Jacob Christensen

My result of DN’s emissions test. The fact that I don’t own a car and don’t fly helps bring down my CO2 footprint. The fact that I live in a big appartment helps bring up my CO2 footprint. Having two computers doesn’t exactly help, either.

For Kieran Healy: Gubbslem revisited. One word of warning – the mp4-file is more than 100 MB large and takes forever to launch.

XKCD accidentally weighed in on the subject some week ago.

And now for something completely different…

What do you do on a Thursday night when the first season of Californication has ended on TV4?

Perhaps considering what we might learn from the show can help filling the void:

• Having sex with your ex-partner’s new partner’s sixteen-year-old daughter is a bad idea. Bad! (Jeppe Kofod, are you listening?) Even if I will have to admit that Madeline Zima is very attractive.¹
• The combination of alcohol, marijuana, modern non-figurative painting and sex with a scientologist is generally not to be recommended.
• Never, ever pick up a girl in a supermarket line. Especially not if you collect vinyl records.
• Having an affair with your secretary is a always pathetic move.
• Having a kinky affair with your secretary is even more pathetic.
• Threesomes should be avoided at all costs. Especially if they involve your wife and your secretary or one of your business clients and some random woman.
• Porsche might consider employing more female salespersons.²
• Blogging is for burnt-out writers.
• Shouldn’t you be just a bit spooked by the fact that your twelve-year-old daughter is a wannabe Goth? I would.
• In the real world, Natascha McElhone is married to a plastic surgeon.

Here’s to season two. It will be a hard act to follow, but I have high hopes.

1. Zima is twenty-two [↩]
2. But would the play have been as iconic if it had been named Death of a Salesperson? Methink not. [↩]

John Sides points us to a discussion about how to study terrorist suicide attacks. Judged from Sides’s presentation, we have a case of the classic “sampling (or no variation) on the dependent variable” problem on our hands here – ie. Robert Pape (the researcher whose work is being discussed) only studies suicide attacks and tries to analyse what they causes they have in common, not what effects different distributions of causes have.

It is of cause still hypothetically possible that suicide terrorism is a worldly rather than a religiously motivated strategy.

• World Economic Forum – Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008
  (tags: economics globalization internet scandinavia technology)
• Pew Research Center: Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life
  (tags: usa economics economy sociology research pew)

Norman Geras says what can possibly be said about Mr. Brown’s “I’m – not – going – to – Beijing – because – this – is – not – a – protest”:

Here’s a thought for him and those close to him to chew over: whatever he planned, if he’s now staying away people will be interested to know if there’s any element of protest over China’s human rights record in there. Cleft stick, buddy! Either there is or there isn’t. If there isn’t, then why not, given what you know about that subject? If there is, then your Chinese hosts may be miffed. It’s surely not an intention to send opposing messages to different people? No, he wouldn’t do that.

Gordon Brown is the new Poul Nyrup Rasmussen when it comes to media gaffes.