Now on ScienceBlogs: The Laboratory at Harvard
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: NOIBN
If I had to take a paper newspaper, then I would like Dagens Nyheter's news section, Svenska Dagbladet's arts & entertainment section, no sports section and no business section. SvD is a conservative rag and some of its political columnists...
Posted by Martin R at 4:11 PM • 14 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: Travel
Yesterday's paper sessions offered eleven presentations. I almost fell asleep several times. This was not mainly because four of the papers were in German and French which I have a hard time understanding when spoken quickly. The main reason...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
It's a bit like brick masonry, only you use cordwood instead of bricks and clay daub instead of mortar. And you always orientate the wood perpendicular to the wall.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
On my way to the Library of the Academy of Letters today I spied something unusual. Somebody on the second floor of Storgatan 30 is having pigeon trouble. They've studded the window ledge with nails and stuck a plastic...
Posted by Martin R at 2:53 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Yesterday I had a clear illustration of how the brain determines the direction of a noise. I was listening to a podcast in ear buds when my wife asked me something. I took one bud out and talked to her...
Posted by Martin R at 8:25 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
If you look up an organisation on Wikipedia, then the article will be pretty useless if it's written by people with any sort of passionate relationship to that organisation. If they hate it, if they love it, they're not the right people to write about it.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 26 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
A woman in New Hampshire allegedly bludgeons her eight-months pregnant friend to death. Then she performs an amateur C-section on her victim, delivers the baby and assumes maternal responsibilities for it. After a week she and the baby girl, who...
Posted by Martin R at 4:53 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Geocaching is a fun nerdy outdoors hobby where you hide tupperware under boulders in the woods and publish their GPS coordinates on the web for other geeks to go look for the tupperware. Sometimes when you look for geocaches in...
Posted by Martin R at 3:16 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: NOIBN
I intentionally stay away from Twitter. Too many internet-related things already fracture my concentration and keep me from reading books. I go only so far as to update my Facebook status a few times a week. But for those of...
Posted by Martin R at 3:38 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Is the length of your education significantly different from that of your parents?
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 39 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Yesterday I inadvertently offended the Sb Overlords in an interesting way. Since I came on board 2½ years ago we've had a series of handlers or "community managers" who have all been competent, charming women. Punning a little, I have...
Posted by Martin R at 4:35 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
6% of applicants get grants from the Swedish National Bank's Centenary Fund.
Posted by Martin R at 2:54 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
I've been working as a consulting editor for the Royal Academy of Letters for almost a decade, most of that time from home. But since 2006 I've had an office at Academy headquarters in a quiet part of Stockholm....
Posted by Martin R at 9:56 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Who is responsible for a package? The sender or the volunteer messenger who carries it? Do they perhaps have a joint responsibility? This issue has led to quite a number of arguments between me and my wife over the years,...
Posted by Martin R at 1:37 PM • 45 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
On a whim, I've grown one of my infrequent beards, and it's starting to itch. The beard hairs are hard and bristly, and the mustache feels like having the skeleton of a herring glued to my upper lip. Kissing...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 18 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Eight years ago I sold half an apartment to my former wife and found myself, for the first time, with a sum of money to invest. I did what conventional wisdom recommended at the time: stuck all the money into...
Posted by Martin R at 9:43 AM • 15 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
On the problems of applying bibliometric assessments and Open Access practices in the humanities.
Posted by Martin R at 8:48 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
A house I have been asked to check in on over the holiday season was burgled last night along with two neighbouring houses. I've been on the phone to the police and the window repairman, and then I've been showing...
Posted by Martin R at 8:16 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
My friend of twenty years, retired broadcaster Lars Erik Åström, died the other day of cancer at age 69. Too soon by far: he has young grandchildren and he was a very good man without whom the world is worse....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Biology
I am impressed by the gay dolphins' invention of nasal intercourse.
Posted by Martin R at 7:21 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Tech
"In the morning I left voice mail messages to call me on my mother's and sister's numbers. As I came in to work I saw S still logged in to his Skype account, where he'd left it going for his...
Posted by Martin R at 2:40 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
You know the Iggy & Stooges track "Penetration"? The one where Iggy sounds like he might be the penetratee rather than the penetrator? Now, I want you to imagine me singing that song, only with the word "affiliation" rather...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 15 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
I'm at the first Swedish Wikipedia Academy conference in Lund. Yesterday I did a talk on inclusionism vs. deletionism (vs. mergism) on the online encyclopedia (text available on-line in Swedish). Above is my audience who asked a lot of...
Posted by Martin R at 5:37 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Great images of my childhood are appearing on-line from an unexpected source. My dear Connecticut nanny Lynn Leavey is scanning choice pix from her time with us in Sweden in 1978-79. Here's my India-goin', safety-match-pushin', ABBA-accountin' grampa Ingemar with...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Every once in a blue cheese, a son of Ming the Merciless invites me to speak at an advertising school in Stockholm, Berghs School of Communication. (Yes, they have adopted an English name to sound cooler. No, they didn't...
Posted by Martin R at 3:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
On an ammunition delivery run to Kai's place in Rågsved last Saturday, I found a grimy strip of photo negatives beside a lamp post at Stövargatan's southernmost point. Rain had obliterated two of the pictures, but two remained. So,...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia regarding certain facets of the on-line encyclopedia's controversial notability policy. At heart, it's about where the line should be drawn between notable subjects (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and non-notable ones (Shitty Arnie, my...
Posted by Martin R at 12:09 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Alun tells me that Google Knol is now live. It's like Wikipedia, only written by experts and pwned by Google. Check it out! Also, I happened upon Everything2, this other weird & interesting hypertext community where anything goes, not modeled...
Posted by Martin R at 3:39 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
I'm frustrated about Wikipedia. Cultists are slowly and surely readjusting the Falun Gong article to their own rosy and "oh-how-persecuted-we-are" perspective. The other day I watched some anonymous loon create a new user account for the single purpose of deleting...
Posted by Martin R at 1:33 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Yesterday I did 5.5 more man-hours of metal detecting at the "Hall of Odin" site in Västmanland with Per Vikstrand. No prehistoric finds: just a piece of a 15/16/17th century brass cooking pot. Bob Lind's craziness is once more repeated...
Posted by Martin R at 4:12 AM • 18 Comments •
Category: Tree House Ruins
Logged my 600th geocache this bright May morning, took a picture of a treehouse ruin near the cache, then drove home listening to the Nashville Pussy. After lunch, me and the Rundkvist ladies took part in the annual street...
Posted by Martin R at 9:13 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
All the big old guys and gals in high energy physics should contribute tissue from which hydrogen and lead could be extracted.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
A week ago I complained that I couldn't find any good podcasts, and you guys responded with a wealth of recommendations. More to my surprise, a number of irate fans of the popular Nobody Likes Onions podcast showed up. They...
Posted by Friendly Scibling at 11:41 AM • 35 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
[More blog entries about podcasting; podcasting, webbradio.] I've been laid low all day with a cold. To entertain myself while unable to read, I've listened to podcasts, and when I ran out of shows I subscribe to I started checking...
Posted by Martin R at 12:42 PM • 36 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia and most of its contents are naked text that hardly takes up any disk space. Thus there is no reason to limit the subjects its contributors can write about. Fans have written hundreds of...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 22 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Who are the victims? Who are the perpetrators?
Posted by Martin R at 9:20 AM • 24 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
When I was in Florida a month ago, right after having lunch with an elder statesman of the skeptical movement, I found the above polaroid photograph on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. The signs above the windows have allowed...
Posted by Martin R at 8:02 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
We are not comfortable being associated with James Watson even at such a remove.
Posted by Martin R at 3:45 PM • 16 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Here's a link page that I used during a talk about internet culture.
Posted by Martin R at 3:00 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Sweden
It consists of granite balls covered with hornblende and then encased in a granite matrix.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
You start feeling like you know the people on the show a little.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
They built the bridge where it was needed and had their message carved at the road side.
Posted by Martin R at 10:00 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Often I have risen at dawn on weekends and gone out to seek tupperware.
Posted by Martin R at 10:41 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Feel free to befriend my digital representation.
Posted by Martin R at 2:08 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: NOIBN
Should the future Constitution of the European Union make reference to Christian values?
Posted by Martin R at 10:04 AM • 8 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
