Archive for February 9th, 2008
Politisk Debat
Now let me get this right – Danmarks Radio (or whatever acronym the corporation wants to be known by) still broadcasts Politisk Debat but a) has stopped bothering podcasting it and b) can’t be bothered announcing it.
Why am I not really surprised?
Inglisj
I’ll just note that a journalist from DN has been to Copenhagen and writes a satire over the fact that he only spoke English during his visit.
Well, try to visit Stockholm as a Dane and see what happens.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
In the UK media a debate (to say the least) has been raging over comments made by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the role of Islamic sharia law in British society. This is the introduction to the Guardian’s original article:
The Archbishop of Canterbury tonight prompted criticism from across the political spectrum after he backed the introduction of sharia law in Britain and argued that adopting some of its aspects seemed “unavoidable”.
(The Times has the full text of the archbishop’s lecture* – and Language Log also weighs in on the wordings)
That the right-wing press loved to attack the archbishop was perhaps not that surprising (here’s the always-subtle The Sun “newspaper”, and if you’re looking for a more up-market treatment try the Telegraph or the Times) but the government and even media like the Guardian also gave the speech a distinctly frosty reception.
The Economist takes one step back and points to a central issue:
In any case, the reality to which the Archbishop was referring is palpable enough: there are already plenty of sub-cultures in Britain where people choose to regulate their behaviour, in matters like diet, marital status and inheritance, by a set of self-imposed norms which may differ quite sharply from the remainder of society.
The big question, for any secularist advocate of the rule of law, is whether people who participate in these sub-cultures really have a right to opt out, or to indeed to move from one cultural world to another.
The entitlement of sub-cultures to exist can easily become inimical to freedom if vulnerable individuals (such as women and children) are in effect trapped inside them because of massive pressure not to �betray� the community. The Archbishop would have drawn a much less hostile reaction if he had remembered to make that point more firmly.
And by the way: Here’s a prominent UK businessman talking about women’s role on the labour market – and here’s a report about how Microsoft’s German division treats female employees. If my choice was between the Brits and Microsoft, I know what I’d prefer.
PS: Xenophobic and outright stupid comments will be deleted.
Hey, I thought I was slow but I actually beat Danish media on the story! Berlingske, Politiken.
* As good scientists we should always go to the primary source so here is the official transcript of the lecture from the AoC’s homepage.
Richard Florida on Universities and Regional Economic Development
Opening universities everywhere was a hallmark of Social Democratic regional policy in Sweden during the 1990s and early 2000s. Richard Florida has some sceptical words about the tendency to see universities as instruments for regional economic policy:
Businesses, governments and economists talk of getting local universities more involved in technology transfer, commercial innovation and start-ups. “If only our university could be more like Stanford and MIT,” they say.
The idea actually sells universities short. It oversells their commercial role and underestimates their other contributions. There are only a few instances where universities have played a major role in high-tech development � certainly Silicon Valley and Greater Boston, as well as Austin, North Carolina’s Research Triangle and Waterloo, Ont.
It’s more common for regions to export technology their universities create. Economist Michael Fogarty has found that while labs in Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland generate plenty of patents, most of them find their commercial uses in Boston, San Francisco, New York or Tokyo.
The entire thing is here.