And the Pendulum Swings

It seems every time I read something that really pisses me off (see the last post), I find something that touches me and gets me back to equilibrium:

I was raised by my grandmother and am from a military family. Everyone is a Republican. I was the first to go to college and am finishing up my graduate degree. ...

I am currently in a relationship with a black man in what John McCain would describe as the "real Virginia." My family, after three years, are just now becoming comfortable, if you want to call it that, with my boyfriend. They claim that he isn't like all of the other *****.

Before my grandmother died, she left me with a note that she didn't want me to open until she died. I opened that letter. My grandmother — who has never referred to blacks appropriately — had [early] voted for Obama. She called him a "socialist" in her letter but she voted for him because she said that maybe the values that her parents instilled in her, which was to hate anyone that didn't look like her, would not be passed on if people saw Obama in office.

It was especially touching given my current relationship, and I honestly believe that there are many others out there just like my grandmother.

Robocalls

This is what we're up against, and this particular example is getting another hour of volunteer time out of me. From Sean Quinn:

Over in Indiana, PA and Northern Cambria, PA, volunteers fielded complaints of a massive wave of ugly robocalls both paid for by John McCain's campaign and those paid for by third parties. The third party call was interactive, and purported to be from Barack Obama himself. The call starts out reasonably, and then "Obama" asks what the listener thinks is the most important issue. Whatever the response, "Obama" then launches into a profane and crazed tirade using "n***er" and other shock language.

From what we've seen, this IS the McCain ground campaign. Robocalls count as "touches" on voters, as do direct mail pieces such as this one. As David Plouffe said in today's fundraising letter to supporters, "These tactics are all that the McCain campaign and their allies have left."

Crossing State Lines

I forgot to post this after the 2nd US Presidential debate:

John McCain talks about health care:

I want to give every American a $5,000 refundable tax credit. They can take it anywhere, across state lines. Why not? Don't we go across state lines when we purchase other things in America?

My question is, when he says I can cross state lines, does that mean I can go to Canada?

No seriously. 

"Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way"

One of these days I'll actually do some real reporting, instead of passing on other people's news stories. Yeah.... one day:

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way

Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Will Now Be Suspended Because of the Financial Crisis

From the same book by Romaine: Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are separate languages largely for political reasons:

"When these [three] languages were standardized, differences were consciously exaggerated."

Romaine gives a recent example, the spelling of the word for "what", which before 1906 was the same in all three langauges. But in 1905, Norway became independent from Sweden, and so a few changes were made:

Original for all three languages: Hvad

After 1906...

Danish: Hvad
Swedish: HVad
Norwegian: Hvad

(These are all pronounced the same way, "Va")

I just thought that was cool. Continue about your business.

Why do Swedes not understand Danish?

This one is for my Swedish friends, I'm sure they'll relate.

When I was in Stockholm, I heard a lot about how most Danes understand spoken Swedish perfectly, but Swedes, especially those in Stockholm, often have a really hard time understanding Danish (this is curious mainly because Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are very similar, and most Scandinavians can read newspapers in all three languages).

Well from "Language in Society" by Suzanne Romaine comes this interesting clue:

"However, Norwegians and Danes claim to understand Swedes better than Swedes claim to understand either Norwegians or Danes. How can this be? Studies of mutual intelligibility are not really about linguistic relationships... but about social relationships, since it is people and not the [languages] who understand or do not understand one another. More Norwegians and Danes have been in Sweden than Swedes have been in the other two countries. Only a quarter of Swedes claim to read anything in the other two languages. While 41 percent of Danes and 52 percent of Norwegians listen to Swedish radio, only 9 percent of Swedes listen to Norwegian or Danish radio... more accomodation is made towards Sweden and Swedish because Sweden is a larger and wealthier country."

This is a good point, that mutual intelligibility is shaped as much by social linkages as by the grammar and pronunciation of the languages in question. Most of the Swedes who've mentioned Danish talk about how the Danes "swallow" letters when they speak, which is the most common reason I've heard for why it's hard to understand Danish. But I bet if people spoke and listened to more Danish in Sweden, a lot more Swedes would start to understand. Thoughts from friends in Sweden?

PS There's a lot of American English on Swedish television, and most Swedes seemed to understand my English just fine (or pretended to), even though I swallow words, chop them in two, talk quickly, and mumble. Interesting....

Solar Panel Black Market

An interesting story in the NYT...

Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves...

Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again.

“I have a shotgun right next to the bed and a .22 under my pillow,” Ms. Hoffman said.

Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics.

Assuming that installations go up, this is probably going to become a much bigger problem. Which is why this graf at the end of the story caught my eye:

In Europe, where the solar industry is well-established, thievery is entrenched, and measures to ward it off have become standard, including alarm systems and hard-to-unscrew panels.

I'd be interested to see more info about this, I'm sure our European friends could teach us a few things about busting solar panel rings.

And does this mean that one of the green jobs we keep talking about will be solar theft detective?