According to Julie

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February 21, 2007

Google-ranking 2: Kaffebarguiden

Ikke nok med at mitt bilde kommer opp først om man image-googler Julie Andersen, og min blogg kommer opp først om man søker etter According to Julie, men Kaffebarguiden er ganske søkbar også.

Jeg må først presisere at jeg har et liv...
Før jeg forteller at jeg søkte etter de forskjellige stedene jeg har anmeldt, og Kaffebarguiden kom opp på første resultatside i alle tilfeller. For La Sosta og U1 måtte jeg legge til ordet kaffe og for Java måtte jeg legge til kaffe og St. Hanshaugen, for i det hele tatt å få opp sider som handlet om kaffebarene. Men det må alle andre som evt. vil lese om kaffen de har her også gjøre.

Søker man etter “kaffebarguiden”, har alle resultatene noe med denne bloggen å gjøre. Ikke verst...

Posted by Julie at 4:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Politikk

Jeg studerer politikk. Men jeg er ikke politisk aktiv ut fra mange andres målestokk: Jeg er ikke medlem av et politisk parti, jeg har vel kanskje vært med to demonstrasjoner i hele mitt liv, og den ene gangen jeg stemte, bestemte jeg meg for hvilket parti jeg skulle stemme på da jeg allerede var inne, ikke bare i valglokalet, men i selve avlukket.

Hvorfor?

Det kan være fordi jeg først og fremst er interessert i internasjonal eller overnasjonal politikk, som får mindre dekning i media og som det ikke stemmes over og debatteres over i samme grad som innenrikspolitikk. Eller det kan være fordi det å være "politisk aktiv" fører med seg så mye annet tull at jeg ikke orker.

Alt for ofte føler jeg at jeg tvinges til å gruppere meningene mine, at hvis jeg har mening A må jeg  nødvendigvis ha mening B, og det bare fordi det er vanlig at mennesker som mener A også mener B, ikke fordi det er en logisk sammenheng mellom de to meningene. På en debatt om blogging var det en skeptisk innleder som spurte: "Hvordan skal man vite hva disse bloggerne står for, om man ikke vet hvilken gruppe de tilhører?" Vel, men kunne jo prøve å lese det vi skriver, tenkte jeg. Det er jo nettopp det som er poenget med politisk blogging: å kunne uttrykke sin mening med en selvstendig "stemme". Det er menneskelig og fornuftig å forsøke å sortere enkeltsaker etter steriotyper, men det er like fornuftig og viktig å gi disse steriotypene fleksible grenser, og å tenke seg litt om før man plasserer nye tilfeller i utdaterte båser.

For noen måneder siden var det en som mente at han med 100% sikkerhet hadde funnet ut hva jeg stemte, uten at jeg hadde diskutert politikk med ham, ja, uten at jeg egentlig hadde snakket noe særlig med ham i det hele tatt. Det som bekymret meg, var ikke hvor rett eller feil han tok, men at han var så fullstendig sikker på at han gjettet riktig. Ikke bare viser dette en overdreven tro på steriotyper, men et etter min mening veldig feilaktig syn på politikk generelt. Demokrati kan ikke handle om å stemme bare etter det som lønner seg for deg personlig og menneskene i din gruppe. I så fall ville mindretallet alltid hatt store problemer. Man bør stemme etter det man mener er mest fornuftig generelt, men hvis alle virkelig gjør det skulle det vært helt umulig å se på noen hva de stemmer.

Med mindre måten de kler seg på og oppfører seg på er tegn som med vilje viser hva de mener. Og her er vi tilbake ved det sentrale problemet, som Saccarina beskriver veldig godt. Jeg vil ikke ha en hel politikk-pakke. Jeg vil finne ut hva jeg mener fra sak til sak.

Det ville vært langt mer praktisk å bare melde meg inn i et eller annet. Andre ville visst hva jeg stod for, jeg kunne skrevet "politisk aktiv" på cv-en, og jeg kunne få ferdigformulerte argumenter fra mer erfarne partifeller. Da ville jeg hatt mye mer å slå i bordet med under politiske diskusjoner med medlemmer av andre partier. Nå må jeg stort sett improvisere frem argumentene mine, og i mange saker vet jeg ikke hva jeg skal tro. Jeg er veldig skeptisk til å uttale: "sånn er det" hvis ikke alle fakta er kjent, siden det er fakta og ikke ideologier som er det avgjørende for mine konklusjoner. Og jeg vil gjerne bruke litt tid på å høre de ulike argumentene og veie dem mot hverandre, men da er gjerne de andre for lengst gått over til det stadiet der de enten er lykkelig enige og roper høyt om hva som må gjøres, eller helt uenige og konkurrerer om å rope høyest.

"Det er naivt å ikke ta et standpunkt", får jeg høre. Likevel er det grunnleggende i vitenskap at man skal forsøke å motbevise hypoteser for å styrke dem. Derfor, for å ha et vitenskapelig forhold til politikk, kan man gjerne ta standpunkt men man må være åpen for at dette standpunktet kan endres. I motsetning til enkelte andre, mener jeg at objektivitet er en bra ting.

Jeg husker da jeg oppdaget at jeg kunne være interessert i politikk selv om jeg stemte "vet ikke" i skolevalget. Det var fantastisk å oppdage hvor spennende disse problemstillingene egentlig var, hvis man så bort fra de dagligdagse aktivitetene til enkeltpolitikere og den selektive argumentasjonen til de berørte partene. Problemer oppstår hvis jeg ikke skal kunne bruke denne kunnskapen fordi politikk og vitenskapen om politikk regnes som to helt adskilte ting. Kanskje det er helt feil av meg å stille vitenskapelige krav til politiske synspunkter utenfor Blindern. Men at ord skal ha helt andre definisjoner innenfor vitenskap om politikk enn det de har innenfor egentlig politikk virker ikke logisk. Det kan argumenteres for at man bør forenkle politiske og ideologiske synspunkter for å gjøre det forståelig for de menneskene som kun er aktive som velgere, de menneskene som egentlig ikke er interessert i det hele tatt. (Nazistene argumenterte for dette.) Har man viktige beslutninger å ta, bør man ikke grave seg ned i teorier og vitenskapelige definisjoner bare for å gjøre det. Hvis kartet og terrenget ikke stemmer, skal man lage nye kart. Men det må ikke bli sånn at de gamle kartene studeres i detalj av statsvitenskapstudenter, nye kart utarbeides av forskere og er utdaterte innen studentene får kjøpt dem på Akademika, og ute i skogen er det viktigere å gå sammen med en gruppe med matchende turutstyr enn å egentlig tenke over hvor man går.

"I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians", sa Charles de Gaulle. Jeg vet ikke hvem han mente skulle ta seg av politikken. Men jeg håper det finnes plass til objektivitet, grundighet og vitenskapelighet... og at man kan komme til denne plassen uten å bruke år på å rope slagord man bare delvis tror på.

Opprinnelig skrevet litt etter litt, som pauseaktivitet da jeg satt alene på Blindern og leste til eksamen i Politisk Teori. 

 

Posted by Julie at 12:27 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 20, 2007

Update on the computer situation

Warning: I'm going to write about computers now. 

Thanks everyone, for all comments, both real life and online. I'm typing this on my new computer! And no, it's not a Macbook. The fact that many of you "just prefer Apple to Windows" without being able to tell me why wasn't enough. Maybe if money were not an issue at all. But then again, I really don't like their keyboards. And I don't see what's so great about white. I wouldn't say that this computer is pretty, but I haven't ever called any computer pretty. I think it's relatively not ugly.

I'm going to miss my old computer, which I now refer to as "the little one", but I wasn't willing to spend the extra cash for a new version of the same thing.

I asked for an explanation of the Apple/Windows debate, and I found one. The full text can be downloaded here, but I'm posting an excerpt. It's not going to make my Mac-using friends happy, but Stephenson does say that he "embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of "In the beginning was the command line" is now obsolete." There is an updated version, now with monkeys, which will make these same friends very happy, and which I've also posted an excerpt from.

When I bought my computer, I wasn't thinking about any of this. All I really need is Firefox and Open Office attached to a good keyboard.

From In the Beginning... Was the Command Line by Neil Stephenson:

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles—expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery. The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of Rvs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships. Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits. The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"

And now, with monkeys, added by Garrett Birkel:

(...) if you buy an Apple sedan, you also receive a little monkey in a snappy blue suit. Your personal X-Monkey (as the company calls him) is the ideal driver of your Apple sedan. He knows where everything is, feeds and washes himself, drives defensively, and will even tune up the car for you. X-Monkey will accept precise instructions like, "forward 10 feet, right 20 degrees", but he is smart enough to think on his own, so you can tell him "Drive me to a taco stand, then pick up Uncle Steve". He will also keep you out of trouble, by politely ignoring instructions like, "Run over that jogger", and "Floor it", when you're at a red light. Depending on your temperament, this could actually be a downside.

The X-Monkey comes from a line of monkeys originally bred by the military for the purpose of driving tanks. It's a good fit, because the modern Apple sedan is actually a tank in a fancy shell. The X-Monkey's only drawback is that he can only drive a car from Apple. Show him any other vehicle, and he won't even know how to operate the door lock.

Meanwhile, the free-thinking Linux people, displeased with genetic engineering, have created their own smart monkey chauffeurs through a massive international breeding program. Unlike the X-Monkey, the Linux Monkey is capable of driving any car, including the Apple sedan. If you could install a steering wheel on a log splitter, the Linux Monkey could drive it for you. The catch is, you have to train the Linux Monkey yourself. Fortunately there are experts everywhere who will help you out, and the Linux Monkey trains easily.

The Microsoft Gorilla, on the other hand, cannot be trained. Instead, you must keep rephrasing your directions until the MS Gorilla can comprehend them. He consumes both front seats, lowering the mileage of your car, and blocking most of your view. Though he sounds like a bad deal, MS Gorilla is actually extremely popular, because he looks impressive, drives aggressively, and keeps his mouth shut. If you speak in his limited vocabulary, he will take you Where You Want To Go Today ... especially if he can plow monkeys off the intervening road. However, if you touch anything on the dashboard, or try to haggle with him over the exact route, he may become irritated and casually drive your car into a telephone pole. People learn to not argue.

The point to this altered metaphor is that the Microsoft dealership, and the Linux collective, do not really make cars at all. All those shiny automobiles sitting on the lot and lined up on the street corner are re-branded vehicles, manufactured by other companies. However, their modern instrument panels are so confusing that they'd be useless without a chauffeur. ... And the Microsoft dealership gets a cut from the price of every vehicle that leaves their lot, piloted by the Microsoft Gorilla.

If you were so inclined, you could purchase a car from them, drive to the sidewalk, and kick the gorilla out onto the curb. The Linux Monkey can hop right in and start driving for you. Of course, Microsoft already has your money, and what are you going to do with a spare gorilla?

Contrast this with the Apple dealership, that personally designs and assembles every Apple sedan. When a sedan leaves their lot, they pocket the whole amount. You could still kick out the X-Monkey any time, but why would you? The Linux Monkey is basically the same, without the training.

Posted by Julie at 7:03 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 18, 2007

Hvordan oppleve en fantastisk søndag

 

1. Våkne kl. 10 (ikke for sent, ikke for tidlig) på en behagelig sofa hos gode venner.
   
2. Spis stor frokost med bacon, omelett, rundstykker, boller og mye kaffe. Veldig mye kaffe.
3. Gå til toget og vær positivt overrasket over været.
4. Ring mormor og gratuler henne med dagen.
   
5. Sitt på toget og stirr ut av vinduet og nyt følelsen av å være akkurat sliten nok til at du ikke føler at du burde gjort noe fornuftig.
6. Sitt utenfor en kino og vær helt i din egen verden fordi du har en morsom bok.
7. Se Dream Girls, gratis førpremiere, langt fremme i salen.
8. Gå en lang omvei hjem fordi du vil høre hele CD-en til The Magic Numbers.
9. Kjøp grønnsaker og lag en stor salat.
10. Gled deg til kake og te med venninner på kvelden.

 

Ja, jeg har det bra. 

Posted by Julie at 5:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 16, 2007

Rot i systemet

Heidi skriver en liste med forslag (med fordeler og ulemper for hvert forslag) for hva man kan gjøre med forelskelse.

Og mens vi først er inne på temaet "tekster som beskriver hvordan ordensmennesker tenker når de er forelsket", her er en linje fra sangen "Mystery" av Indigo Girls, som jeg ikke får ut av hodet: "You set up your place in my thoughts, moved in and made my thinking crowded." 

Posted by Julie at 6:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 14, 2007

Coffee without a price tag (part 2)

Read part 1 

I became really fascinated with the idea of coffee without a fixed price. After about one minute of internet research, I found out that some people really do pay to avoid guilt, like the comment-writer on the Kirkland Weblog who wrote:

"Katie and I had this plan to just go in, get coffee and not pay because we wanted to see how it felt to just not pay. We ended up feeling so guilty that we drove back paid double what we would have and I offered to put a bumper sticker on my car to help advertise...it's a crazy mind game they have going there."

Other people see this the way I did in my original post: as an economic experiment.

"My initial excitement was later tempered by the thought that we've done this before and it has failed miserably (pick any communist state that has tried to force economic equality by spreading wealth). But then I realized that this was fundamentally different. It's not a government forcing us to distribute wealth. It's about relative worth measured by US. It forces US to look at the larger economic picture and assess how we fit in. I wonder what I'll pay when I get a cup of coffee?"

After checking out Terra Bite's website, I realized that they do rely on more than faith in their customer's logic in order to get money: they encourage people to pay what they would normally pay and let their customers know that they plan to support charities. They also sell game consoles with fixed prices to boost revenue.

Posted by Julie at 2:33 PM | TrackBack

February 7, 2007

Coffee without a price tag (part 1)

The Terra Bite Lounge is a coffee shop without prices. Customers choose to pay whatever they want anonymously - or they can get the coffee for free. Using a strict rational choice economic model, no one would pay (or so the article claims). However, the average price of coffee (or a "transaction" which could be anything from an espresso to a double mocha with a cookie and a bagel) is 3 dollars.

This article is about so much more than coffee. It's about whether people are inherently good or inherently selfish - a question which is often at the root of debates not just in philosophy, but political science and not least international relations. Althought the question in itself is endlessly interesting, debating it endlessly is boring: it's obvious (at least to me) that we are somewhere in between these two extremes. I believe that people are selfish in the most basic sense of the word: we care about ourselves first and wish to benefit as much as possible from our choices. But this doesn't rule out acts of goodwill, especially when we percieve the cost for us as much, much smaller than the benefit for someone else. After all, we want to live in a world where people think like this.

I don't think people give up free coffee for fear of "the guilt of not having paid for it and the scorn of other customers", as Steven D. Levitt writes in the Freakonomics Blog. I think they give up free coffee for fear of losing the opportunity to get free coffee in the future. Paying because you just feel that the nice people who are willing to give you free coffee deserve to get paid doesn't really make sense economically. The people behind Terra Bite wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think it would give them at least some small profit. The founder, Ervin Peretz, says "If it turned out that 20 percent of the population were dishonest, we could just put in a cash register." Which means that, if possible, you should pay today, so that the coffee will still be free tomorrow.

What would happen if one of my coffee places let me determine my own price? As a college student with relatively expensive habits, I would probably appreciate the chance to drink for free every once in a while. But since I'm willing to pay for coffee at today's prices, never paying would be avoiding a very small cost and risking a very big future gain (the wonderful feeling of a perfect double cortado and a brownie after deciding that my bank account is too tiny to justify buying new shoes). I would give the coffee shop my spare change if I had any, but since I often don't, I would probably work out some sort of average sum for what a cup of coffee is worth to me, paying a little more if I were feeling rich and a little less if I wasn't. The basic idea (that I have to pay today so I don't have to pay tomorrow) is rational; figuring out a price by gut feeling isn't.

Posted by Julie at 5:53 PM | TrackBack

February 1, 2007

Rambukk igjen

Gratulerer, Rambukk, igjen!!!

Du har skrevet både kommentar 100 og kommentar 200.

Premie: Jeg hadde tenkt til å la begge vinnerne (altså deg og en annen) gi meg en bloggeoppgave. I tillegg skulle dere få kaffe. Dermed både innflytelse og koffein - det må jo være bra. Men når du vinner dobbelt, er ikke disse premiene nok. Siden jeg allerede har linket til deg ørten ganger (og din blogg uansett har flere lesere enn min), teller ikke pr som premie i seg selv. Og nevnte bacheloroppgave skal uansett ut på nett når den blir ferdig. Så hva ønsker du deg?

Til dere andre: Er du skuffet over at du ikke selv får en premie du kan bestemme selv, er det bare en ting å gjøre. Kommentar ofte, og plutselig er det på tide å premiere nr. 300...

Posted by Julie at 4:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Ting man bør huske på

Via Førti, feit og ferdig, men opprinnelig fra et annet sted...

1. Ikke bekymre deg for hva folk tenker. De gjør det ikke så ofte.
2. Å gå i kirken gjør deg ikke til en kristen i større grad enn det å stå i en garasje gjør deg til en bil.
3. Kunstig Intelligens kommer til kort mot Naturlig Dumhet.
4. Om du må velge mellom to onder: Velg det du ikke har prøvd før.
5. Det finnes ikke det minste bevis for at livet er på alvor.
6. Samvittigheten er den delen av deg som føler seg dårlig når alle andre deler av deg føler seg bra.
7. Menn er fra Jorda. Kvinner er fra Jorda. Og sånn er det med den saken.
8. Ingen mann har noen gang blitt skutt mens han vasket opp.
9. Mennesker som tenker logisk utgjør en hyggelig kontrast til den virkelige verden.
10. Mennesker som absolutt vil dele sin religiøse oppfatninger med deg vil som regel ikke at du skal dele dine med dem.
11. Et menneske som er hyggelig mot deg men ikke mot kelneren er ikke et hyggelig menneske.
12. Vennene dine elsker deg likevel.
13. Vær ikke redd for å prøve noe nytt. Husk at en enslig amatør bygde Arken, mens en stor gruppe profesjonelle bygde Titanic.
14. Vær ikke overtroisk når det gjelder tallet tretten. Du har nettopp lest tretten gode råd og observasjoner.

Posted by Julie at 4:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack