Pieces of Mind
aardvarchaeology | October 10, 2017
Medieval account books were so common in Germany and considered to be so worthless, that into the early 19th century they were used as fuel to heat certain archives.
Got nominated to the municipal council. Not likely to be high on the list, but still, feels good to be considered useful.
I was shocked to learn that people who get elected onto the municipal council sometimes just flake out and never show up again after the first few meetings. Somebody pointed out that many people don't live my kind of predictable, regimented life. But accepting and then flaking out from public office suggests…
aardvarchaeology | October 5, 2017
Ben Aaronovitch = Benjamin Aaronson wrote The Rivers of London. I wonder if it's a pen name for my grandpa's grandpa Aaron Benjaminson, who was a farmer in Tanum.
Two students are trying to play verbal chess while digging. The board is in their heads.
"Well, I'm not the world's most physical guy / But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine / Oh my Lola" /Ray Davies
Sudden thought: Christianity is a 2000-year extension of a state of spiritual emergency that Jesus thought would last a year or two.
Sweden has recently reformed its coinage. Convenient for me and the students: when…
aardvarchaeology | September 20, 2017
Planting a gingko and listening to early Black Sabbath.
Sailboat owners around Älgö have a lot of trouble with their wind indicators. The local crows use them as merry-go-rounds, which messes them up.
Me: "I am daft today." Autocorrect: "I am Daddy Toast."
Friendly local fellow gladly gave us permission to stash our excavation gear overnight behind his garden shed.
Heavy downpour making loud whoosh noise on the roof.
Rented a van, collected excavation gear and two students, deposited gear at site, bought extra gear, had lunch, returned van, am now in no hurry to airport. Everything went as…
aardvarchaeology | September 11, 2017
Five years since my first teaching gig. Still temping today, still enjoying it, still think I should have a steady job.
LinkedIn suggests that I might apply for a job as home language teacher of Kannada, a Dravidian language spoken in southern India. 15% of full time.
Did Timothy Leary use TripAdvisor?
Richard Bradley discusses my 2015 book at length in his new book A Geography of Offerings. *happy*
I want to text my lower-teen self that I just favourited Mötley Crüe's "Kickstart My Heart". He would be absolutely disgusted.
Breakfast: bread that I baked, mushrooms that I picked, crayfish…
aardvarchaeology | September 2, 2017
I'm confused. For years and years this boy lived with me. Now instead there's a tall young man studying engineering in Jönköping. I somehow helped make this happen. It's strange to me.
The most common surnames among my DNA relatives are Johansson, Nilsson and Persson. All three are among the ten most common surnames in Sweden.
Miley Cyrus & the Flaming Lips have covered "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" & "A Day In The Life" together. Both are amazingly good!
Hehe. NYT writer spells "help reign in spending". Maybe using a reigndeer?
"She's a peach" was not coined by Prince in the 90s.…
aardvarchaeology | August 19, 2017
I don't get it, safe deposit boxes, Sw. bankfack. Are they a disappearing bank service? Do I know anyone under the age of 50 who has one? What do you guys keep there?
Do you wonder if I've got my shit together? I'll tell you. I have street maps of Helsinki from visits in 2002 and 2009 instantly retrievable from the bookshelf next to my desk. That's how together I've got my shit, OK?
Sonja Virta: in the 1966 edition, Tolkien added to The Hobbit that Gollum is small and slimy. Illustrators had been drawing him too big.
New adjective: beshatten = very dirty. "Honey, can you find clean pants for…
aardvarchaeology | August 9, 2017
Reading Matt Ruff's new novel about black Americans in the 50s. Annoyed to find that nothing in the dialogue would sound out of place if spoken by a white American sci-fi fan in 2017.
Feared 45 would be the sort who gets the trains running on time and starts wars. Actually can't get trains running at all, wars with TV hosts.
Etymological misunderstanding in this novel. Ruff parses the name Braithwaite as Braith-white, when it is actually Brae-thwaite.
There's this book about edible wild plants in Sweden named "Can you eat these things?" A more important question is "What population density…
aardvarchaeology | July 29, 2017
"Ways of knowing" = alternative facts.
I am on a WorldCon panel about the Medieval mind and fantasy literature. I just had the (unoriginal) idea to say that the High and Late Medieval aristocracy lived largely in an Arthurian fantasy world of their own creation.
Last night a skinny cat came miaowing at our door. Turned out to have left his home 200 m from us a week ago. With no sense of direction. And no hunting skills. He's back with his kind owners now.
I've bought a lot of ebooks from Google. I would happily continue to do so even though now I've got a Kindle, because Google has much…
aardvarchaeology | July 21, 2017
Los Alamos means "the poplars".
A friend lent me J.P. Hogan's 1980 novel Thrice Upon A Time. It's set in 2010 but has pre-PC "mini" computers the size of fridges, with text terminals and command-line interfaces. Four years before Neuromancer...
1970s computer designers: "What? You folks run your screens in graphics mode all the time? But why? It's so inefficient compared to text mode! Must be unbearably slow!"
Had some skin moles lasered. The smell of burning hair is strong immediately inside the clinic's front door. The lasering makes a noise like quietly frying bacon.
Pluto's orbit is…
aardvarchaeology | July 12, 2017
Swedish 1960s translation of the Game of Life. I just found a uranium mine. According to Boardgame Geek, there are 13,879 better boardgames than this.
I bought a Kindle and I like it. Better than reading on my phone. No screen glare. Weeks between recharges. Bigger page.
As a boy I was shocked to learn that most people have to pay a monthly fee to keep a roof over their heads. I found this to be a horrifically unstable arrangement, similar to staying at a hotel. My parents had never spoken to me about their mortgage loan. I felt that the only monthly expenses anyone should by rights have to…
aardvarchaeology | July 1, 2017
It would be quite nice if writers feared for their lives over the difference between publishing city and printing city in bibliographies. Then they would be more motivated to get it right.
My parents are great. They've got so much hiking gear, at 74 they still know exactly where they keep it, and they're happy to lend it to me. All I've had to buy for four days' mountain hiking is boots and a pair of sufficiently long waterproof pants.
24 applicants for Stockholm U archaeology lectureship, several with exceptional qualifications. Looking at the list I realise that you could staff two new…
aardvarchaeology | June 20, 2017 On a whim I searched for my surname in the Sites & Monuments Register and was awarded with a distribution map of fieldwork I have directed
Boiled cauliflower is bland and boring. But try slicing it and baking it at a high temperature in the oven with oil and salt. Good stuff!
Archaeoscience friends! The other day when I was feeling happy I had the idea that you guys should develop a method to measure lifetime happiness in human bone. Preferably including variability over the life span.
Proponents of market capitalism tend to confuse a description of how the market works with a…
aardvarchaeology | June 10, 2017 Poppies along our fence
My wife receives her second university degree today. In addition to her 15 years in journalism, she is now also a trained psychologist. Go YuSie!!!
I assume 45's lawyers cleared the covfefe tweet?
Small but very satisfying discovery. In 1902 a Medieval coin is found at Skällvik Castle. The finder makes a detailed drawing of the coin and sends coin & drawing to the authorities, who promptly lose track of the coin. Gone. In 1954 a list is drawn up of twelve Medieval coins found at nearby Stegeborg Castle. In 1983 the list is published -- and suddenly there are…
aardvarchaeology | May 31, 2017 In the time of the lilacs, in the month of laburnum
I didn't like any of this year's Hugo-nominated novels, so I'll be voting ”No award” there. But the short-story category really has me confused. The novels aren't great, but most of them are certainly science fiction. Only one of the six shorts though is scifi as opposed to fantasy. Is there no longer a difference between the genre remits of the Nebulas and the Hugos? I thought the Hugos were strictly sf.
Today a number of contract archaeologists and metal detectorists have treated me like someone with valuable skills and knowledge. I…
aardvarchaeology | May 25, 2017
I don't know what "the winter of 1473" means. January and February? November and December?
Just got home from a sunny bike ride that was also incidentally my least successful geocaching expedition ever. I was in Hammarby Sjöstad, a recently built and densely populated urban area. The only way a geocache survives in such an environment is by extreme stealth. And GPS navigators do really poorly between tall buildings. I simply couldn't find the little fuckers.
Cousin E has taught us the popular old Maoist card game "Fight the Landowner".
Translationale Magnetresonanztomographie.…
aardvarchaeology | May 11, 2017
Contraceptives really changed society radically. Prior to them literature is full of references to people being too poor to get married. Because getting married was the same thing as having children.
I'm disappointed with streaming movie services. I thought they were like music services, where it's a rare exception if some older band's catalogue isn't available in full. On Netflix and Viaplay it's in fact the other way around: you're super lucky if an older movie is available, and you often have to pay extra.
Snoop Dogg's autobiography: The Chronicle.
Poetry tip: don't put the word "the" in…
aardvarchaeology | May 1, 2017
Movie: Little Big Man. Tragicomedy about the Old West and the fate of the Native Americans. Grade: OK.
Submitted my tax returns. Always super easy, which is one of the benefits of having a low income and few assets.
I've researched my ancestry fully four generations back and found no madman, sorcerer, ape or sea monster. What am I doing wrong?
I re-read two random chapters near the end of Peake's Titus Groan for the first time in 30 years. It's really, really good stuff.
I grieve for the multitudes of Windows users who don't know what flag-key plus M does.
The drumming on "Rock And Roll All…
aardvarchaeology | April 20, 2017
There is no year zero in the common era. 1 BC is followed by AD 1. This is because Dionysius Exiguus worked around AD 500, long before the Indian concept of mathematical zero reached European scholars via the Arabs.
I don't quite understand why the guy in Springsteen's "The River" is so super sad. It's not in the lyrics.
I love Turkish fast food and "Here Comes The Rain Again".
Thorn-stabbed left eye acting up again nine months after that brush-clearing session at Skällvik Castle. Right-hand one showing its sympathy by clouding up too, leaving me unable to read or write much. Annoying. But…
aardvarchaeology | April 10, 2017
"If I blow my top -- will you let it go to your head?" W.F. Gibbons
Hit jackpot on the car radio riding with Jrette and her buddy today. First some Tuvan throat singing. Then a fat version of the Marseillaise with orchestra, choir and a solo soprano who sounded like Piaf. It's important that you outweird young people regularly to prepare them for life.
My soft tissue now has a distinctly later radiocarbon date than the dentine in my front teeth.
Over half a thousand people congratulated me on my birthday. Made me feel cherished, like through Facebook and in other ways I'm a small but…
aardvarchaeology | April 3, 2017 I like this illustration. Note the spirals in the woman's hair, repeated in the clouds. Also the hint of post-nookie intimacy suggested by this being *breakfast* tea.
Been helping Jrette study French for a test. Love making up absurd sentences for her to translate. "On my right is Charlemagne. He is wearing Father's pink beret. If you take Father's beret he will not be very nice. But Charlemagne gets to borrow it."
Finally got it. The name of the crowdfunding site IndieGogo references indigo.
Listening to Tubular Bells. Can't get over that Oldfield was 19 when he recorded it.
Updated…