En rotete ostehistorie

Foto: Tine SA.

Meieriene Tine og Synnøve Finden er i tottene på hverandre igjen, som vanlig. Denne gangen har sistnevnte utfordret Tines eierskap til ostenavnet «Jarlsberg». Saken har utspilt seg som en komedie med rettstvister, regisserte PR-stunts og beskyldninger om faktajuks på Wikipedia.

Fakta har virkelig vært mangelvare i denne saken.

Kort fortalt mener Tine at navnet «Jarlsberg» viser til et bestemt produkt. På dette grunnlaget varemerkeregistrerte de navnet i 1972. Synnøve Finden hevder derimot at navnet «Jarlsberg» viser til en generell ostetype, og er så gammelt at ingen kan eie det.

Og her blir ostens – og navnets – historie klemt mellom to store PR-maskinerier som ikke nødvendigvis tar hensyn til objektivitet og historisk metode. Dermed blir sannheten, igjen, krigens første offer.

Jeg skal prøve å fortelle historien om Jarlsberg-navnet i henhold til hva kildene forteller, ikke hva et firma ønsker å fortelle oss.

Finally, a religious book about mangos

I have previously discussed how ridiculous things can get when linguistic interpretations are filtered through politics. And particularly so when the process is lubricated with outright insanity. And sometimes politics and insanity join into their natural composite: Religion. This time I found a holy man who, through his powers, was enabled to discourse in length on the exact science of linguistics. The result is unsurprisingly baffling.

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of living six months in an Ananda Marga community. Ananda Marga is a yoga organization founded in India in 1955 and their followers are now spanning the globe, practicing yoga and meditation and abstaining from various things ranging from the obvious (alcohol and meat) to the more peculiar such as dark chocolate, onions or drinking while standing upright.

Book review: The Viking And The Red Man

Don't judge a book by its cover, they say. Still, sometimes you come across a book and somehow sense there's something about it. Good or bad, that can be hard to say, but then you take a closer look and find it contains a world of its own. This is one of those.

It's called The Viking and The Red Man, it's written by Reider T. Sherwin and after I read it I googled it and found out that a lot of other people like it too. Although not for the same reasons as me―To put it mildly. And I was overwhelmed by the feeling that somebody should set the record straight.

Great mystery man solves great mystery
Reider Thorbjorn Sherwin was born in 1894, and wrote his series of books in the 1940s and 50s. There is not a lot of biographical information available, except that he claims to be born in Norway (probably as Reidar Thorbjørn Skjerven), and he seems to have lived all his adult life in the United States, possibly New England. I can find no trace of where in Norway he might have been born, when he arrived or what he was doing up until 1940 when he published his first book. In it he claimed to have solved a mystery that had already puzzled learned men for centuries: The 15th century disappearance of the Norse Greenlanders.

Fikk VG-sjokk!

Sjokk-ingress!
VG er antagelig Norges mest sjokkerende avis. Hvem har vel ikke stått i kø på butikken og fundert på hvor uendelig mange kombinasjoner man kan lage med ordet «sjokk»? Og hva er egentlig et sex-sjokk? Vel, nå er svaret her!