Helene » Norwegian life and culture

The french ban on burqa

Helene Klungvik — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:02:27 +0000

Klassekampen had a good statement about the french ban on burqa (norwegian). The ban has to be violating one, if not several human rights. The ban will probably go some rounds in court, ending up at The International Court of Justice in Hague.

As the ash is blowing in the wind

Helene Klungvik — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:40:52 +0000

I’m thinking about high-speed trains and the benefits it would provide the society. The last three days of plane less skies and volcano ash shows just how vulnerable we are when we rely on one primary way of transportation. Having high-speed trains between the major cities in Europe would make the infrastructure less vulnerable when natural catastrophes happens, because we would have more means of travel. Environmentally it’s also a great benefit, though the politicians might not see it that way since they would have to pay for it.

I would really like the debate about high-speed trains to come back now.

iam…. better because of it

Helene Klungvik — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:15:51 +0000

The new people search iam.no finds information about Norwegian people. All one has to do is enter a name, and it finds information about the person in question. It displays information like name, adress, telephone number, birthday, relevant search hits, tax information, images etc.

When this service was released it created a storm of negative feedback claiming they disregarded the personal information act (loosely translation from personopplysningsloven). There has been at least one article where the availability of personal details have resulted in harassing calls from bullies for an underaged girl.

If one looks under the hood of what this search engine does, it only uses information freely available on the internet already. It collects information from several public sources and merges it to a public profile. Freely available for everybody to search for. iam.no is not inventing the wheel again, it just knows where to gather information from. Wether iam.no is allowed to gather that freely available information is another issue I will not address, but if we are to criticize anything it has to be that our addresses, phone numbers and tax information is allowed to be published online by selected providers. Going after iam.no is just to miss the real target.

I believe some of the reason iam.no receives so much negative feedback, is because people suddenly realizes that a lot of their anonymity on the internet is gone. When we are born we receive a social security number for the state we were born in and we automatically have a public persona. That persona is becoming more and more extended into the internet. Services like iam and pipl is just extensions of it. To expect that our existence begins in this world, but stops online is futile.

Search specifically targeting living people is not a new concept. The search engine pipl.com has already been around for a while doing the exact same thing. pipl.com looks for information on different sources like amazon.com and facebook. There is nothing that could stop pipl.com from collecting the same information that iam.no does. The difference is that pipl.com probably doesn’t know where to look for norwegian data, while iam.no does.

The biggest difference pipl.com and iam.no has is that on iam.no it’s not possible to see where they have collected the information from, which is a problem. When viewing information about oneself, the importance to be able to control that information is key. Since iam.no only uses information from other sites one has to guess where the information comes from (which in most cases shouldn’t be difficult).

When I did a search on myself on iam.no, I was startled to see that all contact information on me was available, adress, telephone number etc. I have been unlisted for years, so it came as a surprise. I recently changed jobs and my phone is usually company registered, so that explained why I was listed.

On pipl.com I found that my amazon.com account was public with my former living location and wishlist.

And these two incidents are the reason why I’m happy for services like iam and pipl. They make it easier to discover and control the information that is available on me online. I have a multitude of registrations on websites I no longer can remember. I even discovered a powerpoint introduction I have written for a company I worked for many years ago, freely available on the internet. I can’t remember writing it, but my name is on it. If services like pipl and iam can make me aware of it, I’m just happy for it.

I have been in touch with my phone company and gotten unlisted from the phone book (telefonkatalogen.no) and within 10 days my details should be removed (and one don’t need a secret number to get unlisted). My amazon account is no longer public.

When we realize that we are public people on the internet just as we are in real life, we also have to learn the importance of controlling what information is available on us and what we make available. The general public is just beginning to get that lesson.

Hangursbanen

Helene Klungvik — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:02:41 +0000

Kari’s mother suggested to take Hangursbanen which is a gondol cable car. Again it was a bit of walking…

Since I came to voss I had seen people paragliding and they took of from Hangursbanen. Every year there’s a festival in Voss called “Extreme Sports Week” where people compete in kayaking, rafting etc.

View from Hangursbanen where one can see voss on the left there

Slondalen

Helene Klungvik — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 04:11:14 +0000

We decided to take a walk to slondalen today and walk around slondalsvatnet. To get there we parked next to a hostel and started walking Rallarvegen for a kilometer or so. There is really two schools of thought when it comes to hiking and the first one is the most widespread:

Walking is the road, light and purpose
Get to a beautiful place and stay there to relax for hours, enjoying the view.

I am soundly located in option number two. I see that there doesn’t have to be two schools of thoughts, but norwegians is hellbent on walking, walking, walking. It’s not enough to see beautiful places – we have to be able to say we walked from A to B. There has to be a plan to a trip – a grander design than just viewing the surroundings.

Kari is soundly located in number 1, and I don’t think option nr. 2 has ever crossed her mind.

So as we continued walking I (again) started souring up more and more. It was such a beautiful place with water and mountains all around, and I would have been perfectly happy to just be there. Unfortunately, that was not in Kari’s mind, and since I carried the food and the heater (or whatever a “stormkjøkken” would be called) we couldn’t seperate. I was sick of walking – or, I like walking, but long hiking trips, almost every day for over a week?

Not really. But it was well worth the trip.

View into slondalen

View from the end of slondalsvatnet

Grønlivannet

Helene Klungvik — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:18:13 +0000

Kari’s mother has been involved in the handicap association in Voss, and the association has a cabin at Grønlivannet, a truly beautiful place. Even though we drove the whole way up there and just stayed there, I was exhausted afterwards and stayed in bed for some time.

Raundalselven

Helene Klungvik — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:36:04 +0000

We only went for an easy walk this day. Pictures of Raundalselven with Horndalssnuten in the background. Getting to know voss and it’s surroundings with a local is nice

Storbotnegget

Helene Klungvik — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:02:05 +0000

I was still in recovery mode from sickness (and other female issues), when Kari’s mother decided we should go up the same mountain that the cabin was located in. I was told that it wasn’t such a long trip, so I went along in blissfull ignorance. The first kilometer or so was okey, no problem. But then the climbing began and it was steep. I had to go at my own pace to ensure that I didn’t over extend myself, and I’m happy I did. Halfway there my water bottle was empty and there was no water in sight anywhere, but again I was told it was “just around the corner”. I continued walking but I just soured more and more. Just before I was about to say “fuck it”, they shouted: We’re here!

So I got up.

View from the cabin in the afternoon. The cabin was located high up in the mountain so it gave us a great view of the valley. We often got to see the clouds that was in the valley. We even saw clouds being made in the valley (the ground was warmer than the air).

Petroglyph’s, Tvindefossen and Nesheimtunet

Helene Klungvik — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:21:32 +0000

After I was hit by a sore throat and fever the last couple of days we tried to take it a bit easy and just go to the nearby places. So first we visited a huge stone that supposedly contained petroglyph’s. I looked long and hard, and even though my imagination could have filled in the missing parts, I saw no petroglyph’s. But at least I got to see a big stone

Just a few minutes a way, we took a look at tvindefossen, and afterwards we went to Nesheimtunet.

Kari can be shimmered there in the middle of the rock

Tvindefossen

Nesheimtunet

Fjellsetvatnet

Helene Klungvik — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:06:25 +0000

I woke up to a beautiful, sunny weather and we had breakfast outside and spent the morning relaxing and enjoying the view. Then we drove to Jonstølen and hiked for an hour to get to Fjellsetvatnet (852 meters above sea level). The hike itself was hot because of the weather and when we arrived there we walked to the end of the water where there was a small beach.We wanted to take a bath and we entered the water boldly – only to quickly retreat. It was freeezing! It didn’t take many seconds before it was painful. So we squatted water on our bodies to chill it down, and it helped. Then we just laid down to get tanned. We were completely alone up there, we didn’t even meet any people during our hike up there. I really loved the place and would have loved to stay there for a longer time period. Actually, I would have loved to brought a tent and just stay there for one night with some good company. Perfect place!

In the evening I met Kari’s mother, brother and his family for the first time. They came to the cabin for a small gathering and we had a nice time chatting.