Martin Rundkvist
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, board gamer, bookworm, and father of two.
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Posts by this author
April 26, 2010
This past weekend was full of fun duties. The only thing I did exclusively for fun was read a pretty depressing novel about slavery, U.K. LeGuin's Powers (2007).
Represented the Swedish Skeptics off-stage at the Nordic Conjuring Championship in Uppsala, as our organisation sponsored the event. I…
April 25, 2010
The 91th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Sexy Archaeology on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Kurt, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 June. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a…
April 22, 2010
As mentioned here before, dendrochronology has a problem with confidential data. European dendro labs tend to keep their data as in-house trade secrets in order to be able to charge for their services. This means that the labs function as black boxes: you pay a fee, stick a piece of wood into the…
April 20, 2010
Juniorette has drawn a pretty fierce lion. I imagine sitting in a tree, being growled at from below.
April 19, 2010
Because of blogging and my involvement in the skeptical pro-science movement, in recent years I have come into close contact with Americans as never before in my adult life. More than half of Aard's readers are in the US. It's almost like when I met my wife and suddenly learned lots about China.
A…
April 16, 2010
To my surprise, I found that the Cocteau Twins' 1988 song "Athol-Brose" is not named after a comet but after a Scottish drink consisting of oatmeal, honey, whiskey and cream. I'd like a Bose-Einstein condensate with mine, please.
April 15, 2010
It's been more than four years since the first time I blogged about how cool it is to have broadband on a train. But I still haven't gotten over it. Trainblogging again! The sun is shining and Södermanland zips past outside the window.
I'm on my way to Linköping to drop off finds at the County…
April 13, 2010
Dear Reader, you need to listen to the Drabblecast. I just listened to the latest episode and was completely blown away by the vast amount of work, wit and musical talent that goes into each episode. Norm Sherman is like this uncapped oil well that's constantly shooting a big fat unstoppable wad of…
April 12, 2010
One of H.P. Lovecraft's least successful horror stories is "Medusa's Coil", a 1930 collaboration with Zealia Bishop. The story builds to one of the hideous final denouements that Lovecraft liked to end his stories with.
Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my…
April 11, 2010
The 90th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at A Hot Cup of Joe on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Carl, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 June. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a…
April 10, 2010
In the context of religion versus atheism. Dear Reader Jason has expressed a need for moral absolutes that is quite common among conservatives. Wrote he,
"The bane of atheistic thought based on naturalism is that it cannot account for objective moral absolutes. All that is left is societal ideals…
April 10, 2010
In many of the world's most affluent countries, the population is shrinking because people aren't having enough children to replace the folks who die. This offers some hope to solve global overpopulation, though unfortunately the solution involves eradicating poverty and establishing global…
April 9, 2010
The comment thread on the entry about the shroud of Turin grows daily and is (perhaps not surprisingly) mainly not about the shroud but about Christianity and atheism. Some people are praying for me and my family, others are calling me names, just because I identify as an atheist and offer the…
April 8, 2010
Three cool pieces of science have been retrieved from the depths.
In the L'Atalante basin, one of the Mediterranean sea's deep hypersaline anoxic basins, anoxic metazoans have been discovered. That means multicellular beings like you, Dear Reader, who live without oxygen. They're loriciferans, Sw…
April 7, 2010
After about twelve years of regular use my Braun 5515 sounded like a chainsaw, so I decided to buy a new electric shaver. Mind you, I had repeatedly replaced all the bits I could: the mesh, often; the knife, several times; once even the accumulator pack. But I figured that having someone replace…
April 6, 2010
I recently switched from a 2008 smartphone running Windows Mobile to a Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica that runs the open-source operating system Android put out by Google. Here are some impressions after two weeks of use.
I really miss the old phone's hardware keyboard. Typing on the touch screen is…
April 5, 2010
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 rubber boot". Then increasingly (as Junior grew) I have…
April 3, 2010
I was annoyed and surprised to learn from a publicist that this weekend the History Channel is airing a programme named "The Real Face of Jesus" that takes a credulous approach to the shroud of Turin. The shroud is a 14th century fake relic, as has been well documented by historical sources and…
April 2, 2010
As mentioned before I was a big Depeche Mode fan during my teens. Here's a cool cover from the 1998 tribute CD For the Masses.
In other news, a group of Swedish skeptics have started what may be the first dedicated skeptical podcast in Swedish: Skeptikerpodden. Good stuff, check it out.
And Simon…
April 1, 2010
Like Swedish Mail, many mail services worldwide, I believe, offer a service where you e-mail them a letter and a list of addresses and they do the paper mailing for you. But now Finnish Mail is trying something pretty badass: they're doing it the other way around to cut costs and CO2 emissions.…
March 31, 2010
When I was in school I read a great story about a man who took opium, felt that he had a great philosophical insight, wrote it down, and then found, after sobering up, that what he had written was "I perceive a distinct smell of kerosene", Jag känner en distinkt doft av fotogen.
Mucking around on…
March 30, 2010
Here's a paraphrase from memory of an instruction sheet that came with the main Swedish encyclopaedia back in the 90s. I treat all new books this way to keep their spines from cracking. And they just can't have enough of me.
1. Put book on table, spine down. Fold down left cover, smoothen inner…
March 29, 2010
Joined Jrette on her first bike ride for the season. Had to raise the saddle 5 cm.
Emceed at the Swedish Skeptics' first full-day conference. We felt that it was time to have a bigger event to make it worthwhile for members to travel to Stockholm for it. Four talks, a mentalist, the annual…
March 29, 2010
Asked Felicia:
"... those Viking saga kings, Ragnar Lodbrok and Björn Järnsida. I'd like to know if there exists any evidence at all that these persons ever existed?"
In the present, the categories "real person" and "fictional character" are pretty distinct. But when we look retrospectively at…
March 28, 2010
On Friday the blackbirds opened their concert season. Here's what I wrote about them four years ago.
Oh, still my heart -- I just heard the year's first blackbird serenade! I opened the kitchen window a crack and listened to it while having my evening sandwich and cup of rooibos. I love the…
March 27, 2010
The 89th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Greg Laden's blog on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Greg, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!
The next open hosting slot is on 9 June. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a…
March 26, 2010
Spring is coming slowly, but it's finally coming. These squills have been awakened by heat radiating from our house, but still they reach for the sun.
In other news, Discover Magazine continues to buy over top Sb bloggers, and I have finally learned the story behind the state of Oklahoma's weird…