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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.
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.
Posted by Martin R at 3:33 AM • 10 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 9:23 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Children
Fecal sample submission window....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 1:59 PM • 10 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 26 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Children
As my friend David the physiotherapist commented, if you must break a bone, break your radius.
Posted by Martin R at 5:12 PM • 19 Comments •
Category: Children
At the root of my disagreement with Amy Chua lies my cynicism about the value of conventional achievement.
Posted by Martin R at 4:19 PM • 51 Comments •
Category: Children
We really need a Candle Maiden in deep December when we're still a week on the wrong side of the solstice.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 2:36 PM • 13 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 1:08 PM • 8 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 3:27 AM • 12 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:40 AM • 6 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
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."
Posted by Martin R at 6:09 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Children
Juniorette has drawn a pretty fierce lion. I imagine sitting in a tree, being growled at from below....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
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....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
The priest admits that he should have checked with the dad but that he didn't.
Posted by Martin R at 2:51 PM • 26 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 2:45 PM • 88 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 4:00 PM • 9 Comments •
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,...
Posted by Martin R at 2:02 PM • 47 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 10:12 AM • 5 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 3:13 PM • 7 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 4:07 PM • 0 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 39 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 7:11 AM • 3 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 1:40 PM • 51 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 3:04 PM • 8 Comments •
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.
Posted by Martin R at 8:24 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
You can book guides with which you participate in flint knapping, leather working, cooking, archery, trapping and so on.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Children
This adolescent boy, barely into sexual maturity, is being nasty to girls about their budding womanhood.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Children
Among the hybrid bus's weaknesses: a 110% fuel consumption compared to a normal diesel engine. Back to the drawing board.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:31 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Tech
I instantly desired the tiny XO. That's the kind of size my next computer will have.
Posted by Martin R at 5:08 PM • 6 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
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 &...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 9 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 5:35 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Children
"Daddy, I want ice cream!"
Posted by Martin R at 12:21 PM • 14 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
One tree house had an interesting piece of furniture: a gynaecologist's examination chair!?
Posted by Martin R at 3:32 PM • 2 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 2:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Children
It was a good talk, ranging from abstruse physics to everyday practicalities of life in space.
Posted by Martin R at 3:10 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Children
"People will breathe using space suits, and at home they will have air inside their houses."
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
