Jacob Christensen

Re: Okman-gate

So, there is an EU summit coming up? Who’d have thunk – the good thing about these things being held in Brussels is that nobody except the EU correspondents and the Eurocrats have to care. But thanks to Caroline de Cock aka Linotherhino, we too can have a piece of the action.

Yes, it’s the (almost) official European Council Summit Buzzword Bingo – readily available as a PDF for printing. It even has flexicurity!

PS: Just in case you wonder what a buzzword bingo is, here’s Wikipedia to the rescue.

“Naughties” as in 00s, that is. And in an attempt to be so 2010, I’ve contributed to Bølgen which you can find at Google Wave if you belong to the select company of the Illuminati (or whatever) with a modest look back at Danish politics in the outgoing decade.

Okay – I belong to the grumpy minority who claim that the new millennium began in 2001 and that the 00s strictly speaking go from 2001 to 2010, but as we live in an age of democracy…

(And by the way, James Naughtie is not married to Eleanor Update. Obviously, I spend too much time on the intertubes).

In any event: Thanks to Bjarne Tveskov for putting in the time and effort.

Via Twitter the – rhetorical – question “how do you say this in Danish?” reached me. “This” was astroturfing, which is the not uncommon practice where companies or other established interests try to create popular legitimacy by setting up or funding organisations that look like ordinary grassroots organisations.

I doubt if the term astroturf with reference to artificial grass is generally well-known in Denmark, if only because top-level football (that’s soccer to you yanks) is played on real grass in this country, but we do talk about kunstgræs. So maybe astroturfing could be kunstgræsrødder in Danish? After all, the practice of astroturfing is not that uncommon: As politicians have learnt, the activities of one or the other organisation of patients or people suffering from some kind of disorder have over the years turned out to be heavily subsidised by medical companies, even if completely artificial organisations are very rare.

Oh, and kunstgræsrødderne are coming this way.

1. There are ten twitters in Odense. c|net thinks that Twitter is dead. (Well, almost) … hey, I’m part of the twelite!

2. There are ten types of blog commenters. And yes, I was very much in Unfogged mode Sunday.

3. The Metropolitan Region was something of a mess during the past week. Occasionally, the Monty Python Region felt like a more accurate name.

4. On Wednesday, the Socialist Party had five mayors and one regional chairman. On Sunday, the Socialists had one mayor. How do you think this looks? Professional? I mean: Losing one is what happens, but five out of six?

5. Denmark is officially f***ed. It more and more looks like Anders Fogh got away in time.

Web designers love Flash. I don’t.

Hurry over to XKCD to behold the resurrected glory of GeoCities.

As a commenter wrote: This is beyond #win (If you have just the least idea about html, check the source code). Indeed. Also: XKCD’s forums.

HT: BoingBoing.

Oh, and Flash is for today’s web what animated gifs were to web 1.0.

Update: A reply in kind.

Google Wave seems to be the Next Big Thing.

And no: I do not have any invites.

HT: Jesper Dahl.

The combined forces of Flashblock and Adblock (?) got the better of the new homepage of the Danish Social Democrats and the Socialists:

Bad photoshop, baaad photoshop.

Considering that Microsoft has a more than reasonable reputation with regard to diversity, the blunder is pretty amazing.