Smári McCarthy`s blagoblag on Yaxic.org

Last night I was out at Sprangan with a couple of friends. Sprangan is a local sport in Vestmannaeyjar wherein you climb up a cliff face and jump off, hanging onto a rope. The goal is to swing back and forth in a coordinated manner without dying.

My nephew and a friend of his made a monkey swing from the top of the Spranga, which is about 30 meters high, down to a concrete factory which is about 50 meters away. Then they took turns sliding down. After they’d both had a go my friend Gunnar Friðberg had a go. Here’s the video:

The problem is that both my nephew and his friend are far lighter than Gunnar… and he had never gone before. So of course the impact.. well. Everybody was laughing like crazy when he landed, but still a nervous laughter, because for a few minutes we weren’t sure if he was seriously injured.

It turns out he might be, but probably isn’t. He can still walk. Fair enough, eyy?

This is proof that Vestmannaeyjar is a fun place.

FSFÍ’s awareness campaign leading up to our conference on the 5th of July was accidentally started today, six days early, with an extreme amount of impact.

In fact, the impact was so great that at 15:45 UTC we had a fairly major earthquake near Ingólfsfjall, not far from where the conference is to be held. USGS reports it to have been 6.7 magnitude (Ms/MLs), with local sources stating it to have been 6.1 ML. (ML scale ends at 6.0 so I’m expecting revised numbers later on).

Anyway, what a great way to set off a campaign! Go freedom!

Register to attend the conference here. (free!)

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer used humans as guinea pigs during an epidemic, bypassing regulations on correct drug testing. Killing people.

Ends used to justify means. When the ends is profit and the means is unethical, you can bet your grandmother there’s propertarians behind it.

Link

There’s a non-verbatim translation of Erla Ósks gut-wrenching ordeal at The Icelandic Weather Report. I reiterate: This kind of pathetic behavior on behalf of a government anybody makes me literally sick. As my friends and regular readers of this blag know, I am not a man easily lost for words. I just can’t think of anything suitable to say about this. Thanks to Hildigunnur for the link.

(Note: This is just one of a long line of such incidents. Alda of The Icelandic Weather Report’s tale, Dhananjay’s tale as I mentioned in my last post on this, stories of people being tazered to death and what not. It’s only believable because this is the kind of fucked up behavior we’ve come to expect. That is perhaps the greatest tragedy of this: How little we are shocked)

Update: Parliamentarian Katrín Júlíusdóttir sent me an e-mail to notify me that the laws will not in fact take effect after 12 hours but have been postponed until the 1st of November 2009. This happened on the 18th of October, and it obviously slipped below my radar, which is extremely awkward but not at all surprising. So we’ve got another year until this happens, and a lot can happen in a year. Thank you to all those parliamentarians who voted in favor of the postponement.

That said, nobody voted against it, but strangely most of the people who originally supported the bill didn’t show up.

Voted yes: Atli Gíslason, Álfheiður Ingadóttir, Ármann Kr. Ólafsson, Árni Þór Sigurðsson, Ásta Möller, Birgir Ármannsson, Bjarni Benediktsson, Björk Guðjónsdóttir, Björn Bjarnason, Björn Valur Gíslason, Einar Már Sigurðarson, Grétar Mar Jónsson, Guðbjartur Hannesson, Guðfinna S. Bjarnadóttir, Guðjón A. Kristjánsson, Guðmundur Steingrímsson, Helgi Hjörvar, Illugi Gunnarsson, Jón Bjarnason, Jón Gunnarsson, Jón Magnússon, Katrín Júlíusdóttir, Kjartan Ólafsson, Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, Kristinn H. Gunnarsson, Kristján Þór Júlíusson, Kristján L. Möller, Lúðvík Bergvinsson, Ólöf Nordal, Ragnheiður E. Árnadóttir, Þorvaldur Ingvarsson, Ögmundur Jónasson, Össur Skarphéðinsson

No vote: Bjarni Harðarson, Guðni Ágústsson, Höskuldur Þórhallsson, Magnús Stefánsson, Siv Friðleifsdóttir, Valgerður Sverrisdóttir

Away on leave: Árni M. Mathiesen, Ellert B. Schram, Herdís Þórðardóttir, Pétur H. Blöndal, Þuríður Backman

Not present: Ágúst Ólafur Ágústsson, Árni Johnsen, Ásta R. Jóhannesdóttir, Birkir J. Jónsson, Björgvin G. Sigurðsson, Einar K. Guðfinnsson, Geir H. Haarde, Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Gunnar Svavarsson, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Karl V. Matthíasson, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Ragnheiður Ríkharðsdóttir, Sigurður Kári Kristjánsson, Steinunn Valdís Óskarsdóttir, Sturla Böðvarsson, Þorgerður K. Gunnarsdóttir, Þórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir.

And finally I’d like to apologize to those who got mail from me regarding this matter for the spam. I should have done my homework better!

(English version below)

Eftir um 12 klukkutíma verður allt vatn á Íslandi einkaeign, hvort sem það er í föstu, fljótandi eða gufuformi. Vatnið hættir að teljast almenningsauðlind og verður að eign þeirra sem eiga landið sem það er á.

Ég hef barist gegn þessu síðan að lögin voru samþykkt, frægast með grein sem ég skrifaði þann fyrsta maí 2007, þar sem fjölmargir þingmenn rituðu svör og kváðust samhuga mér í þessu máli, þar á meðal Össur Skarphéðinsson iðnaðarráðherra, sem gaf það út í byrjun stjórnartíðar sinnar að hann hugðist taka málið til athugunar.

Ekkert hefur enn gerst. Nú eru tólf tímar til stefnu. Ekki láta þetta enda svona Össur.

---

After roughly 12 hours, all water on Iceland will become private property, be it in solid, liquid of gaseous form. Water will no longer be a common resource of the Icelandic people but will instead be the property of land owners.I have fought against this since the laws were passed a year ago, most notably with an article I wrote on the 1st of May 2007 to which many parliamentarians replied and claimed to be supportive of my cause. Amongst them was Össur Skarphéðinsson, now minister of industry, who at the beginning of his term announced that the matter was being taken under advisement.

Nothing has happened yet. Now there are twelve hours left. Don’t let it end this way, Össur.

I heard from Xavier today, and he’s safe and good. The San Diego Fab Lab is launching within the next couple of weeks, which means he’s had a lot more luck it than I have. Xavier said:

Looks like things are improving now, but we’ve had about 450,000 people displaced from their homes. That’s like your whole county, right?

There’s only 300000 people in Iceland, so hearing of 450000 displaced is pretty bad. And something tells me that number is only on the American side of the border…

There’s some news on the TIDES front. Lots of more people coming in and it seems like TIDES might be used to some extent in San Diego. Definitely worth checking out. See also: Harmonieweb.org. There’s also some stuff being done by INSTEDD (Larry Brilliant’s operation) on this.

More as it comes…

Google Maps has a map… as they tend to do…

Good article on BoingBoing.

Last night I witnessed the birth of an alarmingly good overview document of the work being done on the STAR-TIDES project (they also have a blog). The document can be fetched here [civmil.org; PDF, ~2.5MB]. It’s definately worth taking a look at if you’re interested in sustainable tech at all.

I’ve also been monitoring a very exciting and touching e-mail thread regarding the situation in and around San Diego. There’s about thirty people on the CC list and most of them are people who are organizing relief efforts. Only a few people like myself who are idle bystanders that can’t actually do anything.

If you didn’t hear, there are massive forest fires consuming the suburbs and spreading down towards Mexico. I haven’t heard from Xavier yet but I’m hoping to get some news from him. However, from the e-mail thread (it doesn’t appear to be private):

If fire really takes off toward Tijuana, really major disaster is in store, as whole neighborhoods would basically torch and ability of their firefighters and equipment is no where nearly adequate to put out fires. Where do the people run? Linking two command/control systems with gear that could basically be stand alone might be good application. Would certainly be useful even if wasn’t needed (best result). Current connection is cell phone.

(That was from a message from Eric Frost last night). I hope the situation resolves with minimal damage to homes and loss of life. I’ll post further news here if and when appropriate.