Jacob Christensen

The Red Hot Chili Peppers bombed completely at Roskilde. Even the critics want their money back.

Today sees the start of Almedalsveckan, a perculiar Swedish tradition, where everybody – well, almost everybody: Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and the leader of the Centre Party Maud Olofsson won’t be there for starters – who are or believe they are something in Swedish politics and political journalism descend on the town of Visby on Gotland.

In the summer, Stockholmers traditionally leave the Centre of the Universe for two destinations: If you have money, but no culture, you go to B�stad. If you have power, and believe you have culture, you go to Gotland. For whatever reason, Olof Palme – you are free to guess which section of the Masters of the Universe he counted himself as part of – decided to do a bit of politics during his vacation back in 1968 and improvised a speech in Almedalen. The rest, as they say, is history.

Anyway: If you read Swedish, then you can read the speech held by Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren a little earlier today here. I’ll get back to it, but just note that the published manuscript looks more like a modernist poem from the 1960s than a polished political presentation.

Strange.

PS: Almedalsbloggen has noted that the Stockholm media has managed to completely overlook that Visby has a new conference centre this year. Small wonder: Nothing of interest happens outside of Stockholm unless there are media people from Stockholm involved.

Correction: Palme held his first speech in 1968, not 1967.

• VoxEU – Inevitable future of health care
  The future is one in which health care will fall into this same category. Even in countries like the United States, the government, not the market, will ultimately control the level and cost of the medical care we will receive
  (tags: healthcare health insurance publichealth research economics government)
• VoxEU – The Habsburgs and future European integration
  As implied by our work, linguistic networks add to those costs as they limit the scope for further European integration in a world with reduced technical barriers to trade and communication. Essentially, networks limit the size of the European market.
  (tags: europe trade economics sociology language research)
• Kenneth Gerard – Software for students (and everyone else too)!
  There are alternatives to paid-for bloatware.
  (tags: academic education software freeware web2.0)
• Software for Starving Students
  A free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone).
  (tags: academic education freeware software teaching)
• NUS – Web 2.0 & Personal Learning Environments
  PLE … it is an ecology of personalized software and services that the learner uses symbiotically.
  (tags: academic education teaching web2.0 software webdesign)