other stuff

On Happy Danes, Morose Finns and Liberal Swedes

Since attempting to explain the differences in personality between Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Finns to my Greek flat mate in Lund last night I have not been able to drop the concept of geography and personality.

Naturally this is an old and distinguished discussion including such greats as Montesquieu and Hegel – so I will not go into an argument with these guys!

Montesquieu posited (in Esprit des Lois) that since the laws are a based upon the ways in which people live their lives and the way in which people live their lives “has as much to do with geography as with climate”. Therefore both law and personality are part of a complex function of nature, geography & climate. Of course Montesquieu believed that geography and climate are constant (no global warming back then!) and therefore do not play a part in social change. Hegel also followed the same ideas

The unchangeableness of climate, of the whole character of the country in which a nation has its permanent abode, contributes to the unchangeablness of the national character. A desert, proximity to the sea or remoteness from it, all these circumstances can have an influence on the national character (Hegel – Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III; Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind).

But what I wanted to add was this.

Not only are people different in different locations but also I behave differently in different locations. But is this just a coincidence? Is my behavior in Lund and Göteborg conditioned somehow by climate? Or is my personality changed by distance from my well-known surroundings? And how important is the fact that I am (literally) surrounded by good espresso houses in Lund affect my behavior? If I could transfer Lund physically to Göteborg (or vice versa) would behaviors (my own and others) change?

If the answer is yes then would that mean if we could physically transfer the northern Finnish town (of slightly depressive people) Sodankylä (67°22′ N, 26°38′ E) to coastal region Denmark (57°22′ N, 9°42′ E – the present location of the happy people of Løkken) that the people would all become extroverted and jovial?

Am I on to something or have I just had too much strong coffee on a Wednesday morning?

Posted on by mklang

Slippery Slope to Spandex

Never thought of myself as a spandex kind of guy. Spandex is the extremely stretchy kind of material worn by athletes and the attractive crowd at the gym. Me I always seemed to be happier in baggy heavy cotton. Then in January I began to run. The more I ran the better I became. Running is not really fun and requires effort and encouragement. So I slowly began encouraging myself.

It began with a slightly more attractive t-shirt. Something to cheer me up and encourage me to run more often. Then I made sure that my iPod contained more lectures and podcasts than music. Running to history is the best distraction I can imagine. Nothing stops boredom like an lecture on the Roman invasion of Britain.

Slowly I bought another t-shirt, a “proper” runners t-shirt, and another and another. But still no spandex. That was still in a different league. But the more I ran the more I liked to run and the more encouragement I enjoyed.

Today I crossed a major barrier I ran in spandex – or whatever its called – and it was really comfortable… This is the slippery slope. It begins with a t-shirt and before you know it you are in spandex…

Where will it all end?

Posted on by mklang

The Internet Imagined in 1969

This is a really cool documentary short about the future of the Internet made in 1969. If we ignore the appalling gender stereotypes mother – mother shops for clothes while father looks concerned and pays the bills. “What the wife selects on her console will be paid for by the husband on his console”!! And the fact that the kids are not on the Internet it is a really cool look at the future with

  • eCommerce (fingertip shopping sounds much better)
  • Browsing
  • Online banking
  • Instant messaging
  • Video surveillance

Sure there are some things missing but it was a pretty good guess. Its also just worth watching for the gender roles…

(via Guardian Unlimited)

Posted on by mklang

Sour Herring

Yesterday I had dinner at the lunch room in the main university library building in Lund. Going behind the scenes in buildings is always interesting but yesterday the focus was not on the building but rather on the menu. The dinner was the traditional northern Swedish dish of Surströmming (literally Sour Herring).

surstromming.jpg

The dish is considered a delicacy but this is hard to believe since the smell will blow your mind away.

The herring is caught in spring and is fermented in barrels for one to two months, the fermented fish is then tinned where the fermentation continues. About six months later the gases caused by the fermentation makes the tins bulge into a more rounded shape. One idea for the origins of the method of fish preservation is due to the high cost of salt so fermentation was used and less salt could be used.

The tin cans are opened outside (because of the smell) and served with bread, butter, potatoes, onion and gräddfil (fat fermented milk). The meal is best savored with beer and schnapps.

As an experience it was definitely great – as a culinary experience it must be an acquired taste and it does not make my top ten but it was fun. The smell was the worst part and I have been getting flashbacks all morning.

Posted on by mklang

Talk like a pirate day

Today is the official (is there an unofficial one?) Talk Like a Pirate Day. For those among us who are not familiar with the correct vocabulary and pronunciation there are some basic and advanced guidelines here. Naturally no education would be complete without the audio-visual aids so naturally there is a helpful video on the topic on YouTube.

For the more curious among you there is naturally more information about how the Talk Like a Pirate Day was started way back in 1995. The official website also includes a top ten of pirate pick-up lines including the classic (but widely unsuccessful): How’d you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

Posted on by mklang

Fear and Courage

Naturally no one can live life through quotations but there are some quotations that kind of manage to capture a sentiment of importance. These also tend to stick in my mind – not that I remember the exact quote, more the general idea. While in Kalmar I came across a second hand bookshop and found a philosophical book on the topic of courage. I am looking forward to reading it.

One of the more curious quotes that I like is from Camilo Jose Cela’s Journey to the Alcarria

Sometimes one has frightening sensations of well-being, strong enough to move mountains; one must fight them courageously, as one would fight an enemy. And then, with the passage of time, they leave something like a drop of gall in ones heart…

Contentment is one of the more dangerous enemies that prevent our development. When we arrive in a situation of contentment we occasionally do not dare to take a risk that may help us develop. Not really sure about the “drop of gall” part.

Part of the problem is the fear of failure or the fear of losing out. But, to quote another writer, there is another way of looking at this problem:

By embracing the inescapable, I lost my fear of it. I’ll tell you a secret about fear: its an absolutist. With fear, its all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes like a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despots fall, has more or less nothing to do with ‘courage’. It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life.

This is from Salman Rushdie’s “The Moors Last Sigh” and it hits the exact point that the fear of fear is more serious than the thing we fear itself. Overcoming our fears are as Rushdie puts it not really a matter of being overly courageous but more a need to get on with our lives…

Posted on by mklang

Lunar Stuga

One of the symbols of Sweden is the little red house (Stuga) with white borders around the windows and corners. This is an ubiquitous site all around the country and in particular in the countryside. Naturally houses come in many different colors but all the same the little red and white house is an image of the idyllic countryside.

Now a Swedish consortium is actively working to put a little red stuga on the moon. Luna Resort writes about their plan:

The project has united a manâ??s artistic ambitions with commercial market powers, political enterprises, scientific research and technical cutting edge competence with many different areas.
Luna Resort contributes to the placing of Sweden in the limelight, and to display there Swedish forces of initiative showing that Sweden stands for world class competence in high technology. Luna Resort will contain a number of integrated projects of technical and scientific purpose.
Through a little red cottage on the moon, humanity will have its first universal symbol for the possibility of a single man to realize his dreams, but above all a unified symbol for the commitment to our common planet.
Billions of people will see the images sent down to Earth of the little red cottage with white gables, symbolizing humanityâ??s first steps to inhabit space.

The moon has often been associated with madness in folklore and beliefs – the word lunatic comes from the Latin and from the stem “luna” which is moon. One idea for the connection with the moon and madness is the changes in the appearance of the moon and certain symptoms of mental disorder.

It seems that Swedes are not immune to moon-madness 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Save Bunny

A cute flash game. To save Bunny you have to give him electric shocks, shave him, open him up, move intestines, remove foreign object and insert medicine. All in 60 seconds and without making mistakes. Silly, but cute.

(via Boing Boing)

Posted on by mklang

Instead of sleeping

You know that you should be asleep when you start reading spam mails. Most of my spam gets filtered out so it was actually a long time ago that I got a Nigerian 419 in my inbox. It was rather amusing. It begins with the rather polite apology for possibly insulting my morals…

Please accept my sincere apologizes if my email does not meet your business or personal ethics. I will first introduce myself as Mr. Amos Tower, an Auditor with Bank of Scotland, here in london,England.

It then goes on to explain that a bank account containing 15 million pounds has been untouched for three years and that the owner of the account had died five years ago in a airplane crash. The inability to do math here is an easy mistake. That the account has been used despite the holder being been dead… probably some late credit card slips…

The letter ends with the totally re-assuring words

This transaction is totally free of risk and troubles as the fund is legitimate and does not originate from drug, money laundry, terrorism or any other illegal act.

A risk free transaction 😉 All they want from me is to “stand in as the next of kin” and withdraw the money. They don’t even want anything in return 🙂 Its probably that they just don’t want that kind of money lying around?

I really should go to sleep instead of reading spam after midnight.

Posted on by mklang

Grumpy Old Man

Yesterday I hit forty – or maybe I should say that forty hit me. Naturally I fully intend to ignore this momentous occasion and not let it disrupt my life. Naturally there will be a party. Today I am plagued by a shitty little cold, lack of sleep and have spent the day traveling to and from Stockholm.

The purpose of the trip was to give a Creative Commons lecture at the University of Stockholm but I also had a birthday lunch with my family and grandmother. In reality this is supposed to be a good thing. But sitting on the train with a ways to go before I can have a shower, a decent cup of tea and sleep – I feel like crap.

Naturally I needed to share this with everyone and prove beyond a doubt that I am developing into a grumpy old man….

Posted on by mklang