biking with vikings

reasons to be cheerful, part 3

nuclear plant replaced by windmill park (Jyllands-Posten)

Swedish power producer Vattenfall plans one of the world's biggest windmill parks in the ocean outside Copenhagen

Windmills are to replace Denmark's favorite hate-object in Sweden, the nuclear plant at Barsebäck, daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported on Tuesday.

Swedish power producer Vattenfall is planning to build a giant wind turbine park in the sea east of Copenhagen to replace the plant, which closes down on Tuesday, after decades of protests and political pressure on the Swedish government.

The placement of the nuclear plant just 20 kilometers away from Copenhagen in 1974 caused a long-standing diplomatic crisis between the brother nations, and earned Barsebäck the label of being 'the world's worst situated power plant'.

Sweden promised to close the plant down in the 1990s, but kept postponing it for fear of not being able to provide southern Sweden with enough electricity once the reactors had been shut down. The first reactor was finally turned off in 1999, and the second will go into history on Tuesday, as technicians begin turning the plant into a monument of near-sighted local planning.

In recent years, Swedes have been stepping up their power production in other nuclear plants to take over Barsebäck's job.

Vattenfall, however, seems eager to contribute to the gap in power production and provide Denmark with a new power source to gaze at across the Sound of Øresund. On its homepage, the company presents its plans to begin construction of one of the world's largest wind turbine parks in the middle of Øresund, just southeast of the bridge between the countries.

The park is to hold 48 turbines, which together will produce enough electricity for 50,000 households, nearly as much as Barsebäck's second reactor.

liberalism

it’s amazing how different connotations behind words can be in different cultures.  To whit: liberalism.

In the U.S., liberalism has become a (succesful) slander word for the right-wing intifada who want to portray their opponents as weak, anachronistic or out-of-control spenders, which is highly ironic as the right wing racks up government debt that can only be described as horrific.

Today,  France will vote on the EU constitution, an event being widely watched around the world as possible evidence of the health/illness of the “European Experiment”.  Liberalism has become a code-word for unfettered free-marketeers and laissez-faire capitalism, at the expense of a social safety net.  In fact, it is nearly the opposite meaning of the term in the U.S.

And the party of the right here in Denmark is Venstre, or “left”.

I guess it really does depend on your perspective and where you’re standing relative to the entire political spectrum, and which continent you’re standing on.

 

 

little boys and the science of gender

there’s a fascinating debate posted over at edge.org on gender and science, specifically about whether there are inherent, preprogrammed differences between boys and girls.  Rather than the usual more-heat-than-light “debate” of an emotional topic, this is an extremely thoughtful and enlightening exchange between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke, two of the foremost researchers on these questions.  Check it out.

This part esp. caught my attention:

a bit later in development there are vast and robust differences between boys and girls, seen all over the world. Boys far more often than girls engage in rough-and-tumble play, which involves aggression, physical activity, and competition. Girls spend a lot more often in cooperative play. Girls engage much more often in play parenting. And yes, boys the world over turn anything into a vehicle or a weapon, and girls turn anything into a doll. There are sex differences in intuitive psychology, that is, how well children can read one another's minds. For instance, several large studies show that girls are better than boys in solving the "false belief task," and in interpreting the mental states of characters in stories.

I’ve long been a skeptic about the nature side of the nature vs nurture debate, but I must say that Pinker has a point here.  Malcolm is not-quite 3 years old and he routinely turns virtually every game into something involving a vehicle or a weapon.  A stick is a sword, or a gun, and anything that can be pushed, rolled or “flown” is a vehicle.

Of course he could be picking this up from his peers or surroundings, and he’s been fascinated by cars since age 1 (he sits in the driveway for hours and pretends to drive our leased car) but he sure didn’t get the gun thing from us, and I doubt he got it at his little børnehavn school.  So maybe there’s something to boys having a predisposition towards agression.

That said, he also thought that our friend’s daughter’s bratz dolls were pretty keen, after he finished dismantling their toy car, so who knows?

that's different

listening to Debussy's Nocturnes last night w/Malcolm.

malcolm:  "do you like this (music)?"
me: "yes.  do you like it?"
malcolm: "yes.  it's different."

good boy.

ex-pat kids playtime

today we had brunch with a few fellow Redmond ex-pats and their kids – the weather was *fine*

Susan made a lovely brunch (hangover n’all) and we entertained the kids by riding them up and down the street in the Christiania for a while.

dinner with irishers

a bang-up time @ dinner in Hornbæk with Janet, Sven, Sara Claire, Siobhan and Lia.  Great fun!  We drank a bit too much (surprise!) so we moved a bit slowly on Sunday, but worth every minute of it! 

thx to Janet and esp Lia for showing Malcolm the tractor, sheep and chickens across the road, and letting him play with her toys!  She was lovely…

 

Clinton: You are smart, we are not (Jyllands-Posten)

Bill Clinton speaking to 1000 businesspeople in Copenhagen:

'Global warming is not taken seriously, and it can wind up wiping out civilisation as we know it,' he said. 'When I landed today, I saw the (energy producing, ed.) windmills and thought, 'You're smart. We're not.'

Check.

http://www.jp.dk/english_news/artikel:aid=3054872/

BBC launches web-based player, podcasts, web APIs and more

wow.  Beeb launches radio-on-demand and hella more…http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/index.shtml?button

create archive: http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/archives/what_is_the_creative_archive/index.html

bbc backstage: http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/

wiki-fied beeb: http://wikiproxy.whitelabel.org/

bbc to open content floodgates:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63857,00.html

Cory Doctorow snippet:

America's entertainment industry is committing slow, spectacular suicide, while one of Europe's biggest broadcasters -- the BBC -- is rushing headlong to the future, embracing innovation rather than fighting it.

Unlike Hollywood, the BBC is eager and willing to work with a burgeoning group of content providers whose interests are aligned with its own: its audience.

experimentarium

field trip yesterday to the Experimentarium in Hellerup.  What a great place – Better than the Pacific Science Center in Seattle IMO.  It is like HowStuffWorks set in a nice, well-lit, airy space.

There are endless and fascinating exhibits that encourage tactile interaction for kids, such as mechanical apparati (intermeshing gears, pulleys/levers) plus visual displays of electrical circuits, accoustics (a ‘guitar’ that shows giant wave vibrations when you pluck the strings) and a host of Rube Goldberg-style contraptions to illustrate water wheels, windmills and other gadgets in a fun, participatory way.

 Malcolm is a tad young for much of it, but it is great way to make science and physics tangible and fun (and hopefully… intuitive) for kids.

Many thanks to Barry & Joan for organizing the outing.

yellow submarine

one of our erstwhile friday night jam sessions.  tonight we improvise on “Yellow Submarine” and the Beatles canon…

 

I consider it my duty as a parent to pass along a love of the Beatles to my son.  My first music purchase was a 45 rpm single of Paul McCartney’s Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey back in the 1970s, and I’ve loved them ever since.  I played that single to death.

to borrow a good line from a so-so movie:

Everybody is born knowing all the Beatles lyrics instinctively. They're passed into the fetus along with all the amniotic stuff. In fact, they should be called "The Featles".

Malcolm seems to have really cottoned to The Beatles… he likes Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour.  It warms my heart .