Tighter
I’m currently following the Swedish parliamentary election. At the moment, it seems to be much tighter than the opinion polls had predicted. We seem to be seeing a lot of very close elections these days (Denmark 1998, USA 2000, Germany 2002, Italy 2006 and many more).
I’m wondering what’s going on… Are people changing their minds after reading the opinion polls? (That is, “Oh, so Moderaterna are winning? I’ll vote for somebody else then!”) Or are all the spin-doctors in all parties just so good at influencing the public that it becomes a stale-mate?
I tend to favour the former explanation, since the latter should mean that all parties in a multi-party system should be of equal size, which is clearly not true. It’s probably caused also by the media’s tendency to report all elections as if they were presidential ones with two clear alternatives, and a group of voters then try to pick the losing party.
I might be very wrong about the causes, but something is definitely going on!
Fan charts
Gramps, the genealogy program I’m using, has a nice option for producing fan charts. (It’s just a shame it isn’t better at fitting the texts into the fields.)
I like the fact that two fan charts can be fitted together when one marries to produce a full circle. 
Milk colour coding
In Denmark, skimmed milk packaging is grey, semi-skimmed is light blue, full-fat is dark blue, and whipping cream is red. In the UK, skimmed milk is red, semi-skimmed is green, full-fat is dark blue, single cream is red, and whipping cream is green.
I’ve forgotten the colour coding schemes used in other countries, but I’m sure they’re different, too.
When were the colour schemes invented? Were they regional at first, and then harmonised on a national level?
Where to go for cold winters or thunderstorms
I stumbled upon a page called “Where is the best place to go for weather in Britain?“. It’s a rather nice summary of the weather of the UK. I definitely don’t live in the right place weatherwise. 