Clockwork knowledge

Have you ever seen such a cool wall clock. My 14 year old got it as a birthday present from one of his aunts. The clock has been produced by Tekna and uses elementary(?) mathematics to represent the hours. My kids do not understand it all yet, but they were amused by my enthusiasm.

The clock has now replaced the old kitchen wall clock, so that we get more exposure to mathematics every day.

The values in green are linked with Tekna's history. You can read about it in the Wikipedia page. Or you can visit their web site at http://www.tekna.no.

Autodestruct in progress

In Norway kids learn about word processing, spreadsheets and so on in school. When I asked my own kids about what they think about this topic, their enthusiasm was limited.They knew the stuff from before, and the teacher is not always up to date.

But it appears that this may not be a problem only in Norway. During the weekend I read the report "Shut down or restart?" from the Royal Society. This report is about how ICT-training in British schools has become a threat agains Britain's future as a technology leader. It also suggests that the topic should be replaced by

• digital literacy
• Computer Science
• Information Technology.

This may sound wild! What kind of school can expect to give pupils insight into programming, data structures, building software solutions etc, in addition to learning them how to edit in a word processor?

Well, here comes the exiting news - the UK department of Education has decided that ‘Harmful’ ICT curriculum set to be dropped this September to make way for rigorous Computer Science.

What will a country like Norway do to keep up with the advantage the UK will get in technology, innovation and business? Nothing, I fear!

For improved spreadability ...

Maybe you heard about the shortage of butter in Norway before Christmas. Well, it certainly isn't over, although occasional appearances of the product has been reported. When I went shopping for groceries about a week ago I found that my store had both a small supply from our national cartel and some Irish butter. The latter one was more expensive, so what do you think I did?

Well, I bought the product from our friends in the Atlantic to voice my desire to do away with the trade barriers that Norwegian consumers are subject to.

We actually have traces of competition in the dairy market in Norway, but foreign material is treated as a national threat. The big "cartel" has been handling regulation of the butter market while being the single significant supplier. That is not good!

But I like to think that competition is good, although I am not seeking eradication of the farming sector in Norway.

Einstein in Geneva

I went to Geneva last week, and I found Einstein looking out of a window in the gable wall of a house.

When I looked closer I realized that the wall was solid and made from prefabricated elements. So Einstein was just a painting on the wall.

There is more on the wall, so if you are ever in Geneva I suggest you go to Chemin Edouard-Sarasin and taker a look at the gable wall.

Whoever paid for this really appreciates their neigborhood.

FLL competition @ Kjeller

Last Saturday the local final in the First Lego League was arranged at Akershus University College. My youngest was part of the Team Kebabgeeks that got the fifth place out of ten competing groups. And they were nominated for the prize for best presentation.

The picture shows a panorama of one of the robot challenges, with my team in red. As the competition developed they got really excited, and contrary to my expectation they expressed the desire to participate next year as well. Whether they do or not, I think they have got an experience they will remember the rest of their lives, and maybe influence the path they take later in life.

OSL - a disgusting airport

On Monday I travelled to Germany via Oslo Airport Gardermoen (OSL). Early in the morning I had some time to waste before my flight, so I walked around window shopping. One of the shops there is an electronics shop, and just outside the shop someone had been sick and vomitted on the floor. The weird thing was that nothing was done about the vomit on the floor except putting up a barely readable note to warn people passing by (the footstool came later).

From the angle I approached the store I nearly didn't see the notice, and I saw at least one other person loosing their footing on the wet floor. As far as I could see the person managed to stay on her feet, but ruining her clothes and possible physical injury was close. So why wasn't any attempt done to dry up the vomit from the floor.

I approached some staff at another shop nearby, and they told me they had offered the staff at the electronics shop to call the cleaning department. But this offer was rejected. When I expressed my concern to them, they made the call anyway. But nothing happend. From the first time I consulted my clock the first time to the last time I was within range of the vomit, more than 20 minutes passed without anything happening.

I like to think that if I were working in the electronics shop I would have started drying up myself - wouldn't any responsible person do that? I would claim that both the guys at the electronics shop and the resources responsible for keeping the airport clean have demonstrated that they should find something else to do.

The Rise of the East

I have just attended Norwegian Institute of International Affairs' seminar on "The Rise of the East". My prime reason was to see Hans Rosling, the father of entertaining statistics, sharing his insight.

Of course, the overall topic of how Norway and rising populations in Asia can interact was interesting as well.

My work with traceability brought me to south east Asia in 2007-2008, but the later financial downturn made TraceTracker pull out from that market. Now there are signs that things are picking up again.

Part of the topic for today's seminar was the population growth, where, according to Hans Rosling's analysis, the "old world" will be left with 1.5 of the projected 10 billion people. In such a context, the need for traceability on food products may become a neccessity - we can no longer throw away food to be on the safe side when food scares occur. Instead we must use traceability to know exactly what is affected, so that surgical recalls can be performed.