Jacob Christensen

We interrupt the campaign reporting to turn attention somewhat closer to, if not home then our present post of observation: The relationship between Finns and Swedes which is the subject of a report with the bizarre title Different Ways of Encountering a Big Elephant written by Thorleif Pettersson and Sakari Nurmela published a couple of days ago. (Full publication as a pdf; Summary as pdf)

The fun fact of the day is that the average Swede doesn’t know much about Finland but would love to have Finnish friends.

The average Finn on the other hand knows a lot about Sweden and is not particularly interested in having Swedish friends.

Now, how can we possibly explain this…?

PS: The title of the post refers to the peculiar Swedish way of writing “X loves Y” – “X+Y=True”. In Sweden the phenomenon otherwise known as “love” has been replaced with the pragmatic exchange of various kinds of domestic services.

I’m not sure whether DR’s media servers have crashed or if they are simply unavailable from abroad. As it is, I can’t get access to Sunday’s debate on DR1 between Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Helle Thorning Schmidt regardless of whether I use a Mac or a Windows box, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer.

So, no comments about the debate from here. I’ll do a round up of the first part of the campaign later tonight or tomorrow.

Update: Using the direct links from DR’s dedicated election site (still) doesn’t work. Using DR’s video player works. And AFR did not wear a tie this time either.

Update update: DR’s video player works on the 11 Mps line at work, not on the 2 Mps line I have at home. Grrr…

• Pew Research Center: Widespread Negativity: Muslims Distrust Westerners More than Vice Versa
  (tags: politics research religion sociology)
• Pew Global Attitudes Project: Summary of Findings: Muslims in Europe: Economic Worries Top Concerns About Religious and Cultural Identity
  (tags: politics immigration research religion racism)
• Religiosity and income in the U.S.
  (tags: religion politics usa statistics)
• Political Science Weblog: Haas on the Geriatric Peace
  (tags: politicalscience research demography)
• Political Science Weblog: Haber and Menaldo on whether natural resources fuel authoritarianism
  Our results indicate that resource dependence is not associated with the undermining of democracy, the persistence of authoritarianism, or less complete transitions to democracy.
  (tags: politics politicalscience government research)
• Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis – The Region – Has Middle America Stagnated? – September 2007
  (tags: economics labourmarket usa)
• Andrew Gelman: Some cool graphs of rich states and poor states (US 2004)
  (tags: class economics politics statistics visualization election usa)
• islamologi.se » Arkiv » Ett decennium av islamofobi
  (tags: religion research politics media uk)
• House price bubbles made in Europe | voxEU
  (tags: economics housing europe)
• Pension funds and corporate governance: shareholder discipline or entrenchment of control? | voxEU
  (tags: economics governance pensions europe)
• Gregory Clark – Malawi vs. Sweden: Which has better economic incentives?
  (tags: development economics sweden)
• Gideon Rachman: Top five politics moments on Youtube
  (tags: politics humour video youtube)
• Dani Rodrik’s weblog: Good news on the gender gap front
  According to the latest gender related statistics published in the 2007 World Development Indicators (WDI) by the World Bank, the gaps between the sexes are going through a major shift worldwide.
  (tags: gender education international statistics)
• Where: Five Innovation Myths Applied to Urbanism
  (tags: architecture design innovation urban)
• Political Science Weblog: Lieberman on AIDS and ethnic politics
  The author highlights ethnic politics as a negative influence on AIDS-related expenditures and other policies.
  (tags: publicpolicy publichealth aids research politicalscience)

I haven’t been able to watch the second debate between Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Helle Thorning-Schmidt which was broadcast by DR TV on Sunday – yet. If possible, I will try to catch up with it on Monday.

According to reports, the two were more aggressive than in the first debate on TV2 (not that that would be very difficult, the debate in round one was more polite than most dinner-parties) but intriguingly Berlingske Tidende manages to name both AFR – okay: Thomas Larsen has always been in complete awe of Fogh – and HTS the winner.