Å bestille bonusreiser på Internett er gratis

Da vi innfører et servicegebyr for å bestille bonusreiser via Medlemsservice den 21. mai, lønner det seg å bestille via våre nettsider. Basic-medlemmer må fra 21. mai betale et servicegebyr på 150 kr. Se linken for mer informasjon.

How bout that. SAS Braathens has my email address, because I book all my flights online. Periodically they send me this spam, which is "great offers" included in "important membership information". Today they sent me an update on my bonus miles (along with a host of "great offers", of course), including this paragraph, which I find completely incomprehensible.

Booking flights online using air miles is free

Since we are about to introduce a service charge for booking flights out of air miles through our Membership Service, from May 21, we encourage you to book them on our website. Basic-members will incur a charge of 150kr from May 21.

Well that's an interesting way of telling you that 5 days from now you'll be paying money for booking flights from air miles you've saved up. So something that's not supposed to cost you anything now will, meanwhile you can avoid paying the service charge if you book online. Which is exactly what you expected to hear based on the headline, isn't it?

It almost reminds me of Orwell's 1984. First the weekly quotum for chocolate is 30 grams. So first they announce it is lowered to 15g, and the a week later, as if nothing happened, the "increase it" to 20g, to demonstrate how generous they are.

The latest from back home:

Yes, that's right, yet another fire. Trondheim chock full of wooden houses has been a feast to fires in the past couple of years. The biggest one destroyed a whole block:

The city decided to reinvent itself by putting up an ugly ass new building:

And that's just a prospect from the architects, believe me it looks crap up close. But the fun didn't stop there. A restaurant smack in the middle of town caught fire. The place is so central that it's practically a landmark.

I don't know if you shop at Hennes&Mauritz much, but their building burnt to the ground a few years ago:

And apparently, last year in April while I was here in Holland, yet another fire.

Come see Trondheim, a city that enjoys a good bonfire. Here's a full timeline, but unfortunately doesn't list upcoming events. That's just the big ones, there are bound to be plenty of smaller fires as well, like one covered in the past.

On the upshot, I don't think any people were hurt in any of these fires. "But", you say, "that's good, Trondheim center is packed with these old wooden houses that are all the same and the city badly needs urban development. At least this way, new buildings can come up." Well, that's true, but it would be nice if this could come about through controlled change and some proper innovative thinking, not clumsy accidents followed by damage control. As it is, the city is hell bent on preserving these "cultural treasures" instead of actually building something that is worthwhile. Conservativism to the fullest. The cathedral is one of those landmarks that really stand for something, the rest of the city center is practically expendable architecturally. Well, it's little old Trondheim, with all its close minded provincial mindset, don't expect urban progress.

Oh, and happy Constitution Day.

Normally I'd just read these political articles and move on, but one that I found today is so succinct and logical that I think it deserves a note in the margin. Incompetent Design, the premise of how Bush and his buddies manage to make their dealings seem incompetent whereby they're point by point achieving exactly what they want to achieve.

It's a sobering perspective on the situation, certainly similar views have been expressed in the past, but I haven't come across a theorem equally elegant, logical and complete.

It's interesting how the assumption of "things aren't going the way we want them to" has been made into fact without actually being established anywhere. Meanwhile, sock puppets and figureheads like Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Rice come out and say the most outlandish things and the only response is mockery. Fine way to deflect real reactions. Underestimating idiots sure can be dangerous.

As with a lot of things, the theory of music intervals is complicated enough to require a little bit of maturity. The division of the octave into different tunings has evolved with the times, and while the concept is simple, there are many nuances.

An easy way to illustrate is by observing the piano keyboard. The most fundamental scale is C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, and that's an octave, of course. Each of the scales (or collections) built on these successive pitches has its own fancy Greek name, so if you want to understand what the heck people are saying, you better know these as well.

The problem is a typical memorization exercise, tie 7 different pitches to 7 Greek names. There is no obvious way to do this, match one set of numbers with another set of names. Except when you're a football supporter. We can memorize lineups and shirt numbers like nobody's business, linking them to faces and positions on the pitch. So why not leverage this ability.

There are 7 players, so we're going to play a 2-2-2 formation. The numbering is standard, ascending from right to left. C is our fundamental pitch, so that's where we start counting.

You're going to look at this formation, and the next time someone mentions Lydian mode you're going to think "Lydian... right midfield, shirt number 4, so that's... C, D, E, F. The mode is then F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F".

If only we could get this team into Football Manager, everyone would know this.

It's almost as if no one dared to say it before. But here's the statement that says more about hip hop music than anything else.

People fail to realize that hip hop first and foremost is a musical art-form. Right now, hip hop just isn’t living up to musical standards. It’s just plain bad.

From an opinion about why hip hop sales are plummeting.

I would go much further than this. To me, hip hop has always been bad music, with a few exceptions. I believe that any musical genre must always be about the music, otherwise it's pointless. And while there are certain things that have always attracted me to hip hop - the energy, the bold form of expression, the rhythm, and sometimes the lyricism - I have always found it profoundly lacking in the music itself. It's a genre that wants to be loved, but I just cannot find enough reason to embrace it, the music is so lacking.

Meanwhile, there have been exceptions. Songs that have the kind of musical quality that make them mainstays in my listening (most have previews on last.fm).

• 2 Pac - Changes
• 2 Pac - California love
• Coolio - Gangsta's paradise
• Coolio - C U When U Get There
• Public Enemy - He got game
• Public Enemy - What you need is Jesus
• Will Smith - Black Suits Comin' (Nod Your Head)
• Will Smith - Potnas

But these are exceptions, not the only ones, but taken out of a small set. When I do like a hip hop song, it's usually because of the melodic/harmonic/rhythmic value, not the lyrics, whatever they may be.

Perhaps melody and harmony just don't square with the core values of hip hop, but as long as it is music, it will always be judged on those.

So how can you tell if a hip hop song is worth its salt? Here's one thing to try. Remove the vocals. Vocals are very important in hip hop, so removing this will make the music feel very empty. But here's the question. Does what remains offer anything at all?