Rambling Dane

Sprogpurister

2006-04-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

Disse midaldrende sprogpurister får mig altid til at tænke på en økonom, der med sin geniale model i hånden sidder og råber ad aktiekurserne: ”Det er forkert, sådan skal det ikke gå”. De har ikke fattet pointen: Sproget er levende og i konstant udvikling. At skamride sin barndoms lærdoms kæpheste har ingen mening: ”Stop toget, vi vil af.” - Det er patetisk - . Sprog er et virvar af sociolekt, dialekt, slang, andre sprog, fagterminologi, tilfældige lyde, attitude, fri fantasi – what have we. Klart, man kan fucke up; mene et og sige noget andet, men en effet, hvis du ikke bryder dig om måden noget bliver sagt på, må du bare leve med smerten. Sprog bliver aldrig entydigt, aldrig rent, og kan først fastfryses, når ingen længere taler det.
Grammatik er et fremragende redskab til at lære nye sprog, men kan aldrig være andet end en ham sproget før eller senere vil kaste af sig. De grammatiske fejl er den sproglige udviklings frø, dagens udbredte misforståelser er morgendagens grammatik.
Så fat det dog!

Bicycle helmets and procreation

2006-04-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

On of the major issues in the Danish media these days is the problem, that only about 6% of the bicycling population use bicycle helmets. This leads to the horrorfying result that 1600 people a year hit their heads when taking a tumble. 800 of these are seriously concussed and a few even damaged permanently. In a population of approximately 5.3 million, this means that about 1 in 7.000 will knock their heads on a yearly basis. This is considered so grave an issue, that legislation is being considered. By comparison an amarican is 20 times more likely to be raped, robbed, assaulted or murdered by someone with a gun. Denmark is a quiet country!

My thoughts are, that the chances of a concussion are so low, that from a progenic point of view, it is actually more dangerous to wear a bicycle helmet than to leave it off.

Anyone who reacts to a threat level this low will of course be a rather fearful creature who lacks trust in his or her own ability to navigate safely through trafic. Whereas courage is an aphrodisiac when seasoned with a certain amount of common sense, fearfulness is not something most people look for in a potential partner. When this fearfulness is signalled with a rather ridiculous hat that leaves you with a bad hair day every day, it becomes a problem.

The inevitable result will be, that these fearful individuals will be largely ignored as potential partners and will be forced to interbreed: thus, creating an increasingly timid sub-race of man. As fear is enforced by breeding and upbringing through generations this race will slowly withdraw from human society, becoming ever more isolated and shy of any contact with normal humans, which might entail danger. As they slowly withdraw into more secluded areas - forced underground as it were, the process will accelerate, and as the genepool diminishes, racial traits will become increasingly pronounced, and it is not unlikely, that the primary racial traits: Timidity and ability to hide will become the desired traits. As size is a factor in hiding, it is likely that these people will be of ever diminishing stature and might eventually shift to nocturnal creatures.

This invariably leads my thoughts to Santa's elves, who probably started out as normal people, indistinguishable from their neighbours except for the habit of wearing practical but rather silly looking hats. Santa's elves are now creatures of legend, and so will Danes be in a few generations if this ridiculous law is passed.

Thus, my advice is to visit Denmark in the near future, while it is still a country whose population is tall and athletic. All too soon we may be reduced to fearful creatures of diminutive proportions wearing silly hats, who venture out only at night. If this law is passed it might be a sign, that timidity has already taken over, and the process is unstoppable. Woe to Denmark and its timid inhabitants.

Why religion is ridiculous

2006-03-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

Burdened with a very religous upbringing, gifted with reason, and exposed to education, religion is something I have given a lot of thought to, and finally rejected.

Here are some of the reasons why I find religion ridiculous:

If we are talking Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the basic belief is in a supreme being that can do anything (but does nothing), knows everything (but says nothing), that is present everywhere (but conveniently invisible).

Anyone who tries to explain the workings of an automobile with the presence of a supernatural being would typically be considered in need of psychiatric treatment. If on the other hand a large group of people explain the workings of the universe as a whole as a result of the will of a supernatural being, they are religous, and their thoughts must be respected.

Not surprisingly, nothing (outside the realm of psychology) can be proved to have been achieved through prayer. Quite to the contrary, things get done, when people ignore religion and start thinking for themselves, roll up their sleeves and get busy.

Religion, which the religous usually refer to as the root of good behaviour (ethics) has been used to justify some of the worst crimes in history.

The fact that religion is practiced in a multitude of ways and is constantly developing, while most of the practitioners claim, that their way of worshiping, their beliefs, are the correct ones, show that most of them must be wrong. Why not all of them, since no religion has achieved anything, and no religion has been able to stay the same. Either God changes his mind a lot, or all of the people who claimed to know his will were liars, or he exists only in the mind of a more fickle creature - man himself.

The rise of religion is quite understandable in a historical perspective. I assume that human beings have always wished to live safe lives with sufficient food to procreate as much as possible. With an unmathematical approach to chance, bad luck and good luck must have seemed to represent some sort of underlying forces with minds of their own. What would be more natural than to shape the most interesting of these phenomena into supreme beings and then suck up to them in order to gain some sort of controle over them? The reduction of this multitude of divine beings into one, seems mostly to be the result of good thinking: Why sacrifice 12 goats, if you could make do with one? Thus, monotheism seems simply to be a first attempt to rationalise some messy procedures. Why not go all the way, and do away with it altogether? Save the last goat for some hungry people, so to say?

By forging ahead and ignoring the outcries of the religious people, who for some strange reason find new ideas incompatible with their omniscient God, we are creating a world, where people can be safe from the calamities of nature, with plenty of food for our offspring. Not by praying, but by adding lightning conductors to our houses and fertilizers to our fields.

Burning flags and strange bed fellows

2006-03-10T06:26:00.000-08:00

The other night I saw the flag of my country being set on fire by a raging crowd half way around the world. And you know what? It brought a smile to my face.

Denmark has always been sitting on the hedge. A socialist democracy, a peace-loving member of NATO, known primarily for our Queen, our victuals and our soccerplayers and the fact that the Danish Jews not only survived the Holocaust, but were able to return to their jobs, friends and property immediately after the German surrender. A country so small that most of the people familiar with the name of our country would be hard pressed to place us on the map.

We are a very secular democracy: Abortion is an issue long settled, porno is an acceptable pass time, speech is very free and religion is mostly a joke. And you know what? It's toll free. No one really knows what Denmark is all about and, thus, we are friends to all the world. Or we were until recently, that is.

An editor decided (very sensibly) to push back at an encroaching tendency of self-censorship on issues dealing with Islam. 12 drawings of Muhammed were published . The initiative sank without a ripple until it was fished up by a group of Islamists who went on a rabble rousing tour of the Middle East. It worked!

Suddenly Denmark is facing an international crisis, based on cartoons. Half the Danish population is ready to slug it out with the Islamists, half is ready to sell out the same democracy for the ability to go back to obscurity, from which we can safely peddle our wares, and being friends with everyone again. Now, who do you think are the ones ready to sell out democracy?

That's right - the left wingers. The same people who fought for abortion and women's rights: Who defended pornography and derided the morals of Christians are now siding with the Islamists, pleading the respect for different norms and values that they never showed an affection for, when targeting the morals and ideas of more settled fellow citizens.

Effectively they are siding with people fighting for a totalitarian state based on religous law, their own convictions acceptable casualties if it means that we can all be friends again, even if it is at the price of freedom of speech. Muslims are a silent minority in Denmark. Islamist an out spoken minority within the minority and so far they have won an easy victory holding their muslim brothers hostage in the attempt to hi jack the press. The Danish left wing are seling out their principles, selling out the homosexual muslims, selling out the secular muslims, selling out the muslim women in order to please the extremists. Islamists and socialists, joined in the fight against freedom of speech: Strange bed fellows indeed.

My conclusion is, that it has been too easy in Denmark. Too many people have forgotten, that democracy is something that yoy can never take for granted. That it is something that people have fought, bled and died for. It is never free. It is always opposed by those who would govern not only the bodies but the minds of human beings. The crowd with the burning flags just pointed out that fact and for that I thank them.