Jacob Christensen

Bad photoshop, baaad photoshop.

Considering that Microsoft has a more than reasonable reputation with regard to diversity, the blunder is pretty amazing.

I’ll admit: Personally, I’m no supporter of the Danish People’s Party but the initial manoeuvring over the UK Conservative Party’s choice of partners in the European Parliament has something ridiculous over it. The Tories have stated that the Danish People’s Party were out of the question because it was too extreme politically.

So, which positions are not too extreme for the Tories?

We urgently need global chemotherapy against Islam to save civilisation. Fair and balanced. (Belgium)

Marching with local SS veterans? A-OK. (Latvia)

Women should not stand for parliament? Sure. The Tories are a modern party. (Netherlands)

Banning gay-rights demonstrations? No problem. (Poland)

I’m sorry, but the only thing to do about British politics is to shake one’s head in disbelief.

I am generally the last person who should advise anybody about parenting but I used to think that it was a good thing that students had children while they were – well, students. Sure, students do not have that much money, but they have a certain degree of flexibility in their lives, and we also know that demographers and doctors yak about Danish women having their children too late in life.

But as a university person, I am now obliged to say to (female) students who announce their pregnancy:

I’m so sorry. As you know, this will delay your studies and we can’t afford this. So on behalf of the Minister of Science and Technology, I must advice you to have an abortion.

Surprising? Well, as part of the drive to turn universities from research and development units into units of production (we don’t educate people in this country – we produce ST?s), the minister has come up with a bonus for each student who finishes his (!) education within the time-norm. And – drum roll – this norm expressively does not allow for parental leave.

It’s not that nobody told the minister or the ministry – they have been made aware of the situation and decided to stick with their original proposal (but then, nobody gets the minister or the ministry to change their minds).¹

And that means that university lecturers and professors must now do their utmost to prevent female students to get pregnant.

Update: The Red-Green Alliance is on the track. Cf. footnote.

1. The minister’s excuse is that it is technically impossible to see if a student has been on parental leave. Yeah, right. This is Denmark where just about everything about everybody gets registered. [↩]

Is London Police run by agents of the Danish People’s Party?

Probably.

Can we make fun of it?

Definitively.

Tell me which damned file is in use by which application! Either that, or give me a name, an address, and an appointment so I can slap the OS engineer responsible for this behavior, for a minimum of 40 minutes.

Andy Ihnatko, re: The 25th anniversary of The Mac. I can already see the line forming.

What … the … it’s not April Fools’ Day, is it?

Ideen om tid til fordybelse hører industrialderen til. (The idea about time to concentrate in a subject belongs to the industrial age).

Hanne Løngreen. Vice-dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, University of Copenhagen, quoted in the Danish newspaper Politiken about the role of universities.

Sausage factory, anyone?

Update: Surname of the boot camp manager vice-dean corrected. Or is copy-editing also considered so 19th Century by contemporary university managers?

Who, for the love of god, dreamt up this one: Umeå City Airport? Umeå City Airport?!?

There is nothing quite like provincial pretentiousness. I’m sure some consultant is trying to convince the town council that the railway station should be renamed Grand Central Station Umeå.

The Liberal Democrats may not be the most important British party, but still…:

As the Liberal Democrat leader flew from London to Inverness last week, he shot the breeze with his closest adviser over the merits of his front bench team.

In a stroke of desperately bad luck for Mr Clegg, the seat in front was occupied by a journalist who listened agog to Mr Clegg’s candid assessment of his colleagues as he speculated over reshuffling them.

That’s the nice version courtesy of The Independent. Unfortunately, the journalist was from the Sunday Mirror.

A minor public service announcement: I’m trying to figure out is my web-hotel and domain registrar has all its marbles in its database. The thing is that I keep getting messages that the domain expires on November 28, 2008 on the control panel.

But I have already paid for two more years of jacobchristensen.name – which the account also shows. In any event, I’ll make a back-up of the blog’s database. I have one or the other domain lying around for other uses.