Updates

Well, it's once again been a while -- my excuse it that I've been really busy at work (and still am, but I'm nevertheless taking a few minutes for a quick post), and really nice outside, which, combined with my unreliable internet access at home, cuts down on my blogging time.

Anyway, last weekend I went to Oslo, which was really nice. See pic taken from the ship as we came in through the fjord. We got in at 9.30 in the morning, and had to be back on the boat to return to Copenhagen by 4.30, so we didn't have a ton of time, but we did manage to walk across town (it's really not that big) to the famous Vigeland sculpture park, where there are lots and lots of statues in a big beautiful park (some of them are really weird, with naked people fighting or, in the one below, kicking babies. There's also a big obelisk thing made up of naked bodies). Then we walked back into the center of town and went to the national gallery, where we saw (among a lot of other things) Munch's The Scream.
We had really nice weather, which held out all week long in Copenhagen too -- pretty amazing to have a full week of sunshine! So I've been spending a lot of time hanging around in the parks, going on bike rides or runs, etc, when I'm not working (which I'm doing a lot lately -- planning for the new summer programs is proving difficult...)
On Tuesday of this week I also went to two interesting talks sponsored by DIS. The first was a panel discussion about the Muhammed cartoon crisis, in which two journalists, a professor of a class called "Muslims in the west", and a representive from Dansk Islamisk Trossamfund, a Muslim organization, gave their views on the issue. Then right after that I went to another talk by the Danish minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, about climate change. Copenhagen is hosting the international climate conference in 2009, and it's interesting to hear about some of the initiatives they've taken -- for example, using trash incineration as heating for homes, which gets rid of garbage and saves energy at the same time. She also talked about the option that Danish businesses have to get financial incentives by investing in environmental improvements for a business in the developing world, which can make a bigger difference than putting the same amount of money into upgrades in their own business (if it's already pretty "good", environmentally). Seems like there are lots of good ideas out there -- I wish that other bigger countries (cough cough, UNITED STATES) with a bigger impact in the world would behave in a similar way.
Anyway, must get back to work!