As suddenly as it arrived, 2015 has ended and 2016 is at the gate. As it is, the year stands empty – but it is brimming with potential.

It is my sincere wish that the upcoming year will be prosperous, rich in experiences and filled with happiness – and similarly that it will be poor in adversity and pessimism.

I take this opportunity to wish you a particularly happy new year.

Photo: Fire and brimstone — up close and personal with the forces of nature at Kawah Ijen on East Java, Indonesia. One of many impressions from a 2015 that has now entered into history.

— quote from a tour-guide at the Ras al Jinz Turtle Reserve

I have a hard time to believe that they get that question from “many people”, but the frequency with which the words “green” and “turtle” occurs in the answer is uniquely high.

— Niels Bohr

… An ROP* official said that criminal techniques have evolved, and in this case, the intruders wore gloves. …

* = Royal Omani Police

My flight is operated by Etihad, an airline whose existence I was unaware of until January this year, when I flew with them for the first time. The first time I heard the name mentioned was by a clerk at Widerøe’s ticket office at Oslo Airport who enthusiastically declared that my flight was not, in fact, operated by Brussels Airlines, as I had thought, but by this fantastic luxury airline where the customers were not named passengers – rather they were named, and cared for as guests.

I was immediately sceptical; a feeling which was further strengthened when I sat down in my seat and found that they had managed to mount an entire remote control on the inside of the armrest, resulting in my thigh constantly pressing random keys, more often than not calling on the cabin attendant as a result. However, as I removed the remote control from it’s armrest socket and put it on my knee things took a definite turn for the better.

Now, having flown with Etihad on five occasions I am looking forward to the experience; I am looking forward to my seat; I am looking forward to the in-flight entertainment system (which is available for every seat in every seating class); I am looking forward to the pleasant cabin personell – and – I am even looking forward to the food.

Antoher of Etihad’s treats of is the good mood of it’s employees. Office staff, ground crew and flight crew have been remarkably happy and helpful in all my dealings with them. I asked a guy whether they were extremely well-paid or if there was some other explanatio for their constant cheerfulness. To this he replied that they were all people who had left established airlines and who wished to achieve something more, something different, in a new company. Then he gave me a more spacious seat.

Go fly Etihad!

If you dig straight down, where will you end up?

Each year since 1985
Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, and the end of the Cold War.

For most people this eccentricity would not be significant as the number of collectibles would be limited by the amount of space available and the size of the individual collectible would be limited by the capacity of the transport available to the collector.

My father however, used to run a logistics company. That meant near unlimited transport capacity. Once he scaled down operations to only one lorry he also freed up an abundance of space for storage, previously occupied by his vehicle fleet.

Please join me on a safari of my fathers garage:

We start off with a look at the high security door that keeps unwanted visitors out of the garage. The door is secured with a rusty padlock for which my father has never had a key. In fact, the bolt to which the padlock is attached is screwed through the hole in the hinge and into the wooden beam with the lock already attached to it. In order to open the door, remove the wing-nut that secures the hinge to the door.

My father tends to get mad whenever someone visits the garage without putting back the wing-nut, claiming that someone might steal something. Yeah, right!

Well inside we start to get an overview and immediately see such diverse items as broken ladders (on the left), stolen road-signs (top, center), house-insulation (bottom, center). Other indistinguishable material also abounds. Please notice a nice detail: the coat-hanger with a jacket on it, hanging from the ladder, giving the impression of a well-organised garage-owner.

Though the garage overall is nothing but a mess, a lot of tiny, tiny sub-systems exist to organise screws (like the bucket in the box near the centre of the photo) or the bolts that are stored in a container, custom-made from a plastic bottle that has been cut open. I call it micro order.

Though all things aren’t organised into containers, areas or regions of the garage are reserved for clusters of specific types of objects; here from the area where arbitrary cables and wires can be found in the unlikely event that they shall ever again be needed.

All space is potentially useful. Therefore my father has exploited the storage potential to the full, stuffing old drain-pipes and plastic plumbing pipes with scrap-metal and lead-pipes.

Old, worn-out tyres make out part of the foundation of complex shelve-constructions such as is shown in this photo where pallets (designated to store something else) are laid out on top of the tyres which in turn are standing in a semi-upright position on top of some grid iron.

On a set of discarded store shelves that are mounted four meters up on the wall of the garage is the department for old sinks and wooden lists. A collection of old skis, where only one remain, the other one being broken or having vanished, can be spotted below the shelves.

Although it may seem like a minor detail to externals, I personally find the set of car-keys for our old Volvo 240 from the early ’80s to be one of the novelties. The car passed into oblivion more than 20 years ago.

The Bishops Meeting, part of the management of the Church of Norway, has decided to alter future translations of the Holy Bible into Norwegian by excluding the word “tukt” (Norwegian for punishment/torment). The decision was made unanimously. It doesn’t say if God was consulted on the matter, but we must assume that He, like most Norwegians, is a democrat and will yield to the oppinion of the majority.

The background for “overruling” the word of God is a request from the Norwegian Commissioner for Children in the interest of avoiding child abuse from being exercised in the name of Christianity. A worthy cause!

It is however interesting that the Church of Norway sees the Holy Bible, and thus the word of God, as being subject to democracy. Many Norwegians will claim to be “personal Christians”, believing in their own custom subset of the Holy Bible, omitting those parts that are either too difficult (resurrection) or to uncomfortable (sin/punishment) to deal with.

Though “personal Christians” claim to believe in God, it remains to be seen whether God actually believes in them! We shall never know, as once they find out they probably won’t be blogging any more!