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Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.

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Martin Rundkvist 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.

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2011 Enlightener & Obscurantist Awards

Category: Skepticism

The Board for the Environment of Mora and Orsa municipalities receives the Obscurantist of the Year anti-award, as it has disregarded scientific knowledge when dealing with so-called electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

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Hot Troll/Cow Action in Big One Magazine

Category: Children

Bamse magazine is one of Sweden's most beloved childrens' publications, with a readership mainly about age 10. Its title character's name does mean "The Big One". But still, I must say that I was as surprised as Bamse himself...

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With the Theme of Engrish

Category: Children

Fecal sample submission window....

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The Silly Conventions of Funding a School Trip

Category: Children

Funding trips for classes of school children is a complicated business in Sweden. This is due to two commonly held conventional ideas. One is that it would be unfair to ask each family to simply pay for their kid, since...

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Is Child Porn In the Eye of the Beholder?

Category: Art

In issue 2011:1 of the journal of the Swedish Photographer's Association is a fine essay by Jens Liljestrand. Here's a translation.

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Juniorette Sings Cohen

Category: Children

Juniorette is a precocious seven years old. Here's her rendition of Leonard Cohen's 1984 song "Hallelujah", with the Swedish lyrics by Py Bäckman. The performance is influenced to a certain degree by another young Swedish singer's version, Molly Sandén's on...

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Skiing Holiday, Broken Bone

Category: Children

As my friend David the physiotherapist commented, if you must break a bone, break your radius.

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The Mindless Conventionality of an East Asian Upbringing

Category: Children

At the root of my disagreement with Amy Chua lies my cynicism about the value of conventional achievement.

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Gingerbread Cult of Saint Lucy

Category: Children

We really need a Candle Maiden in deep December when we're still a week on the wrong side of the solstice.

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Girl Power

Category: Children

Asked by her teacher to write five things she's good at, and to illustrate them, 7-y-o Juniorette just produced this. The speech bubble reads "Yes I win". Then "I'm good at writing running putting my hand up eating candy...

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Absurd Tractor

Category: Children

A buddy and namesake of mine has a father who is a literature scholar. He wrote his thesis on absurdist drama, Beckett and Ionesco, that sort of thing. This influenced his son's vocabulary. Once about 1970, when the scholar was...

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Sailing Camp

Category: Children

I've spent three days with my son's class at Ängsholmen summer camp where the 12-y-os got a chance to reaquaint themselves after the summer and do some fun stuff together. My job, like that of the other three parents who...

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School Girls Fined for Placing Teacher Break Room Under Electronic Surveillance

Category: Children

Reports Swedish Broadcasting, Dagens Eko:When two school girls in the 13-16 years age bracket found a lost key ring for their school's teacher break room, they had an idea. They bought simple audio surveillance equipment in a tech store, waited...

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Junior Live-Streams His Video Gaming Sessions

Category: Children

It's like a crowd of kids in front of a gaming console and a TV set, lounging in the living room and watching one kid play a game -- only they're all on different continents.

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Little Interpreters

Category: Children

When a family migrates, the members who pick up the local lingo first and best are generally the children, and they soon become little interpreters.

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LinCon 2010 Gaming Convention

Category: Gaming

My two days with Junior at the LinCon gaming convention in Linköping turned out even better than I'd hoped for. I had lots of fun myself, and as a geek dad I was extra happy that Junior took to...

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Schoolyard Sprouts Pagan Burial Monument

Category: Archaeology

Last year part of my daughter's schoolyard was landscaped and fitted with new entertainments. The landscapers also built a stone circle right next to her classroom.

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Nigerian Islamist Senator Outdoes Catholic Church on Child Rape Issue

Category: Children

"History tells us that Prophet Muhammad did marry a young girl as well. Therefore I have not contravened any law. Even if she is 13, as it is being falsely peddled around."

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Fierce Lion

Category: Children

Juniorette has drawn a pretty fierce lion. I imagine sitting in a tree, being growled at from below....

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Easter Egg Hunt and Club-House Ruin

Category: Tree House Ruins

On Easter Saturday, many Swedish kids receive candy-filled cardboard eggs. Mine have to jump through a lot of hoops to get theirs. Often I have made paper trails around the house, "Under yellow table", "Inside broom closet", "In Dad's...

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Rundkvist Sibs Sing "Handy Manny" Theme Song

Category: Children

You know the bit in Khalil Gibran where he says that children are arrows and parents bows, not archers? The other day my kids recorded this rendition of the "Handy Manny" theme song, and then Junior edited it in Audacity....

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Baby Christened, Dad Unhappy and Surprised to Learn

Category: Skepticism

The priest admits that he should have checked with the dad but that he didn't.

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Skiing Break

Category: Film

Last week was skiing break for my kids. I couldn't find anywhere good to stay in the mountains, so we didn't go off on holiday. Here's what we did for fun instead. Dinner at the home of a Chinese...

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Population Will Come Down -- We Choose How

Category: Biology

It's up to us to decide if it should happen through contraception and a global single-child policy or through a catastrophic die-off.

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Like an Elephant

Category: Humour

My 6-y-o daughter usually sleeps really solidly over in her room and is not easily woken by sounds she's accustomed to. But this morning she told me over breakfast, "Dad, you and Mom made the weirdest noises last night and...

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Fake Advertising Mom

Category: Children

Autumn is starting to get nasty in Sweden, and immediately the Fake Advertising Mom pops up on billboards and in magazines. Sometimes she's even part of a Fake Advertising Family. Here's what I mean. I don't claim 100% accuracy,...

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Weekend Fun

Category: Children

We spent Friday afternoon and evening walking in the sunshine, eating like kings, listening to some pretty far-out and eclectic music and playing the Swedish 70s board game Marinattack.

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Retro Gamer

Category: Gaming

I never was much of a game console nut. My video game crazes mostly played out on the PC. But I did play the Atari in the 70s, the C64 in the 80s and the NES and SNES in...

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Weekend Fun

Category: Having Fun

Played the new German board game Finca that my friend Eddie the heathen goldsmith brought along. It's an abstract system lightly dressed up in a story about harvesting and distributing fruit and greens on Mallorca of all things. Good fun...

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Chasing after the Wind

Category: Introspection

Maybe it isn't such a good idea to tell your kids they're anything else than just plain Joe & Jill. Because regardless of how talented (or not) they are, it is clearly possible to live a happy life without standing out in any way.

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Daycare No More

Category: Children

Today is my last day as a daycare customer, provided that my views on having a third child don't change radically one day. I've enjoyed the fine service of the Igelboda daycare centre for six or seven years straight, but...

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Silence is the Enemy: But What is Wrong With Those Men!?

Category: Children

In the long run, Darwinian selection acts upon cultures. But us in the world at large can't wait for that to make the current cultures of Liberia and Congo go extinct.

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Nose Balloon

Category: Children

Us grownups do the same thing easily by just closing our eyes, holding our noses and "pushing", like on air trips or while driving in mountains or scuba diving.

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Age of Spawning -- Results

Category: Children

The readers are not closely emulating their parents' life decisions, and they spawn regardless of whether they are in the middle of their studies or not.

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Prehistoric Reenactment Centre

Category: Archaeology

You can book guides with which you participate in flint knapping, leather working, cooking, archery, trapping and so on.

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Phone Pix September-October

Category: Photography

13 September: Samuel and Ludvig play the piano at Ludvig's aunt's house in Viggbyholm. 12 October: Playing Pandemic at a gaming convention in Gröndal. 21 October: A mechanical excavator is delivered to my dad's property to start work on...

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Being Mean to Girls

Category: Children

This adolescent boy, barely into sexual maturity, is being nasty to girls about their budding womanhood.

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Unsuccessfully Greening Public Transport

Category: Children

Among the hybrid bus's weaknesses: a 110% fuel consumption compared to a normal diesel engine. Back to the drawing board.

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With Juniorette at the Playland

Category: Children

I never thought I'd be writing about Iron Age political geography at a place called Andy's Playland. It's Skiing Break, and because of preparations for our recent move my wife and I never got round to booking accommodations up north...

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One Laptop Per Child and One For You

Category: Tech

I instantly desired the tiny XO. That's the kind of size my next computer will have.

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Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

Category: China

I bought two wooden model kits in Beijing last October. The kids and I finished the Imperial Dragon in late August. Since then, my daughter and I have worked on the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿) which...

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My Weird Camp Counselor

Category: Children

A memory. A lot of Swedish middle-class kids get sent to confirmation camp when they're 14. It's basically a crash course in Christianity and ends with first communion. My brother went through his course and then refused the wafer &...

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Chinese Model Dragon Kit

Category: China

Back in October I picked up a couple of wooden model kits in a mall near the Drum Tower in Beijing. Yesterday my daughter and I finished the first one, an Imperial Chinese dragon (count the toes), brought to...

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Criss Cross: Swedish Scrabble Ripoff

Category: Gaming

Scrabble was first published in 1948. Shortly thereafter, it was ripped off for the Swedish market by a firm named Lemeco, under the tell-tale Anglophone title Criss Cross. The main difference between the ripoff and the original is that...

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Birthday Clustering

Category: Children

Yesterday my glorious daughter turned 5. Today my radiant son turned 10. In the maternity ward five years ago I quipped to the nurses, "The kids being born one day apart, I suppose I'm only fertile for one week each...

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Tuscany with Children

Category: Children

"Daddy, I want ice cream!"

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More Djurhamn Tree House Ruins

Category: Archaeology

One tree house had an interesting piece of furniture: a gynaecologist's examination chair!?

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Egypt Criminalises Female Genital Mutilation

Category: Children

Good news from Egypt: the country's parliament has passed a new child protection law that, among other wise measures, criminalises female genital mutilation and raises the legal age of marriage to 18 for both men and women. Daily News of...

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Junior Meets the Astronaut

Category: Children

It was a good talk, ranging from abstruse physics to everyday practicalities of life in space.

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My Kid's an Anglophone Spaceman

Category: Children

"People will breathe using space suits, and at home they will have air inside their houses."

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