Five Good Podcasts
I love listening to podcasts during housework, commuting and travelling. I use the Podkicker app on my Android phone. Some of my current favourites are put out by the old media: NPR, CBC and BBC. But...
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Podcasts I Pay For
Part of my subscriptions list in Podkicker I give these podcasts $5-8 monthly. Only the HPLLP has a pay wall. The Drabblecast — Norm Sherman produces strange stories by strange authors for strange...
View ArticleElsevier Spams Journal Contributors With Offer Of Language Revision
A few months ago I registered on Elsevier’s clunky old on-line manuscript submissions site and submitted a paper to Journal of Archaeological Science. It got turned down because the two peer reviewers...
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Think Before You Drop-Shadow
No chair could cast a shadow like this Many graphic designers like to cut out objects from photographs and give them a digital drop shadow on the page. Here’s an example of why this is often a bad...
View ArticleKarate In A Hijab
Here’s an interesting case regarding Muslim women’s veils. They’re instruments or symbols of patriarchal repression, right? Well, check this out. Dania Mahmudi is from my area, Fisksätra. She’s 14...
View ArticleUniversity Degrees that Lead to Jobs in Sweden
Five years ago I blogged about a study by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, identifying the higher education degrees that were likely to give you the best chances of a Swedish job in...
View ArticleFestival Pregnancy
After my first marriage I briefly dated a stoner girl. She was sweet and mild-mannered, her conversation laggy. There was a sleepy micro-pause before each of her replies. She’d spent four years on...
View ArticleGun Stash Suddenly Unavailable
A colleague of mine has left contract archaeology to work for the police as a civil utredare, that is, someone with a university degree who works on crime cases despite not being a policeperson. He...
View ArticleSatnavs and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
One of the best pieces of economic advice I know is ”Don’t throw good money after bad”. Or in other words, when you consider whether you should continue to invest in a project, don’t let the sum you’ve...
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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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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...
View ArticleArchaeologist, editor, teacher, writer, speaker seeking work
I’m seeking employment. Do you need an experienced archaeologist, editor, teacher, writer, and/or speaker? Check my LinkedIn profile and drop me a line! Now move on to my latest blog entry just below.
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