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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, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
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 • 8 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: Art
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 • 12 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 •
Category: Gaming
Now and then I like to play board games: mostly Blokus, Drakborgen (a.k.a. Dungeonquest), Scrabble and Roborally. The latter is an award-winning 1994 game where each player programs a robot to move through a treacherous obstacle course and tag...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Language
A dialect is split into sociolects, that have to do with social class.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 35 Comments •
Category: Children
Swedes have taken up US Hallowe'en customs only very recently and half-heartedly, the whole thing being driven by merchants. But we do have something like trick-or-treating: the Easter Crone custom of Maundy Thursday. Traditionally, there's no Easter Bunny in...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 16 Comments •
Category: Film
Three siblings move to a big old house and find the field journal of their great-grand-uncle who studied fairies.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Tree House Ruins
The children who used the site no longer exist: they're grownups now.
Posted by Martin R at 4:53 PM • 15 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I added two sites to my growing collection of abandoned club houses.
Posted by Martin R at 11:07 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Having Fun
... stared in fascination at beautifully (and rather scantily) clad people, received not inconsiderable admiration ourselves ...
Posted by Martin R at 10:10 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Children
Drive it over a piece of metal and it'll go BEEP and light up.
Posted by Martin R at 2:30 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Skepticism
"Pupils must be protected from all forms of fundamentalism".
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 19 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
It looks like the remains of an outdoor gym built by the cub scouts who periodically camp in a nearby house.
Posted by Martin R at 2:56 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Most of the kids are standing on postholes belonging to the walls of the house.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Children
Let us cleaning!
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 18 Comments •
Category: Children
I certainly wasn't a Son of the Steppe.
Posted by Martin R at 11:54 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
He's turned all his data and 14 years of thinking about the site into a pop-sci book for kids!
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Children
A 1970s Sesame Street alarm clock!
Posted by Martin R at 9:45 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Psychedelic
A product way off the scale on the weirdometer.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Children
Dear Reader, what is my responsibility here?
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 33 Comments •
Category: Children
To get kids to eat veggies, hand them out while they play video games.
Posted by Martin R at 7:46 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Psychedelic
My crappy camera actually enhances the visual effect of this day-glo monstrosity.
Posted by Martin R at 4:55 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Introspection
Autism-spectrum disorders may largely be due to an accumulating genetic predisposition to systematise.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Children
Let's get rid of this cruel Bronze Age superstition.
Posted by Martin R at 4:35 AM • 98 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
That common type of archaeological site, the abandoned tree house.
Posted by Martin R at 3:38 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Children
Godless parenting manual due out April.
Posted by Martin R at 2:00 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Children
Luke Skywalker's grandma, mother and sister were the same person to him.
Posted by Martin R at 4:14 AM • 6 Comments •
