Paul Gubbins (ed): Star in a Night Sky
Harry Harrison in Memoriam (12/3 1925-15/8 2012) In 1970, I began my professional life as a literary translator into Swedish. During the seventies, I was translating mainly science fiction, including two books by Harry Harrison: The Stainless...
During the latest Universal Congress of Esperanto, in Copenhagen last north hemisphere summer, I visited a meeting with Esperanto-speaking Atheists. The subject of the discussion was "Are Atheists Against Religion?" The question may seem to be...
WikiLeaks has just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is true that, as an organization and a collective, they are doing a good and valuable job. Let's hope, however, that the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee - and WikiLleaks themselves -...
Some countries are said to be neutral. The meaning of this may vary; in World War 2, when Ireland was officially neutral, some Irish said that they knew perfectly well whom they were neutral against. Some countries, like Switzerland and Sweden...
Some years ago, I dicovered an enterprise called Lulu, which proved to be a quite useful way for self-publishing. I went ahead and published some of my books through them. You can find them at http://stores.lulu.com/gunnargallmo (Not all are...
What do Gothic architecture, Gothic letters, Gothic literature and Gothic Metal have in common? Of course, you say; they are all Gothic. Wrong. What they have in common is the fact that they all are not Gothic at all. Just as Vandalism doesn't...
The Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by eight British parlamentarians (four labour, two tories, two liberal democrats) - see http://tinyurl.com/ydbovps ! I don't know their motivation. I don't...
You may think so, if you start reading Esther Schor's article in The New Republic at http://tinyurl.com/ylqf3zm With LL Zamenhof as Victor Frankenstein. Or at least that Esperanto is a Pinocchio, with Zamenhof as a Geppetto. (Both...
The 15th of December, 2009, Google used its so-called doodle - a picture replacing one of the letters in its logotype - to honour the initiator of Esperanto, LL Zamenhof, who was born exactly 150 years before that date: ...
"War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." These are the three slogans of Ingsoc in George Orwell's novel "1984". President Obama, who has caught the opportunity when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize to come out as a supporter of...
It is written in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml : Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom...
Strange things are happening. I just read - at http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=43,8748,0,0,1,0 - that a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka, Battaramulle Seelaratana Thera, intends to run for president in the country next January. It's the...
It is written in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml : Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. ...
In an earlier hub - http://hubpages.com/hub/Land-of-Invented-Languages - I reviewed Arika Okrent's book In the Land of Invented Languages. I have recently been informed that the author will appear in New York at December 15th, at 2:30...
After writing two earlier hubs about Buddhism and political power - http://hubpages.com/hub/Buddhist-king-is-violating-Buddhist-ethics http://hubpages.com/hub/Buddhist-Imprimatur - I got a question from a commentator: "What is a 'Buddhist'...
I thought Imprimatur is something to be found only in the Catholic church - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprimatur But now, I read at Buddhist Channel - http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=43,8627,0,0,1,0 - that the four topmost...
Some strange writers at the web have "accused" him of this. It would honour him if he were guilty. But I doubt very much that he is. If I go to the web site of the White House and search for "esperanto", I get the answer: "Did you mean?...
I think Mr. Obama has two great problems. His enemies is one, those who regard him as the devil himself and accuse him for being a Nazi, a Fascist and a Communist (funny combination), and even as someone who wants his compatriots to study...
For those of you who don't want religious bodies to have political power, opposers of Sharia law in Britain will participate the celebration of the Universal Children's Day and International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in...
Why is a committee of the Norwegian parliament deciding over the Nobel Peace Prize? Seems strange, for at least two reasons. One: Nobel Prizes are private, not public (funded by private money, ruled by a private will); so how can a parliament be...
In Alfred Nobel's will, about his five prizes, it is said about the Peace Prize that it shall be given "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies...
After writing two earlier hubs - http://hubpages.com/hub/Progressive-Buddhists-in-Trouble and http://hubpages.com/hub/More-About-Religious-Policy-in-Vietnam - I have read one more article about the matter: ...
In an earlier hub - http://hubpages.com/hub/Progressive-Buddhists-in-Trouble - I wrote about the current problems for the disciples in Vietnam of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who some decades ago opposed both the US war in his country,...
In 1968 - "the crazy year", including some previous and later years as well - I was a university student in Uppsala, Sweden. This was the time of the Vietnam war in South East Asia. It was also the time of a strong leftist movement among Western...
As I wrote in an earlier hub - http://hubpages.com/hub/Dangerous-Language - Esperanto has sometimes been regarded as a dangerous language, and Esperantists as suspect persons, by people from Hitler and Stalin to some present day Obama haters. ...
Can a language be dangerous? Some think it can. We see some of them just now, in North America among the most rabiate Obama-haters; those who are so far out at the extreme right-wing that they think George Soros is a leftist (which he...
In October every year, we are informed who are to receive the Nobel prizes of the year. All five of them, plus the parasitic prize of economics "in memory of Alfred Nobel", which isn't Nobel's prize at all, but a prize of the Swedish National Bank....
Brazilian High Schools will be able to teach Esperanto officially. The decision was made Tuesday, Sept. 15th 2009, by the Commission on Education, Culture and Sports of the Brazilian Senate. The proposed law was written by Senator Cristovam...
Last summer (2009), I participated in the Universal Congress of Esperanto in Bialystok, Poland. Now I read a short article about a strange incident at the web site of the Polish radio, at http://tinyurl.com/m47z3p What happened was that two...
This is part of a book I wrote and self-published. If you want to read it all, click at http://tinyurl.com/msk8kd Free at screen, or for pay at paper. I've also written a non-fiction book about Old Norse Religion - ...
I recently read a book published earlier this year: In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent (Spiegel & Grau, New York 2009). In general, there seems to be two main attitudes to "artificial" languages, like Esperanto: the extremely...
If I were living in Thailand, I wouldn't dare to write this article. If so, it might have given me fifteen years in jail, for "lese majesty" - a concept found in Hinduism and in medieval Christianity, but actually not in Buddhism, which is supposed...