Must Start Keeping Up and Today That Means "Garbage"

I have not been keeping up and since my blog is a bit on the primitive side it does not notify me that people are actually looking and replying. So this is advance warning for 2015-01-12 that I have submitted a Letter to the Editor and a comment at Paul Krugman today that will require that later today I at least put links to my older posts about Swedish Waste to Energy systems. "Later" is made possible by the fact that I am writing at 10:48 CET but that is only 04:48 on the other side of the Atlantic. Thus I can keep working on the medical manuscripts I am reviewing and add something here later.

Joe Nocera Gets High On Natural Gas

UPDATE AFTER PUBLICATION OF COMMENT 2 IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, 20 DECEMBER.
Only the 2d comment submitted was accepted. It was well recommended by readers, and 4 also wrote replies that make "interesting" reading. Comments had been closed when I got the chance to read the replies, otherwise I would have had much to say. I add nothing here since no one has visited this post. If someone does, then I might put one or two  replies in here to illustrate how difficult it appears to be for many of my fellow Americans to understand renewable energy. This inserted 2014-12-21 kl. 17:08

Joe Nocera is one of my "favorite" New York Times columnists - "favorite" in quotes. Why? The simple answer is that his infatuation with natural gas is  so total that he is a sitting duck for simple comments in the comment column seen to the right of his declarations of ever lasting love for natural gas.

I have just filed two main comments at his column chastising Governor Cuomo (New York State) for banning fracking. The essence of the comments is that Joe Nocera knows so little about renewable energy that he never even can mention renewable energy in his many columns advertising natural gas.

My headline is, of course, ironic. Natural gas  kills, most recently as reported in a Times story a couple of days ago. Not the hazard that guns are of course, but more easily avoided than death by a bullet. Use one of the renewable systems described in this blog and nothing to worry about

At the moment on Bus4You toward Göteborg, will add internal links later.

This link takes you to a post by me with photos of Göteborg wind power and Styrsö Ground Source Geothermal (Heat pump) and the additional URLs in the post take you to Fjärrvärme systems (MSW incineration provides hot water to heat just about everything)


Passing Brahe Castle Wind Turbine park, very impressive turbines peacefully producing electricity, each turbine surrounded by picea forest.

My comment on Charles Blow's column: Blacks, Obama and the Election

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST Charles Blow

Blacks, Obama and the Election

NOV. 2, 2014

Picture of Charles blow at URLs below 

The text below my ikon (Swedish flag overlain by Vermont license plate) is copied from my main comment on Charles Blow’s column in the New York Times today November 3, 2014.  I place it here in my blog because I have invited New York Times readers to reply to me via my Gmail here.

The tiny URL to his column is:http://nyti.ms/1xQswD6

 

The tiny URL to his column “Constructing A Conversation On Race” is http://nyti.ms/1mo4ERj

 My ikon appears at my comment 

Larry Lundgren

 Linköping, Sweden 51 minutes ago

Charles, after filing this I Email you to beg you – yes beg – to take the next step in “Constructing a Conversation on Race” (your column 2014-08-20) @http://nyti.ms/1mo4ERj

Here I beg – yes beg - commenters to take part in replies and/or Email to you/me in this conversation by responding to questions I pose. You give 2 reasons for Republican opposition to Barack Obama:

1) He embodies the idea that federal government has important roles to play, as in the ACA.
2) He has a skin color not acceptable for anyone being president of the United States.

Question I: What is the relative importance of (1) and (2).

Question II: Is opposition based on (2) really based on the belief that every person designated in the uniquely American way as belonging to a black “race” is genetically inferior to those designated as belonging to a white “race”?

You note that “Race is a construct that, unfortunately, is woven through the fabric of America”, a view with which I agree in the strongest possible way.

So Charles, take that conversation further by expanding on that sentence.
I shall do so and even am considering the need for a blog “The American Riddle of Race”.

Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
My birth certificate, Attleboro, MA, reads: “color-white”

·        3 Recommend (16:21 CET-2014-11-03)

End of comment appearing in the Times OnLine

I rarely, if ever, succeed in getting anyone to join the conversation, but this is placed here just in case.

USA-Sweden comparisons

I cannot keep up here but have been citing this blog in New York Times comments every single day so want to encourage any NYT visitor who wants to communicate with me to do so directly via Gmail (address to the left). Of course if you wish to remain anonymous you can reply to this short post.

I have been commenting daily in the Times on four subjects that I know something about:

1) Medical care in the US and in Sweden (both from the viewpoint of patient and from the viewpoint of one who reviews manuscripts for Swedish medical researchers and sometimes does translations for them from Swedish to English).

2) Renewable energy and related subjects.

3) The American Riddle of Race - In the USA medical researchers routinely use "race" as a variable even though these researchers cannot define "race". Since the main users of "race" in Sweden appear to be supporters of the SD party, we have some strange situations arising. Older blog posts provide samples.

4) USA-Iran-Israel triangle (maybe later I will enter sample URLs)

For the moment, here is a URL to a comment dealing with the cost of health care in the USA, costs that any American citizen must face on returning, even for a short visit, since we expats may have Universal Health Care in our present country of residence, but that health care may not cover us if we return to the USA. As one who is over 65 I have American Socialized Health Care Insurance called Medicare.

Here is today's URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/opinion/gail-collins-a-political-crystal-ball.html?comments#permid=13194224

Two Parent Family-Trumpeter Swans In Sweden

At the Hour of the Wolf on 30 August on an island in Sweden, I had before me New York Times writer, Tim Egan's, story about the return of trumpeter swans to his favorite place in the west. Here is my own story about "my" trumpeter swans and their return to my favorite place in the east, Ullstämmaskogens naturreservat, Linköping, Sverige.

This URL will take you to his story and my comment filed at 04:00 h from Styrsö.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/opinion/timothy-egan-new-west-renaissance.html?comments#permid=12688428

The Two Parent Family's story for 2014 begins with the return of these two on February 22d, one of the restored ponds between Tinnerö eklandskapet and Ullstämmaskogens naturreservat. I will add to this during the day-it is after all only 2 AM in New York. (Note that you can view any image much better by clicking on it and some can only be seen by clicking and then viewing in photo-album series.)

                                                            The rocky outcrop where she would lay her eggs was still completely ice covered but is just barely visible at the

right edge of this view below of Ullstämma sjön, which for me is The Tree In The Pond lake where a single Alnus glutinosa still stands, now more than three years after the pond was created.




Once the pond was ice free the pair moved to Ullstämma pond along with several Canada Geese that for a time seemed to have eyes for the future birth place of the seven offspring of the swan pair.

Since you never know if you will have time to create the post you have in mind, I give you a typical family picture, this one on June 1, 2014, from their feeding ground in May and June, the next pond upstream from the Tree in the Pond, which is connected by a centuries old small rock walled passage created by settlers at Ryddare torpet.

There were seven small cygnets in early June, but then one of them disappeared and a few weeks later a second so then there were five left. In the next montage you see them at about 4 months old, now gray and showing more independence. 

Charles Blow - Constructing A Conversation On Race

One of the New York Times finest - if not the finest - columnist is Charles Blow. I have been asking for quite a while to take up the subject of the American system for classifying people by "race", and this column seems to be his first step in that direction. He does not, however, refer explictly to that subject).

The short URL will take you to that column and to the hundreds of reviewed comments published by the New York Times.

I mention the fact that the New York Times publishes only reviewed comments unless they have been submitted by Verifieds. Verifeds are Times comment writers whose submissions are "printed" immediately without review. They have been chosen by successfully passing review by an NYT algorithm!

I call attention to this because my Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter DN has no such system. Because of this it is not possible for DN readers to do for Sweden what Charles Blow is trying to start for America, "Skapa ett samtal om "race"" (Jag använder "race" på Amerikanska eftersom det svenska ordet "ras" motsvarar inte "race" på Amerikanska)

So today I would like to enter a conversation about "race" in Sweden to which Judith Kiros (see previous post) was a recent contributor in the form of an essay that DN published in full. That essay is discussed in DN today, 24 August, in a thoughtful essay by Susanna Birgersson (dn.se ledare). I would like to discuss both Judith Kiros and Susanna Birgersson essays in a forum of the quality of the New York Times comment forum. 

Not possible, Never In Sweden. Efforts to get Judith Kiros to reply to tweets go unanswered. 

No conversation

(I add here the URL to Susanna Birgersson and will add one to JK later:
http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/offerkoftan-en-antirasism-som-befaster-ojamlikhet/

The short URL below will take you to Charles Blow and hundreds of comments accepted for publication by the New York Times Comment Reviewers.

OP-ED COLUMNIST Constructing a Conversation on Race BY CHARLES M. BLOW A true racial dialogue is not one-directional — from minorities to majorities — but multidirectional.

Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/1mo4ERj

Church Street - Burlington VT - 2014

Welcome to Church Street and Church Street People, 2014. There ain't no place on earth like Church Street and if you had the time to look back through this blog you would see why I say that. Each summer I leave Linköping in Sweden to spend a few weeks in the woods of northern Vermont and an hour or two almost every day on Church Street where so many great people turn up every day - without fail.

I am just back from the USA so tonight, July 2d, I just want to start in case any of the people shown here here have gone in to the blog and found nothing. Will be adding more. Right now I will just use captions to tell a bit about the people in the pics.

The High Point of Church Street 2014
Kids Lemonade Run by the "kids" from the King Street Center
All of those I got to know have their family roots in Sub-Saharan Africa but they are now just plain old Americans
(They are going to get their own post here but they provide the banner for 2014)

Church Street becomes the concert hall for a real potpourri of musicians of every age, musical taste, and development. In my time in Burlington this year the street was quieter than in the past - will insert URL to a previous year but not now.) There have been some really fine fiddlers in the past and that tradition is kept up by this fiddler whose fiddling caught my ear and led me to her.

I was just about to leave when I heard some really fine fiddling
giving some Irish folk tunes their place in the Church Street Sun.
The fiddler is Addie, 14 years old, and she gets the little kids dancing
 and even climbing the rock in back of her. She went from the Irish
 tunes to some French Canadian that were really neat.
 Now I hope to introduce her to  Swedish and Norwegian fiddlers.
She plays great!

What I love about being in my part of the USA - New England - is that it is so easy to talk with people and learn something about them and what they have on their minds, even if you will never see them again. Case in point below. We were both listening to Addie and "she" (unnamed at the moment) was praising Addie as was I when suddenly she said "Can I borrow your camera". The result is a Sony DSC RX 100 "Selfie" which without a doubt is convincing evidence of the happiness Church Street people can bring out in others.

"She" took the selfie with my camera, something I absolutely
could not manage myself, probably proof that people like
her who have grown up taking selfies have mastered the art of
holding an I phone or even more difficult a Sony DSC RX 100 and getting a pic.

Last for my first evening back in Sweden - need I say I need some sleep - is a clue to the range of human beings you will see on and around Church Street on any given day. My thought on seeing Mr. Orange was that he could stand next to Kids Lemonade and drum up business for them - as if they needed any help, they don't.

Want to have your 15 minutes of fame? Do as Mr. Orange,
wrap yourself in a color of your choice and strike up a conversation
as Mr. Orange had just done here.

SIGNING OFF FOR TONIGHT. 

TOMORROW YOU GET TO SEE A PERFORMER WHO IS ALREADY AT MY FB.