Jacob Christensen

“There’s an age when boys read one of two books. Either they read Ayn Rand or they read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. One of these books leaves you with no grasp on reality and a deeply warped sense of fantasy in place of real life. The other one is about hobbits and orcs.”

Paul Krugman has more.

And yes, I read the one about the hobbits and the orcs.

Just two quick notes about my vacation reading – vacation, that is when I’m not finishing manuscripts:

1. Peter Baldwin: “The Narcissism of Minor Differences”

US historian with European links goes mediaeval on tales of American exceptionalism and whatever Europeans have claimed in their favour in a frenzy of (easily accessible) statistics. If it wasn’t for the size of the country and the level of GDP (yes, the Americans are wealthier than we are), Martians would think that the Americans were sort-of-Europeans.

Read it before (or rather: instead of) your newspaper columnist.

Bonus info: The Swedes have guns. And they are not afraid to use them. The NRA would love Sweden.

2. Pranab Bardhan: “Awakening Giants. Feet of Clay”

US-Indian economist looks at emerging economies and helps you sort out facts from globalisation-babble. 160 pages. And no: You do not have to be an economist to get the picture.

Laura McKenna wants to know.

Here goes (with my address of that time thrown in for good measure), for GBP 73,08 I ordered these:

Remember the days when you went to a bookstore to order foreign books?

Via Scott McLemee who, bravely, avoided the lure of graduate school, we are lead to Thomas H. Benton (alias William Pannapacker) who takes a dim view of the entire affair:

Graduate school in the humanities is a trap. It is designed that way. It is structurally based on limiting the options of students and socializing them into believing that it is shameful to abandon “the life of the mind.” That’s why most graduate programs resist reducing the numbers of admitted students or providing them with skills and networks that could enable them to do anything but join the ever-growing ranks of impoverished, demoralized, and damaged graduate students and adjuncts for whom most of academe denies any responsibility.

Topic for discussion: Consider similarities and differences between the humanities, social science and science.

PS: You may also want to follow SML’s advice and take a look at comment #75. Is there “a life of the mind” outside of academia. Yes or no?

I hope Fred Bass and “The Editors” will forgive me for lifting his advice about getting rid of books:

My advice is to first clean out duplicates and books with repetitive information — why do you need six dictionaries? Next, remove all books with out-of-date information, like atlases and reference books. Political, economic and topical books should be the next category to sort through; you don’t really need that copy of Richard Simmons’ “Never-Say-Diet Book” (a 1981 best-seller), or a book on the future of the Democratic or Republican parties, written 20 years ago.¹

One should eliminate books that are in poor condition unless they hold sentimental value and remove those you never intend to read again.

Once you have weeded out the duplicates, the out-of-date material and those moldy, unreadable tomes, make sure to note any first editions or autographed books, as they could be valuable if they are in good condition. Put them aside and store them properly — away from direct sunlight and humidity. You might consider investing in some Mylar, as that is the only proven way to keep a valuable book in perfect condition.

I went through the pain last summer (2008, that is) and I’m more or less trying to figure out what to do with the different parts of my library in about a year’s time. Getting rid of old textbooks and books bought for a specific project is the easy bit, weeding out fiction and stuff bought for personal entertainment is much, much trickier. Still, there is something comforting in reading that other people make the same mistakes as I do when it comes to buying books.

1. For “Democratic or Republican parties, insert relevant European party or “the European Union” [↩]

I think this one pretty much nails it.

Click.

As I read it during the week-end, here are some short notes on Niels Krause-Kjær’s biography of Lars Løkke Rasmussen:

The book is mostly a journalistic biography using template 1A. It is easily read, but on the other hand the tendency to use casual spoken language in a written text occasionally annoys me. There aren’t any revelations in the stricter (media) sense, but it is a very useful summary of Løkke’s twenty-year career in Danish politics. A number of observations still stand out and – at least in my opinion – could merit some attention, also by PolSci types.

So: What did we learn and what might merit some further discussion?

1. For a Danish top-level politician, Løkke has stayed unusually close to his (geographical) roots which are the village of Græsted in Northern Zeeland. He never really went through the socialisation, moving to Copenhagen or Århus meant for Poul Nyrup Rasmussen or Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Somehow, Anker Jørgensen comes up as a parallel, and even he moved from Christianshavn to Sydhavnen.

2. As Krause-Kjær also points out, Løkke’s background in local and regional politics is highly unusual despite all talk of local politics being the entry to a political career. The high-flyers go directly for the national arena, one way or the other.

3. For a long time, Løkke looked like the heir presumptive in the Liberal Party to most people, but Krause-Kjær argues that Løkke through his youth and much of his early years had a tendency to live on the edge in career terms. Does this also apply to his approach to politics and policy decision-making?

4. Kause-Kjær also implies that Løkke will be happy basing his government on the Danish People’s Party. As long as we have a VKO majority, a continued polarisation between the left and the right blocs looks likely. How important is his socialisation in internal party politics and local politics in this aspect?

5. Løkke has a degree in law but has never practised as a lawyer. In fact, the biography makes no mention of how having an academic education has influenced Løkke’s way of working or thinking. When I read Anne Sofie Kragh’s biography of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, I noted that the same applied to him. Which begs the question: These days most top-level politicians have an academic degree, but does having a degree in higher education play a role in practice? Is it mostly a training in managing and presenting a large amount of information (in itself very useful), does it have some substantial impact or is it in fact irrelevant?

6. Kause also points out that Løkke’s personal network is based on party contacts. PolSci people have for a long noted that traditional party organisations were being replaced by smaller, more professional ones, but Løkke has made much of his career in the town halls in meetings with local party activists. Did we underestimate the role of party organisations (we are talking the 90s and the 00s here) or was this another indication of Løkke living dangerously?

Finally, Krause doesn’t compare Løkke with any of his predecessors (needless to say, Kraus notes how Løkke is different from his immediate predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen), but I would offer Erik Eriksen as the most likely parallel. Unlike Løkke, Eriksen never appeared as the obvious leader of the Liberal Party – until he seized the day. Similarly, Eriksen became prime minister by seizing the day. For an immediate observation, Løkke was biding his time, but as Krause notes at several occasions, Løkke also knew, and knows, how do identify his moment of opportunity.

And to quote (from memory) what Søren Mørch wrote about Erik Eriksen: He was a friendly man which often misled others to believe that he was their friend.

The advice “If you want a friend in politics, get a dog” still stands.

Niels Krause-Kjær: Lars Løkke – et portræt af Danmarks statsminister. Jyllands-Postens Forlag, 2009.

Update: Anne Sofie Kragh’s name corrected. Apologies.

Lights. Camera. Action.

I’m not sure if I won or lost all possible street-cred here. Never mind: PSW is the real culprit. Or maybe the buck stops with Roland Poirier. Anyway: Swedes can in fact be funny, though I still think the Germans are in front when it comes to razor-sharp satirical wit.

In case you would like a dose of contemporary Swedish poetry in the grand tradition, PSW is ready to take your challenge.

Hurry over to XKCD to behold the resurrected glory of GeoCities.

As a commenter wrote: This is beyond #win (If you have just the least idea about html, check the source code). Indeed. Also: XKCD’s forums.

HT: BoingBoing.

Oh, and Flash is for today’s web what animated gifs were to web 1.0.

Update: A reply in kind.

Right. Bleg #1 didn’t solve the problem, but it gets worse. As the slug says: I’m also trying to figure out just how many morning papers I need. Or want.

Perhaps we should start with the easy bit: I subscribe to Weekendavisen and Die Zeit which arrive each Friday. In case you wonder, the German Wochenzeitung doesn’t mean that the paper is published every week. It means that it takes a week to read the paper. (The same applies to Tageszeitung, at least when we are talking about Süddeutsche Zeitung or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

Back in the 1990s – before I moved to Sweden – I subscribed to Politiken and Berlingske Tidende and, let’s face it, reading two different papers was and can still be interesting. Unfortunately, I cleaned my archive when I moved from Umeå, but as far as I remember a 12-month subscription to any of those papers was around 2500 to 3000 DKK. So subscribing to two papers would set me back 5000-6000 DKKK. These days, a 12-month subscription is 4000+, so two papers would set me back some 9000 DKK now. And back in the 1990s, the internet was something you had access to at work.

Enter my Old Mother who threw a gift subscription to Politiken after me when I moved back to Denmark. That one is up for renewal in mid-October, but just to add to my misery Mother recently decided that I needed a month’s subscription to Berlingske Tidende as well. Or perhaps she was just tired of being approached harassed by Berlingske’s salesforce. So right now I’m back in the 1990s with two morning papers delivered every morning. Except, I no longer get the papers in my hall (or whatever it should be called) but in the post box at the front door to the house.

I don’t know. I think both papers are okay, but 9000 DKK really is a lot of money. A heck of a lot of money, as it is.

My department for some reason subscribes to Politiken, Jyllands-Posten, Fyens Stiftstidende and BT (!), but not Berlingske Tidende. On the other hand, I’m probably, all things considered, more of a Politiken person (you know, self-righteous public employee. The kind who would read The Guardian in the UK. Oh, dear…).

If I was an economist, everything would be easier: They just go for the cheap subscription offers and change papers like other people change clothes.

But: Should it be two or one? And in that case, which one? Decisions, decisions…

PS: When I lived in Sweden things were a bit easier for another reason. DN was the only national newspaper that was distributed every day in the week in Umeå and my workplace subscribed to both local newspapers. That said, reading DN was often a strange experience.