Why? I have no idea. It’s a symptom, haven’t found the cause yet. The transformation is practically asymptotic, that’s for sure.

Suppose you want to buy an mp3 player. Your local electronics store only has 3 different mp3 players. So the choice is pretty clear, it’s easy to compare the 3 models and find the one that suits you much better than the other 2. But then you learn that abroad they have hundreds of them. So although you’re limited to just the 3, *theoretically* there is much more choice. Would that not detract from your satisfaction of choosing the best one of the 3 you can get?

There is compelling talk from TED by Barry Schwartz about how having a lot of choice ruins your experience, because you have to take your pick out of an enormous set of possible choices, which leaves you agonizing over whether you made the right choice or not. There are so many choices, which means that whichever you pick, there is a chance that some other option would have been a little better still. Whereas if you only had a few options to choose from, you would choose the one best for you and know that none of the others could possibly make you any happier, because they weren’t as close to your preferences as the option you chose.

So that makes me think about people who work in job agencies. I mean these guys must see tens of jobs everyday, thousands of jobs every year. And it’s not so much that they are in a position to choose between all of these, but just *knowing* about them must make you think. Many other jobs may not be as enjoyable, but where else are you constantly confronted with a ton of other jobs out there?

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.

The terrible sociological experiment that never should have left the lab, Nazism. Here is an exerpt from a book on the subject that describes how society changed gradually, imperceptibly, until it was too late.

It’s a stunning piece of psychological experimentation.