Jacob Christensen

Obituary (in Danish) in Politiken.

Google Scholar.

Point #1: Never mind.

Point #2: Stories about Sarah Palin’s political history would probably cancel out Republican attempts at campaigning about Obama’s Indonesian sejour.

Point #3: The daughter story is very fascinating.

And as it is, this is a lot of noise, taking attention from things like the economy, public pensions and health care.

Just as I feared that he would get away with it, Radovan Karadži? is finally caught. Ratko Mladi? is next.

Karadži?’s professional background incidentally inspired this joke:

The good news is that Slobodan Miloševi? has finally visited a psychiatrist. The bad news is that Radovan Karadži? was the psychiatrist.

Update: Douglas Muir of a Fistful of Euros begins to suspect that Karadži? had been living in Belgrade all of the time while Olli Rein declares that the new Serbian government’s cooperation with the International War Crimes Tribunal is a good sign ahead of negotiations about Serbia’s relations with the EU. Oh, and EU’s foreign ministers meet on Tuesday to discuss that subject.

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.

It turned out that documentary film maker Maria MacDalland has posted excerpts from her portrait of Thomas Winding on YouTube. Here are two, with a taste of Winding’s appearances on Danish children’s TV. They also give an impression of Winding’s style as a narrator.

And here is a photo-set from his performance at Cph:Dox in November 2007.

Denmark just lost one of its best voices. My personal recollections of Winding go back to the 1970s when he was very active on children’s TV as reader and performer. His relaxed and yet distinct voice will be missed.

Oh, by the way: A usually reliable source told me that there is a family link between Danish writer Johannes Helms and a certain recently deceased former US senator.

Jesse Helms would be a bit exceptional as a Danish-American, not by being conservative, but by being from North Carolina. Most Danish-Americans can be found in the northern Mid-West and, of cause, California.¹

And you could cast a movie with Scarlett Johansson – yes, Johansson is a Swedish name but the lady should be counted as Danish-American as her grandfather was a well-known Danish TV presenter; his ancestors probably emigrated from Sweden to Denmark in the late 1800s or early 1990s – William Petersen, Viggo Mortensen, Virginia Madsen and Michael Madsen and have an all-Danish-American lead cast.

Update: Forgot about Jessica Alba. Quite a cast, really.

1. My frequent correspondent would like to point out that Ted Sorensen, Lloyd Bentsen and Janet Reno played in the blue corner. [↩]

This one really deserves a longer post but let me just note that the lawyer and politician Mogens Glistrup, founder of the Progress Party, has died. Whether or not you liked his politics, his impact on Danish politics in the 1970s onward was huge.

Ah, yes: The Wagners. A real-life Dynasty for Bildungsbürger.

As Die Zeit writes about old Dick W:

Er ist das wahnsinnige Genie, der übermächtige Schöpfer, um dessen Erbe sich seine Familie noch immer rauft. Richard Wagner erdenkt eine neue, romantische Form der Oper, die Text, Musik und Regie zu einem Gesamtkunstwerk verbindet.

In any event, great-granddaughter Katharina wants to bring Bayreuth to the internet in a big, you might almost want to say: Wagnerian, way.

I usually avoid academic festivities because, well big solemn formal events are not really my cup of tea. But it would have been interesting to have witnessed Friday’s Promotion ceremony and dinner at the University of Lund with Tiina Rosenberg losing her temper completely and making a public scence.

Rosenberg gained some notoriety in broader circles a couple of years ago when she managed to undermine Gudrun Schyman’s Feminist Initiative.

Update: Interview with Ms. Rosenberg.