introspection
aardvarchaeology | November 22, 2013We interrupt this transmission for some adolescent self-examination.
My high school Swedish teacher – I've forgotten her name – played the saxophone and kept an Irish wolf hound. They're pretty wussy creatures as a rule, but my teacher's pet was extreme. She explained that though big as a calf, the dog had been brought up by a dachshund bitch, thought it was a dachshund and was afraid of anything larger than a dachshund.
I'm a bit the same. I keep getting these hints that people see me as way meaner, taller, more critical and better-looking than I see myself. To me, anybody above 170 cm looks…
aardvarchaeology | November 11, 2013
Certain experiences during my mid-teens a quarter of a century ago left me with this strong Pavlovian reaction to a ladies' perfume called White Linen. It's not very popular any more, and not at all among young women. So imagine my moment of confusion when without warning a whiff of White Linen hits me at George Best airport, making me automatically prick up my ears -- and I find that the wearer is a stout 65ish grandmotherly lady in a floral print dress.
aardvarchaeology | January 26, 2013Teaching 20-year-olds for the past term has begun to make me feel a little avuncular. But yesterday I had this sudden surge in my avuncularity. First, in the morning I finally took the step of shaving the sparse fuzz remaining on my forehead all the way up to the coronal suture. (That's the lateral seam in your skull that you feel if you put three fingertips between your eyebrows and slide them up to the top of your head.) To salvage a little dignity, I've always been one step ahead of the male pattern baldness.
Then I talked to the heat pump repairman (31) about what it'll be like for him to…
aardvarchaeology | August 29, 2012My cousin Annika kindly forwarded me this postcard from a budding archaeologist just out of high school and on his first dig. I translate:
*
Hazor-Haglilit July 15th, 1990, 12:05 [Sunday]
Shalom!
Mainly I'm digging. At the same time we exchange some language teaching – my new Israeli acquaintances call each other “whitstevell” in passing [Sw. skitstövel, “shit boot”] (think about it and you'll get it...), and I've learned things like makush (hoe), makushon (small hoe), benga benga (work, work!), yalla (faster!), malofofon (cucumber), and ma-eem (water).
I've got today off, and I have the…
aardvarchaeology | April 4, 2012For forty years I've been one of the most fortunate people I've ever heard of.
Starting from the global perspective, there is of course hardly a single country on Earth where people live under such good conditions as in Sweden. This goes for all of us here tonight. If we had ended up somewhere else, ourselves and our loved ones would in all likelihood have had to endure illiteracy, slavery, tyranny, torture, famine, war, severe illness and a very early demise.
With my slightly odd professional perspective I'm also acutely aware of how lucky I am to have plopped down not just where I am, but…
aardvarchaeology | October 25, 2011A pop musician's and a mathematician's twenties are a precious part of their life. During those ten years of early adulthood, there seems to be a residual childlike creativity or randomness in the brain at a time when a person has had a chance to amass skills and experience. In some fields, the window in time when you will produce your best work is open only during your twenties. Take the Beatles, whose albums appeared when Lennon & McCartney were 23-30 and 21-28 respectively. Few would argue that either of them made a Beatles-quality album after the split, and looking at other bands, I…
aardvarchaeology | August 11, 2010In the podcast liner notes to his new album (starting at 14:21), George Hrab talks to Milton Mermikidis for a space about how neither of them does any heavier drugs than caffeine. I realised that in close to five years of blogging, I've never talked specifically about my own drug abstinence, though I've mentioned a few times that I'm tee-total. So I thought I might say a few words on the subject.
The culturally accepted heavy drug in Sweden is alcohol, which is strongly mind-altering if used in a sufficient dose and lethal if overdosed. Drinking is so common here that if you don't, then it…
aardvarchaeology | March 28, 2010On 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 blackbird. It sings at the most unsettling time of the year.
These spring and early summer evenings, when the light never really fades and the blackbird sings its heart out... They fill me with a nameless urgency, a desperate itch for something I can't put words to. Watching myself dispassionately from…
aardvarchaeology | September 20, 2009A funny intermezzo caught me Saturday on the train from Brussels to Liège. Across the aisle, two young pretty lesbian couples were seated. And they spent most of the ride necking furiously. I suppose that as a het male I might have been expected to feel some kind of perturbation or arousal at the sight. But in fact I mainly experienced a sort of avuncular tenderness toward the young ladies. Their joy made me smile. Any desire these shapely wenches might have inspired was checked by the evident fact that they weren't interested in my kind. Then they got off (the train, you pervert) and left…
aardvarchaeology | August 10, 2009I was brought up to believe that I am special. I was told that I am unusually smart and gifted. Whether or not this is true, it has given me a deep-seated expectation of myself to do great(ish) things, to achieve a bit more than the average Joe, to stand out from the crowd, to gain recognition.
Most people of course achieve very little that is noteworthy beyond the solid humble everyday victories of a quiet life. I'm sure that most people do not have a sense that this is in any way insufficient. I'm also sure that many of these average achievers have talent and potential far beyond that…
aardvarchaeology | July 12, 2009
I'm now in that state of summer leisure mixed with the responsibility of providing entertainment for the kids that causes a man to forget what day it is of the week. And so a week's fun is no longer restricted to its last two days. But I have done nothing grandiose lately: mainly pottered about and enjoyed being reunited with my lady wife after her recent visit to the in-laws.
Anyway, Friday and Saturday were largely taken up by housework of the interior decoration kind. My dad likes to suggest grandiose changes to our house and incite my wife into supporting his ideas, but as he also…
aardvarchaeology | June 9, 2009Why are we here? Why do we live? What is the meaning of life? These questions are poorly phrased as neither "why" nor "meaning" has a distinct definition.
To begin with "why", it can refer either to the cause of something happening or the purpose for which something was done by an agent. Causality vs. teleology, to use big words. And in the present context, the question "why" can be dismissed for both senses of the word. Teleology: humans/animals/plants/protists are not given life for any particular purpose and there is no agency involved. Causality: the answer to the question "Why am I here…
aardvarchaeology | March 25, 2009I suddenly remember a few times when I was mean to girls when I was fourteen. I feel really bad thinking about it now. Being mean and bullying was particularly ugly for one such as myself who had just barely reached the end of his years as an object of bullying. But I see a pattern there that wasn't visible to me at the time. It doesn't excuse my behaviour in the least, but it sort of explains it.
H was thin as a rake and had a highly strung personality. She didn't seem to expect to be liked, and I believe few did like her much. Yet she wasn't the sort to fade into the background: she was…
aardvarchaeology | January 25, 2009Being a married man and a father of small children, I am very rarely alone in the workday evenings or weekends. Indeed, in the past five or or six years, my capacity for sustained self-entertainment (yeah, yeah, OK; "nudge, nudge") has atrophied to the point where I no longer know what to do when faced with a free Sunday. Yet this was the situation I found myself in last night. Wife off on business trip. Son at mom's place. Daughter likely to spend day at friend's place. Now what?
After some thought, I reached the conclusion that I would very much like to spend the afternoon with friends at a…
aardvarchaeology | January 2, 2009The houses in our new neighbourhood are clones of one basic design: an L-shaped single-story structure with a fenced yard inside the angle of the L. The main entrance (1) is on one of the L's outer long walls. The grubby-boots entrance (2) is on the gable adjoining the wall with entrance 1. Finally, there's an entrance from the yard (3) which in many cases is fitted to be unlocked only from the inside: it's how the architect intended us to reach the yard from inside the house.
Our particular specimen of this design only has entrance 3, combining the functions of all three entrances from the…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2008I have made peace with the passing of the 70s. I no longer feel that the 80s is the default present decade during which everything still happens. But let me tell you, Dear Reader, in my mind the 90s still lie mostly in the future. Windows 98 is a very new operating system. Nobody born in the 90s is able yet to walk or eat or use the potty unaided. I was really shocked when I realised that people born in the 80s were playing hockey and participating in porn.
And now there's only one year left of the Noughties. To me it's been a decade of fatherhood, of my second marriage, of PhD-hood, of site…
aardvarchaeology | November 30, 2008Dear Reader Michael Merren of the Religion, Philosophy and Other Oddities blog is a married man and a father of three. He also used to be a Catholic priest. Learning this, I asked Michael to write a guest entry on his personal history. And now I know whom to turn to with any theological question that might pop up.
I don't know where else to start than from the beginning. I was raised Roman Catholic and always felt drawn to do something to give back to humankind, to be great and benefit my fellow man in some way. Some might call that a "vocation" or a "calling" I suppose. As a Catholic boy the…
awild | November 27, 2008As a matter of coincidence, my first blogiversary falls on Thanksgiving day. Happy Thanks-Blog-Giving, then. Or something.
I started out aiming my writing at a non-technical audience. So I featured insect photographs, simplified coverage of entomological news, and notes about photographic technique. But I've come to realize from various feedback that many of my regular readers are professional scientists. This poses a bit of a problem of where to pitch my content. Both my mother and Phil Ward read this blog. What might interest both of them?
This imbalance in the biological fluency…
aardvarchaeology | October 2, 2008
On my way to work in the mornings, I pass the hibernation grounds of the Saltsjöbaden Boat Club. Boat owners are currently busy getting their craft out of the water and onto scaffolding on dry land, as the Baltic winter ice is not friendly to boats.
The other day I found an adjustable spanner on the bike track right by the boats. It was sitting beside a newly landed boat, one of many whose cover scaffolding was in place but whose tarp wasn't on yet. This threw me into a brief ethical dilemma. What should I do with the wrench?
I already own an adjustable wrench. Another one would be somewhat…
aardvarchaeology | August 21, 2008My current ten favourite things:
Books
Boardgames
Podcasts
Tea
Sunshine
Archaeology
Sleep
Nookie
Music
E-mail
And yours, Dear Reader?