International Years

2007 is drawing to an end.

It has been an International Polar Year (IPY), and the UN has drawn a lot of attention to the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UN was not involved with declaring the Polar Year, but it's hard to mention one without the other up here in Norway. Besides, the UN is very keen to announce International Years for all kinds of stuff. It wouldn't have been unnatural to blame them for this one too.

The real movers of the Polar Year are the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and International Commitee of Science (ICSU). The WMO is part-founder of IPCC as well, by the way. The other main contributor to IPCC is United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

There are lots of other TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) involved, and perhaps even a couple of four letter... um... words as well. :-)

But that's about enough Bureaucrat Language for one blog entry, methinks. What d'you think they're up to for next year? Must be more of the same, right?

Right. So lets poke some fun at it. With, as they say, all due respect of course...

It seems, from the info floating on the web, that 2007-2009 is a bundle of three International Years together where the Polar stuff and the Climate Panel was just the start. 2008 will be the International Year of the Planet Earth. And so was 2007 and will be 2009.

But UN is certainly not any one-trick pony.

2007 has also been the International Year of the Dolphin, and of Violence Prevention. Wonder if they've got an office in Kabul.

-No, not the dolphin guys...

2008 will be the International Year of the Potato, of Sanitation, and possibly a whole host of other worthy causes.

The UN have also declared that 2005-2015 is an International Decade, entitled Water For Life (little did I know when publishing this).

I must admit I'm amazed by the sheer diversity of programmes. Good thing they stop short of the Century of the Anchovy.

And with that, I'd like to wish the Very Thin Crowd (VTC) of people reading this a Happy New Year (HNY).

Internationally. :-)

Big hugs to both of ya from Norway.

2007 summary

In two days' time, it is one year since the first post in this blog. I haven't exactly gone out of my way to post regularly, or even to draw much attention to it in the rest of the blogosphere. Some of my friends have graciously linked to here from their own blogs, and on two occasions I've pointed to my blog from discussions at PDML. That's all.

This is accurately reflected in the number of visits per day, which is usually less than 10. The accidental reader will probably shun away after the first post, if readability has anything to do with it. An online test gave my texts a total thumbs-down. Apparently one has to be a genius to understand my writings.

I've tried to give this a bit of thought. Perhaps I suffer from... um... "hyperextended vocabulary"? Silly term, of course. Whatever it's called, I'm pretty sure I picked it up at university, where practically all the textbooks were in English. Biochemistry, ecology, physiology, statistics; the lot. My current daytime job is no better, with terms from medicine and IT. I'll take it as a challenge to improve readability in 2008.

Fewer fancy words, perhaps, and commas. :-)

My photography this year became totally dominated by the trip to Northern Norway in June. More than 60% of my total production this year is from that trip. Another 30% is from shorter trips, and less than 10% is from the local area. Since displaying local photography was the very purpose of this blog, I must admit failure.

I'll just have to improve next year.