Category: Kim Blog (English)

Personal blog. Thoughts, conspiracies with a danish twist etc.

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Jeg brænder ikke for Dannebrog – Jeg brænder for at bygge bro! jeg er verdensborger

Bridge From Kalvebod Brygge To Islands Brygge In CopenhagenYesterday was a very special day in Copenhagen. A new bridge crossing the harbour between Kalvebod Brygge and Islands Brygge was opened, and this bridge is exclusively for pedestrians and bikes.

I have no idea how long time it has been since the last bridge crossing the harbour, so close to the city centre, was opened, but it was way too long time ago.
Per Vers Brænder Ikke For Dannebrog - Men For At Bygge Bro

There are way too few bridges across the Copenhagen harbour, so having a new one is great. After the bridge was opened the rapper Per Vers took stage to give, amongst others, his interpretation of Benny Andersen’s “Verdensborger” (World citizen), the title of this post is a quote from the lyrics, it’s difficult to translate, but Dannebrog is the name of the Danish national flag, brog rhymes with “bro” which means bridge, so the literal translation is: “I’m not passionate (buring for) about Dannebrog (the Danish flag) – I’m passionate about building bridges (e.g. bridging gaps). I’m a citizen of the world (verdensborger)”. Oh well! Lost in translation! I hope it made any sense.

Anyway a great performance by Per Vers, who’s scoring a small hit with his song “Black Power”, which is a great track.

I couldn’t have put it any better! We need more mental, racial and physical bridges.

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Julian Beever in Copenhagen – C’est formidable!

Julian Beever At Alextorv In Copenhagen DenmarkRegular readers might remember that I recently made a post regarding the remarkable artist Julian Beever, who does 3-D chalk renderings on the pavement of cities all over the world, drawings that plays tricks on the eye.

This week Julian Beever was in Copenhagen, and he made a beautiful work at Axeltorv, as shown in the picture. He obviously hides something in his pictures, this time it should be a man that looks up at you. I think I spotted him, can you?

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Dansk Flygtningehjælp (The Danish Refugee Council) – Frivilligbladet (The Volunteer Post) – Interview with yours truly

Dansk Flygtningehjælp - FrivilligbladetDansk Flygtningehjælp (The Danish Refugee Council) – Frivilligbladet (The Volunteer Post)

Dansk Flygtningehjælp (The Danish Refugee Council), has just published the latest issue of Frivilligbladet (The Volunteer Post). This time they have a piece on our trip to Ringkøbing in the western part of Denmark, and I’m very proud to be featured in it.

Besides the fact that the article basically is an interview with yours truly, it’s also accompanied by pictures taken by me. I’m really, really proud and humbled by this.

Since the article is in Danish, I’m hereby publishing an English language translation.

FROM MJØLNERPARKEN TO WESTERN JUTLAND
Frivilligbladet Volume 3, 2006, written by Bente Bækgaard

It’s a long distance from Mjølnerparken in Copenhagen to Western Jutland (the main peninsula of Denmark). Despite that fact a group of volunteers from Mjølnerparken had success going on a trip with 21 children to Hee near Ringkøbing. The trip became a success, in part because it was planned in close co-operation with the volunteer group in Ringkøbing as well as local partners.

Sea, sun and blue skies. 42 brown legs from Mjølnerparken are streaking across the sandy dunes and into the roaring North Sea. In the background is a group of volunteers. They’re also from Mjølnerparken. They’re the organisers of the vacation trip to Western Jutland, aided by two consultants, the volunteers from Ringkøbing and local partners from Mjølnerparken.

Co-operation

“The idea behind the trip surfaced after the yearly assembly in April, where our volunteer consultant had talked to the volunteers in Ringkøbing about the possibility of arranging a vacation trip. We felt that that was a great idea, that we wanted to help realising.” says Kim Bach, who has acted as the co-ordinator of the trip.

Shortly after the yearly assembly of the volunteers in April, he and seven other volunteers from the group in Mjølnerparken contacted the group in Ringkøbing. And the planning of the vacation trip had started.

Aid from the group in Ringkøbing

The alliance with the group of volunteers from Ringkøbing turned out to be a huge asset for the volunteers from Mjølnerparken. The volunteers didn’t have much previous knowledge of the possibilities in the western part of Jutland, so at that point the local partner came to the rescue: “It was a great help having some locals to co-operate with. They have much more knowledge of the area than we do, and besides that, they also know our target group. This means that they quickly can point us in a direction that is interesting for us”, says Kim Bach.

The volunteers from Ringkøbing helped us locate a place to stay, and to find activities for the children. To top this, the volunteers from western Jutland arranged that the children from Mjølnerparken, got access to the control tower in the harbour in Hvide Sande, and they saw how the sluice that give boats access to the harbour is controlled. The local contacts seems to be able to open sluice gates as well.

Klub 36

One thing that the volunteers were aware of, after deciding to go through with the project: it will become a challenge to get the children to sign up for the trip.

In order to avoid the classical horror of volunteer work: that no one shows up, the volunteers chose to co-operate with Klub 36, a local club in Mjølnerparken: “We chose to work with Klub 36, because they have a strong network in Mjølnerparken and a good contact with the parents of the children, there’s no doubt that the many sign-ups also can be attributed to the fact that two workers from Klub 36 took part in the trip, and that the invitations were circulated in their network”, says Kim Bach. He adds that the group of volunteers also leveraged another offer from the group, the volunteers that offer private tutoring in the private homes of the children, “hjemmelektiehjælpen”. “The benefit of our private tutoring offer is that the volunteers have a close relationship with the parents of the children, and the parents are much more inclined to permit their children to take part, if they know the people behind”, Kim Bach adds.

The strategy of the volunteers paid off. The sign-ups poured in, and the volunteers had to create a waiting-list. The only drawback of the strategy was, according to Kim Bach, that the group of children weren’t as mixed as we originally had envisioned: “We would have like to have more children of Danish ethnicity to take part in the trip, but we didn’t succeed,” Kim Bach says and adds, that the volunteers next year will do more to gather a more ethnically mixed group.

Volunteer work in rural areas

It turned out that the trip to Western Jutland did more than open the eyes of the children. The volunteers that took part in the trip, also discovered how the volunteers in rural areas work: “Through the co-operation with the group of volunteers in Ringkøbing, we discovered the great differences between volunteer integration work in different parts of Denmark. It’s my impression that the volunteers in Ringkøbing spends a lot of time doing volunteer work. “Our” volunteers don’t have that much time. On top of that the volunteers in rural areas has a much closer co-operation with the local authorities. While we were in the Western Jutland, a number of Burmese refugees arrived, to be settled in Ringkøbing. It was interesting to hear, how the authorities involve the volunteers in that task. “We don’t do things like that at all” says Kim Bach.

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FrontPage – Software Freedom Day Wiki

Software Freedom Day 2006
FrontPage – Software Freedom Day Wiki

Saturday September 16th is Software Freedom Day (SFD), and I’m one of the volunteers.

So what’s SFD. Here’s a quote from the Software Freedom Day web-site:

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world are organising events on 16 September 2006.

As part of the event we’ll be giving away Ubuntu CDs.

You’ll find us at Gammel Torv (The Old Square) in the centre of Copenhagen on Saturday the 16th of September from 11am to 1pm.

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Apple Consumer Corporation – now commenting on unreleased products?

It's showtime - Apple special event webcast 12 september 2006In keeping with tradition, I’m commenting on new Apple product announcements, and since Steve Jobs did a presentation yesterday, my post is overdue.

We’ve come to expect consumer product announcements from Apple in the fall, and in plenty time for the holiday season. This year was no exception.

So what did we get this time?

iPod shuffle - 2nd generationMinor updates to the iPod product line, and a brand new iPod shuffle, that looks really really cool, and at $79 it’s great value, and it’s now truly wearable, and sports an integrated clip. I really, really want one. I would have liked wireless (Bluetooth) or an integrated USB, eliminating the need to carry a cable, but that would have hurt estetics.

The iPod nano was also updated (or re-mastered as Apple puts it so brillantly), now looking much like the Mini. Aluminium is back in fashion with Apple, and I like it, the green nano is tempting (surprise I’m a sucker for green), now if it only came in a 8 gig version.

iTunes was given a make-over with version 7. At first I didn’t find the new look too attractive, but I guess that this a preview of what Leopard will look like, and it is actually quite attractive – it grows on me. The inclusion of “cover flow” is great, but I expect that Apple will be getting a lot of flak over the way they implemented the download of cover art, by requiring that you have an active iTunes account.

I predict that Apple will remove the requirement to register with iTunes for the cover download feature to work, quite soon, but I’m sure that Apple has increased their iTunes user base by some percentage points before then. iTunes is a Trojan, Apple knows it, and they will keep trying to leverage it, like Steve Jobs said at a presentation “we now have x millions active accounts in iTunes – and they come with credit cards!”.

The big content announcement was that you now can buy movies on iTunes, so far only in the US store, the rest of the world might follow in 2007. Apple has also increased the quality of the video you can purchase by a factor 4 to VGA quality, approaching DVD quality.

Apple is also selling games for the iPod 5th Gen, this hints that Apple is opening the iPod platform for 3rd party development, this is a very welcome development.

Apple 'iTV'The big hardware news was, breaking with the tradition of not commenting on unreleased products, the announcement of a digital set-top box code-named the iTV. The iTV is a “real” digital set-top box, it looks like it’s a thin iTunes/FrontRow streaming client, think of it as “AirVideo” or “AirPort Express/Video”. Apple seems to be skipping analogue all together for their entertainment centre strategy, this makes good sense, and was somewhat what I expected, but it’s still somewhat visionary and definitely an example of different thinking, and I applaud the boldness of Apple here. I’m looking forward to more details on this cool new product.

The reason information about the iTV has been disclosed at the late prototype stage, could be in order to deter people from investing in Windows Media Centre solutions, that supports old style broadcast. No other company in the industry has the infrastructure, and deals with content providers in-place. It can only be a hit, but Apple should consider a much lower price point than $299, this is the hardware that could take iTunes to the next level, yet another Trojan from Apple.

iTV is the way TV should be, bringing you in control, but I think that the Mac mini is more for me. I like the concept of a general computer at the centre of my digital media, and the Mac mini is already up to the task. Again I’m looking forward to hearing more details. Will the iTV for instance be a gaming platform? The availability of games on iTunes hints at that. Then again: it looks as if Apple is going to use the same old dogmatic remote from the newest Macs, and that they will not be introducing a game navigation feature, like a click wheel.

The new products, and a Steve Jobs looking a little more enthusiastic than during the WWDC Keynote, made me wonder if Apple should change it’s name to Apple Consumer Corporation. Apple: I need a sub-note book with record breaking long battery life, PLEASE remain a Computer company.

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Blogs Education/Undervisning Kim Blog (English) Lektiehjælpen (Danish)

Another great day…The “happy” party

The child from last week was back, once again with challenging assignments…

This time she had to talk about “problems in society”, she had written cue-cards about pollution, and how bad it is that we’re polluting the oceans, but the empty cue-card had the headline “Religion” written on it.

“Do you think I know something about that subject” I asked? She nodded “Yes”.

She started out by acknowledging that there are more similarities than differences between Christianity and Islam, and once again the number one issue Muslims have with Christianity surfaced, the fact the Jesus, alav ha-shalom, is claimed to be the “son of God”, well since God or Allah, is “one”, this is blasphemy. My point was once again that we’re all children, and that our relationship with the Creator is much akin to the relationship we have with our parents, and that I believe that that was what Jesus meant (I feel that that is expressed by one of the names of God: Al-Wadud (الودود) The Loving, the Kind One).

We’ll after touching the subject of the prophet Muhammad “Salla Allahu ‘Alaihi Wa Sallam” cartoons, she ended up with two cue-cards, focusing on tolerance and understanding as ways to avoid problems due to religion. The “Nudansk Ordbog” actually lists “Understanding other cultures” as a way to create tolerance.

Part of the assignment was to describe an ideal party – the “happy” party. I should get the 10 misson statements she listed, but here’s some important ones I remember:

  • Everybody should have a job
  • People shouldn’t annoy each other
  • It should not be allowed to beat children
  • The Police shouldn’t beat on people

I think the “happy” party will get my vote.

Finally she had a Math problem, and it included triangulation: You know the length of one side, and the three angles, now the job was to determine the middle normal! I believe that it’s quite simple to calculate – even without knowledge of trigonometry, I just couldn’t remember the formula, so after some attempts at analysis, I decided to do a simple calculation of the fractions, by measuring the drawing in the textbook.

One side of the triangle was 12 meters, I measured it to be 2,7 centimetres, so the unit is 4,44 meters/centimetre. I then measured the middle normal and got 5,2 centimetres yielding 23,11 meters.

We do need Internet access in the “classroom”, Wikipedia has the solution, but it seems that you do need knowledge of trigonometry, which she doesn’t have as far as I know. It might be that my approach was the correct one!

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Blogs Historier/Stories Kim Blog (English)

Am I doing what I’m doing because of 911?

Well the world didn’t end yesterday, the terrorists are holding their breath, the world shouldn’t however, something will happen again. ’nuff said.

Last week I asked myself a question. Would I be doing what I’m doing today if 911 hadn’t happened? It’s possible, but I think that it made me curious to learn more about the reasons behind, and since ignorance is the order of the day, I’ve been trying to swim against the tide.

Mjølnerparken neonsignI now have several Muslim friends, but that wasn’t the reason I started doing volunteer work in a predominately Muslim neighbourhood. It simply felt like the right thing to do, and I also wanted to come to terms with my limitless tolerance, that my friends criticised me of having, calling me naïve and even worse names.

One of the most important things that has happened as a result of my work as a tutor in Mjølnerparken, is that my friends no longer can claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

A few weeks after I started as a tutor in Mjølnerparken, I went on a trip to New York. In 2004 I travelled a lot, and most of the times I had a mission. The actual reason I went to New York, was to attend one of the Ladies First Tour dates, but on the night I arrived, I first went to a great musical, and even though it was late, I immediately decided to head downtown.

After a 30 minute walk, I’m obviously not scared – this being after midnight, and I’ve never been to New York before – was standing at Ground Zero at around 1 am, being the only human being around, but probably the most surveilled person on Earth, just looking around saying: “Det er så WTC sitet…Et stort hul i jorden som man kan se” “So that’s the WTC site…A huge hole in the ground”.

It was immediately clear to me that my trip to New York, was much more a pilgrimage to visit the place where it all started, than it was about attending the Ladies First concert (which was great with performances from Missy Elliott, Beyoncé and an impressive Alicia Keys).

Like I wrote several years ago, I find it amazing that there was so little damage. Yes the hole is huge, but the WTC towers were so immense that it’s really a miracle, that a huge part of lower Manhattan wasn’t destroyed, when the towers collapsed. This fact is part of the fuel for several conspiracy theories, and that’s understandable.

One of the most important lessons I learned during my visit to New York, was that the New Yorkers wasn’t exactly suffering, like I wrote yesterday. Another thing I felt on my body was the fact that the war on terror is also about revenge, and that New Yorkers seem quite paranoid.

I felt the paranoia when I went far out in the suburbs to attend the Ladies First concert, basically being the only white person in a venue with something like 5.000 people of colour, might not have been the smartest thing in the world to do, walking home through projects, picket-fenced homes and deserted shopping mall parking lots, was down-right stupid. There are no pedestrians nor street signs in a New York suburb, and I though that locating a train station would be easy, it wasn’t. Working back and forth on the outskirts of the city, I felt the eyes watching everywhere. You know, I even tried to hitch a ride when I was trying to reach the venue an ice-rink..No I was definitely not in Kansas anymore.

So am I doing what I’m doing because of 911? I’m not sure, but it most likely came into play on the subconscious level, because my work in Mjølnerparken wasn’t something that I was shopping actively for. I actually didn’t really grasp the concept of volunteer work until I was actually doing it.

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Blogs Education/Undervisning Kim Blog (English) Open Source Technology

Windows cleaning – give Windows a makeover or how to turn a Windows pc into a Mac (well sort of)

UPDATED 12-Sep-2006@23:14.

My mother got a laptop for her 70th, unfortunately not a Mac [-) – I really didn’t want to take that conflict with my brother and father

Instead I’m trying to install some “trojans”, to make Windows feel more like a Mac. Here’s what I came up with:

Installed:

  • iTunes (the “ultimate” trojan)
  • Picasa (very iPhoto like, actually better in some respects)
  • Open Office (2.0.3 simply rocks under Windows)
  • Gimp
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Mozilla Thunderbird

Additional:

• Google Toolbar
• Google Earth

To install:

  • Konfabulator

Considering:

  • Mac theme – nah?

Need suggestions:

  • “GarageBand clone”

More suggestions are welcome!

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The Church doesn’t have Wi-Fi

The Church Doesn't Have Wi-Fi15 minutes to go…5 years since Mohammad Atta shouted Allah Akhbar and slammed into the WTC, focused on Jannah and the waiting virgins, and the Church doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

A selection of today’s headlines:

  • The Internet is evil because the terrorists are using it to co-create terrorism manuals.
  • The problems of the Middle East are bigger than ever, but who cares about the people of Lebanon.
  • Danish forces are engaged in Afghanistan and Irak, we’re good at killing people
  • Anders Fogh thinks that Denmark is weak when it comes to foreign policy…We need to do more! OMG!!! Denmark is the 51st State!
  • Documents with lab results from the police investigation regarding the terrorism case from Odense has been found laying around in the open!
  • RFID tags, great Big Brother is watching!
  • Oh it’s so sad for the poor New Yorkers that lost their business! Well others lost their lifes! As far as I could tell when I was in New York in 2004, the New Yorkers aren’t exactly suffering.

Who do you believe? Our media? Their media? Your media!

It’s time to take back what’s rightfully ours, our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression.

Forgive me I have to pray, pray for humanity, the jury is still out, but are we going to make it? Only if we wake up!

WAKE UP!!!

And my keyboard switched to Arabic!

Amen!

SLAM!!!!!!

And because the Church doesn’t have WiFi, I can’t access the Sacred Texts Library, to meditate on Surat 2.112, I’ll have to write it down in my own words:

“He who worships his Lord and is a doer of good shall fear nothing!”

Alahu Akhbar…SLAM!!!!

Hey my cell-phone and Google to the rescue…Surat 2.112 al quran…Yielded this page:

The Birth of Islam

It started out with quotes from Al-Quran most of them hinting a violent side of Islam, with quotes like this:

Surat 9, Al Taouba, “Repentance; The Immunity-Dispensation,” verse 29:

[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

This means that Islam must conquer Jews and Christians, and if after being conquered they do not convert to Islam, then they must pay a tribute (head tax). You would either have to convert, or pay an “infidel tax.”

I was quite sceptical, what was the point? But I actually found the correct Surat 2.112 (my all time favorite quote from Al-Quran):

[2.112] Yes! whoever submits himself entirely to Allah and he is the doer of good (to others) he has his reward from his Lord, and there is no fear for him nor shall he grieve. ‏بَلَىٰ مَنْ أَسْلَمَ وَجْهَهُۥ لِلَّهِ وَهُوَ مُحْسِنٌۭ فَلَهُۥٓ أَجْرُهُۥ عِندَ رَبِّهِۦ وَلَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ ‎
balay’ man ‘Ê”aslama wajhahuw lil:ahi wahuwa muḥsinunm falahuwÊ” ‘Ê”ajruhuw Ê•inda rab:ihiy wala’ xawfun Ê•alayhim wala’ hum yaḥzanuwna (I hope this was correct, I’m not proficient in Arabic).

Surat 2.112 is as far from fundamentalism as you can possible get.

Then the text suddenly become much more interesting, and turns into a rather full historical account of the “Birth of Islam”. Very interesting indeed sitting in a Danish Church reading this historical account of the “Birth of Islam” on the 5th anniversary of 911 on a cell-phone using Google, including sentences rendered perfectly in Arabic script. This was not possible to do 5 years ago, there’s still hope for humanity.

BTW the bible quote of the day was from the Letter to the Galatians. Paulus basically says “remember: the ‘books’ aren’t written by men!”…Hmm…I don’t agree – the ‘books’ are inspired, spiritual and ‘eternal’, but they are indeed written by men.

LysglobeI lit all the candles in the “globe” in the Church and prayed some more for humanity. Too bad that the “bowl” with Bible quotes for contemplation were nowhere to be seen! But I welcome that this tradition has reached Denmark, I saw it in Lund 2 years ago, and actually I prayed for it to be adopted in Denmark. My prayers were heard it seems.

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99 Names of God

Al-Wadud99 Names of God – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Naqshbandi Sufi site, The Power of Love

Al-Wadud (الودود) The Loving, the Kind One

I knew it!