Now on ScienceBlogs: Oldest Human-Made Object in Space
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
January 31, 2010
Category: Having Fun
Went skiing twice. Went skating on Lake Källtorpssjön at the Hellas sporting centre under the watchful eye of the Nacka radio masts. There's a snow-ploughed circuit there, but it hadn't been ploughed recently so there was a lot of...
Posted by Martin R at 11:17 AM • 10 Comments •
January 29, 2010
Category: Biology
Great flocks of fieldfares are hanging around Boat Hill, feeding off the frozen parkland rowan berries instead of migrating.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
January 28, 2010
Category: Archaeology
It's tragicomical reading, really. Because regardless of whether people were trying to drain and cultivate bogs, or if they were digging for peat and trying to process and sell it, there was a huge disconnect between their high hopes and the actual outcome.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The eighty-fifth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at A Very Remote Period Indeed. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Magnus at Testimony of the Spade. All...
Posted by Martin R at 5:47 AM • 0 Comments •
January 27, 2010
Category: Humour
The Web helps you check if your ideas are original. Recently I've come up with two puns that proved to be unoriginal but still surprisingly uncommon. Ronald McDonald is the Lord of the Fries. The famous fantasy role-playing game should...
Posted by Martin R at 4:43 PM • 8 Comments •
January 26, 2010
Category: Blogging
The 85th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at the A Very Remote Period Indeed tomorrow, Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Julien, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes! The next open hosting slot is...
Posted by Martin R at 3:54 PM • 0 Comments •
January 25, 2010
Category: Archaeology
Today I had the rare pleasure of teaching undergrads.
Posted by Martin R at 4:02 PM • 15 Comments •
January 24, 2010
Category: Having Fun
Had a lot of fun this weekend:Went skating twice, once with each of my kids. Went skiing with my wife. Got beaten at Pitch Car four times by my kids. Took the kids to a birthday party for a charming...
Posted by Martin R at 4:22 PM • 8 Comments •
January 22, 2010
Category: Archaeology
What I said wasn't controversial. I just happened to be the first to say something that every specialist in the field of Late Iron Age gender studies realises immediately.
Posted by Martin R at 12:30 PM • 13 Comments •
January 21, 2010
Category: Archaeology
Contract archaeology exists to solve an internal conflict among the goals set out by politicians.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
January 20, 2010
Category: Food
We rarely buy bread. Instead I bake. Tonight's production involved a 5-day sour dough and a bag of roasted sunflower seeds. Pretty good, though I overestimated the amount of salt on the seeds and overcompensated. The sour dough was...
Posted by Martin R at 4:07 PM • 5 Comments •
January 19, 2010
Category: Food
Writes Dear Reader Bruce Paulson of Gillett, Wisconsin:Your article the other day about rutabagas whet my appetite so on Friday I went to the local grocery store with a friend who was staying for supper. I unloaded three of them...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
January 18, 2010
Category: Having Fun
Here's what I did for fun this past weekend.Watched Avatar. Had a dim sum dinner. Chucked out the Christmas tree, lopped off the branches and kept the trunk to bring to my dad's place for firewood. (This doesn't sound like...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
January 16, 2010
Category: Film
The moon Pandora, Avatar's world, is Tolkien's ents on a global scale. It's Lovelock's natty old Gaia "hypothesis" turned concrete reality.
Posted by Martin R at 3:00 PM • 32 Comments •
January 14, 2010
Category: Archaeology
Although I am still just getting acquainted with the research background of my Bronze Age project, I wrote the first couple of paragraphs for my next book today.
Posted by Martin R at 8:13 AM • 15 Comments •
January 13, 2010
Category: Archaeology
The eighty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at the A Primate of Modern Aspect. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology! Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to Julien at A Very Remote Period...
Posted by Martin R at 4:24 PM • 0 Comments •
January 12, 2010
Category: Blogging
The Open Laboratory is an annual anthology of blog writings on science started by Bora over at A Blog Around the Clock. I was very proud to get pieces selected for the 2006 and 2007 volumes, and then I was...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
January 11, 2010
Category: Having Fun
I just had to swap two hours of daytime work for two hours of evening free time and get out on Lake Lundsjön with my skis. It's amazing, seeing the cliffs where we sim and sun bathe in the...
Posted by Martin R at 8:23 AM • 2 Comments •
January 10, 2010
Category: Archaeology
The 84th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at the A Primate of Modern Aspect on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Modern Primate, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes! The carnival needs hosts. It's...
Posted by Martin R at 9:17 AM • 0 Comments •
January 8, 2010
Category: Politics
The Swedish Association of University Teachers is demanding that foreign PhD students be paid as much as native ones. This suggests that they don't know how research projects are organised and funded.
Posted by Martin R at 10:40 AM • 13 Comments •
January 7, 2010
Category: Tech
Not everyone knows what's inside a golf ball. I do. Or I thought I did.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 38 Comments •
January 6, 2010
Category: Books
I hardly ever read books in French and I hardly ever read books by Nobel laureates. In the first case, my grasp of the language is shaky and I have no good entry point into French literature: I don't know...
Posted by Martin R at 10:48 AM • 16 Comments •
January 5, 2010
Category: Food
Everybody knows that English has borrowed the words ombudsman and smorgasbord from Swedish. But did you know that rutabaga is another Swedish loan? And that it was borrowed from a rural Swedish dialect, not standard Swedish? "Rutabaga" is an American...
Posted by Martin R at 1:19 PM • 17 Comments •
January 4, 2010
Category: Space
Spirit landed on Mars six Earth calendar years ago today, Opportunity on 25 January -- and both still work fine!
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
January 2, 2010
Category: Gaming
My old Tolkien Society buddy Indûr and his wife rents an extra room in their apartment building. It looks like it used to be the caretaker's office. Now it's a gaming room....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
January 1, 2010
Category: Photography
Frost on rowan trees in Fisksätra at sun-up on New Year's Day. (Note the blackbird.) [More blog entries about photography, trees; foto, träd, nacka.]...
Posted by Martin R at 1:01 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Psychedelic
I found this sign at the Slussen commuter train station the other day....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Orac 02.14.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
Jason Rosenhouse 02.12.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
Steinn Sigurðsson 02.14.2012
