Bjørn Stærk's homepage

Yes - the homepage! Reviled relic of the 1990's. Birth place of the blink tag. Eternal reminder of the dangers of putting HTML editors into the hands of ordinary people. Now it is back.

With bearstrong.net I have always aimed to be part of the vanguard (no not the vanguard, the one right behind it) of publishing technology on the web. I launched my first Blogger blog in 2001, moved to Movable Type in 2003, and switched to the Ruby on Rails-based Typo in 2006 - always making sure to adopt new technologies right before they peaked and stopped being cool. Now I smell a new change in the wind: I believe the age of the static HTML homepage is back. Consistent design and powerful publishing tools are for corporations. All I really need is a place to publish my essays. HTML is more than sufficient.

But what about comments? How will people respond to what I write?! Well, what about them? After 7 years of blogging I have come to realize that I truly, profoundly, hate my readers. Most of them, anyway. I can think of a handful who have anything interesting to say. They're welcome to e-mail me (see above), and I'll reply, and we'll have a nice and interesting conversation without all the idiots.

Besides, I publish most of my essays at iNorden.org as well, go comment there if you must.

Bonus benefit: I am no longer a blogger! OMG!

Recent essays:

Galactic Heroes and Bureaucrat Spies (May 2008)

Not sure what do watch next? Finished with Sopranos, The Wire, and [name your favourite here], and wondering how you'll ever make do with regular television again? No need to. Watch one of these well-written gems instead.

Historical Mythologies (2008)

Today's myths are about historical figures, not gods and heroes.

No Gods, No Masters - A Liberal Reads Anarchism (2008)

There's a strange term that is used in No Gods, No Masters - An Anthology of Anarchism, which collects 19th and 20th century anarchist writings. The term is 'libertarian communism'. It once described a wing of the anarchist movement. Today it has an unintentinal zen quality, and points to both the contradictions of anarchism and the muddiness of the ideological map.

The Prosecution of Steven Saylor (2008)

Murder! Rape! Conspiracy! Torture! Dreadful crimes that disgust all of us. And yet there are some people - we all know it - who not only like to daydream about such horrors, but have set out to document their fantasies, in lurid detail, by putting them down on paper. Yes, my fellow citizens, again I stand before you with the unpleasant task of accusing one among us of having committed novels.

Norsk nærhistorie med Niels Chr Geelmuyden (2008)

Nyhetsmediene stjeler troen fra en på at det finnes interessante mennesker i norsk samfunnsliv. Niels Chr. Geelmuyden gir den tilbake.

Sinclair Lewis - Elmer Gantry (2008)

Accidentally Decaffeinated (2008)

Something unexpected happened over the Christmas holiday: I got decaffeinated.

Bookshelf Curiosities: The Jungle is Neutral (2007)
Lesser Known Nobel Peace Prize Winners (2007)
An Atheist Reads the Bible (2007)

Best of the archives:

Most of what I've written since 2001 falls into two categories: Crap, and pretentious crap. I've been five different kinds of wrong, I've embarassed myself before thousands, and been a real prick to decent people I disagreed with. Here are the essays I'm least ashamed of.

Knowledge, belief and ideology

Lessons from the anti-library (2007)
Exploring the Dark Corners (2006)
Why the news is a waste of your time (2006)
Illusions of Progress (2006)
Thoughts on time and history (2005)
Fooled by Randomness (2005)
Why we need professional encyclopedias (2005)
Opinions about the unknowable (2005)
Goodbye to the missionaries (2005)
The conspiracy smell test (2005)
Modular design in politics (2004)
Objectivity and neutrality (2003)
Woohoo's and gotcha's (2003)

The Iraq war

What Went Wrong? (2007)
The Iraq war revisited (2005)
Case of the Missing Nukes (2003)
The city fathers of Carthage (2003)

Islam and terrorism

Living with terrorism (2006)
Islamdebatt v2.0 (2006)
Muhammed cartoons have got everyone confused (2006)
Believe what you say, say what you believe (2006)
The Essence of Islam (2004)
Anti-Islamic views - the debate continues (2004)
More on banning Islam (2004)
Spanking your inner racist (2003)

Humor

Lesser Known Nobel Peace Prize Winners (2007)
Snappy Title: How I Expanded A Moderately Original Idea Into 300 Pages of Misleading Anecdotes (2006)
Når Jesus leser bloggen din gråter han (2006)
At the siege of the MSM (2006)
Bli en politikkblogger på 1-2-3 (2005)
Don't you know there's a war on? (2005)
Five reasons to vote for Professor Genocide (2004)
Time for another war yet? (2004)
Okay so maybe I'm silent but that doesn't prove anything! (2004)
Five reasons why Bush is like Hitler (2004)
The racist message of Two Towers (2003)
The Lion roars no more (2003)

General politics

How Far Is Far Enough? (2006)
The Better Kind of Hypocrite (2006)
Victimization on the right (2006)
V for Vendetta's politics (2005)
Pro-democracy, anti-politician (2005)
Ingen plikt å stemme (2005)

Books

Bookshelf Curiosities: The Jungle is Neutral (2007)
An Atheist Reads the Bible (2007)
Good Books You Should Feel Under No Obligation to Read (2007)
Are social sciences good for anything? (2006)
Translating Shakespeare into English (2006)
Books of 2004 (2004)
All the President's Spin (2004)
Anti-Americanism (2004)
Books of 2003 (2003)

Other

Off the fence on global warming (2007)
A global, personalized culture (2005)
Responsible piracy (2005)
Legacies of a blood-red decade (2003)

This site is under construction

Hosted by:
New World Order Norway (Yes! They control the world! And me!! I'm not making this up, NWO Norway hosts my homepage. Help!!!!!)

Nwo

Last updated: March 2nd 2008