Jacob Christensen

In the middle of the election campaign, we had a reminder of one of the weirdest affairs in Swedish politics as Lars Danielsson announced that he would be resigning his post as Assistant Secretary to Prime Minister Göran Persson.

Since the details of the Chancery’s and Foreign Office’s problems in the handling of the Decembver 2004 Tsunami where a large lumber of Swedish tourists were killed or injured, Danielsson has been in the line of fire as he consistently failed to give a satisfying explanation about his whereabouts during December 26.

The latest round in the affair was performed this Monday as the Swedish Ombudsman published a report on Danielsson’s performance and especially the information he gave – or failed to give – to the Disaster Commission and later the Constitutional Committee of the Swedish parliament. The Ombudsman’s report contained a strong criticism of Danielsson’s performance in relation to the administrative and political inquests and in the end acted as the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Whether Danielsson through his behaviour during the crucial days following the tsunami and the inquests also will be a nail in Göran Persson’s political coffin (to use another tired old phrase) remains to be seen.

c|net has this very scary story: News.blog: Has a company patented e-learning?

What troubles critics most is the broad nature of Blackboard’s patent, which apparently goes far beyond any particular technology to cover fundamental aspects of large-scale, widely used “Learning Management Systems.”

Why am I not surprised?

Just for the fun of it, I tried taking Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s “Wahl-O-Mat test for the state elections in Berlin in a few weeks’ time.

I wouldn’t have a problem with voting for the Green Party but it’s kind of interesting that Linke/PDS and WASG appear on the next two places.

Just for comparison – an old favourite: The result of Dagens Nyheter’s lifestyle-party test done a few months ago:

I suspect this tells us something about the difference between Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

The results of the electoral sweepstake of the Swedish Political Science Association are here (pdf-format, right-click to download).

Two interesting points: 1. Interest in the sweepstake was limited to Gothenburg, Lund, Umeå and Karlstad and to a certain degree Uppsala, 2) Political scientists can’t add to 100. I’m not quite sure which point is the scarier.

My own entry from back in March is here.

We’re – as usual – running a separate sweepstake here in Umeå but this time, I’m keeping my guess secret.

If you are into numbers, the annual Budget Proposal of the Danish Government was published today and is available through the homepage of the Danish Ministry of Finance. Worth noting – though hardly surprising by now – is that the government is promoting the proposal under the headline Reformer og velfærd (“Reforms and welfare”).

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives emphasise improvments to public and welfare services while investments and research initiatives receive less attention.

The first comments from the Social Democrats and the Socialist Party focus on the valence issue aspect of the service issue: The Social Democrats accuse the government of manipulating the data about appropriations for public services while the Socialist Party claim that the government is trying to hide a shift in emphasis from services to the elderly to education and research.

The Socialist line of criticism incidentially mirrors recent demands from the Danish People’s Party that resources should be transferred from research to welfare services for the elderly.

Unfortunately, Berlingske Tidende for whatever reason chopped off information about half of the parties on its homepage, but according to Danmarks Radio the latest Danish Gallup-poll puts support for the Social Democrats back on level with the result from the 2005 election – which still was one of the worst results for the party in the last century.

Where we may have a trend, though, is in the support for the Socialist Party which has been at 9-10% during the last six months. That’s a pretty big improvement from the 6% the party managed to get in the 2005 election but more in line with the support for the party – and the left wing – during the last 30 years.

Still, the weakness of the Social Democrats continues to be a real problem for the Danish centre-left.

The latest opinion polls have sent the Swedish media in a frenzy: It seems that the Centre-Right alliance have lost the lead over the Left more-or-less-bloc.

Here are some graphs based on TEMO’s poll barometer. First, polls from this year (but without Sifo’s latest poll which was published today):

I haven’t controlled for inaccuracies or made other forms of calculations or quality controls but simply added a sliding 5-point average for the aggregate support for the left and the right. Small parties and undecided voters are excluded from the calculation. (Click on the picture to get to a higher resolution).

And here is the big picture: All major polls since 2002 with a sliding average trend line. Again the source is TEMO.

And here it is: One of those batteries that have made the headlines in international media.

Some thoughts about the process – and just to make my position clear: It’s bad luck for Apple (and Dell) that batteries produced by Sony turned out to be faulty, perhaps even dangerous, but I do think that Apple’s information has been a little shaky:

First, Apple’s homepage collapsed as concerned users tried to log on and see if their computer was affected. That took some hours to fix.

Second, the support page gave confusing information. I could see that the battery in my laptop was affected but when I tried to enter the relevant information, the battery number (but not the computer) was rejected as out of range. I’m sure the people at Apple support have one or the other story to tell about Thursday evening.

Third, the link to the relevant information is hidden on the lower part of Apple’s frontpage. It should be more prominent, if only to show Apple-users and others that Apple does in fact take the issue very seriously indeed.

When all of this has been said, the process of ordering a new battery went pretty smoothly when all of the SNAFUs had been cleared from the road – or the net, if you like. A new battery will arrive.

Eventually.

For the record: Yes, the battery of my PowerBook G4 is among those recalled by Apple Computer. As a matter of fact, my TV broke down yesterday as well.

The autumn semester starts on Monday.

First, applause for Sara Mead for coining one of the best headlines in a long, long time: College is not a dating service.That’ll teach them!Second, even if women are outperforming men with regard to formal education and formal qualifications, it still doesn’t follow that women will be outperforming men with regard to income and social status in later life.And finally a quote:

But I wonder if articles like this contribute to something of a vicious cycle. Although there’s no evidence, a persistent theme – on both sides – in debates about why women are outstripping men on some academic indicators seems to be that at least some groups of women are more determined and are working harder because they’ve gotten a message that they need to do so in order to compete economically, provide for their future families, etc. It would be ironic if, as a result, prestige colleges really did start requiring women to be much better than men to be admitted. 

A possible hypothesis could be this: Higher education for women does in fact rub the balance of power between the sexes. This triggers unease and leads to myths about how the social order is put in jeopardy. (A fast application of Albert O. Hirschman’s “Rhetoric of Reaction“).