DANISH OSCARS
Denmark won the Oscar for best foreign film at the awards ceremony last night. It was the third time that a Danish film had won, after "Babette's Feast" in 1987, and "Pelle the Conqueror" in 1988. Congratulations to Susanne Bier, who has made a string of good films in recent years, notably "Brothers" in 2004 and "After the Wedding" in 2006.
One oddity was that the English name of the film has been changed from "Hævnen" (literally "the Revenge") to "In a Better World". Distributors often do that with Scandinavian films, for reasons that I don't understand. The wildly popular Stieg Larsson book and film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is in fact titled "Men who Hate Women" in both Danish and the original Swedish. I don't know why the name was changed, when they translated them into English.
I repeat my comment from last year's Oscars, namely that it is extraordinary how few people who are professional actors (Colin Firth a notable exception) can give a simple speech, even when they know that they may be called on to give one if picked as the winner. The organisers apparently asked this year's winners to cut down on thanking Uncle Tom Cobbley and All, since it puts off viewers, who don't know who these people are. Natalie Portman had obviously not listened, since I was one of the few people on this planet whom she didn't thank for her Best Actress award.
Walter Blotscher
Monday, 28 February 2011
Sunday, 27 February 2011
DANISH HEALTHCARE
Denmark has an admirable public health system. Pretty much everything is free (even dentistry is subsidised), and you have the right to have an operation in the private sector, at the state's expense, if the state can't deal with you within one month. That's probably about as good a deal as you can get in this world.
Yet the inexorable demographic trends of longer life, fewer babies and consequential increased dependency ratios affect this small, northern European country just like anywhere else. And that in turn has led to the beginnings, faint though noticeable because of their novelty, of a debate about priorities. Is it really such a good idea to carry out so many fat removal operations, for instance, particularly on young people, shouldn't they simply be told to cut out the sugar? Is it really such a good idea to provide respirators + care at home, when it would be much, much cheaper to look after such people in care homes? And so on and so forth.
In my view, the debate about the quality of old age is going to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue in western politics during the next twenty years. Living to 90 is fine, if your physical and mental faculties are OK, you have a modest amount of money to pay your bills, and you have some form of social network. If these things are not around, then living to 90 is probably pretty miserable. What the Danish debate about healthcare (and its sister debate about old people's homes, also mainly stated funded) ultimately shows is that a large part of the current infrastructure needed to support old people may not be there in the future. Forging a consensus about what should or should not be part of the state-provided package will be the great challenge for politicians, mindful of the fact that pensioners are the most assiduous voter group of all.
Walter Blotscher
Denmark has an admirable public health system. Pretty much everything is free (even dentistry is subsidised), and you have the right to have an operation in the private sector, at the state's expense, if the state can't deal with you within one month. That's probably about as good a deal as you can get in this world.
Yet the inexorable demographic trends of longer life, fewer babies and consequential increased dependency ratios affect this small, northern European country just like anywhere else. And that in turn has led to the beginnings, faint though noticeable because of their novelty, of a debate about priorities. Is it really such a good idea to carry out so many fat removal operations, for instance, particularly on young people, shouldn't they simply be told to cut out the sugar? Is it really such a good idea to provide respirators + care at home, when it would be much, much cheaper to look after such people in care homes? And so on and so forth.
In my view, the debate about the quality of old age is going to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue in western politics during the next twenty years. Living to 90 is fine, if your physical and mental faculties are OK, you have a modest amount of money to pay your bills, and you have some form of social network. If these things are not around, then living to 90 is probably pretty miserable. What the Danish debate about healthcare (and its sister debate about old people's homes, also mainly stated funded) ultimately shows is that a large part of the current infrastructure needed to support old people may not be there in the future. Forging a consensus about what should or should not be part of the state-provided package will be the great challenge for politicians, mindful of the fact that pensioners are the most assiduous voter group of all.
Walter Blotscher
Saturday, 26 February 2011
THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST (2)
Tonight was the contest to choose the Danish song for the Eurovision song contest.
I have to say that nearly all of the ten songs were dire. I only liked one, which came second. The girl sounded just like Taylor Swift, who I think is great. My 16-year old daughter says I have terrible taste in music, since I have admitted to liking P!nk, Shakira and now Taylor Swift. I don't care.
Walter Blotscher
Tonight was the contest to choose the Danish song for the Eurovision song contest.
I have to say that nearly all of the ten songs were dire. I only liked one, which came second. The girl sounded just like Taylor Swift, who I think is great. My 16-year old daughter says I have terrible taste in music, since I have admitted to liking P!nk, Shakira and now Taylor Swift. I don't care.
Walter Blotscher
Friday, 25 February 2011
WRITTEN EXAMS
The head of England's exams watchdog has just said that pen and paper exams should increasingly be replaced by computerised tests. These are currently available only in a few papers.
I agree. I completed an English law degree during the noughties, and the exams consisted of nine 3-hour papers, all written in longhand. Since I rarely write anything longer than a Christmas card these days - and precious few of those - it was the physical act of writing that I found the most difficult part of the whole course. My wrist ached after each paper.
If the above applies to old fogies like me, then it applies in spades to the current generation of children, who learn to type almost before they can write. That is no bad thing, but the English obsession with pen and paper is increasingly old-fashioned. In Denmark, not only all schoolwork, but also the exams themselves, are done on computers. Indeed, a fair number of the exams are oral, even in supposedly "non-oral" subjects such as mathematics and physics.
It would be good to see more of that sort of balanced exam structure in the U.K. After all, what is the point of testing people's ability to write for 3 hours in longhand, if they never, ever have to do a similar thing for the rest of their lives?
Walter Blotscher
The head of England's exams watchdog has just said that pen and paper exams should increasingly be replaced by computerised tests. These are currently available only in a few papers.
I agree. I completed an English law degree during the noughties, and the exams consisted of nine 3-hour papers, all written in longhand. Since I rarely write anything longer than a Christmas card these days - and precious few of those - it was the physical act of writing that I found the most difficult part of the whole course. My wrist ached after each paper.
If the above applies to old fogies like me, then it applies in spades to the current generation of children, who learn to type almost before they can write. That is no bad thing, but the English obsession with pen and paper is increasingly old-fashioned. In Denmark, not only all schoolwork, but also the exams themselves, are done on computers. Indeed, a fair number of the exams are oral, even in supposedly "non-oral" subjects such as mathematics and physics.
It would be good to see more of that sort of balanced exam structure in the U.K. After all, what is the point of testing people's ability to write for 3 hours in longhand, if they never, ever have to do a similar thing for the rest of their lives?
Walter Blotscher
Thursday, 24 February 2011
BIG LORRIES
Under normal E.U. rules, lorries (including their cargo) can weigh a maximum of 44 tonnes, either in the form of a truck and trailer or a "horse" and semi-trailer. The maximum lengths are 18.75m and 16.5m respectively, and in both cases there are usually six axles. In sparsely populated Finland and Sweden, however, they have long used - and, since 1996, have been allowed to run - truck and semi-trailer EuroCombi combinations reaching up to 25.25m and weighing up to 60 tonnes, usually with eight or nine axles. Securing the exemption from the E.U. was a crucial demand of these countries' important forestry and paper industries, which required transport of large numbers of long trees.
Since modern diesel engines are so powerful, a lorry can today pull 60 tonnes almost as easily as 44 tonnes, so using EuroCombi variants significantly reduces driver and fuel costs, and emissions, per tonne. Furthermore, the key determinant of wear and tear on the roads is not total weight, but weight per axle. In general, spreading 60 tonnes over 9 axles has roughly the same effect on the road as 44 tonnes spread over 6 axles.
With the question of carbon emissions increasingly in Governments' minds, and much of that carbon coming from lorries, more and more countries have begun to experiment with EuroCombi variants. Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as non-E.U. Norway, all allow the bigger lorries, though only on certain routes. Generally, these are the motorway network, plus access roads to major freight terminals. The results of these trials will inform politicians' willingness to extend the scope of EuroCombi lorries.
A lot of people get hot under the collar about big lorries, but in the absence of alternatives (eg we ship much more by rail, which is unlikely to happen), the transport and environmental benefits are, to my mind, compelling. I suspect we'll see more and more big lorries in the future.
Walter Blotscher
Under normal E.U. rules, lorries (including their cargo) can weigh a maximum of 44 tonnes, either in the form of a truck and trailer or a "horse" and semi-trailer. The maximum lengths are 18.75m and 16.5m respectively, and in both cases there are usually six axles. In sparsely populated Finland and Sweden, however, they have long used - and, since 1996, have been allowed to run - truck and semi-trailer EuroCombi combinations reaching up to 25.25m and weighing up to 60 tonnes, usually with eight or nine axles. Securing the exemption from the E.U. was a crucial demand of these countries' important forestry and paper industries, which required transport of large numbers of long trees.
Since modern diesel engines are so powerful, a lorry can today pull 60 tonnes almost as easily as 44 tonnes, so using EuroCombi variants significantly reduces driver and fuel costs, and emissions, per tonne. Furthermore, the key determinant of wear and tear on the roads is not total weight, but weight per axle. In general, spreading 60 tonnes over 9 axles has roughly the same effect on the road as 44 tonnes spread over 6 axles.
With the question of carbon emissions increasingly in Governments' minds, and much of that carbon coming from lorries, more and more countries have begun to experiment with EuroCombi variants. Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as non-E.U. Norway, all allow the bigger lorries, though only on certain routes. Generally, these are the motorway network, plus access roads to major freight terminals. The results of these trials will inform politicians' willingness to extend the scope of EuroCombi lorries.
A lot of people get hot under the collar about big lorries, but in the absence of alternatives (eg we ship much more by rail, which is unlikely to happen), the transport and environmental benefits are, to my mind, compelling. I suspect we'll see more and more big lorries in the future.
Walter Blotscher
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
KARL-THEODOR zu GUTTENBERG
Karl-Theodor, Baron of Guttenberg, is the rising star of German politics. Still not yet 40, he is Defence Minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition Government, and the future hope for the Chancellorship of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party to Ms. Merkel's CDU. He is easily Germany's most popular politician.
Yet he has just run into the sort of problem, that only seems to hit politicians with meteoric career paths. In 2007 Herr zu Guttenberg added to his many personal names the title of Doctor, after completing a PhD in law at Bayreuth University. However, it has emerged during the past week that he in fact copied parts of his thesis. This is in principle ok, if you make it very clear that it is not your own work, and give a clear attribution of the source. This did not happen. On 18 February, Herr zu Guttenberg said he would temporarily stop using his doctor title; on 21 February he said he would no longer use it; today, following an investigation, the university revoked the degree, citing "extensive violations" of its rules against plagiarism.
The affair has not - or, at least, not yet - affected his popularity with voters. But it has put Ms. Merkel in a very difficult position. On the one hand, she runs a Government short on star quality. On the other, she is having to defend someone whose "summa cum laude" (the top grade) thesis turned out to be partly or mostly the work of others. As more and more outsiders pick over the 400-page work on EU-US constitutional history, and the number of discovered plagiarisms rises, the pressure will be on to find a way out. My guess is that Herr zu Guttenberg will resign from his job "for personal reasons" before the summer holidays.
Walter Blotscher
Karl-Theodor, Baron of Guttenberg, is the rising star of German politics. Still not yet 40, he is Defence Minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition Government, and the future hope for the Chancellorship of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party to Ms. Merkel's CDU. He is easily Germany's most popular politician.
Yet he has just run into the sort of problem, that only seems to hit politicians with meteoric career paths. In 2007 Herr zu Guttenberg added to his many personal names the title of Doctor, after completing a PhD in law at Bayreuth University. However, it has emerged during the past week that he in fact copied parts of his thesis. This is in principle ok, if you make it very clear that it is not your own work, and give a clear attribution of the source. This did not happen. On 18 February, Herr zu Guttenberg said he would temporarily stop using his doctor title; on 21 February he said he would no longer use it; today, following an investigation, the university revoked the degree, citing "extensive violations" of its rules against plagiarism.
The affair has not - or, at least, not yet - affected his popularity with voters. But it has put Ms. Merkel in a very difficult position. On the one hand, she runs a Government short on star quality. On the other, she is having to defend someone whose "summa cum laude" (the top grade) thesis turned out to be partly or mostly the work of others. As more and more outsiders pick over the 400-page work on EU-US constitutional history, and the number of discovered plagiarisms rises, the pressure will be on to find a way out. My guess is that Herr zu Guttenberg will resign from his job "for personal reasons" before the summer holidays.
Walter Blotscher
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
BMI
Your body mass index is a relationship between your height and your weight. To be precise, it is your weight in kg, divided by the square of your height in m (i.e. bmi = w/h^2).
If your BMI is under 18.5, then you are underweight, and if it is 25 or more, then you are overweight. I have never had any problem with the former, it is the latter I have to watch. Since my height of 1.8m is highly unlikely to change from now on, I can work out my maximum weight limit, if I want to have a normal weight. That is 25 x 1.8. x 1.8 or 81kg.
I have struggled to stay within this at times. The good news is that the past week's flu episodes completely took away my appetite, so that I am now safely within the normal band again. All I have to do now is stay there.
Walter Blotscher
Your body mass index is a relationship between your height and your weight. To be precise, it is your weight in kg, divided by the square of your height in m (i.e. bmi = w/h^2).
If your BMI is under 18.5, then you are underweight, and if it is 25 or more, then you are overweight. I have never had any problem with the former, it is the latter I have to watch. Since my height of 1.8m is highly unlikely to change from now on, I can work out my maximum weight limit, if I want to have a normal weight. That is 25 x 1.8. x 1.8 or 81kg.
I have struggled to stay within this at times. The good news is that the past week's flu episodes completely took away my appetite, so that I am now safely within the normal band again. All I have to do now is stay there.
Walter Blotscher
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