Robin Wilton's esoterica

And very nice it was, too. The 13th conference of the Porvoo Group was held between Tromsø and Trondheim in Norway last week, and they were kind enough to invite me to speak on the subject of Electronic Identity and Privacy. Trondheim airport (or rather, Værnes airport, which is about 35kms from Trondheim itself), is situated right next to the small town of Hell. It was fairly cold there last week, but I couldn't honestly say that it had frozen over (which, presumably, is why those unlikely things you were waiting for haven't happened yet).

And speaking of eternal darkness, here's a photo of the monument marking the point at which the Norwegian Express Ferry route (Hurtigruten) crosses the Arctic Circle. This is the southernmost latitude at which it is possible to experience Polar night or Polar day (i.e. a night in which the sun fails to rise above the horizon, or a day in which it does not drop below it).

More later on the content of the conference, but in the meantime, many thanks to the Porvoo Group organisers, and especially everyone from the Registry Centre in Brønnøysund, where we were welcomed with exceptional warmth and style.  

[Apologies - I meant to post this on April 7th., but got sidetracked.] 

Perhaps it's naive to think that there's any such thing as 'pure' sport, untainted by grubbier considerations. After all, Berlin (1936), Munich (1972) and Moscow (1980) all held games in which politics was a significant, if unwelcome factor. In recent decades, the commercial factors (sponsorship, product placement, broadcasting) seem to have increased exponentially - and in 1984, combining the two, Russia boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics, citing their over-commercialisation as its reason for pulling out.

Growing up with the Cold War games, I often had the impression that they were being turned from a contest between individual athletes to one in which competing economic and political ideologies battled it out for the biggest haul of medals. Which could produce the better performance - individualism and free enterprise, or all-pervading devotion to the socialist state? Mary Decker or Nadia Komaneci...?

There must presumably still be some people who cling to the Olympic ideal that sport and politics are best not crammed, willy nilly, into the same bed. They, above all, must have been wndering what the Olympic torch was doing in front of Number 10 Downing Street yesterday. Apparently Gordon Brown wanted to appear with it in the company of prospective British Olympians - a laudable enough aim, in itself. But a little finesse might perhaps have suggested a venue with sporting connotations, rather than purely political ones. After all, the torch was on its way to Stratford, site of the London Games in 2012.

In any case, today's news stories suggest that the Olympic ideal has been rather fatally undermined elsewhere. Apparently officials in Paris twice snuffed out the torch 'for safety reasons'. It was then re-lit from one of the back-up lanterns which accompany it. I thought the whole point was that the flame made the whole journey unextinguished. Otherwise isn't it, well... cheating?