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Talking To Stubbornly Angle-Pushing Journalist About Vaccine
Posted by Martin R on April 21, 2013 
As part of my duties as chairman of the Swedish Skeptics, earlier tonight I took part in a studio discussion on Swedish TV4 about Gardasil, the vaccine against human papilloma virus that is offered to all 12-y-o Swedish girls. It was a pretty silly affair. The TV people had decided on the angle that the…
Transparent Recruitment Charade
Posted by Martin R on April 17, 2013 2009. University of Lund publishes the PhD thesis Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Created Agricultural Wetlands, dealing with biological diversity and ecosystem services in ponds in the agricultural landscape (and commented on here). 2013: Same department advertises a post-doc in the field “Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Services in Ponds in the Agricultural Landscape”. Because in…
Norse Saga About The Buddha
Posted by Martin R on April 8, 2013 I found something pretty wild in an essay by J.L. Borges this morning. There’s a 13th century Norse saga about the Buddha. And the story has other fine twists as well. This all revolves around a legendary tale of the Buddha’s early life. In the 6th century BC a son was born to a petty…
March Pieces Of My Mind
Posted by Martin R on April 4, 2013 The Swedish Church lost 54,000 members last year. That’s more than half a percent of the country’s population. Yay! Eight years after submission, a star-crossed paper of mine has finally appeared in print! I was at this provincial museum in 2004, looking at finds, and the staff asked me for a paper to put in…
Making Peace With Kraftwerk
Posted by Martin R on March 28, 2013 
I used to be kind of angry and disappointed with Kraftwerk. The only album they put out after I started listening to them was 1986′s Electric Café which is OK but not great, and after that, no new material. But now I look at their catalogue and think, hey, from 1974 and for seven years…
The Sacred Blue String of Ethnic Identity
Posted by Martin R on March 25, 2013 In this well-written, painstakingly annotated and beautifully designed book, physicist Baruch Sterman (with contributor Judy Taubes Sterman) traces the history and prehistory of a certain blue pigment, along with its cultural and religious significance through the ages. It’s what the Torah and Talmud calls tekhelet, and it’s made from a gland harvested from Murex sea…
Kay Glans Mourns Authoritative Newspaper Discourse
Posted by Martin R on March 22, 2013 Kay Glans used to edit the literary pages of Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden’s main conservative* newspaper, and Axess Magasin, a conservative Swedish arts & social sciences mag that also has a TV channel. The latter’s standard is high, and I’ve been particularly pleased to find repeated staunch rebuttals of post-modernism there. What I don’t like much…
Registration Opens For European Skeptics Conference
Posted by Martin R on March 21, 2013 Registration has opened for the 15th European Skeptics Conference. Hie thee there and register NOW, because there’s only 400 tickets! Here’s the confirmed (still evolving) line-up: Anna Bäsén (Sweden): Undercover Health Journalism Chris French (UK): Psychological Perspectives on Paranormal Belief and Experience Maria Berglund (Sweden): Våra opålitliga hjärnor: hur fel vi uppfattar världen och hur…
Gutsy Student Exposes My Modernist Leanings
Posted by Martin R on March 18, 2013 After only one day of my teaching, one of my Kalmar students has already twigged that there’s a funny discrepancy between the course’s post-modernist meta-archaeological syllabus and the opinions voiced by his main teacher from the lectern and elsewhere. Fearlessly he goes for my jugular on the course blog, where all the students have to…
Hedge-Wizards and Hedge-Parsons
Posted by Martin R on March 16, 2013 The Grey Mouser, along with Fafhrd the Northerner hero of Fritz Leiber’s genre-defining sword & sorcery story cycle, is the archetype of the Dungeons & Dragons thief. He began his career however, Leiber informs us, as apprentice to a “hedge-wizard” who taught him some simple magical cantrips. I never understood what a hedge-wizard was, until…
