Dear Relatives and Friends:

I visited Denmark and Sweden to work with logicians, computer and cognitive 
scientists there.  It is a remarkable fact that Scandinavia shares a
distinction with Australia and New Zealand --- they (and us) have the
world's highest concentration of logicians per head of population!  I do
not have an explanation for this.

Love to you all.

Norman (and Yokelin)
=================================

SUMMARY:  We visited Copenhagen (Denmark), Malmo, Linkoping and Stockholm
(Sweden).  Lovely cities all, and very ancient.  The most memorable was
the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, host to an 17th century battleship that sunk
just 1.5 km from its launch site.

Read on for details if interested.

=================================

Copenhagen
----------

One has the feeling that the Danes did not worry about the possible 
corruption of the youth, the crime for which Socrates paid with his life.  
Or else they had tried prudery and disliked it.  For this city, together with 
Amsterdam, is truly a sex capital of Europe.  On the south side of the 
Central Station is the highest density of sex shops I had ever seen, with
highly explicit window displays of devices and gimicks so exotic (note I
did not say "erotic") that little was left to the imagination.  The obvious
question is whether this kind of titillation has damaged their psyche, sapped
their vigor, or diminished their sense of propriety.  The evidence is that
it has not.  

We stayed in the modest Absalon Hotel, named after the 14th century
Copenhagen bishop whose statue and relief seems to dominate everything.
In the magnificent Radhaus (State House) in the central platz, the
entrance is dominated by his picture.  He was clearly in the mold of Pope
Julius II who commissioned Michaelangelo's sistine chapel Creation; both
were generals and also princes of the Church.  The statue of Absalon
in the Nyhaven (new harbor) has him in armor and a raised arm with
a sword.  Denmark has historically been the scourge of its neighbors.
Its King Christian II took Stockholm in the middle ages, and conducted
a treacherous massacre of leading burghers in a square there near the
Palace after treating them to a sumptuous dinner.  Talk about the fatted
calf! The Swedes recount it these days with mock horror.  Of course
you remember that the Danish vikings were the terror of the English
coasts after the Romans left, which they later settled in large numbers.
The rapid simiplification of the English language from around 700 is
partly due to the necessity of tribes from different Germanic language
groups having to drop the complicated (but systematic!)  conjugations and
declensions that still pervade modern German -- the variations from tribe
to tribe proved too confusing.  There are remnants in modern English,
many fast dying out: brother-brethren, possesive case "s" with apostrophes
(few know how to use them well); woman-women (with an odd pronunciation
for the latter!), run-ran-run; have-had-had, smite-smote, eat-ate-eaten,
singular you-are.  So, if you had difficulties with irregular verbs
and count agreement when you learned English, you can blame the Danes!
These days, they are only frightening when you meet them on a badminton
court.  They play a mean game, and their TV must be the only one that
has a channel that shows live badminton games in prime time; I watched
it with wistful pleasure when it was too cold to go out in the evening.
 
Legoland is about 4 hours from Copenhagen, so we did not get to
see it.  I was told that Lego is in some difficulty because many kids
prefer computer games to Lego.  Personally, I find the triumph of Sony
Playstations over Lego very distressing.  It is the victory of instant
gratification over reflection and creativity.  It gave us enormous
pleasure to watch our two sons grow up assembling and reassembling Lego,
so imagining all manners of creatures and artefacts.  One of the most
disturbing reports I have heard is from my colleague Prof Claude Sammut
who told me that the premier management school in Australia, my very
own UNSW's AGSM, has found that the best day-traders are those who are
good at computer games.  The reason is that it is all about reflexes,
and they need not understand what the numbers mean!  Civilization is
advanced by deep knowledge and broad culture, by empathy with the weak
and suffering, by resisting base passions.  The day-trading geeks are
the antitheses of these qualities.  The decline of Lego is portentous.

Scandinavian corporations are suffused with noblesse oblige.  An anecdote
told to me by a Danish scientist will illustrate the difference between
our Australian tycoons and those in Scandinavia.  Carlsberg feels that it
has to support the Sciences, so its thing is to fund a visiting chair
in the Niels Bohr Institute of Atomic Physics.  (Bohr was Danish.) One day
an American professor arrived to take up the chair for 6 months.  After he
was chauffered to the Carlsberg professorial house, he received a call
from the CEO of Carlsberg welcoming him to Denmark.  The conversation went
like this.  CEO: "Professor, it is the custom of Carlsberg to provide the
visiting professor with as much beer as he and his guests need.  How much
beer do you need per week?"  The professor thinks to himself, "Hmm, maybe
I will drink one or two per day, then maybe I will have friends over
on weekends and they will drink about half-a-dozen, so let's say about
a dozen bottles per week".  So he said, "Herr XXX, I think a dozen per
week is fine."  CEO: "Very good, professor!  The first lot for a month
will be delivered tomorrow."  The next day a Carlsberg truck pulls up at
the house, rang the door-bell, and when the professor answered the door
the truck driver asked him where he wanted the 48 CRATES of beer placed!

Linkoping
---------

The train from Copenhagen went over the bridge connecting Copenhagen
to Malmo, the southern-most city of Sweden, to Linkoping in 4 hours.
Malmo is an ancient city, next to the university town of Lund.  It has
the usual old square with lovely colored buildings including the almost
mandatory "Stadhuset" (Swedish for State House).  As the train speeds
through the countryside, pine forests interleaved with neat farms and
villages.  Lakes abound, so still and clear that they were like mirrors.
Each farm house was far from its neighbor, with grey skies accentuating
morose and stoic solitude.  I did not realize until I saw these houses
that the design of American country houses in Upstate New York and New
Hampshire were Scandinavian.  A Finnish professor told me that there
is a good reason why Nokia mobiles is a natural enterprise for Finns
(and Ericsson for the Swedes).  If a Finn discovers that a new neighbor
has moved to within 5 km of him, he complains about the crowding.  He is
happy to converse with the neighbor -- but it is a lot more comfortable
if it can be done at a distance.  

The next day I walked from our hotel to the University of Linkoping.  It
was an invigorating 1/2 hour walk, and part of it took in a huge cemetary
on the left side.  It was the most orderly civilian cemetary I had ever seen.
Neat rows, dignified headstones, symmetry and clean lines -- I could almost
have said "Ikea" -- so Scandinavian even in eternal rest.  And there were
two custodians sweeping up the fallen leaves.  Peace, quiet, contentment.
Such is the care of the humane socialist state that not looks after its 
citizens from cradle to grave, but also beyond!

For indeed if one has to look for the most humane realization of the
socialist ideal, it has to be Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Denmark).  The taxes are high.  My professorial friends pay about
50% of their income in tax, and that's excuding VAT (GST) of 17% on
most things.  But in return, they get a distribution of income that is
the most egalitarian in the world, excellent schools and universities,
great museums, wonderful arts (drama, music, painting, sculpture ..),
industrial peace, dynamic scientific innovation, exemplary creches,
efficient public transport, national health.  Would we rather have the
American model of "free enterprise/choice" -- in which the personal taxes
are low, but so many schools are badly under-funded and their students'
families live on the margin that they are breeding grounds for criminals?
And their "solution" is to build more prisons and hire more cops.
The Scandinavians, not being hostage to any ideology, prevent the
problem from arising!  And it is a lot cheaper that way.  And contrary to
malicious propaganda, socialism does not equal nationalization.  All the
big corporations here are privately owned -- Ericsson, Volvo, Lego, Nokia,
SKF, Maersk, Saab, etc.  It is not the nominal ownership that matters,
as Galbraith has argued, but the mechanisms of control.  The Boards of
Directors here have trade union representatives.  Workers therefore did
not regard bosses as adversaries but as partners.

Sweden has not escaped the ravages of Reaganism and Thatcherism (for
which Britain is now paying heavily, but I'll tell you about that
separately).  Ikea is an example.  Because of globalization, a lot of
Ikea products are no longer made in Sweden.  But worse, there are now
homeless people in Stockholm.  They are the mentally ill who used to be
confined in hospitals.  The latter were closed in imitation of the move
in the English-speaking world to cut costs by placing the patients in
"half-way-houses" instead.  They failed for the same reasons as elsewhere
-- insufficient funding.  It is now realized that there is no cheap way
to care for the mentally incapacitated.  But reversing a mistake takes
time and guts.

If you get to visit Stockholm and have only a day, you should divide it
between the old town (Gamla Stan) and one of the greatest musuems in the
world, the Vasa Museum.  I had been to both last year, but a re-visit
is not a waste for there is a lot that is missed in a first visit.

The Gamla dates back to well before the Norman invasion of England.
It is on a small island connected by a walking bridge to modern Stockholm.
The island has actually grown in size because this part of Sweden rises
(yes, UP!) 40cm per century.  I was told that it rises even faster in
northern Sweden.  The cobbled streets are narrow, one no wider than a
meter, most about three or four meters, with double storied stone houses
on both sides.  The plastered walls of the houses are painted in lovely
pastel shades, and many have the trade-mark "cape-cod" windows peeking
from their roofs.  Street-level windows are large, with low bases.
There are two main streets that run the length of the island, meeting
at one end.  Small lanes run between them, up-hill then dowm.  At the
other end is the square that looks into the straits separating the island
from the mainland, backed by an ancient cathedral, and rising to meet
on one side the old palace.  Latin inscriptions glorifying the ancient
kings decorate the walls of the cathedral and the palace.  This country
was never a part of Pax Romana, but nevertheless its most famous king
Gustavus Adolphus felt incumbent to adopt a Latinzed name for himself,
and to insinuate that he was an incarnation of the Roman emperor Augustus.
Such was the power of Rome ten centuries after its garrisons
withdrew from the Rhine.

The Vasa Museum is named after a ship that was built as the flagship
of Gustavus Adolphus when he was warring with the Poles in the
early 1600's.  He was fighting a cousin, Sigesmund, King of Poland,
who was also the heir to the Swedish throne but lost it because he
was Catholic.  Gustavus, being a Lutheran, was crowned in his place,
and the war was to force Sigesmund to renounce his irredentist claim
on Sweden.  Gustavus ordered the construction of a huge man-of-war,
the Vasa, which was to be so magnificent and formidable that the mere
sight of it would reduce potential foes to despair.  The ship builder
was Dutch.  He was experienced, but the envisaged two levels of gun
carriages was something unprecedented.  To cut a long story short, on
completion there was clear evidence that the Vasa was unstable, being
too high and top-heavy.  The standard test of having 30 men run from
side to side several times had to be prematurely stopped when the ship
listed dangerously.  But no one was game to tell King Gustavus (then in
Poland with his army) that something was wrong.  The Admiral let it be
launched amidst great fanfare.  The Vasa sailed only 1500 meters (that's
not a typo!) into the harbor before a slight breeze caused it to keel
over and sink.  Can you imagine what the ship builder must have felt,
with thousands celebrating the launch festival watching the disaster
unfold before their incredulous eyes?  Oh, how dreadfully embarrassing!
But he was spared that, for he had died 2 years before.  Naturally,
there was what we Australians today would call a "Royal Commission".
And characteristically no one was punished, for there was a lot of
evidence that it was the King's insistence on the novel design that
caused the instability.  The Vasa lay in its watery grave in the harbor
for centuries until it was raised in a marvellous feat of engineering in
the 1970's.  It is now in the eponymous museum.  The story is a wonderful
one, for its lessons are even contemporary.  A lot of software is like
the Vasa, let loose upon an innocent world even though designers know
of their faults.  And the faults exist not through ill-intentions but
because, like the Vasa then, we do not have a scientific theory of
(software) construction or reliability.  Practice has almost always
outstripped theory.

Oh, a wee caveat.  Scandinavian socialism prior to its current travail 
with the effects of globalization had one problem -- BOREDOM.  When you 
remove all worry, uncertainty and responsibility, you also remove RISK.  
But there seems to be something elemental in the human psyche that rejoices
in risk.  The most glamorous of sports (think, which ones would you choose
to advertise an expensive vodka?) are typically individual -- skiing, 
hang-gliding, absailing, mountaineering, car-racing, etc. -- and risky.  
Boredom often leads to lassitude, then to depression.  Heavy drinking was 
so bad in Sweden that even today you can buy alcoholic beverages only from 
State-controlled outlets.  No-one has yet found a way to rescue the
decency of social democracy from its blandness.  Perhaps the ultimate
lesson is that there is no such thing as perfection in the affairs of
men.