Weather report

This has, seriously, got to be the shittiest May ever recorded in known history. At least weather-wise.

Eguzkilore

These "sunflowers" (that really are a kind of thistles) hung to the door or wall of a house are a very common sign in the Basque Country and protect against evil spirits.

According to legend, many thousands of years ago when men began to populate the Earth, it was very dark as neither the sun nor the moon existed. In this constant darkness, people were scared of the many sorcerers and witches who came from the bowels of the Earth in the shapes of bulls made of fire, huge dragons, flying horses, lamia (a kind of mermaids with birds legs) etc.

Desperate, the people decided to ask for help from Mother Earth (Amalur):

- Amalur, we beg you to protect us from the dangers that surround us!

But Mother Earth was very busy and ignored the humans at first. However, they were so persistent that eventually she responded:

- My sons, you ask me to help you and that I will. I will create a luminous being that will be called the Moon.

And Mother Earth created the moon.

At first, the men were terrified and stayed in their caves not daring go outside, but slowly they got used to it. But like the people, the sorcerers and witches who were also afraid at first to see the bright object in the sky, got used to it also and soon started to harass the humans again.

Once again, the humans came to Mother Earth asking for help:

- Amalur, we are very grateful that you have given us the moon but we still need something more powerful because the sorcerers never cease to haunt us.

- Okay, I will create an brighter thing, that will be called the Sun. The Sun will be the day and the Moon the night.

And Amalur created the sun. It was so big, bright and hot that the people had to get used to it little by little, but their joy was great because thanks to heat and sunlight, colourful plants and fruit trees soon grew up around them and the hills turned green. More importantly, the sorcerers and witches could not get used to the daylight. However, they still harassed the people in the night, so once again the humans had no choice but to ask Mother Earth for help:

- Amalur, we are very grateful that you have given us the Sun and the Moon, but we need something more, to protect us during the night.

Amalur answered:

- I will help you again. I will create a flower for you, so beautiful, that seeing her, the creatures of the night will think that it is the sun itself.

And Mother Earth created the Eguzkilore, which to this day defend our homes from evil spirits, witches, Lamia, sorcerers of disease, storms and lightning.

Thanks, Agurtxu and Itsas for sharing this beautiful legend!

From Ethiopia to Oslo with coffee, water samples and a sun burn

-->Photos on Flickr

I am sitting in an overcrowded Gardermoen and waiting for my flight to take me and my six kilos Ethiopian coffee back to Bergen, after some 15 days of roaming around. The second half of that was not very exotic but spent teaching in a metagenomics course in the University of Oslo. Good for inspiration and work though. Also had good cod at Lofotstua. I can recommend it.

Anyway, the first half was more exciting. I've been down in the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia (3,000 years old, they reckon) to take some samples from alkaline soda lakes in the Rift Valley. This is pretty interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, they are really alkalic and yet with a very high microbial biodiversity, as opposed to many other "extreme environments". Also, they don't taste so nice. I accidentally had some from one of them and now I feel sorry for the poor flamingos who live off their cyanobacteria.

Also, it's interesting because it is the first time I ever do any kind of field work, being in bioinformatics and usually not allowed into the secret world of real biologists that cannot be viewed through a computer screen. It was fun, but it's tough work filtering litres of salty brown lake water with a handpump in 30 degrees heat, surrounded by locals and kids and sometimes thousands of ants. They were really nice and helpful but sometimes in the way when they were sitting more or less on top of our equipment offering to help out or just curiously watching what kind of crazy stuff we were doing. And what we were doing would have looked crazy to most people, even those with television and a grasp about modern science. Probably also to other biologists. Anyway, enjoy the photos.

Toilet paper poetry

I unsuspectingly bought toilet paper from Lambi and found it covered in hundreds of metres of love poems, written in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Amazing concept! But I can't help but feel strange to wipe my ass with somebody's creative and romantic work just because I paid for it. Does that say something about the core of the problem with copyright or am I just obsessed?.. :)

Cross-cooking Part II

I have written earlier about the fantastic dish haggis pakora from Glasgow and inspired by this Indian-Scottish cross-cooking I did experiments at home. I am less brave, though, so I have only been trying South-European - Scandinavian combinations.

First up (depicted here) is the famous Iberian morcilla along with potato omelette (tortilla). Morcilla is an Iberian blood-sausage quite similar, but typically superior to, its Swedish cousin the blodpudding. Morcilla contains rice or vegetables whereas blodpudding contains flour and the best ones come from Burgos or Etxarri Aranatz. This one was was from Burgos.

Normally you serve morcilla with beans but sometimes like here with tortilla and tomato sauce. My hypothesis was that it would be even better with lingonsylt (lingonberry jam or "tyttebærsyltetøy" as they say here in Norway; the lingonsylt test area is located in the slightly out-of-focus back of the green plate). I think it was damn good but it was even better with tomato sauce, so this was a negative result. Unable to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal I thus put it here on my blog.

A random historical fact about Venice

I came back from a short vacation in Venice and Trieste the other week and took a lot of photos ~500) that I have just started to go through. Some can be found on my Flickr account. This completely random one shows a Truth Mouth or Lion's Mouth, which I thought was quite a funny concept.



There were a number of these spread out over Venice, before Napoleon came and removed them along with the old judicial system. They were used for denouncing other citizens by placing a signed note inside reporting a committed crime. Behind is a kind of mail box emptied by officials. The case would then be tried and if the accused was found guilty, the reporter would be rewarded. If found not guilty, the reporter would be punished instead, with the same punishment as the accused would have gotten. This special Lion's mouth (without the lion motive) inside the Doge's Palace was to be used against corruption or tax evasion amongst politicians or officials of the Republic.

The text apparently says: "Put down here your Secrets, against those who oppressed you, freely and officially. Have faith, for those who hide the truth will answer for it."

Saker det är dags för

1) Dags för den första snön i Bergen. Annars upplevde jag vinterns första redan i slutet av augusti på Svalbard.

2) Mer än dags för att skriva nytt blog-inlägg, vilket är just vad jag gör. Ju.

3) Tydligen är det dags för nytt OS från Apple. Jag tyckte att Snow Leopard, som för övrigt måste vara världens i särklass coolaste kattdjur, kom ut alldeles nyss, men nu är det alltså Lion som gäller. Det ska ta den fantastiska funktionaliteten från iPhone, iPod, iPad och alla andra iPrylar till riktiga datamaskiner. Med tanke på hur min iPod Touch funkar så undrar jag om det inte vore bättre tvärtom, men jag måste nog läsa på lite mer.

4) Dags för Bergen Internationella FilmFestival, eller BIFF. Ikväll är det dags för en film om legenden och profeten Bill Hicks liv. Ett liv som tyvärr blev alldeles för kort. Han dog i exakt den ålder jag är nu; 33. Den filmen ska jag se. Se trailern och gå och se den du med, om du kan.

English translation:

The time has come for a lot of stuff:
1) The first snow over Bergen
2) For me to write a blog post
3) For a new OS from Apple. This time called OSX Lion - bringing the fantastic functionality of the iPod to your laptop. Hmm.
4) For Bergen International Film Festival, tonight featuring a film on Bill Hicks, the legend, prophet and all around really funny guy who died much too young in 1994. It should not be missed.

Cheers,
Anders