Jacob Christensen

A Swedish classic, also courtesey of Ola Nordebo: Carl Lidbom vs. the inimitable Anders Björck in the Constitutional Committee of the Swedish Riksdag’s interrogations about the Ebbe Carlsson-affair. I recall that Danish papers were amused about “trams” (roughly = “bollocks!”) and “vet hut” (which apparently translates into “you ought to be ashamed of yourself“). Actually, I asked my supervisor Gunnar Sjöblom about the exact meaning of the latter phrase to which he only said – “Oh dear, I hope nobody said that to you…”.

• European economic integration: Undoing 1914-1945 | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
  Prior to 1914, Europe was economically integrated across political borders. The “second Thirty Year War” (1914-1945) put up barriers that post-war European integration has been undoing since the 1950s, returning Europe to a familiar state of economic
  (tags: europe economics research globalisation)
• Sju dagars arbetsvecka vanligt – Högskoleverket
  En konsekvens av lärarnas arbetssituation är att slarv och kompromisser arbetet blir oundvikligt. … forskningsanknytningen i utbildningen [hotas]
  (tags: sweden education university)
• Mac OS X Leopard: Enable Google Contact Sync Without an iPhone or iPod Touch
  (tags: google Mac osx sync addressbook gmail)
• Crude Awakening: Behind the Surge in Oil Prices – Economic Letter, May 2008 – FRB Dallas
  After the tumult of the early 1980s, prices remained relatively tame for two decades—in both real and nominal terms (Chart 1). This long stretch of stability ended in 2004, when oil topped $40 a barrel for the first time, then embarked on a steep climb
  (tags: economics)
• c|net – In Revision3 DOS outage, has Hollywood gone too far?
  (tags: entertainment web2.0 internet legal usa)

This is what you’ll see if you stay up working on an article for too long on a late night at the end of May.

Today’s quote is brought to us by apophenia:

At breakfast this morning, I was reading about the costs of teachers’ failure to teach penmanship to children. Failure to write often results in reduced math and literacy skills, yet teachers are spending fewer and fewer hours per week teaching penmanship.

…

My handwriting skills have decayed. My ability to communicate without editing has decayed. My patience for creating text at a rate slower than I think has decayed. Typing is fast, handwriting is slow. So is handwriting all that important? Maybe the key is to learn to write while learning to read and then happily forget how to write? Or maybe my brain has turned to all sorts of mush without me even knowing it…

It has of cause been turned into a comic.

And while we are at it, Danish students complain about being forced to do exams in handwriting.

Note to self: The game about the opt-out referendums has begun.

Topics to follow:

• DIIS Report: When to publicise?
• Money for an information campaign
• The Socialist Party
• The Danish People’s Party

June could be a lot of fun.

The advice “use jargon or mathematics” still holds. (Starts at about 0:30)

HT: The Monkey Cage.

• LO Ugebrev – Skal Fogh sende en ansøgning?
  (tags: denmark europe andersfoghrasmussen politics)

Mark Thoma has recommendations for today’s students:

Given the shift in relative prices, kids today should be tempted to drink more, and drive less.

As the headline says. I’m not really updated with regard to the regional papers but my guess is that Politiken is the only big broadsheet left. For how long?

• Pew Research Center: Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream
  The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.
  (tags: islam pew politics religion research usa sociology)