Jacob Christensen

Inspired by this post by John Quiggin and especially the following comments, I couldn’t resist revealing my true position in the OS Wars. Dropbox to the rescue:

I’m not sure if this is Mac 2 – 2 Others or UNIX 3 – 1 Windows.

Bleg: Can anyone please tell me why I should vote in next Tuesday’s elections for regional councils? I mean: Seriously, does this election make any sense?

I could ask Ulrik Kjær, but I think I know the answer.

Fokus claims that the laundry room is uniquely Swedish. I beg to disagree: I can’t say if the Swedes invented the shared laundry room or were the first to but the idea into general practice, but laundry rooms have been a feature of many Danish condominiums and housing estates for a long time.

Still, the point stands: A shared laundry room is an interesting way of pooling resources – even if buying a washing machine these days is within the reach of most people, machines in individual apartments are often underused. The laundry room is also a cause for conflict – not everyone can do their laundry at the same time, the machines and the room have to be kept clean, clothes cannot lie around forever, etc – so an elaborate system of norms and communication is demanded to make the room work and the machines run. Unfortunately, Danish does not have a word for “arga lappen” (there is a pun here which can only be understood in Swedish) but we do know then down here as well.

That said, I do miss the opportunity to book a time for doing the laundry where I live now. As it is, I have to go down to the laundry room and check if the machine is vacant, go back and fetch the laundry – and hope that nobody else manage to get to the machine before I do. I take it, that you feel the frustration and anxiety. Oh, and the tumble dryer is out of order.

When hamfisted multiculturalism meats thinly veiled racism, the result is often mind-boggling. This week’s case in point is Hvidovre, a suburban local council in Copenhagen, where a candidate for the Danish People’s Party now demands that at least one in five meals in council institutions should be served with pork. Needless to say, that would mean that muslim children and adults would go starving one or two days a week.

The story about institutions not serving pork (actually, in Danish we are not so French about it: We eat pigs. End of story) for fear of offending muslims is an old one, but I have never seen any precise figures detailing the possible extent of such behaviour.

What I do find interesting, though, is that is seems impossible to Danes to administer a system where people have a choice in the delivery of meals. In Sweden, you will be met with a form where you can enter special wishes or needs. One reason is that the place is full of vegetarians and people with allergies (I, for one, have an issue with apples and nuts). Another may be that the Swedes on this issue have somehow been able to break out of the one-size-fits-all way of thinking.

As I don’t have any children myself, I haven’t followed practices in Sweden and Denmark, but it really ought not to be that hard to introduce an element of choice in day-care and and other meal services. Except for a party which wants to turn us all into leverpostej.