A Farewell to Fores

Many moons ago I applied for a job at a Swedish organisation called Fores. This is a green liberal think-tank who want to focus on solving our severe environmental problems by encouraging both big and small business to get involved.

Now regardless of your political leanings (and I am not at all sure of mine these days) this seemed like a fine idea and a great opportunity, even though the position itself was part-time and a bit vaguely defined.

However the people at Fores turned down my finely crafted application, told me the position basically did not exist any more, and sent me in return a question that went like this:

“Do you know anything about Macs? Because we need somebody to help us keep our Mac network working”.

Which unfortunately told me everything I needed to know about this workplace.

So today I wandered into their site to see how they are getting on and I stumbled onto their scientific advisory board. And my jaw slid open and remained there.

Check it out here. From of a list of  20 people, 2 of them are actual scientists and a further 2 are so vaguely defined that they may or may not be.

The remainder are economists, political scientists (not much to do with science, I think you will agree) and various scattered disciplines far removed from science and technology.

For the love of Jove, they even have a “Gender Researcher”, surely the bottom of the barrel when it comes to academic disciplines.

Conclusion: The “scientific advisors” are not at all scientists, and any advice they offer will be pretty hard to swallow. Which makes the whole idea kind of pointless.

So sorry Fores, but you’re just not pulling any wool over any eyes.

So the lessons to be learned here are:

• Don’t promise things you can’t deliver
• Don’t try and offer us scientific advice from non-scientists
• Don’t fill an office with people who only know how to use Macs
• Don’t turn Paddy down for a job and expect to get away unscathed

/ paddy

Bad Pills

On November 1st 2009, a great and historic thing happened in Sweden.

Was it a battle? A terrorist event? A royal baby to suck our resources dry?

Well no, it was the day when aspirin and other fairly harmless pharmaceuticals were made available in normal shops.

You see (gather round now children, this may take a while) before this day you were unable to buy basic pills anywhere in Sweden except in the state-run pharmacy chain Apoteket. 

Have a headache? Need to buy a morning-after pill? Live in a part of town where there is one Apoteket that opens at 11 on a Saturday and not at all on Sundays?

Then tough. Until now.

So welcome Sweden, to the 20th century.

Now if we can only fix it so we can buy a bottle of wine on a Sunday, give University students exams that actually test their ability, and reward people according to their merits and accomplishments, then we might be able to drag it into the 21st.

/ paddy

Rock gods and rock dots

This blog post is based on an original conversation with Martin Rundkvist.

There was, and is, a healthy tradition in heavy metal and hard rock music to use various extra dots and squiggles over the vowels in the band name.

Think: Motörhead. Or Mötley Crüe. Or Queensrÿche.

This denotes hardness or something. And these special dots are affectionately known, among other things, as “rock dots“.

Now consider, if you will, the 80s metal band Trojan. In the spirit of the age they decided to adorn their name with rock dots. So the album covers and t-shirts all had the typical 80s heavy metal imagery, plus the band name splayed across the top, in all its extra-umlaut glory.

(The Swedes will already see where this is going. So shhhhh…)

I couldn’t find a band t-shirt on the web, so I threw one together for the occasion. And here it is.

And the fun part of all this?

“Trojan” means nothing special in Swedish, but “Tröjan”, with rock dots over the “O”, actually does.

And do you know what it means?

It means “The t-shirt”.

Isn’t life just superb sometimes?

/ paddy

Four Stone Hearth Volume #78

Hello. And welcome to another drunken stagger through the halls of anthropology and archaeology. I am your host, Paddy K, and I am here to shower you with bones. Lots of bones.

So then, without further stalling for wordage, let’s introduce the experts, who have lots of clever things to say about things that I barely understand.

Experts, take it away!

First off,  the folks over at Archaeopop tell us a tale about the Nefertiti bust and the attempts to return it to Egypt. Of course this tale also features the Egyptian Indiana Jones, Dr. Zahi Hawass (and I only say that because I know that archaeologists just love hearing about Indiana Jones).

Next, those nice people over at Radio Lab discuss the ways in which language and music are connected. Haven’t you heard of Radio Lab? Go there. Now. And never return.

Future retro is one of my own favourite areas. This is, basically, the reverse of archaeology – what did people from the past think the future would look like? Head on over to Paleo Future to see the latest snippets of retro futurism. For example, where are all the flying cars, eh? Eh?

Eric at The Primate Diaries discusses how birth control for women may be affecting the way they pick their partners, as well as their bits on the side, their bits on top and even their bits underneath.

And speaking of smut (and we were, weren’t we? Well I generally am) I am always tickled by the very existence of the “unsuitable material” rooms at the British Museum. This is where 3 centuries of twitchy curators have placed their kinky material that the ladies might have swooned at, effectively removing it from the popular historical record and making the Victorians believe that all previous ages were as prudish as they were.

Martin Rundkvist gets his nose to the grindstone and takes us on a trip to look at a burnt mound. And if anybody knows their way around a burnt mound, it’s Martin.

Mathilda over at her eponymous blog wants to put white supremacists straight on a few things. And so what if it’s from a year ago? It’s still good stuff.

And of course I simply have to include Glen from Paleoglot, since I never have the faintest idea what he’s talking about. And I find that kind of refreshing.

Ciarán over at Ad Hominin explains why hominid evolution in the Middle Pleistocene is a great big bloody mess, with many theories, lots of species and not very many bones to back it up with.

TED continues to pump out mind expanding talks at a terrifying rate. Talks in the area of anthropology/archaeology are thin on the ground, but here’s one I enjoyed,  on skin colour in humans. And then there’s Louise Leakey, talking about nothing less than digging for the origins of humanity.

Over at A Hot Cup of Joe, we learn something about the reaction of the Creationist “community” to the unearthing of Ardipithecus ramidus. Further evidence that they should, you know, just shut the hell up.

Neuroanthropology present us with a primer on, you guessed it, neuroanthrolpology. And that word is so long it doesn’t even appear in my spell-checker.

And finally I, for my part, have been considering the classification and behaviour of different road-users. Field research, if you will. But on the road. And not in a field.

So that appears to be that. Tune in the next time at…hang on, the next slot on November 4th is vacant! Vacant, I tell you! Come on now, get the finger out and host the damned thing.

Just contact Martin Rundqvist to make a date with destiny!

The next time I do this blog carnival, it will be a swimsuit edition. So people, you have been warned – start hitting the bench press and warm up the baby oil because I’ll expect you all to be nice and buff. I know I will be. Deal?

/ paddy

Nina JablonskiNina Jabolski

Shaggy Dog Stories

Note: This blog entry was based on a true Facebook story. Names, dates and sexual preferences may have been changed to protect the innocent.

So I was walking to work. Picture it now. Wait, here’s a photo I took that will help you:

Yeah, now we got it. So just about THERE I passed a lady and her dog. The dog was doing something doggy – sniffing, peeing, quoting Marx – which the lady did not like.

So she pulled the dog closer on the leash and said:

“Tusse, I TOLD you not to do that, why don’t you ever listen to me?”

Which, since it was a dog, is probably a bit pointless.

This reminded me of a previous dog-lady anecdote (oh yes, a thin thread, I grant you). On that occasion another old lady was walking in a park, along a small path, dragging a reluctant dog behind her.

A moped was coming, quite fast, so the lady pulled the dog in and said to it sternly:

“Watch out Moppsy, there’s a moped coming!”

I just like that she felt the dog had to receive extra information as to the precise form of the imminent danger.

Of course, I can’t talk – I regularly speak to myself while working or doing stuff at home, whispering fiercely about this or that while work-mates and pets look on in deep amusement.

Oh well, at least I don’t go for a dump on the pavements. Not yet, anyway.

NOTE: Next Wednesday, October 21st, I will once again host the Four Stone Hearth Anthropology blog carnival. Please send in your links to anything vaguely relevant. That is all.

/ paddy

A Death in the Boy Band

Now it’s not my place to speak ill of the dead. But I see that Stephen Gately passed on, and in that most rock-and-roll of ways – by choking on his own vomit.

Sad, but also stupid. I mean, come on – vomit? In 2009? Please.

But what I don’t get is why people are praising him just because he was gay. As in: “a pioneer in the pop world” and how brave he was to come out.

Um, hello? If you were to pick a business to be gay in, wouldn’t music be a first choice? I would have thought that the reaction would be more like – yeah yeah, sure, get in line, Stevo.

And so what, he’s a hero now?  For filling the world up with shit tunes? For helping to unleash the horror of Ronan Keating on us?

Or for crapping all over something that is quite important to me and to many other people – popular music – just for the sake of getting his own grinning mug on the telly and lining his fucking pockets?

I am prepared to accept that he may have been a very nice guy. And even if he wasn’t, I’m still sad to see him go. And all respects to his grieving family and friends; seriously, this must suck for them.

But if the truth be known he was a crap singer in a rubbish band that tainted the world’s view of Ireland. And boy oh boy, I’m so incredibly glad to see the end of fucking Boyzone. 

Long live real music.

/ paddy

De-lurk and reveal thyself

Inspired by Martin’s occasional delurking events, I thought to offer my readers the same opportunity.

So, if you have been hanging out here for a while and have never made your presence known, now is your chance.

Just stick your hand up and leave a comment to tell us who you are, why you are here and what keeps you coming back. And what the management can do to make your stay with us more enjoyable.

Who knows, we might all learn something. (And I also avoid having to think up something to write about, which is always nice.)

Let the delurking commence!

/ paddy

A Great Day for Europe

All the newspapers today (well, yesterday, when I started writing this) are spouting off about the Lisbon treaty, about the “landslide” YES vote in Ireland. And about the “great day” for Europe.

Well it isn’t a “great day” for anything; in fact it was a tragic day that demonstrates the staggering failure of democracy in Europe.

Do you non-Irish know what the Lisbon treaty is about? Probably not, because your government took away your option to vote on it, and simply voted for you instead.

I don’t know what it was about either, and I even read some of the election pamphlets in Ireland a few weeks ago. But I still don’t know very much.

You can see that nobody had an idea what is involved when both the Yes and No sides presented almost identical arguements as to why we should vote for them. And the reasons that weren’t identical were innane – “we will be left outside Europe” and so on.

The biggest scare tactic used was the threat of removal of aid for the Irish economy and Irish banks. Basically – “Vote Yes or risk your country going under”. Nice.

To promote the passage of the treaty, the Irish were given some “guarantees” – or, if you prefer, bribes – to convince them to go ahead and vote yes. Among these was the provision for the Irish state to continue pissing all over women’s rights and continue the Catholic Church backed ban on abortion.

So now, with this Yes vote, the Irish have a legal guarantee that Europe will not interfere in the question of allowing Irish women the right to choose what to do with their own bodies.

So in what way is this a “great day” for anything? Simply throwing a referendum at the people again and again until you get the answer you want, calling it “final” and then never bringing it up again?

The actualy turnover was 57% and 67% or so of them voted yes, meaning that about 40% of the Irish electorate said “Yes”, hardly a landslide, as the press are saying.

If the Irish had said “Yes” on the first attempt, would there have been another vote in case they had changed their minds and now wanted to vote “No”? You bet you arse there wouldn’t.

And if Ireland was truly was a democracy, then there would be one referendum more, and they would take the best out of the 3 results. And that ain’t going to happen, is it?

So don’t worry, nothing actually changed on October 3^rd – the power in Europe still rests with the same people, and they will continue to get what they want in the same ways as before, despite their record of being very very wrong, so many times.

Yes, a great day for Europe indeed.

/ paddy

EU Farm Subsidies

Thanks to an article over on Sound and Fury, I discovered that the entire database of EU farm subsidies is now available on-line for our perusal, thanks to a volunteer effort by journalists, researchers and computer programmers.

This is fantastic and scary stuff. I have always wondered where this money came from and where it went, and now we can trawl through the data at our own convenience.

This video gives the background and a whole lot of surprising facts (click to launch it on the external site, I could not embed it directly):

The major things that struck me were that fully one quarter of the 55 billion Euro dished out per year (over 40% of the EU’s budget) goes to, of course, Big Business. And another large chunk goes to big landowners, the exact opposite of what we are led to believe (that the CAP is in place to support small farmers).

A couple of examples plucked from this excellent article on the subject:

• The largest recipient of “aid” in the UK is the food giant Tate and Lyle, who pocket €134,069,000.

• The Queen of England received £473,500 in farm aid in 2008. Because, you know, she needs it.

Think what this money could be used for instead of lining pockets that require no further lining and propping up inefficient industries. It’s all a bit sickening.

So the conclusion? We are being bum-fucked by out politicians who are once again channelling out money to themselves, their friends and the powerful people who support them. Small farmers? Taxpayers? Transparency? Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all good and hard.

The next time the farmers are out complaining about their incomes, we should join them, and complain about the large part of OUR incomes that is being ripped out of our hands and handed directly to the people who least need it. Anybody else who is tired of being lied to?

/ paddy

Goatee saver douchebag

Here is one of those products that seems to be a clever joke, but is actually for real, which makes it all the more hilarious and sad.

The goatee has been used in fiction for years to signal that a character is “evil”, and is used in reality, specifically in the US, to indicate that a person is a jock and/or an idiot (whether intentional or not).

I mean, come on, if you’re going to grow a bread, then grow a bloody beard, and spare us the ordeal of looking at a face that looks like it was put together in Photoshop.

And the dudes in the ad! Jeeeezus. Serial killer convention, anyone? Is there any of these guys that you would trust, for any reason, for even a millisecond?

And then you hold the stupid thing in your MOUTH…

Excuse me, I have to leave now and shudder for a while.

/ p

A Proper Pint

I had to charge home to Ireland over the weekend, due to a family medical emergency. And yesterday, 4 days later, I made my way back to Dublin, a bit dazed and head-spacey but very glad that things are improving.

Jumping into a taxi at the train station in Dublin I was informed by the driver that Thursday was a good day to be in Ireland. Apparently it is worldwide Arthur Guinness day, to celebrate the great man’s 250th birthday. But I told the taxi driver I was just passing through and would not be in Ireland on Thursday, and we agreed that it was a shame.

As a consolation the taxi driver agreed to drop me at what he considered the best real pub in the centre of Dublin. He drove me to O’Donoghues on Merrion Row and in I went.

This is a real Dublin pub–a long hardwood bar soaked with the sweat and beer of five generations, photos of real old patrons on the walls, a ticking clock and the laughter of old men, and an atmosphere of peace and timelessness.

So I drank my wonderful authentic Dublin pint and  wondered why I hadn’t gone back to Dublin more often, just me, and rediscovered the place where I had become an adult. And why I didn’t see my friends in Ireland so often these days, why several of them had children that I had never even met, and how my family could be getting old without my noticing.

And I decided to do something about that, to get out there and see these people again, and rediscover those parts of the world I once fell in love with before my own medical emergencies come a-knocking on my door.

Because, as you well know, life’s too bloody short.

/ paddy

The French Excel Holiday

This is too good to waste. A friend of mine has her French cousin visiting for a few days. Nice, you would think. But then she gets presented in the mail with the cousin’s plans for the holiday.

Now this is not the usual “See a museum or two, drink some coffee, walk in a park, do something intellectual that requires contemplative frowning” that I come up with before a holiday. No sir, the French visitor has made a detailed plan, after consulting on-line sources and tourist guides. And this plan is detailed down to the level of deciding which bicycle stands he will pick up his free bike from, and when.  And it includes such vital info as “have lunch”.

And he’s made it in Excel!!!

Oh this is great … fantastic … wait, let me pull myself together … Excel … oh god … deep breath …

So yes, he has a detailed Excel sheet showing exactly where he will go and what he he will be up to. For example, September 18 contains no less than 33 precisely planned movements, starting at 7 in the morning and continuing, no doubt, until midnight.

Note that there is no leeway whatsoever for accident, bad weather or spontaneity.

So good luck to the French visitor and I hope he gets to see every square cm of Stockholm in his frenetic 3 days, although he won’t remember or enjoy any of it.

Oh I just wish he had made a Power Point presentation out of it, then I would stop laughing–oh, let’s see–never.

/ paddy

18-sep	Gamla Stan / Skeppsbron	prendre 2 vélos à la station 34 (Skeppsbrokajen)
18-sep	Södermalm	ballader sur Stadsgardsleden en prenant la piste cyclable Varmdostraket
18-sep	Södermalm	déposer les 2 vélos à la station 70 (Folkungagatan/ Londonviadukten)
18-sep	Södermalm	aller à Fafangan (plus beau des panorama sur la Ville)
18-sep	Södermalm	prendre 2 vélos à la station 70 (Folkungagatan / Londonviadukten)
18-sep	Södermalm	prendre la piste Folkungagatan sur la voie du même nom
18-sep	Södermalm	déposer les 2 vélos à la station 20 (Folkungag. 134 / Stigbergsparken)
18-sep	Södermalm	se restaurer à la patisserie-café BAKVERKET Bondegatan 59
18-sep	Södermalm	prendre 2 vélos à la station 17 (Renstiernas Gata 18)
18-sep	Södermalm	continuer sur la piste Folkungagatan sur la voie du même nom
18-sep	Södermalm	sur Soderleden prendre la piste Nynashamnstt vers le nord
18-sep	Södermalm / Slussen	déposer les 2 vélos à la station 22 (Södermalmstorg-Slussen)