I'd like to promote something I rather believe in - the kiva.org website, which is all about microfinance, more specifically microloans. I won't try to sound as if I know the first thing about economics, but this is how it works: Person A lives in a developing country, and needs a largish sum of money to start or expand a business. "Largish sum" in this case means from the equivalent of US$ 200 up to US$ 1200 or so - let's say 300 dollars. Too little for a bank to be interested in lending it, and anyway with banks there's security, and possibly an exorbitant interest rate, and so on. Instead, Person A contacts a local microfinancing institution, where he is investigated to see that he actually seems to be able to repay a loan, and that the money would be used to good purpose. When the local microfinanciers are satisfied, A's details are relayed to Kiva.org. They publish the information about A on their site. Persons B, C, D, E, F and G visit the site and decide to lend $25 each to A. A takes the money, builds an extension to his shop or some extra stock or whateveer it was he needed the money for, and proceeds to pay back the loan over 10 or 12 months. B, C, D, E, F and G are not rich people and none of them would have been able to lend $300 very easily, but $25 each is no great sacrifice. I know it sounds like something out of Bamse but lending money through Kiva is quite satisfying. Because it isn't charity, nobody needs to be beholden to us for anything, there is no non-rectifiable debt of gratitude (which I have come to realise is a very fundamental concept for Swedes - but I won't sidetrack into discussing that here.)

For a lot more detail, see the Kiva website. I'll just mention, too, that when somebody lends money they must use Paypal - and Kiva is the only organization that Paypal doesn't charge a fee from for using their service.

The banner below is supposed to show a different "Person A" each time you reload the page. It's got Javascript, though, so I can't promise that it'll work.

Labels: links

 
Here are some fun games I've discovered over the past couple of months or so. Most of them I found at the excellent site Jay is Games (or is it Jayisgames?).

In Bloons you get to throw a dart through a lot of balloons. It's as silly and satisfying as it sounds, and it gets very difficult after a while. (posted at MCiOS, I can't remember by whom)

Hoshi Saga is a Flash game where the object is to find a star that's hidden in each of the 25 levels. Sometimes easy, sometimes quite difficult.

I'm tempted to call Trapped a point-and-click game, because that's what you do in it, but the author says it isn't. It is an escape-the-room type of game, with some rather difficult puzzles; I found it very intriguing and fun to play. It's my favourite kind of game, I think, the kind with a lot of clicking, puzzling and pondering with no time limit or shooting. Part one is available, out of three. I've signed up to be told when parts two and three are finished.

Remember the GROW! games? I've linked to several different ones over the years. Here is GROW! Tribute, not created by the original GROW! creator, but managing to be very similar. Not as fun, I didn't think, partly because the music is more annoying. Still worth playing for a few minutes' entertainment, though. There is a new GROW! game, too: GROW Nano. Which is... less challenging :-)

Bodilies is another solve-the-story point-and-click puzzle game, and a very beautiful one too, with great music. It's a while since I played it now, but I really loved it.

I can't remember if I've already linked to Ring Pass Not; I played it all the time a few months ago when it was posted at MCiOS. Beautiful and hooking solitaire-type game.

Labels: fun, games, links

 
Time to link to another post in Language Log: "The "happiness gap" and the rhetoric of statistics". It's more to do with general scientific method than with linguistics, but it expresses really well something that always annoys me no end. Mark Liberman writes: "Most people think in essentialist and non-statistical terms, as if all the members of a category were uniform copies of an invariant prototype." Yes! That is exactly it. Of course it can be questioned whether actually most people do it - it is certainly the case that it seems that most people do, and that enough people do it for it to be what the doctors call Very Annoying Indeed.

Which is not to say that I would like everybody to walk around thinking in statistical terms. I don't. I don't want to think in statistical terms myself, it hurts my brain when I have to. But the point remains: "More women than men like to do X, so she'll like to do X cos she's a woman" (or teenager, or any other more-or-less random grouping of people.) It doesn't actually take any knowledge of statistics or scientific methods to see the basic flaw in that type of reasoning - and yet we see examples of it every day.

So read that post, even though it's longish and contains statistical diagrams. It's worth it.

Labels: links

 
Brilliant, just what I need. A rather habit-forming, Flash based online card game in the tradition of Magic the Gathering and other "role playing card games" (which I have never actually played but I know how they work in theory).

Labels: games, links

 
Oh, and also you might want to read the writings of Cedric Walker. He wrote for Slant and Operation Fantast and all those famous fanzines, back when.

Labels: books, links

 
I know I've been plenty quiet, and I have to run now and can't post, so here is a quick cheese cam just so you have something to do. (Watching a Cheddar cheese mature beats watching paint dry, hands down!)

Labels: links

 
I just discovered Bill and Bull, a double planet orbiting Delta Eridani. Oh, ok, so I didn't literally discover it -- astronomers from Uppsala University did. Isn't that marvellous? Discovering a double planet and naming the constituents Bill and Bull.

And for those readers who were not raised on a diet of Swedish childrens' literature: Bill and Bull were twin cats who were the minions of the nasty cat Måns, nemesis of Pelle Svanslös (Peter No-tail in the English translations of the books). Bill and Bull were always seen together, and always said the same things, generally echoing what Måns said (and often getting it oh so slightly wrong). Especially Bull had no imagination of his own, he'd repeat everything Bill said, and so in Swedish, "X, said Bull" has become a means of emphasising that X is rather obvious.

Bill and Bull as a double planet. Excellent. I'll sleep well tonight.

Labels: books, fun, links

 
Here is a nice blog I found not very long ago: Sociolinguistics and CMC. (CMC in this context being computer mediated communication, which is what my PhD is all about). It's written mostly by graduate students, and there are more posts that raise interesting questions than posts that answer them; but the field is too young to have a lot of decisive answers anyway. I think it's quite interesting reading.

Labels: linguistics, links

 
Language Log is one of the best linguistic weblogs around. Read this post by Geoffrey K Pullum, for instance. (It concerns less and fewer and why less than three is a perfectly grammatical construction). I could give you lots of other example posts to read as well, but on the whole, it is almost always worth reading. (No, not only if you are a linguist.) Relevant topics, often entertainingly discussed. A really good blog about language. How could it possibly be better?

Here it is: Language Log.

Labels: linguistics, links

 
My Christmas holiday is winding down. I went to the department today, saw my tutor briefly and discussed my time plan. Once back home, I started tidying up my reference lists and making todo lists. Tomorrow I'll start writing again.

I feel fairly good about the thesis right now. I think I can finish it on time - more or less. I feel less sanguine about the quality of my research, though. Sometimes I don't think what I'm doing is relevant at all. But at the moment I'm not too panicked about that.

Ho hum. Here is a good link regardless of your nationality: The Local, English-language news from Sweden. Only from Sweden, and by a team of native English-speaking editors who live here (mainly expatriate Brits, I think). I enjoy reading The Local for many reasons - their articles are well-written and usually well-researched; even if the news are the same I get in DN the language factor makes it seem as if the perspective is somehow different; and knowing that Sweden is very small and very insignificant it nevertheless feels good to be able to point to news articles (not to mention in-depth articles about Swedish society, culture, traditions, science, politics...) for the benefit of foreign friends. Read The Local, it's a good newspaper. Especially if you're a forriner.

Labels: links, personal, Swedish stuff, thesis

 
Incidentally...

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Not forget Poland. Get your resolution here.

I haven't broken my resolution yet!

Labels: fun, links

 
Woo, posting now works with Firefox again! I am pleased.

I have posted links to the GROW! games before; two new games have appeared there since last time I checked. These are less complicated than the ones on the site earlier -- in fact they are called GROW! 1 and 2, respectively, whereas the previous one was GROW! 3 -- but quite enjoyable all the same. Here is GROW! 2 and GROW! 1. The latter is extra fun because once you have found the correct sequence you can go back and see what happens if you make other choices, which is often quite fun and very different. I like that kind of light-hearted creativity, very much.

Labels: blog meta, fun, games, links

 
A slow return, with a few time-wasters:

Drifts is a skill/reaction type game, but nicely slowish. I haven't made it onto the highscore list yet, unlike some other people I could name. (from flerdle@MCiOS)

Sling is another game, more of a physics puzzle. The time component stresses me out a bit (not to mention the music -- fortunately it can be turned off) ; I prefer my puzzle games not to be timed. It's still fun, though. (from KC@ODP)

Die Anstalt, a German game (but with English and Italian versions, just click the relevant flag) set in a mental hospital for plush toys. Rather different, and very enjoyable. (from Projoy@MCiOS)

Labels: games, links

 
My efforts to make the blog's links more visible haven't been a success. That is, the links are definitely easier to notice now, but I don't like the way it looks now. So instead of experimenting further, I haven't written for a while. Is logical, no?

But I do have to tell you all to draw a pig, since that is all the rage now in the Morniverse (it was Lib who started it).

Labels: blog meta, links

 
Johari Window by Kevan. I wouldn't call it a personality test so much as a... um, not sure just what :-)

Today I have been working on a Table. A good table, I'm quite fond of it as a matter of fact. It's not the kind of table that has legs and a tabletop, rather the kind where you get rows and columns, and table cells with numbers in. I know more things about the language of chat rooms now than I did this morning. Not much more, mind you, but still -- a day well spent.

Labels: fun, links, thesis, work

 
So You Think You Are Clever. And So You Think You're Clever, 2.

Calling them "intelligence tests" is not quite right, though. I think. But they are frustrating and fun, and it does feel good when you get an answer right! (I finished part 1 and am currently missing four answers in part 2... there is no time limit.)

Labels: fun, links

 
Nice site idea: youthought.com, a web site where anybody can post brief thoughts. It's moderated, so shouldn't get full of idiocy; I haven't looked through it enough to see if there is actually anything worth reading there - that's not the point, though, I just kind of liked the idea.


Dept. of Laughing til you Cry: Skateboarding email to Tony Hawks. There is a British comedian named Tony Hawks and an American skateboarder called Tony Hawk; the former often gets fan email intended for the latter, with hilarious consequences. (I do think he gets a bit too rude in the later messages, but that's probably just me.)


Finally,

Labels: fun, links

 
Help! I've been listed on the stock exchange! I'd seen references to the Blogger Shares game but not looked at it — so why am I suddenly worth $2172.16 and what do the symbols and statistics mean? Do I even want to know?

Labels: blog meta, links

 
B Wahlströms gröna/röda ryggar. Nostalgimax!

Labels: books, links

 
Comments on the links from the other day, for it isn't all that appealing to follow random links that haven't been explained at all...

Exactitudes is "[...] an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity" ; a photographic project with somewhere between 700 and 1000 photographies grouped together by style, clothes, attitude of the subjects. (It's a book, too, apparently. I don't know if the book contains more photos than the web page does; it does lend itself very well to the web medium however!) Many of these styles I have no real idea what they stand for, btw, but no doubt that only says something about my lack of perceptivity and memory for these things — which is borne out of a general lack of interest, of course. My loss.

On the other hand, I am not going to comment more on FuneralQuest. It's extremely addictive.

Labels: links

 
Hmm. Have been writing all sorts of things all day so don't feel up to doing much more writing now. Just a couple of links:

Exactitudes, via Raak.

And the eery and addictive game FuneralQuest.

Labels: links

 
Dunx is a blog writer, too!

Labels: friends, Internets, links

 
A sudden discovery and some quick googling revealed that the article I referred to below is also available in English! Three extra points to Nat who divined what it was about from the Swedish version. (But then, Nat does have an aptitude for Swedish -- we have proof, still, on our fridge. . . :-)

Labels: fun, links

 
Plötsligt drabbas jag av lust att lära mig finska!

Labels: fun, links