Jacob Christensen

Amsterdam: Java Eiland, originally uploaded by jacobchristensen.

I’ve posted some a selection rather a lot of photos from KNSM/Java Eiland in Amsterdam on my Flickr page. More from Amsterdam to come.

Click on the photo to get there.

Message to students, graduate students and senior researchers: We’ve heard your lame excuses before.

To boil down a long argument to one sentence, I think it’s a good thing that research papers and the like are openly available and searchable because it will make it easier to check for plagiarism.

Obviously, the plagiarism problem among students often have to do with goal displacement: Students don’t want to learn, they want a degree – but degrees are only proxies to gauge a person’s qualifications.

Greg Mankiw points us to a graph of the development of P/E-values. Also, Stephen Cecchetti on VoxEU about the sub-prime crisis. Mark Thoma also endorses caution.

In case you’ve ever wondered: The Danes do not call the Germans Krauts or Huns. Our favourite insult for our southern neighbours is Pølsetyskere (Sausage Germans) – which given the ubiquitous Currywurst-stands in the Federal Republic seems a very apt choice.

But what about the other way round?

One problem is of cause that Germans have a really hard time telling Danes, Swedes and Norwegians apart. In German eyes, we are all Scandinavians. This recently led one of the chefs appearing in ZDF’s weekly show Kerner Kocht to ask guest cook Tina Nordström about how you prepare smørrebrød.

Poor Ms. Nordström had to explain that smørrebrød is a Danish, not a Swedish speciality. I can testify to this – the Swedes sweeten their rye bread and eat herring on white bread. Fortunately, I can buy German (!) rye bread where I live and prepare a decent lunch.

But ask a German about the Danish cuisine and he or she is likely to come up with fond memories of Danish pasty (which is called wienerbrød in Danish. Go figure) and hot dogs. Talk about returning an insult!

The Danish food prices may be one reason for the lack of more profound knowledge of the Danish kitchen among Germans, the lack of a sophisticated food culture another.

Luckily, things are changing though as Frankfurter Allgemeine notes in an article about the joys of the table in Copenhagen. Besides making the obligatory mentioning of the hot dog-stands (their numbers are actually dwindling as McDonald’s™ “restaurants” and 7-Eleven-shops are taking over the fast food-segment), gives German readers a guide to the nine stars Guide Michelin has bestowed on Copenhagen.

This actually means that Copenhagen plays in the same league as Bruxelles, Madrid and Rome when it comes to elite cooking. You can even get gourmet hot dogs these days.

• Västerbottens-Kuriren: Trögare befolkningsutveckling en väckarklocka för Umeå
  Umeås befolkningsutveckling fortsätter att gå trögare än förväntat. De nya siffrorna från Statistiska centralbyrån (SCB) visar att det gått bakåt sedan motsvarande tidpunkt förra året.
  (tags: umeå sweden demography)
• LifeHacking required reading list: 100 personal productivity blogs — Jim Gibbon.com
  let me direct you to some of the most popular time management and procrastination articles on the site:
  (tags: blogging blogpost productivity academic)
• VoxEU: What can we learn from successful autocracies?
  The lesson from successful autocracies is that supporting good government with effective accountability requires institutional arrangements appropriate to that task, given the circumstances of the country in question.
  (tags: research economics politicalscience autocracy accountability institutions)
• VoxEU – Can European firms close their ?management gap? with the US?
  Our research suggests that strong competition and open labour markets both lead directly to improved management performance. Multinational companies have a strong positive effect too, and their influence is felt throughout the countries in which they oper
  (tags: management economics sociology organization research)
• Slate Magazine – Mean Girls
  (tags: statistics research usa journalism)

Frederiksborg Slot: Barokhaven, originally uploaded by jacobchristensen.

Many more photos from the outing to see on my Flickr page: Just click on the photo to get there.