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Back In The Saddle Again
I’ve been away from my various desks for almost two months while excavating and then enjoying some time off. Here’s what’s on my plate right now. Saddle. I mean my saddle, in which I’m back. Landscape...
View ArticleOdd Gender Pattern At Maths Olympiad
Cousin E pointed out something odd about the International Mathematical Olympiad. It’s an annual competition for high school students. And girls do super poorly in it. We ran some stats on the data for...
View ArticleMechanisms Of Urban Decay
Downtown Kavalla’s mix of well-kept properties and hopeless ruins confuses me. I’ve seen similar in the Baltic States, but there it has to do with uncertainty about the ownership after the Soviet...
View ArticleMy Ancestry
Inspired by Karin Bojs’s and Peter Sjölund’s recent book Svenskarna och deras fäder, I’ve looked into my ancestry by means both genetic and genealogical. Here’s a few highlights. Like most...
View ArticleAnticipation
14 months of no teaching gigs and several bad professional disappointments have brought me down a bit. So I checked my calendar for things to look forward to in the coming months. April. War games...
View ArticleSwedish Academia Is No Meritocracy
After almost 14 mostly dismal years on the academic job market, I find it a consolation to read an opinion piece in Times Higher Education under the headline “Swedish Academia Is No Meritocracy“. In my...
View ArticleAcademic Recruitment in Sweden is a Mess
Academic recruitment procedures in Sweden are a mess. There are at least four strong contradictory forces that impact them. Meritocracy. As Head of Department you are legally obliged to find and employ...
View ArticleYeah, Screw You Too, Academia
I recently received a long-awaited verdict on an official complaint I had filed: there was in fact nothing formally wrong with the decision by the Dept of Historical Studies in Gothenburg to hire Zeppo...
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I’m @sweden This Week On Twitter
The Swedish Institute is, according to Wikipedia, a Government agency in Sweden with the responsibility to spread information about Sweden outside the country. One way the organisation does this is the...
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What Motivates People To Start Boring Businesses?
Why? I wonder what motivates people to start companies that make or provide boring stuff. What causes a person to devote decades of their life to an organisation that manufactures soap or installs...
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