A Friday night undermybed.dk

Listening to the radio just now, I heard that in Breda in the Netherlands they have a Redhead Day where redheads gather once a year to celebrate (see their webpage). I should have attended, was my first thought. The guy on the radio had been doing some digging and had discovered that red haired have some odd characteristics.

• They require more anesthetics before surgery. Is this some generic phenomenon or is it just because red haired descend from the Vikings and have bigger & stronger bodies and thus needs more anesthetics
• Red haried are an endangered species. There will be fewer of us in 100 years, because the gene is dominated by the non-red hair gene - or something like that. Today we are less than 1% of the world population. Scotland has the highest concentration of 13%.
• Antonio Vivaldi had red hair.

Naturally, you’ll find more on Wiki

Dansk Folkeparti og Pia K. er sur på subsidierne til kunstnere. Tror hun mener at hun ikke får noget for sit skattebidrag - musikken lyder skrækkeligt, digtene er uforståelige, og malerierne uden hovede eller hale. Hun vil hellere have at kunsten skal klare sig på markedsvilkår.

Generelt er jeg også enig i at markedsmekanismerne har fantastisk gode forudsætninger for at styre produktionen af varer og tjenesteydelser hen i den retningen hvor forbrugernes smag ligger. Men det er måske ikke ligefrem det mest ønskværdige når vi snakker kunst?

Læs selv (og specielt de 2 første kommentarer er det også værd at få med): Kjærsgaard kontra kunstfonden | information.dk

Maybe you’ve read about it. The war that is taking place in the streets of Copenhagen these days over the market for illegal drugs with Hells Angels supporters AK81 on the one side, and immigrant street-gangs on the other. The war does not yet involve mortar attacks and air-strikes, but ‘just’ drive by shootings en masse and plain liquidations. And it is all taking place in the middel of the city. Charming.

Anyway, the solution suggestions from the liberal/concervative minority government (supported by the national socialists) are as dim as you would expect. I’ve heard two suggestions: 1. Safe conduct for handing over firearms to the police. 2. A ban of motorcycle gangs. [To be fair, it should be noted that 1. originally was a left wing suggestion.] But I think it is obvious to everyone that these are only temporary and doubtful solutions.

Instead I would like to see a debate about two alternative solutions.

A. Liberalising the market for drugs. As a layman, I immediately see three sub-markets for illegal drugs with (presumably) a high degree of substitution between the substances. There is the market for mild substances such as Cannabis, a market for weekend-drugs such as ecstasy, and a market for the highly addictive as heroin. The market for the mild substances could be liberalised with the Netherlands as an example (state controlled outlets with prices below the black market) and the market for the highly addictive substances could be highly reduced by introducing doctor prescribed heroin for addicts (which is probably a good idea under all circumstances because it would prevent a lot of the crimes related to raising money to buy these drugs for addicts). I see no overt solution for the weekend drugs-market, but it is my conjecture that easy access to mild substances would reduce this market.

B.  See that war as a social phenomenon with roots in social marginalisation, alienation, unemployment, low education, ghettoisation. That requires a lon-run intensive effort, which is likely to be very, very expensive, but the Government seems to place a higher value on spending ~20 billion DKR [*] of taxpayer money on digging down high voltage air-power cables to beautify the scenary. But perhaps the Government coalition has envisioned the digging as a labour market programme for gang-members?

[*] = I have that  number from a recent article in Weekendavisen, but I could not find a link to that.

Information.dk har en fin artikel om Melodi Grand Prix og det Russisk-Georgiske, Russisk-Svenske, Israelsk-Arabiske forhold. Her et citat fra den Russisk-Georgiske del af historien:

“Ironisk nok deltog Georgien sidste år, blot et par måneder før Ruslands invasion af landet, i det Internationale Melodi Grand Prix med sangen “Peace will come”.

Sangerinden var blind, hvilket måske kan forklare det nu noget åbenlyse fejlskud.”

An interesting viewpoint from a nurse and researcher from Princeton University:

“Our interconnected global community will certainly confront another disease crisis; therefore, we must learn from the response to the current H1N1 crisis to do a better job in the future. During the initial stages of any outbreak, public health professionals and the media must be cautious when providing numbers on how many people are infected and how many have died. A country’s disease reporting capability is only as good as its medical and public health infrastructures. Therefore, we must assume that the numbers from countries with poorly integrated medical and public health infrastructures and large numbers of uninsured will be inaccurate.

And we must not forget that the name of the disease matters. By using the name “swine flu,” health officials inadvertently tied the disease to pigs even though there was no evidence that pigs were involved. The name led to some countries inappropriately slaughtering their healthy swine herds or banning pork products. They should have used the name “influenza A (H1N1)” from the start. In future outbreaks, health officials should only refer to a pathogen by its scientific name, taking care to avoid naming the causative pathogen after an animal, location, or subgroup of people to avoid inadvertently placing blame or scapegoating.”

At first it seems hard to disagree, but from a precautionary point-of-view, it is probably a good idea to exaggerate the risk initially, when little information is available, and then adjust the risk-level accordingly as more information becomes available. To me, it does not seem sensible to reject initial information based on the country of origin, but rather to judge the information by the quality of the accompanying documentation.

A second point is that Egypt might have ordered the slaughter of the 300,000 pigs anyway, purely because of religious reasons. The authorities were just waiting for an excuse…

Here in Amsterdam (as in Denmark) it seems as a big secret: the upcoming election for the 700+ seats in the European Parliament. Is it because we only vote for a tiny fraction of the many seats that noone cares? Or is it just the ‘times-of-not-caring’ about European politics because we are doing so well (disregarding the current crisis)? {Has the social democrats been too successful?}

Anyway, here’s a link to viewpoint by an LSE-professor. He thinks that the UK-national parties sees the election as a mid-term vote and therefore treat it merely as a national contest, but:

 ”A big difference between the European Parliament and most national parliaments is that the European Commission and the EU governments cannot railroad their laws through the European chamber. Coalitions have to be built issue-by-issue. As a result, more than 50% of amendments proposed by the European Parliament end up as law. In this respect, the European Parliament is more like the US Congress than the House of Commons.

So, European Parliament elections matter. If the centre-right wins we can expect more market liberalisation, fewer environmental regulations, and more restrictive immigration policies, while if the centre-left wins, we can expect stricter environmental standards, more labour market rules and liberal immigration policies.”

So maybe the the lack of interest among the public (if there is a lack of interest) is caused by journalists and politicians who are focusing on the wrong issues. In Denmark, it seems to me, that every discussion surrounding an EU election ends with a discussion of the EU membership (a referendum of 1972). Today the discussion is about the threat of east-expansion of the Union to the Danish welfare system and the labour market - in particular the flexicurity-system and ‘the Danish model’ (a system of no minimum wage in combination with strong unions that negotiate wages with the firms - around 75 per cent of Danish firms have made deals with unions). But these decisions - most notably the one opening the labour market for Polish labour - have already been taken, so why don’t we focus the discussion on something relevant? (climate, agricultural subsidies, market (de)regulation)

…but that’s just my five (euro) cents.

This is cool! 172 photos of people taken at the same location in Berlin over 20 days, stiched together to a 100 meter long slide of history, faces, expressions, clothes, bodies, gestures, haircuts. Where are they going and why do they look like that?

Can be seen at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen from early May.

I just stumbled over a study which finds that the occurence of hangovers is higher among Danish women than men.

“We have examined the occurrence of hangovers i Danish men and women. Among 36,228 particioants, the occurrence of a list of different hangover symptoms as well as of severe hangovers was higher in women than in men. For example, the odds ratio was 1.53 (95% CI: 1.41-1.66) for experiencing headache and 1.97 (95% CI: 1.75-2.21) for severe hangovers after an episode of binge-drinking in women compared with men. This finding could not be explained by weekly alcohol intake, type of alcohol ingested, frequency of binge drinking episodes or by the proportion of alcohol consumed with meals.”

As an explanation for their finding they propose that 1) women generally are more sensitive to pain and 2) that the women have to clean up and take care of the children after the party!

This really adds to the advantages of being a man, and it emphasises womens status as the weaker gender :-)

During my stay in the Netherlands I’ve had to rely on the online newspapers to keep myself updated. In the beginning I felt that something was missing; the day-to-day rumble in Danish politics, which I used to enjoy reading about in my morning newspaper.

The funny thing is that when you’re (relatively) far away from home, for some reason that daily dose of mudslinging becomes hopelessly uninteresting. Perhaps that is one reason to why two of my favorite Danish news-sites no longer appeal to me – in fact, I’ve completely removed them from my daily routine!

Another reason is that the news they communicate is the of the lowest and most tabloid-like quality. My conjecture is that to attract many hits to the site, they wan’t to have a high turnover of news at a low cost (the papers have been hit hard by the crisis); the reason to why they wan’t many hits is because the value of the advertising space depends on the number of hits. And because good quality journalism comes at a high price they choose to save on that! (The site I’m talking about is pol.dk and dr.dk - the latter has no ad’s so I guess my conjecture is off.)

My point is that I’ve found two delightful sources of news that I want to recommend.

1. www.thebrowser.com

Is some sort of meta-newssite that links to other high-quality articles from different sources around the web. One of the contributors (on economics) is Tylor Cowen of Marginal Revolution.

2. www.spiegel.de/international

The english language site of a legendary German “mirror” weekly. It is journalism of extreemely high quality. It is trying to establish a pan-european high-profile partnership with other leading newspapers. Currently the liberal Dutch NRC Handelsblad and the social liberal Danish Politiken is participating. It is obvious from reading the articles that Politiken is the weakest link in that alliance! …but judge for yourself.

Some days after lunch, I stop by the university bookstore. On the first floor there is, what seems to be a neverending sale of (mostly) peculiar Dutch books, but in the basement they have a nice selection of economics books. There are some textbooks, but also many popular economics books. After Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner, a small flood of books on everyday economics has started to pop up on the shelfs of even high street bookstores.

The most recent popecon book in the bookstore is Parentonomics - on the economics of raising children. I turned a few pages in the book, and came across a section on teaching children to wash their hands. Apparently, it has to be done twice in connection with every intake of food: once before eating (for the germs) and once after dinner (for the furniture). References to the military are given, where studies have shown a negative effect on sickness absence (I think it was) of handwashing. It is stated that even surgeons have a hard time remembering to wash their hands and rewards are given to the ones that do remember it.

Off course there is a lot of economics in the handwashing. If everyone else on the planet washes their hands to prevent the spread of germs, then you don’t have to do so, to enjoy the benefit of no germs. It’s a free-rider problem, and it becomes aggravated because monitoring is difficult.

Have not bought the book yet, though…