April Pieces Of My Mind #2 [Aardvarchaeology]


  • I keep getting ads for “Game of War”. They seem to be mixed up with ad clips for a game likely to be called “Gratuitous Breasts”.
  • Sw. massiv means “solid, unmixed, not hollow”. Eng. massive is almost exclusively used to mean “big”. For decades I thought this was sloppy / slangy / colloquial. Today I looked it up and learned that though massive can at a pinch mean “solid”, its main dictionary sense is “big”. I’m Swenglish.
  • Travelling an overnighter to give a talk. Bringing no luggage. My presentation is on a USB stick and my entertainment is in my phone. The largest item I’m bringing is a deodorant in my jacket pocket. Love it.
  • Listening to Bill Doss songs I can’t quite tell if I feel sad because he died so young or because it’s so long since I was 25. But then I remind myself that everything in my life is better now than when I was 25, except for the amount of hair on my head.
  • The plane ride from Gothenburg to Stockholm is amazing. Being able to see the whole area around Lake Vättern at the same time. All the lakes and towns of Östergötland.
  • Danish uni jobs. Not only do they refuse to tell you who’s applied. They refuse to tell you who got the job!
  • OK, librarian friends, I’ll come clean. Remember back in the 90s when I was employed to register a bunch of Fornvännen articles in VITALIS, the main Swedish library database for archaeology? Well, I also registered the John Dee translation of the Necronomicon. I’m sorry, I apologise, I was young and stupid. I know now that we aren’t supposed to talk about that particular volume.
  • Two of the largest Swedish domestic airlines are merging. The new company is going to be called “BRA”. Um. Yeah.
  • For decades I couldn’t quite understand why law courts pay any attention to motive. It was my science background. I thought court cases were simply about investigating empirical reality, when more often than not they’re about establishing narrative plausibility.
  • My no. 1 priority when taking a shower is to remove any empty shampoo bottles.
  • It used to be that kids who did really poorly at school despite trying were dismissed as fucking stupid. Today we know that many of them are in fact quite intelligent but suffer from conditions such as dyslexia, dyscalculia or ADD. I was intrigued to learn yesterday, though, that there still remains a considerable percentage of children for whom child psychology has no other label than fucking stupid — sorry, Borderline Intellectual Functioning. They score just slightly on the sunny side of the (arbitrary) IQ cutoff for intellectual disability.
  • Blackbirds singing in all directions. Love love love it!
  • Am I uninterested in rich women because many are so slim? Or am I uninterested in slim women because of class hatred? Or both?
  • Realised today that the job security act will not only keep me from jobs I apply for when clueless employers allow some poorly qualified temp to work just long enough that they get a steady job by default. (This happened to me last week.) The law also ensures that I will eventually get kicked out of my temp gigs unless my employers are clueless. And one of them informed me today that they are not. Academe is not a meritocracy.
  • Buoyed by yet another ridiculously positive course evaluation from the students.
  • A memory. My childhood buddy lived in an old house with old wiring. When using their phone you would hear the ghosts of other phone conversations. Once while waiting for my mom to pick up I suddenly heard quite clearly a tired, mildly annoyed male voice say with a Finnish accent, “No. That pipe belongs to Daddy.”


from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KGJHhH
  • I keep getting ads for “Game of War”. They seem to be mixed up with ad clips for a game likely to be called “Gratuitous Breasts”.
  • Sw. massiv means “solid, unmixed, not hollow”. Eng. massive is almost exclusively used to mean “big”. For decades I thought this was sloppy / slangy / colloquial. Today I looked it up and learned that though massive can at a pinch mean “solid”, its main dictionary sense is “big”. I’m Swenglish.
  • Travelling an overnighter to give a talk. Bringing no luggage. My presentation is on a USB stick and my entertainment is in my phone. The largest item I’m bringing is a deodorant in my jacket pocket. Love it.
  • Listening to Bill Doss songs I can’t quite tell if I feel sad because he died so young or because it’s so long since I was 25. But then I remind myself that everything in my life is better now than when I was 25, except for the amount of hair on my head.
  • The plane ride from Gothenburg to Stockholm is amazing. Being able to see the whole area around Lake Vättern at the same time. All the lakes and towns of Östergötland.
  • Danish uni jobs. Not only do they refuse to tell you who’s applied. They refuse to tell you who got the job!
  • OK, librarian friends, I’ll come clean. Remember back in the 90s when I was employed to register a bunch of Fornvännen articles in VITALIS, the main Swedish library database for archaeology? Well, I also registered the John Dee translation of the Necronomicon. I’m sorry, I apologise, I was young and stupid. I know now that we aren’t supposed to talk about that particular volume.
  • Two of the largest Swedish domestic airlines are merging. The new company is going to be called “BRA”. Um. Yeah.
  • For decades I couldn’t quite understand why law courts pay any attention to motive. It was my science background. I thought court cases were simply about investigating empirical reality, when more often than not they’re about establishing narrative plausibility.
  • My no. 1 priority when taking a shower is to remove any empty shampoo bottles.
  • It used to be that kids who did really poorly at school despite trying were dismissed as fucking stupid. Today we know that many of them are in fact quite intelligent but suffer from conditions such as dyslexia, dyscalculia or ADD. I was intrigued to learn yesterday, though, that there still remains a considerable percentage of children for whom child psychology has no other label than fucking stupid — sorry, Borderline Intellectual Functioning. They score just slightly on the sunny side of the (arbitrary) IQ cutoff for intellectual disability.
  • Blackbirds singing in all directions. Love love love it!
  • Am I uninterested in rich women because many are so slim? Or am I uninterested in slim women because of class hatred? Or both?
  • Realised today that the job security act will not only keep me from jobs I apply for when clueless employers allow some poorly qualified temp to work just long enough that they get a steady job by default. (This happened to me last week.) The law also ensures that I will eventually get kicked out of my temp gigs unless my employers are clueless. And one of them informed me today that they are not. Academe is not a meritocracy.
  • Buoyed by yet another ridiculously positive course evaluation from the students.
  • A memory. My childhood buddy lived in an old house with old wiring. When using their phone you would hear the ghosts of other phone conversations. Once while waiting for my mom to pick up I suddenly heard quite clearly a tired, mildly annoyed male voice say with a Finnish accent, “No. That pipe belongs to Daddy.”


from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KGJHhH

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