Damn those kids!

The only-begotten daughter's theatre class gave a play they had written themselves. I have attended these shows for many years from the first embarrassing recitals consisting mostly of muffed lines and exits in the wrong direction, but they have learned. Oh, how they have learned… Within an hour they had me fighting the tears.

The play consisted of short scenes from a theatre school—work, breaks, joy and sorrow; the students' lives off-stage and the scenes they rehearsed subtly reflecting each other. The girl who so full of hope had auditioned reciting “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day” was killed in the final scene and when her friend, holding her body, read the sonnet over her I was this close to losing it completely. Afterwards, the daughter got a bit embarrassed when she noticed how moved I was.

Spam, spam, spam, spam!

Every now and then spam letters achieve a certain level of amusement, especially when they pretend to be sent exclusively to you, yet blatantly give away their mass-mailing origin. So for example this charming effusion, sent to the company's support mailing list:

Hi to you

I can imagine that you will wonder to get today the letter from unknown, but pretty woman from such far country like Ukraine. As for me I could not yet believe that I write to foreign man whom I don't know, but whom I do want. The reason of my letter is very simple: I want to find my love, my soul mate, that is why I am here. I decided to try to find love with you. I feel with all fibres of my soul that you are descent man and your heart is kind and is able to love. You may ask me how I know. I will tell you that I have well-developed intuition and my intuition chose you among thousands. and I want you to become the One...
I ask you not to ignore my letter and not to throw it to the rubbish bin. Read it, please, as attentively as you can. I am as serious as i have never been.
I am fed up to be lonely and to feel jelous if I see loving couples.
I want to scream, I want to cry, but I doing nothing I won't change situation.
If love don't come to me, I want to invite love to come into my heart.
And that is why I need to find my soul mate.
If you agree to help me to find love, become my soul mate -write me, I will wait http://loveandonly.com/happiness

Waiting for your mail

Olya P

Going home

We had a good meeting and then took our farewells, the hotel staff located the sunglasses I had mislaid and then I walked down to Brussel Zuid. It wasn't as hot as the day before and it was a nice walk. On the way I passed a beggar who had decided to do his begging with style—he was royally seated in a large red upholstered chair and kept up a constant patter in Bruxellois at the passers-by. Not being able to make my mind up about food on the way there, I ended up with a pizza on the station.

The THALYS to Cologne was on time and so was the connecting night train. On this leg I did not get the compartment to myself but had to share it with a kindly Danish gentleman. I found that the top bunk actually was easier to sleep in as my legs could stick out over the end. The Danish gentleman solved his sleeping problems by drinking himself into a stupor. Or, at least he had a beer before he turned in.

In the middle of the night I woke up from the distinct smell of tobacco smoke, apparently someone nearby was smoking in flagrant breach of all rules, but I couldn't really do anything about it, except try to crank up the air conditioning, which didn't necessarily help. The car attendant also smelled it but couldn't pinpoint the source.

I had worried that I would be deposited in Odense as on the way down, but we did get all the way to Copenhagen. Quick transfer to the Malmö train and from there to Stockholm. For some reason I couldn't reach the wireless net on the train, so I had to make do without on the way up. I think my laptop is slowly giving up.

Hot and bothered

I get to Copenhagen in good time, snag a sort of dinner and then try to find the night train to Cologne. Nothing on the screens. Info desk tells it will arrive at track 7, just go there. There's a local train there—will my train come in just after it? But why isn't it announced on the screens? Possibly the tannoy calls may say something, but the sound reproduction qualities are such that I find it impossible to understand them even when they (presumably) are not in Danish. In addition, shouldn't there be more people milling around, waiting for the night train? I am struck by a thought and ask a nearby railway employee—apparently I am supposed to get on this train and go to Odense, where the night train will pick up its passengers. No explanation of why this is or how this was supposed to have been communicated to the passengers. I jump on at the last minute, rather miffed, I had looked forward to a quiet compartment of my own by now rather than a crowded car (seemingly) full of children in high spirits. Then comes the announcement that we will soon be arriving in Odense and passengers with Eurocity so-and-so should change here—given in Danish only. Still, even the Portuguese-speaking ladies get the message, since everybody start taking down their luggage from the overhead racks and preparing for disembarkment.

In Odense we wait uncertainly for a few minutes before the train arrives and I can finally get my quiet compartment. I feel tired and decide to retire immediately. As mentioned before, folding out the beds requires a special key that the car attendant has, but I study the construction and a couple of seconds of work with the Swiss army knife brings down the bed. Several hours later the attendant comes to fold out my bed and is surprised and embarrassed to find me in bed already.

Though not quite asleep. Advertisers like to write how night trains gently rock one to sleep so that one arrives fresh and ready for a new day at one's destination. The truth in my experience is that one is rudely shook about all night in a bunk that's really too short for comfort and then one has to get up before dawn to be deposited in a city where nothing is open yet.

At least there are showers on these trains to freshen you up, but somebody seems to have fallen asleep in the shower compartment; after watching the red light for twenty minutes I give up.

Cologne. Quick change to the Thalys for Brussels. The Ardennes are as pretty as ever, I'll have to go there some day. In Brussels the train makes a stop at Brussel Noord and we are told that those who wish can get off there. I decide it will make a change from Bruxelles Midi, so I hop off. I exit the station to find I apparently have ended up in the/a red light district—there is a shopping window with a couple of half-naked ladies half-heartedly wiggling about right in front of me. At nine in the morning? Well, it's of course good if the ladies get to keep office hours…

I instead turn right and quite unexpectedly find myself in the Botanical Gardens. I've always been fond of botanical gardens and this is a nice oasis in Brussels—or would be if there wasn't a major throughfare and several construction sites next to it supplying a deafening noise to the park.

The day soon turns quite hot as I meander through the streets, a cool museum would be just the thing. I take aim at the Musée de l'air, walking through a sweltering Parc du Cinquantenaire, but am sadly disappointed: the museum is closed on Mondays. Even worse, across the court yard I see the posters for a Franquin exhibition, that closed the day before… This is the final straw, I trudge up to my hotel and have a cool shower.

In the evening dinner with the people I'm meeting. Yeah, it's all engineers, we all withdraw to our rooms by 21. I try the TV and get a scandal story about the mismanagement of Her Majesty's Prison Rye Hill. I wonder a bit if the main problem is that it run by a private company, or that it has to be run on such a low budget that nobody could do it right.

And then the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech. There is probably a lot to be said about that, but that will have to wait until we know what actually happened…

I feel holier than him

Meteorologist Pär Holmgren has done his best to raise consciousness about global warming in Sweden, but in a recent interview in Dagens Nyheter he reveals that his environmental conscience does not stretch as far as taking the twenty hours one-way to take the train to Brussels. He flies.

I, on the other hand, sit on the X2000 southwards. I have web connectivity and prepare material for a guest lecture next week. It is indeed considerably more expensive to go by train, but an Interrail card takes a bit of the edge off the pain. The tab will be picked up by the European taxpayers anyway, so it's not that much of a personal sacrifice for me—except for the teenage girl in the seat behind me who has been continuously speaking on her mobile since Stockholm. Apparently the reception is bad, because every second word she says is “What?”. sigh

Tomorrow I'll have most of a day free in Brussels and the weather seems fair. Updates as events warrant.

Translation of the week

From the January/February issue of Avions:
“Phoney war” = « Guerre du Téléphone »

Rather disappointing

Art Garfunkel's previous album, Everything Waits To Be Noticed was interesting in many respects—Art was openly writing lyrics and music and indeed produced some touching, not to say occasionally haunting, pieces, sung together with, the perhaps somewhat anonymous, Maia Mondlock and Buddy Sharp, creating a record that definitely is among his best. (I'm not that much of a Jimmy Webb fan anyway.)

After that his latest, Some Enchanted Evening, is a letdown. It is a collection of ear candy, beautifully sung to be sure, but it blazes no new trails. Come on, you've shown that you can do better!

A Day in the Life

The only-begotten son has an essay on biological warfare due for the next morning, but the printer is acting up. We fiddle with things and as such things tend to go, we have to install new software and then I feel the need to dispense some professional advice on the formatting of literature references and of course we have to look up some interesting pathogens in the Tree of Life and… What's that smell of burning? Aaacckk! The pie! It is well on its way to briquettehood when I pull it out of the oven.

Fortunately there are enough leftovers from Easter for us to be able to improvise dinner anyway.

Truth in advertising (cont)

University applications are to be sent in this week and various institutions advertise to attract students. So does KTH:

Kan du bli nobelpristagare,
toppchef eller helt
vanlig astronaut?

Now, I wouldn't trade my degrees from KTH for anything, but to be honest, no KTH graduate has ever received a Nobel prize.

Uppsala University seems to be the place to go to if you are hankering for a Nobel Prize.

Foresight

All the time we make predictions of the future, many of these never come true and we forget them (until somebody points out what an idiot we were for not signing up Astrid Lindgren or the Beatles). But if you make sufficiently many predictions, some of them will of course come true, and some of these uncannily so.

I've always been struck by how similar to Ronald Reagan president Prexy in John Brunner's The Sheep Look up was, long before Reagan's ascendancy to the presidency. But even more startlingly prophetic is The Onion's satire of George W Bush, just after the 2000 elections: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.

If it's printed, it must be true

When I last went to Burger King, the tray liner said: ”99,999999999999999999999999999999999999999% nötkött är inte tillräckligt”. From this we understand that allowed contamination is less than 1 part in 10³⁹. Sooo, for a 100 g burger patty, anything not beef must weigh less than 10^-40 kg. This is less than 1/10000 the mass of the electron neutrino. Conversely, we can accept the contamination by a single water molecule of non-beef origin in a hamburger the size of Kebnekaise.

I'd really like to see the cleanrooms where they make the Whoppers…

Ow, I've been infected!

Martin R has tagged me with explaining why I started to blog.

It was simply because I came up with the name. Everybody else seemed to be blogging and I thought: “If I had a blog I'd call it ‘Pointless Anecdotes’.” I mentioned this to my friend Mats Li and he immediately responded that if I wrote a blog, he'd read it. (Are you there, Mats?)

Then, I saw Martin's Salto Sobrius in its original black splendour and realised that that was how I wanted my blog to look and getting a Blogger account was rapidly done. With time both Martin and I went for a design that was easier on the eye, but I still retain a lot of elements he came up with and I thought were cool. The English was not directly inspired by Martin, but there for the same reason: I try to include my non-Swedish-speaking friends, though I reserve the right to occasionally do bits in any other languages that strike my fancy.

I will not explicitly tag anyone else, but if you feel infected and write something, leave a link in the comments.

Dysthemic, that's what I am

Almost invariably when somebody sends me something with the comment that it is “food for thought&rdquo, my reaction tends to be “it's actually crap already”.

I'm not quite sure what to think about this extract from Barbara Ehrenreich's book Dancing in the Streets, discussing how depression has become increasingly more prevalent in the Western world since the 16th Century. It is definitely in the food-for-thought category, but is it nutricious? I'm not convinced that the reason people are depressed is that they don't party enough, but the discussion about the creation of the individual and how this allows oneself to get depressed is interesting. But what says that an entire group couldn't be depressed?

Oh carp!

Cognitive Daily notes that most researchers don't understand error bars and reading through the explanation I see that apparently I haven't either, specifically my lic thesis does incorrect analyses of statistical significances at some points. Well, the results I presented were so vague anyway, so I don't think this particular gaffe makes much of a difference…

Finite Simple Group of Order Two

Songs like this always make me happy.

Finished model 2007-III

HMS Victory, Royal Navy. Model from Airfix, scale 1/600, donated by my daughter. It has been suggested that two different people made the port and starboard halves of the moulds for this model; I think it was the same person, just before handing in his resignation. Definitely the moulds can be recycled with no loss.

Hos optikern

– Goddag, jag vill köpa ett par glosögon, jag ska läsa franska. Och så vill jag ha röstfria skälmar, så jag inte blir störd.

After the party

Ten years ago. It's after the party and I'm standing on the rocky shore of Maui. Night has fallen and I can't see if the little crabs that scuttle around the rocks in daytime are still there or not. I listen to the Pacific rolling in in a slow pulse. (All week I have waged a battle beyond visual range with the person cleaning my hotel room—every night when I return I turn off the air-conditioner and open the window to let the soft warm air in and hear the waves, every day when I'm out she closes the window and turns on the air-conditioner.)

I'm standing there alone, listening to the waves, looking at the stars. The crescent moon is lying at an unaccustomed angle, apparently the Earth is round. Through the night sky a set of blinking lights: a 747 on its way to Japan, too far away to be heard. On board passengers will be trying to sleep uncomfortably in their seats, cabin crew dozing or doing the neverending chores in the pentry, flight crew monitoring the plane as it flies itself, alone in the night, high above the seemingly endless ocean. I and the plane, both alone. And the stars; one day we will go there, our lights bravely blinking in the infinity.

The next day, simulations and demonstrations: the ground water is being used up faster than it is replenished, all the Hawai‘i islands will become uninhabitable within a few generations. Indigenous species only remain on the highest peaks, where they risk extinction every day. Tourists are physically eroding the islands, we are entreated not to take away any rocks. Yet I take home the dried-up exoskeleton of one of the little scuttling crabs, telling my conscience it isn't actually a rock.

Ten years later. Perhaps the party isn't quite over yet, but the catering staff have started to carry the dishes away. For those of us who were invited to the party, that is. Most people have not been allowed to go the other end of the Earth and watch the Moon from strange angles. Probably that will be the fate for all of us now. It is unlikely that humanity will die out outright, but the great expenditures of energy will be over, the time of great physical projects is gone, humanity will have to retreat, scrimp and save.

And there will never be blinking lights sailing away into infinity.

A new blog

John Bowers has started his own blog, Suborderly, with a link to his Flickr photopages. In the first posts you will find a poignant and sad reminiscence of a childhood friend of his who died doing cold fusion research.

Alas, computer science offers few opportunities for sudden and glorious death.

Worth his prize

I've come to feel increasing respect for Jimmy Carter even though he didn't make that great an impression on me at the time. “JB” sums it up:

And the reality is also that Carter took the proper course of action with the [Iran] hostages because all of them came home alive -- which would certainly never have occurred had Bush been in office at the time. He would have bombed the country and the hostages would have been killed. But Americans would have loved it because they love action -- especially aggressive action.

Asteroids!

I've written about asteroid deflection. Others also think about it.

The importance of Lego for animators

What would filmmakers do without Star Wars Lego?

Clearly not this video.

The first griffons of spring

Rare sighting: A pair of Gripen flying southwards over Stockholm at high speed and with considerable noise.

When the invisible hand cannot be seen

This is really a human tragedy, but I will for a few moments go abstractly economic.

In India (and in many other parts of Asia) female children are considered only as a liability, as one will have to pay a dowry to get them married and will not have any perceived benefit from them once they are married. Yet married they have to be. So, in order to improve family finances, female fœtuses are being aborted and grown women killed to the point that there is a serious skewing of the (numerical) gender balance in India. Now, according to the laws of demand and supply that I were taught in high school, this should mean that women as going down in supply would appreciate and thus be more appreciated, but the opposite seems to be the case. So when parents attempt to pay smaller dowries or not at all, the men instead kill off their wives so they can remarry and get more dowry (doughry?).

This is an example of non-linear economics: the underlying traditions and assumptions about the value of women are stronger than (what used to be considered) economic logic. We can see similar examples in South Africa where funerals traditionally are very opulent affairs that have important social functions. However, with the current AIDS epidemic funerals happen so frequently that families do not manage to recover economically between them.

I'd like to draw a parallel to, say, the Western economic disaster of relying on endless growth of the population and the economy, where however, the consequences have always managed to be pushed far enough beyond the horizon that the connection can denied.

And how will India fare? My imagination is not quite sufficient to visualise a future India bereft of women, starting acquisition raids over the border of Pakistan (or all the way to Sabina). Indeed many things can be done. From the standpoint of women, supporting education and financing for women so that they do not necessarily have to marry to support themselves; from the standpoint of their parents, social security would lessen the need for parents to rely on their children (sons) for old age support. Married high-status men, however, may not necessarily see any benefits in a change of the status quo and are also the ones in the best position to block any reforms. So, can the rest of us use soft power to affect Indian traditions and opinions? Maybe. Where should we start?

Politician vs Industrialist

In a short article in Dagens Nyheter today Norwegian conservative minister Ansgar Gabrielsen comes out as insightful and foresightful: Twenty years ago was raised the issue of the lack of women on company boards. The industry promised that things would sort themselves out within ten years. Nothing happened. So, the minister, in spite of being conservative and thus presumably all for letting companies self-regulate as much as possible, took the consequences of that and successfully forced through quota legislation, to the benefit of everyone.

In opposition to that we have in an article on the next page Håkan Eriksson, spokesman for the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise who blithely says that things will sort themselves out within 15–20 years. Apparently what he has learned from the Norwegian example is to give a date far enough into the future that he will have retired if and when any Swedish minister decides to follow up the promises. (Not that that is likely to happen.)

I'd be happy to hear if anyone knows of a case where industry has promised to self-regulate and this actually has happened. Ever.

Mixing with the upper class

As I've indicated before I consider myself to have a working class background (even if I never actually did live in a cardboard box in the middle of a road), but my university education has catapulted me into reluctant touch with the upper crust.

Take today, for example. It was the occasion of the annual meeting of the Friends of the Vasa, beginning with dinner. I was a bit late from work so when I arrived everybody else was already sitting and eating. It seemed the only seat left was at a smaller table with some people so I just sat down there and tore into the food. While eating I listened to the conversation around me and realised with increasing embarrassment that I had just plopped down next to the society's chairman, Admiral So-and-so, and the rest around the table were his relatives; they'd wave at passing millionaires and discuss how difficult it was to get in touch with their friends now that they were ministers. But the peak of embarrassment came when one of the ladies recognised me and realised I was the father of her best friend's grandchildren—I was family too and greeted into the fold!

How will I ever live this down?

Is it an insult?

One would imagine that Svensk Fastighetsförmedling would be able to broker their own premises, but the task went to another company. All concerned probably think there is a good reason for it.

Research can be anything!

When I once got involved with Young Scientists, someone expounded on how you could turn anything into research—the method is everything! Some who have taken this to heart are the people behind My Science Project. They look into questions that most of us would just idly speculate about and instead carefully find out exactly what you have to do to nail jelly to a wall, how to keep cut flowers fresh with Viagra, and whether Dick Cheney probably told the truth about his shooting accident.

My god, it's full of CARs!

I laughed myself silly at this installment of xkcd:

Finished model 2007-II

Fokker Dr I 474/17 from Jagdstaffel 2, ca 1917. Model from Revell, scale 1/100, donated by Björn B, decals by Al Superczynski. It was completely impossible to get the wings to go on straight and I need to practice more on the Fokker dope streaks, but I like the colour scheme.

Finished model 2007-I

Northrop F-20 Tigershark GG1001 in factory demonstrator colours, 1982. Model from Airfix, scale 1/144, decals by Al Superczynski. There is apparently an Arii kit of the Tigershark in 1/144, I would urge anyone to use that instead of the Airfix horror. Other than that I really like the colour scheme, though it's a pain to get on in this scale. I have duplicate decals if anybody wants to try their hand.

Song meme

A tag from Thnidu: Find five songs whose titles begin with “K” and put them on your blog. I have gracious permission to stray from English lyrics (not that I hadn't intended to anyway :-). On the other hand I will supply translations (not singable ones, however, that's for another day).

---

Kaikki häipyy, on vain nyt
Eppu Normaali

Lapsuuteni kesät sumuun vajonneet,
palasiksi muistojeni läjään hajonneet.
Palapelin kokosin paksuin rukkasin,
ihmetellen minne kaikki palat hukkasin.
En unta saanut ja näin… jäin miettimään…

Kaiken minkä muistan aika kutistaa,
mä sitä pelkään, sua tahdon rutistaa.
Kuullut olen ikuisuuteen kaiken piirtyvän,
ja kaiken suhteen, kaiken siirtyvän.

Niinkuin kuuluu asiaan kaikki tähdet,
kuu ja kaikki muu, aikakin.
Niin myös aikanaan sinä lähdet,
pois häipyy taikakin,
siksi rakastan sua nyt.

Oli mielessäni elämäni kuolemattomuus,
puun takaa mulle nauroi ikuisuus.
Ei huomista, ei eilistä,
vain tämän hetken voi nähdä peilistä.

Niinkuin kuuluu asiaan…

Valovuosiensa takaa tähdet vilkkuen,
unelmille ihmisen hiljaa ilkkuen.
Tiedänhän että pieni oon,
kun siltä tuntuu mahdun hyvin kainaloon.

Niinkuin kuuluu asiaan…

Aamu sarastaa,
öiset hetket varastaa,
meidät valo hukuttaa,
meidät nukuttaa…

The summers of my childhood have foundered in fog,
my memories broken into pieces in a pile.
I assembled the puzzle with mittens,
wondering where I'd dropped the pieces.
I couldn't sleep…so I stayed up thinking…

Everything I remember is diminished by time,
I fear that and want to hold you.
I have belonged to all eternity,
and all relations, everything moving.

As must be, all stars,
the moon and everything else, even time.
Like them you will leave,
even magic will disappear, that's why I love you now.

I had in mind my immortality,
eternity laughed at me behind a tree.
No tomorrow, no yesterday,
just this moment in the mirror.

As it must be.

Winking stars lightyears away,
silently mocking human dreams.
I know I am little,
feeling like that I fit in your armpit.

As it must be.

Dawn rises,
steals the moments of night,
light drowns us,
puts us to sleep…

Eppu Normaali (“Abby Normal”) started out as a punk band in the 1970s, but have now mellowed considerably. Their lyrics on the other hand have always been playful, creatively rhymed and often satirising contemporary Finland.

---

Kaipaan kahta sanaa
Toivo Kärki

Paljon pyytää, paljon kaipaa ihminen, tiedän hyvin sen.
Saavuit kerran niinkuin uni kauniimman. Miksi saavuitkaan?
Mutta tuskin itse arvanneet miksi mua ymmärtänyt et.

En soimaa enkä kiitä kun lähdit sinä pois.
Ei tuhat sanaa riitä jos kaksi tarpeen ois.
Tuhat sanaa kuulla sain, kahta sanaa kaipaan vain.
Sä lausunut et niitä, et sanonut "Sua rakastan".

Katseesi toi mieleen helikuutamon – kylmä sekin on.
Silmiesi loisto niinkuin timantit, turhaan odotin.

Kauniit kylmät sanat multa ei, siksi tieni pois sun luotas' vei.

En soimaa enkä kiitä kun lähdit sinä pois.
Ei tuhat sanaa riitä jos kaksi tarpeen ois.
Tuhat sanaa kuulla sain, kahta sanaa kaipaan vain.
Sä lausunut et niitä, et sanonut "Sua rakastan".

Man asks for much and longs for much, that I know well.
You came like the most beautiful dream. Why did you come?
But you did not understand why you did not understand me.

I don't blame you, I don't thank you for leaving.
A thousand words are not enough when two are needed.
I was told a thousand words, I just want two.
You never spoke them, you didn't say "[I] love you".

Your gaze is like the full moon, just as cold.
Your eyes shine like diamonds, and I waited in vain.

No beautiful cold words from me, that's why I left you.

I don't blame you…

The late Toivo Kärki is one of the foremost Finnish tango composers. Note that since Finnish is a “pro-drop” language, it only takes two words to say “I love you”.

---

Karin hos mig
THS datatekniksektion

Jag blev kär i Karin idag, hon sprider värme och välbehag.
Det låter väldigt underligt, hon är inte någon tjej.

Hon kan hålla i en telefon, hon har en syster en halvmeter ifrån.
Syrran är inte lika bra, men med övning ger det sig.

Åh, jag måste ha retat brudarna när jag föll för dig!
För ända sen den dag de for, har jag Karin kvar hos mig.
Karin Knytnäve gör mig lycklig, hon är het och trång!

Och sen min flicka försvann har Karin och jag hålligång.
Åh, jag minns hur det brukar va', man jagar flickor varje da'
och i sängkammar'n vi gjorde vad andra människor gör
men Karin hon är bra och trogen tills jag dör.
Hon blir bara bättre…

Flickor har jag nästan glömt bort
för mot Karin står de sig kort.
För ända sen den dag de for, har jag Karin kvar hos mig.
Åh, jag måste ha retat brudarna när jag föll för dig!
För ända sen den dag de for, har jag Karin kvar hos mig.

Det låter väldigt underligt, men jag behöver ingen tjej.
Och mer lär det bli
när jag på syrran har fått pli,
för från den dagen min bror
har jag båda kvar hos mig.

I fell in love with Rosie today. She gives me warmth and pleasure.
It sounds very strange, she is not a girl.

She can hold a phone and has a sister half a metre away.
The sis isn't quite as good, but practice makes perfect.

Oh, I must have annoyed the girls when I fell for you!
For since they left I have Rosie still with me.
Rosie Palm makes me happy, she is hot and tight!

Since my girl left me, Rosie and I have kept at it.
Oh, I remember how it is, you chase girls every day
and then you do like other people in the bedroom.
But Rosie is good and is faithful to my death.
She keeps getting better…

I have almost forgotten about girls,
they can't stand up to Rosie.
For since they left I have Rosie still with me.
Oh, I must have annoyed the girls when I fell for you!
For since they left I have Rosie still with me.

It sounds very strange, but I don't need a girl.
And it will get better once I get her sister in shape,
for then, bro, I'll have both with me.

Ahem, a song from the traditional December 1st Singing contest (Sångartäflan) among the students at the Royal Institute of Technology.

---

Kathy's Song
Paul Simon

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day

And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

Well, I don't really need to say anything more here, do I?

---

Kom och killa mej på ryggen
Robert Broberg

Kom och killa mej på ryggen
det är så underbart
när du killar mej på ryggen
åh, så rart vi har´t
Dina fingertoppar – toppar allt!
När du killa mej på – vadå?
När du killar mej på
Måndag, Tisdag, Onsdag, Torsdag,
Fredag, Lördag, Söndag
hela veckan lång!

när dina fingrar, fingrar, fingrar
fingrar på min kropp
är det mer än håret i nacken
som reser sej opp!

Kom och killa mej på ryggen

Come scratch my back,
it's so wonderful
when you scratch my back,
we have a good time.

Your fingertips beat everything
when you beat my—what?
When you scratch me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
all week long!

When your fingers finger finger
finger me
you make more than my neckhair rise!

Come scratch my back!

Robert Broberg, actor, painter, musician, word trickster. It's hopeless to translate his triple entendres…

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Consider my mind officially blown

Please watch the video made by Amanda Baggs shown at Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth and have all your preconceptions of autism kicked out from under you. I feel like having walked through a Philip K Dick novel.

Thanks to Thnidu for the link.

Retro Fits

Behind the University Village Shopping Center in Seattle is a park-like area. I asked what it was and got the explanation that it was a cemetery. “It's really old, it's from the 1930s.” I responded with a look of European condescension, and didn't even have to say out loud that my home church is early 13th Century for my interlocutor to be suitably chastened.

On the other hand, the church is the oldest still extant building in Huddinge and may well have been the only stone building at the time, so when I go to places like Italy I feel much like my US landlord—here there are not just scattered remains of mediæval ceremonial buildings, but entire towns of 700-year-old houses that people still live in.

Of course, you can't go through that much history and keep the building in original shape. Apart from repairs, you also need to adjust the house to new needs, expand it for the kids, connect to the house next over that you just bought cheaply, put in fancy new plumbing and so on.

But, what struck me during a visit to Florence was that so many, if not all, of these modifications seem to have been made without any effort whatsoever to hide the work. I decided to make a collection of Unhidden Tuscan Modifications, and here it is:

Whether because the church couldn't afford stained-glass windows or because the carts in the streets kept breaking them, but the openings are now bricked up.

Santa Croce. The monastery needed a vault, so they just bricked up the windows and stuck in an arch.

Santa Croce. Interesting that giving Galileo a monument was more important than retaining the religious painting, but maybe the Church was feeling penitent.

Piazza Santa Croce. So what if the façade is ancient and protected, you can still stick a modern building on top of it.

The tower is 13th Century, the buildings enveloping it much more recent.

Near Piazza del Duomo. I find it hard to unwrap exactly how many layers of rebuildings (I hesitate to call them renovations) there are in this house. Of course, an expert could tell just from the shape of the bricks at which exact times the rebuildings have taken place.

Palazzo Vecchio. There are at least three layers of rebuildings of this part of the wall, the outside of the great hall of the Signoria.

Palazzo Vecchio. An entire new building has been attached, so the windows on that side have to be bricked up, but then we need a new window, and a new door to get to the new balcony.

Palazzo Vecchio. So for some reason yet another window had to be bricked up, but the frame was too pretty not to keep. And of course, then the little plain square frame also must be allowed to remain.

Palazzo Vecchio. Which windows get bricked up and which not seems a bit random sometimes.

Palazzo Vecchio. One would think that when you put a new house next to an existing one that you somehow try to take that into account, but these seem as if they had been prefabricated somewhere else and then scrunched together as closely as they can be made to fit, and then a bit.

Ponte Vecchio. OK, let's just slap on an extra level on this house, on a bridge, over the river.

Churches in Sweden are always well separated from any other buildings, surrounded by a church yard for additional space. They are clearly not a part of daily life. Italian churches on the other hand are mostly right there with all the other buildings in the block, or even, as here, with the nearby houses squeezing so close they bulge out on the church roof.

Still the Arno, but now in Pisa. The arches seem out of proportion with the rest of the building, one wonders if they are just decorations, but they are not matched up with the windows either.

More Pisan arches. My grandmother's house had an unpainted spot on the wall right under the roof, because there wasn't a ladder tall enough to reach up there. These arches seem unfinished in the same way.

Here it is clear that the arches are not just artefacts of painting, but real structures that have had windows knocked out of them—however that has been done without fatally affecting the structural integrity of the wall.

Heroic

It's 260 K and there are fresh bicycle tracks in the snow.

In the top 10%

Tree sluggers

I read in Nice Matin about « les antibois » and was for a moment confused by these people who were opposed to wood, until I realised it simply referred to the inhabitants of Antibes.

Clearly, I've earned the right not to believe in it

You know the Bible 100%!

 

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz

Via Pharyngula.

Double-deckers are in, smokers are out

Having managed to go by train to Brussels, it was time for the test of manhood: the thirty hour train-ride from Stockholm to Sophia Antipolis for a week of standardization work. As I couldn't reasonably pack clothes for a week in my backpack, this time I pulled along the cabin bag. It doesn't roll very well on snow…

The journey started on a Saturday with the usual 12:20 train from Stockholm C towards Malmö. X 2000—wireless Internet and power plugs by every seat. I crammed as much preparatory material as I could and jotted down comments and questions.

In Malmö I grabbed a quick sandwich and changed to a regional train to Copenhagen. In the train I found a DSB inflight magazine (or whatever the train equivalent is called) and I impressed myself by working out most of the crossword puzzle, in Danish. (The bit that stumped me was in which city Frasier lives. Seattle, it turns out.)

When I entered the main hall at Copenhagen H I just stopped at the top of the escalator and stared. There were large signs up saying that since a few days earlier smoking was prohibited in the main hall. In Denmark! Seriously I had thought this would be the last bastion of bastards, but no, they too have succumbed to civilization. Admittedly not all present had quite grasped the concept yet, but the difference to my previous visit was clear as day. On the other hand it was bleeding cold in the hall, all open to the outside and no heating, I gather. I bought a few postcards to send to neglected friends.

Well, with time (and on time! quite unusual for DB) arrived my next train, a sleeper bound for Cologne. I had a berth in one of those double-decker sleeper cars and even had the compartment all to myself. To my annoyance the shaving power outlet in the compartment didn't actually have any power, so I forewent the laptop and instead spent my time reading some paper-based articles. Soon, though, I folded out the berth and tried to sleep while the train juddered through Germany. In the morning I arrived, breakfasted and showered, in Cologne, posted my postcards, got some new ones and caught the Thalys train for Paris. No power here either, so I read some more papers.

At Gare du Nord I was confused about how to proceed until I figured out that the unobtrusive boxes by the walls were ticket machines and thus managed to get into the Metro part of the station and after a bit of trial and error got to the right platform. (I'm not sure what the problem was, but I found it difficult to work out what trains went where.) To my great surprise they were running double-decker trains underground. I caught one of these the two stops to Gare de Lyon. I had plenty of time before the next train, so I had lunch at the station restaurant and then wandered about the scores of shops in the station, trying to find one that sold stamps. None did.

Eventually I proceeded to the southbound TGV train. Oh, a double-decker again. However, I ended up on the lower level and by the aisle, so I had restricted outside vision. And no power for the laptop. I read about compiler theory and snoozed while the train zoomed by the edges of Massif Central. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground and fir forests. For some reason this surprised me, I don't know why I didn't expect fir trees in France.

Towards sundown we reached the Mediterranean by Marseille, but continued eastwards without stopping there. Finally we stopped in Antibes and I got off. Should I eat or proceed to the hotel first? I knew that the hotel did not serve dinner, so I checked out a café near the station. It looked too smoky for my tastes, so I decided to find a taxi instead. The taxis of the town seemed to be elsewhere, but eventually one turned up and off we drove up into the hills beyond Antibes. In my hotel I was greeted by a porter looking and behaving much like John Le Mesurier. I was immediately identified, which was rather gratifying, but later on I found there weren't very many staying at the hotel, so it was no problem to figure out who I was. It must have been the off-season, as the hotel turned out to be better than its two stars would suggest.

I got a very thorough and actually quite useful introduction to the hotel and the area. In particular, for dinner I was directed to Restaurant La Table in another hotel nearby, carefully marked out on a map. (A photocopied sketch, to be precise, there does not actually seem to be a map of Sophia Antipolis as such, indeed you will not find it on many maps at all. I believe it is not a geographical region as such, but simply the group of high-tech organisations located in the municipalities of Valbonne, Mougins, Biot, Vallauris and Antibes.)

I walked along the unlit roads (at least they had pavements) to the restaurant some ten minutes away and then had to spend ten more minutes figuring out how to enter the carefully fenced-off hotel area. Finally I got the gate to magically roll open. The restaurant was well-lit and had a non-smoking section that actually seemed to be smoke-free. The waitress looked very much like an ex-colleague of mine. I wonder why I saw so many lookalikes all of a sudden, perhaps the modeller at the company producing my life is running out of face ideas. The food was good but the dessert to die for. The French, they do know their desserts.

The next morning, breakfast with croissants, yey! And the breakfast area is non-smoking, double-yey! Then I read the local paper, Nice Matin. Much excitement in France, beginning February 1st, smoking will be prohibited in all public places. Beginning January 1st 2008, smoking will be prohibited in all restaurants. My mind boggles, is this France? Can the leopard in fact change his shorts? Will I in fact be able to go places and eat in peace and quiet all over Europe soon?

In a euphoric cloud I grab my laptop and start the ascent to ETSI. It's half an hour's uphill walk, with nice views of the surrounding mountains, with concrete-and-glass buildings sticking up here and there. Apparently neobrutalism never went out of fashion here. In addition it's awfully cold, there's actually frost on the ground. I, who had hoped for balmy days by the Mediterranean, am a bit disappointed.

At ETSI I get my badge and locate the conference room where I will spend the rest of the week. Round table introductions of everyone in the new working group. A consumer representative, how unusual! Some are (politely?) enthusiastic about such a thing, others accept it without comment, a Chinese delegate is clearly skeptical. Things proceed, I desperately try to absorb as fast as I can everything about procedure, plans, principles and in general what's going on. We all have our laptops up, and I notice many have privacy screens on them—plastic sheets that restrict the view of the screen to straight ahead. Many also have card readers and other security enhancements in their laptops. For my part I have Wikipedia up and check up unfamiliar terms at disconcertingly frequent intervals.

Finally lunch, at the adjacent France Telecom canteen. Then back to work again. In the afternoon I'm feeling rather empty-headed and am grateful when our sessions end, others just continue to other sessions late into the evening. Documents are produced, revised and commented. I make comments every now and then and perhaps I even cause the generation of a new work item. I decide that apparently I Make A Difference. I go for dinner at La Table and then to bed. So the week goes. On Thursday when I get to La Table in the evening, they no longer ask me if I want a smoke-free table as the entire restaurant is smoke-free now—why wait an extra year?

Friday is a short day ending at 15:15; I walk back to my hotel room and fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon.

Saturday morning is early awakening, pack the last things and take a taxi down to Antibes. For some reason I cannot leave with the TGV from here, but instead have to take a regional train to Toulon. The regional train is a double-decker, but fairly full. I end up in a seat where the folding table does not stay up but heavily smacks me on the knees every time I return it to the upright position. I try to lock it in place with the handle of the cabin bag.

In Toulon I decide to have lunch and seat myself outside the Café de la Gare. They don't really serve lunch yet, but seeing my obvious hunger the waitress relents and I get my escalope de volaille. It's definitely the best main course I've had all week. I am very satisfied and sit and bask in the sun a bit until it's time to catch the train.

This time I get to ride on the top level and enjoy an excellent view of the Rhône valley while trying to write poetry. Then Gare de Lyon and double-decker metro to Gare du Nord. There I decide to have dinner at a bar in the station. This was apparently a mistake. The food is OK, once it arrives, but service is extremely slow. I cannot avoid the suspicion that this is so that the “I've lost my ticket, would you please lend me a couple of hundred euro so I can buy a new one, I'll pay you back as soon as I get home, honest”-scammer that sits down at my table will have time to go through the spiel. A tip to would-be confidence tricksters: If you want to seem trustworthy, do not attempt to find out the mark's credit card number within 15 seconds of starting a conversation… I gulp down my food, pay (in cash) and rush to the train.

The Thalys train is full of loud and elated people, many with fancy digital cameras for some reason. Eventually we get to Cologne and after yet a while my sleeper train arrives. I am fascinated by the schedule, the train will continue from Cologne to Berlin, where, in the wee morning hours, it will be split into three parts, one going to Prague, one to Binz on Rügen, and one, my part, going west again to Kolding where it will be attached to another train coming from Munich and the results continue to Copenhagen. Appparently I am very tired as I sleep through all of this shunting.

I arrive in Copenhagen on time, stroll around the still smokeless main hall until my connection to Malmö arrives and then leaves. Lunch in Malmö and then the final leg to Stockholm. By now travel is taking its toll and my sensitivity to the X 2000 trains asserts itself—I'm seasick most of the way. Still, by mid-afternoon I am home and back in the office the next day.

Erlang

One of the more obscure languages I've had reason to program in (indeed, have taken a course in) is Erlang. Erlang is a declarative real-time language, which owes much to Prolog and ML. It was originally developed in the 1980s as a more modern replacement for PLEX, but it never managed to topple the huge installed PLEX codebase, so Ericsson telephone exchanges are still programmed in PLEX, albeit a somewhat more developed and modernised version. On the other hand, Erlang is also still a living language with new releases coming out every few months.

Anyway, I was sent this old demo video, where Bjarne Däcker & Co show off the features of the new language. It's a marvellous document of its time, so if you were involved in CS research twenty years ago, watch and get nostalgic!

Lack of characteristics

My lack of personality is pervasive, I did the gender test at Transtukipiste and was deemed gender neutral.

Olet sukupuolineutraali eli sukupuolisesti sitoutumaton. Et pidä meteliä sukupuolesta, etkä tuo omaa sukupuoltasi mitenkään erityisesti esille. Persoonaasi ei hallitse eikä määritä vahvasti sen enempää mieheys kuin naiseuskaan Sukupuoleen liittyvässä itseilmaisussa olet melko pidättyväinen - jopa sukupuolipihtailija. Tiedostat sukupuolijärjestelmän olemassaolon ja otat siihen mielellään etäisyyttä ja toimit yksilöllisesti, etkä sukupuolimäärittyneesti. Et aina ymmärrä, miksi monet muut ihmiset pitävät sukupuolesta niin kovasti meteliä ja antavat sukupuolensa ohjailla toimintaansa.

Olet hyvin vahvasti sitoutumaton kumpaankaan sukupuoleen- jopa sukupuolipakoilija.

Bitch-slapping with precision

Sigma-6 is a blog that unfortunately has not been updated for a while, yet contains a lot of worthwhile reading, including this long and detailed history of tanks and anti-tank weapons, all for the purpose of demonstrating conclusively why the stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq were drivel.

Mad scientist par excellence

It is my great pleasure to have known Anders Sandberg for many years and all through this time he has always been been coming up with weird and interesting ideas. Of course he has a blog, and among his recent work is a study on the evolution of zombie populations.

”…medan stan av morronsolen fick rosa färg”

The company moved and once again I can walk to work.

“TELL ME AN INTERESTING FACT”

In Roger MacBride Allen's short story “Phreak Encounter” aliens run a bulletin board system in order to figure out what humans think is important. Of course, in the mid-1980s, the people frequenting BBSs were not a representative sample of the world's population, so the question was what impression the aliens would get of humans.

Today, the people on web fora, blogs etc are still not a representative sample of the world's population, but perhaps a bit closer to it. We are also seeing the putting online of all human knowledge, something that has been foreseen since at least the 1950s. But, Wikipedia is not Multivac. The cold, objective truths, entered by serious men in white lab coats are not there, instead there are disputed statements, discussed, constantly edited and perhaps not always true.

There has been considerable debate and criticism of the Wikipedia project, primarily centred on the question of whether the information is trustworthy. There is of course much to be said on that, but the thing I think is interesting with Wikipedia is precisely its property of being an encyclopedia of the things the readers think are interesting. Thus we find lots of information that probably never would have found its way into any printed encyclopedia, such as entries on Yeovil Junction railway station, frameservers and Tetraiodothyronine 5'-deiodinase.

Video mixes at YouTube

The Disney version of Alice in Wonderland becomes much improved with Monty Python lyrics:
The Cheshire cat sings “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”
Flowers sing “Every Sperm is Sacred”
The Mad Hatter sings “The Money Song”
The White Rabbit sing “I Want to be a Lumberjack”
The Mad Hatter and the March Hare sing “The Philosophy Song”

Compartments of the mind

My thesis supervisor Y often remarked on the to him paradoxical state that I was a radical pacifist, yet would attend military air shows.

I for my part pointed out that one could be, say, an expert on dangerous diseases yet have no desire to inflict said diseases on people, but Y never got the point of my analogy. And, thinking deeper, there may be a point to that too. Germs don't care if we study them or not, they just are. Air shows on the other hand are made by and for people, the audience who is to be wooed and the participants whose egoes certainly are boosted performing for the audience. So, studying live military forces can certainly be considered as an encouragement and endorsement of their activities and therefore clearly problematic.

My interest in (military) aviation clearly has complex reasons and roots—certainly at the bottom there is what in my childhood was considered a “boyish” interest in fast and noisy things that make other things explode. Certainly I played a lot with the little plastic soldiers that were abundant at the time (I actually didn't have very many myself, but I had friends who were willing to compensate for that lack) and I don't think any of us considered either the battles or the soldiers to be “real”; soldiers fall over, you get a point, whoever has most standing at the end wins, then you can raise them all again and start another round.

Then, aircraft, something that you could learn more about; catalogue, classify, connect, makers, users, performance figures. Yet again those things boys were supposed to be fascinated by, and I was, and I am.

But then also, as I have found, for most any subject, learning deeply about a subject brings also an æsthetic appreciation of it. I have over time and with learning and practice developed a feel (not necessarily identical to that of other professionals) for elegance in an algorithm, beauty in a mathematical proof and the quality in a well-written text, but perhaps stronger than all this is the experience of a beautiful aircraft. And yes, then there are the the big and strong aircraft, the clumsy but lovable aircraft, the plain planes, and, of course, the hopelessly ugly and useless, loved not even by their manufacturers.

And which aircraft belong in which categories can of course be argued for hours, and what colours they would have been painted in at a given time, what retrofits and upgrades were performed over time and what the actual performance would have been of various armament options. And this consumes a large amount of modellers' time and never does it really pass beyond the abstract. For most. Then there are the…creepy ones, who seem a little too interested in wearing period uniforms and collecting militaria. On one occasion I received, with models I'd bought, the seller's business card with SS mottoes, and they did not seem to be ironically meant. Not least disgusting was the idea that this was apparently intended to encourage further purchases from the person in question and presumably it had worked before. Fortunately there are none of these kind of people in the local modelling club, as far as I've been able to tell, and we have pleasant evenings arguing about the exact caliber of the nose guns on the various subversions of the Bf 109G without worrying about the people that ended up in front of them.

So, when I found this collection of clips of German aircraft, purportedly from the Battle of Britain period, I was geared up for a pleasant little nitpick post, noting how the He 177 wasn't even built in 1940 and how the loaded bombs obviously couldn't have been from the period in question, but then I saw the comments… There were the people for whom a He 111 wasn't a somewhat obsolescent aircraft in late 1940, underpowered and underarmed but still elegant with the characteristic elliptical Heinkel wings and the rounded Plexiglas-covered nose; there were the people for whom it was a weapon for murdering other people and they approved of murder. This was like finding maggots in your half-eaten sandwich and the fun went out of studying the video.

And so we live our lives, desperately trying to justify ourselves. *sigh*

Watch this airspace

The flight path to Bromma passes straight across my office window, so most of the times when I stare into space for a bit of inspiration, I see an aircraft coming in for landing. Now I don't even have to raise my eyes to see the landing aircraft as I can have the relevant radar plot on my desktop.

While the plot gives you flight number, registration number and type, unfortunately you can't click them to get more information. While it shouldn't be too difficult to arrange, the next best thing has been done on this plot centred on Aalborg, which contains a fill-in form for Airliners.net, so you can easily look up pictures on the individual aircraft, general type or whatever.

Link tips via Haba.

Worse than alligators

Last night I dreamt the End Of The World had come with Final Battle and all. At one point ICBMs were erupting out of the pavement and I realised
“It's true, there are Polaris submarines living in the sewers!”

Evil and not

Many years ago, I and my parents were staying at the house of an elderly couple in our circle of acquaintances. Naturally, I first checked out their bookshelf. It wasn't very big, and mostly contained various Christian tracts and other religious literature, but interspersed with this was books with titles like 21st Century Weapons Systems and Lebanon, Pearl of the Mediterranean which did not seem at all at home with the rest of the fare. The conversation during the day revealed that our hosts were expecting Armageddon in the near future and I realised they simply had been boning up on where and how the End Times would take place.

I was rather put off by these apparently nice people joyfully looking forward to the destruction of the entire Universe and spent the rest of the weekend looking very grim. Or so I thought. On the way home my mother told me the couple's daughter had complimented her on how kind eyes I had. Foo! So, no surprise that I've failed the evilness test:


How evil are you?

“…where the future is made today”

Lunch queue. Colleague A is fiddling with his mobile. Colleague B accuses him of always texting. A: “No, I'm editing video! Look, I'm making a TV series on the mobile: shot and edited with theme music, credit rolls and everything.”

And so it was.

Apologies to New York

It has been brought to my attention that Scandinavians travel to New York in order to cover buildings and public conveyances in graffiti.

I want to express my regret at this bad behaviour by my countrymen. (I almost wrote "inexcusable", but in that case an apology would of course be rather pointless.)

I think of me as more of a nerd, really

Fucking IDIOTS!

I am exhausted, exasperated and extremely annoyed with the helpdesk at my ISP Comhem. I'm trying to be charitable and think that probably the staff are overworked and have awful support tools, but the end result is still that I get canned responses that have nothing to do with my question, every reply I send to them I have to confirm on a webpage so it gets assigned a new tracking number and is processed by a new person who thinks this is a new problem and therefore does not check the earlier email conversation and gives me some other irrelevant response. The question is whether there are humans involved at all or if it is a simple keyword-triggered answerbot that signs with a different invented name for every letter.

There is of course a telephone-based helpdesk as well, but there I am met by an answering machine telling me they are so busy they cannot take my call right now, so please call later. Every now and then they try to sell me additional services - telephony or cable TV, but I'm damned if I'm going to support them any more. Can anyone recommend an ISP that actually has a competent helpdesk?

My problem? My webpage suddenly stopped working—I get a 404 when I try to access it. This cannot reasonably be due to the firewall settings of my home laptop, the password to my ftp account or any other of the suggested “remedies” that suggest the problem is at my end, now can it? I've now spent a week trying to get this fixed.

---

And no sooner had I written this than there is an article in Dagens Nyheter on all the other people who are mightily disappointed in the customer service of Comhem. Well then!

Oh rats

The other night I saw a rat in my room. I gasped so loud I woke up.

Sometimes rats turn up for real and sometimes they turn up in the lavvy (City, Fältbiologen). I realised there are many things about sewers I usually don't think about. Incoming water pipes are under pressure, so they are filled with water, but sewers are fed by occasional bursts from showers, toilets, washing machines and such; the pipes in a building are then empty most of the time. I suspect even the larger pipes under the streets must be mostly empty, so that there are margins for everybody showering at the same time in the morning and so on. But, are all solids in the sewer water properly flushed away then? I guess they have to be, or the sewers would be clogged more often. So, there is enough water flowing through the system to keep everything moving. Rats then? They scamper around in the pipes, on the lookout for food I presume, or perhaps there are rat spelunkers that poke around just to see what's around the next bend in the pipe and climb up several stories in the house pipes. A water lock? Well, there's light coming through, so maybe the water's not a lot. Are these very desperate or very confident rats that take the plunge and poke their nose up someone's toilet bowl? And imagine all the rats, cautiously climbing up pipes like long-tailed Indiana Joneses and suddenly the defences of the ancient temple are triggered and a bolus of water, toilet paper and crap comes at them from five stories up. Does one survive that? Just hang on by the claws in the pipe while it passes or ride along, trying to get a breath of stinking air every now and then? Is it like white-water rafting or just sheer terror for the afflicted rat? So many questions, so difficult to find out.

Finished model V

A North American F-86F-40-NA Sabre from the Japan Air Self-Defence Force, sometime in the 1960s. Model from Trumpeter, scale 1/144, donated by Oskar B. The piece of airfield is there because the plane was a tailsitter even with the lump of metal I placed in the nose, now it's glued to the surface.

Hey, hey, ho, ho—the kilogramme has got to go!

It has always annoyed me that the kilogramme, one of the fundamental units of the Système International d'unités, is a prefixed unit. This completely breaks the logic of the system and I'm sure is one of the reasons that many people believe “kilo” is the name of the mass unit. (Not that they can tell the difference between mass and force either, sigh.)

Anyway, to my joy I find in the latest issue of SEK-Aktuellt that others have been equally annoyed by this and there is work underway in the Comité consultatif des unités to replace the kilogramme with another unit, which in addition would together with most other SI-units be based on a fundamental property of nature (Planck's constant in this case), rather than some arbitrary object (the kilogramme prototype in Paris). A proposed name for this new unit is not leaked in Anders J Thor's short article and I haven't been able to come up with anything witty myself, but I hope it will be some short and memorable.

Down with the kilogramme!

Blogs in scrubs

There are quite a few blogs written by medical people out there and they offer stories with the widest possible range of joy, despair, scientific advances and dark-age magic, all the emotions that make the medical profession so attractive to producers of fiction set in hospital environments, but still the (perhaps just slightly varnished) truth is probably the most gripping.

Orac's Respectful Insolence is probably the most well-known and with an amazing spectrum of regular subject themes, from Enemaman to the Hitler zombie, but I just found Trauma Queen, the blog of a recently graduated paramedic in Edinburgh. The stories from his daily life, mixing drunkards, injured and sick people with the children he loves so deeply and selflessly brought me unashamedly cliched tears and laughter. Read them!

Ahem…

…I just wanted to draw your attention to the language spread in my reading list in the side bar.