Jacob Christensen

• Socialdemokraterne – Åbent brev til statsminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen fra S og SF
  (tags: denmark politics socialistiskfolkeparti socialdemokraterne)

• An Oral History of the Bush White House: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
  (tags: politics usa georgewbush)
• Forskningsfrihed?: Forskningsindikator, incitamenter og kassetænkning – styrk basismidlerne!
  Hvis autoritetslisterne virkelig slår igennem i ministeriet, således at de kommer til at betyde noget væsentligt for universiteternes økonomi, ja så vil vi nok inden længe opleve, at visse dekaner og institutledere går ind og ser meget nøje på de enkelte medarbejdere og deres publikationer.
  (tags: denmark research publicpolicy academic)

Being funny across borders is not always easy. Leave aside that Danes generally think, that Swedes have no sense of humour whatsoever, how would you translate the life and times of Rocky, a humanoid dog living the bachelor life in Stockholm from Swedish to Danish?

Well, it can be done. Miraculously, Politiken has run Rocky on a daily basis but as the translator explains in an interview, translating the cultural references brings one or the other problem. The strip which accompanies the interview has a number of traps: Maud Olofsson (transformed into Pia Kjærsgaard!), Café Norrköping (Eleva2eren) and last, but not least, the infamous smörgåstårta (Pizza Hawaii with extra pepperoni).¹ And what, pray, would you do with lättöl and Systembolaget in Copenhagen?

Transplanting cartoons and other forms of popular culture from one country to another brings its risks. As a Dane, I’ve lost countless hidden references to French and Belgian daily life in Asterix, and even Donald Duck (known as Anders And in Danish) is a challenge.

But that the Stockholmers are so much behind the curve, that they still say “nice” … who’d have thunk?

1. I would like to point out that Galna Gunnar’s Danish equivalent is Ærlige Bent, though. [↩]

• Samuel Huntington, 81, political scientist, scholar — The Harvard University Gazette
  (tags: politicalscience samuelphuntington)

• Welfare Reform Has Led to More Work but Less Education
  Welfare reforms have reduced both the probability that women aged 21-49 will attend high school and that those aged 24-49 will attend college, by 20-25 percent.

  Over many decades, welfare programs in the United States focused on education and training as a means of developing "human capital"- skills and knowledge that increase the value of labor. The goal was to help those on public assistance become self-sufficient, aiding them in the ascent out of poverty. By the mid-1990s, however, in response to increasing caseload numbers, welfare reformers turned away from the human capital approach in favor of policies requiring welfare recipients to work in order to receive benefits and making benefits time limited.

  (tags: education usa socialpolicy labourmarket)
• Econbrowser: "Stuff Happens": the Bush Administration's Economic Stewardship
  (tags: usa economicpolicy)

• The European brain drain | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
  This column surveys evidence describing the brain drain from Europe to the US. Europeans living in the US are exceptional – they are more educated, earn higher wages, are more likely to be employed, and more entrepreneurial than their American or European counterparts. Europe's growth prospects may be dramatically reduced by its best and brightesting living in the US.
  (tags: usa europe demography migration)
• The first ten years of the euro | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
  This column looks back at the first ten years of the euro, from the uncertainty surrounding its adoption to the one caused by the current crisis. In between, the euro proved a resounding success. It is worth remembering the magnitude of the original challenge in order to use the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen European governance.
  (tags: economics europe currency)
• The Euro at Ten: Why Do Effects on Trade Among Members Fall Short of Historical Estimates in Smaller Monetary Unions? | Jeff Frankels Weblog | Views on the Economy and the World
  The general finding was that bilateral trade among euro members had indeed increased significantly, but that the effect was far less than the one that had earlier been estimated by Rose and others on the larger data set of smaller countries. Overall, the central tendency of these estimates seems to be a trade effect in the first few years on the order of 10-15%.
  (tags: economics europe currency)

Oh dear – I read about the fire on Geografigränd in Umeå earlier today (it was mentioned on national Swedish TV), but as it turns out, the fire was in the complex right next to where I used to live (Matematikgränd 1).

I should perhaps point out that some of the Swedish papers and TV stations make two mistakes in their reporting: Geografigränd and Matematikgränd are on Ålidhem but these are ordinary apartments and not student housing and the houses are not high-rise buildings – they are “ordinary” 3- and 4-storey buildings.

One thing that I find rather unsettling is that the ventilation systems aren’t isolated so that the fire apparently could spread from one shaft to the others. The good thing is that nobody appear to have been physically hurt but it is still a terrible chock to those families who have to leave their homes for a shorter or longer period.

And one more note: I remember that the housing company repeatedly had to ask people to remove objects (prams, bikes) from the stairways and entrances so that there was access in the case of an emergency.

Update 2008-12-29: Västerbottenskuriren has an informative graphic showing the spread of the fire. I must admit that it raises some questions about the structure of the houses on Ålidhem which seems to give several opportunities for fires to spread and be difficult to control. Given that the buildings were erected around 1970, they don’t look state-of-the-art which surprises me.

My result of Heute’s Thomas Mann-quiz. (I may as well admit that in my younger and more energetic days, I read both Buddenbrooks and Der Zauberberg in the original German).

• Polarization – nolanmccarty.com
  Do you see the dramatic collapse of polarization in congressional term beginning in 2007? Me neither. In fact, polarization rose in the 110th Congress just as it has almost every term since 1975. The House had set a record for polarization in the 109th, but the 110th broke it. The Senate broke its own record set in 1867.
  (tags: politics usa politicalscience congress)

Holy cows! The SEK was between 0,80 and 0,75 DKK during my time in Sweden. Needless to say, we Danes are heading east in huge numbers.

Yahoo Currency Converter.