Jacob Christensen

I ought to take some photos of this at some point: I have buses in liveries from Stockholm, G�vle and J�nk�ping as well as Ume� passing at regular intervals on the road outside. There is a logical explanation, but it is still weird.

Jeff Crespi said his father’s retirement years were spent at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, where he spent hours reading about evolution, religion, psychology and economics — browsing, never buying, the texts.

From Washington Post’s obituary of Leo Crespi.

Not a motorcycle but an old fashioned real bike.

The only real reason for mentioning that Finance Minister Lars L�kke Rasmussen (and the Minister for Overseas Development Ulla T�rn�s) participate in an event staged by the Danish Children’s Cancer Foundation – A 1250 km bicycle race from Denmark to Paris – is that both ministers got lost by the peloton and the service cars shortly after crossing the Danish-German border.

If we for a moment try to imagine the German, the French or the British Finance Ministers pulling off such a stunt, it is not very likely that they would be lost in such a way, given the levels of protection and surveillance of politicians in high offices. There would be any number of security agents present to deal with the situation.

And so, the story actually tells us something positive about the state of Denmark.

• Janet Currie – Parents� health, children�s health and incomes: a cycle of poverty | vox
  Poverty worsens childhood health, which leads to adulthood poverty. Focusing on young mothers� health and wellbeing could break the cycle
  (tags: economics socialpolicy publichealth poverty research)
• A Stroke Leads a Brain Scientist to a New Spirituality – NYTimes.com
  Left-brain injuries don�t necessarily lead to blissful enlightenment; people sometimes sink into a helplessly moody state: their emotions run riot. Dr. Taylor was also helped because her left hemisphere was not destroyed.
  (tags: physiology psychology health)
• Marcia Pally – USA: Kampf um die Freiheit geh�rt zu Amerikas Programm | Nachrichten auf ZEIT online
  Die bewaffnete Verbreitung der Freiheit geh�rt zu Amerikas politischem Programm � das w�rde sich auch unter Obama nicht �ndern
  (tags: usa barackobama foreignpolicy johnmccain)

Here I am, quietly working my way through the backlog of issues of Die Zeit – and believe me: This is serious work – when suddenly in the middle of an article about the collapse of the Austrian government … wham:

Dabei h�lt [Heinz Christian Strache - leader of the FP�] sich die Unterst�tzervariante offen, mit der zum Beispiel die D�nen ihre popul�re Kombination von sozialliberaler “Flexicurity” (soziale Sicherheit und arbeitsmarktpolitische Flexibilit�t) und sozialchauvinistischer Anti-Immigrations-Politik aufrechterhalten: eine Minderheitsregierung (in Kopenhagen Mitte-rechts), im Parlament gest�tzt auf die rechten Populisten der Pia Kj�rsgaard

Austria is the new Denmark?

Well, I have occasionally wondered what happened with Hans Hetler.

On a more serious note, immigration policy is the hot topic during the summer break in Denmark – at least in the media – but even though the Immigration Minister is goofing up again, I can’t see it hurting the government.

For some reason the article (“Das Ende der Schlegokraz”) is not available online but it was printed in #29/2008.

Considering all the trouble I had getting the Veryplaintxt theme and the widgets (expecially the widgets…) to look exactly as I wanted, I might just stick with it for some time. If you have a very good memory, you might recall that I used veryplaintext in the early days of the blog. It (or rather WordPress) wasn’t as flexible back then which was why I switched to K2.

Oh, and please don’t tell me that the Profilactic badge doesn’t fit in completely. I have absolutely no idea about what you could possibly mean.