2009/09/28 22:23
I'm currently baking a cake (lagkage) for Léon's 4th birthday tomorrow, and given that I'm using a Danish recipe, it's calling for hjortetakssalt to be used as the raising agent.I've never seen that for sale here, so I bought some last time I was in Denmark.I checked the bag to see what's in it, and it turns out simply to...
2009/09/25 12:49
Asmus Rotne, who studied in Tbilisi the year before I did, today posted on Facebook that he had "just heard that the Georgian patriarch declared that toasting with beer is ok and carries the same significance as toasting with wine! It is a revolution!"It is a revolution indeed, although you probably need to be familiar with Georgian culture to realise...
2009/09/30 22:47
For many years, the Conservatives and Labour divided almost all of Britain between themselves.
Under IDS, there seemed to be a possibility that the LibDems would replace the Tories as the main opposition to Labour, and now there is a possibility that Labour will disappear.
So I asked myself which constituencies the LibDems would have to win to become the main opposition party.
To find an answer, I used Electoral Calculus’s user-defined prediction, and I fiddled around with the parameters until I achieved two big parties and a very small third party (30-40 seats). I didn’t do anything about the SNP or other parties.
I did this for three scenarios: Labour-Conservative Britain, Liberal-Conservative Britain, and Labour-Liberal Britain.
The first one is very similar to the 2005 election, just with fewer yellow dots. Labour is strong in Scotland, Wales and the big cities, and the Tories rule the rest.
The second one is perhaps what we’ll see in 2014. Labour are holding on to a few seats in Wales, Scotland and the big cities (e.g., Glasgow North-East, Rhondda and West Ham), but apart from Scotland and Cornwall, the LibDems are now dominating the cities, with the Tories dominating the rural seats.
The third scenario is now totally unrealistic, but just a few years ago it would have seemed likely. The Tories are holding on to places like Richmond and Buckingham, but otherwise the LibDems have taken over most of the countryside, with Labour mainly holding on their current seats.
2009/09/27 22:15
They story being reported everywhere at the moment is that the CDU/CSU have won the elections together with the FDP and will now be able to govern Germany in a so-called black-yellow coalition.Slightly more sophisticated reports might point out that the CDU results were mostly static, and that the gains were almost entirely made by the liberal FDP.However, in my view the big story is the collapse of the SPD. They have lost a third of their support, going from...
2009/09/27 18:35
A couple of years ago, when we had just got a new camcorder, I bought Charlotte a birthday present: "How to make a movie: The secret of Pirate Island".On the back, it said: "All you need is a digital camcorder, a modern computer with basic video editing software and four actors (boys or girls). We provide the rest." Pretty cool,...
2009/09/23 21:04
I must admit that I have been a bit downhearted when it comes to the immediate future of British politics.Labour have proven themselves to be centralising authoritarians without any understanding of economics, the Tories are more europhobic than ever, the...
2009/09/22 23:50
I like to think that I know a smattering of many languages, but this guy makes me look like a monoglot! (Hat-tip: John Wells's phonetic blog.) I'm particularly impressed with his intonation, which means many of the languages sound very...
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