Is it possible to get too much of a good thing? I guess it depends on what you’re talking about. In this instance, I’m talking about my fellow board members in the Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation (Unga Humanister). Yesterday, after a seven hour board session at a café we withdrew for a while, only for a sizeable portion of us to reconvene at a later time - for six more hours of socialising.

I think this is more socialising than I have done in a year. One would think that thirteen hours in the company of the same few people should be enough, but really, I can’t wait to hang out with them again. And at least part of the reason why is our shared worldview and values. As much as I enjoy discussing god with believers, and the like, being around other humanists allows for deeper discussions about things like “what is consciousness?” simply because we accept the same premises (in this case, no soul). I’m sure this is blatantly obvious and unnecessary to state, but I do think that humanism suffers from the lack of regular social activities such as those churches provide. To be surrounded by likeminded people in a social setting allows you to relax and not feel like you have to mince your words.

The SHYO wants to provide this for humanistic youth in Sweden. It’s difficult, since we don’t have a given place to gather, but I think we can make it.

humanism, mushrooms

The other day I got a letter from my summer workplace. The street address was correct, but it was lacking a zip code, and apparently, according to them, I don’t live in Sweden.

Thankfully the good people at the Swedish postal service figured out that a street address containing “-vägen” (-road) probably wasn’t situated in Afghanistan at all.

I’m no mycologist, but my friend Michael Krikorev (responsible for the Swedish shroom site, Svampguiden) is. The other day, as he was giving me and my parents a crash course in edible fruiting bodies in the forest adjacent to my parental home, we found an odd specimen which Mike quickly and excitedly identified as quite a rarity.

The mushroom is a Sarcodon martioflavus, called “sammetstaggsvamp” in Swedish but lacking a common English name. It does look like something I’ve never seen before - not a surprise, since according to Mike, there are only about 20 known localities for this species in Sweden. According to another mycologist, Klas Jaederfeldt, it’s only been found in one other site in eastern Sweden.

I’m not a shroom-twitcher, or any kind of twitcher really, but finds like these are always exciting. Especially since the species in question is redlisted as Vulnerable. “Our” forest is not just a nice secluded recreational area and provider of foodstuffs (apart from mushrooms, my parents enjoy homemade blueberry and lingonberry jam all year round), but a remnant of the old virgin woodland that used to cover this country before the forest industry had its way with it.

One of these days, I’m going to take a camera and carefully document the treasures of this place, because any year it might be cleared, creating yet another gaping and bleeding wound in the landscape.

mycology, mushrooms

The university college previously in charge of the education of most (?) of Sweden’s elementary and high school teachers was merged into Stockholm University a while ago. I think the change was welcomed by most people, since the aforementioned university college was notoriously bad at its task. Now, however, anthroposophers and waldorf-cultists have been given reason to whine a bit. Which is obviously a reason to celebrate, if you prefer scientific truth to superstition.

Stockholm University has decided to cancel the four-year programme for waldorf teachers, which has been conducted in affiliation with the Rudolf Steiner school. The natural science faculty has expressed itself in no uncertain terms through deacon Stefan Nordlund, who according to Dagens Nyheter said this (my translation):

Some of the course literature isn’t just unscientific. It’s also dangerous and teaches faults that are worse than gibberish. We’re supported in our opinion by the humanities/social science faculty.

It’s always refreshing when sane people tell it like it is. In Sweden, the prevailing opinion of waldorf schools is that they’re nice cute places where kids get to paint, dance and play flute a lot instead of being forced to learn multiplication by rote. Not even the minister of education seems entirely aware of the crazy religious ideology running those schools - in a discussion with Christer Sturmark (president of the Swedish Humanist Association) on television he said that he wouldn’t like to entirely forbid religious independent schools as that might affect waldorf schools. As if that’s a bad thing. He, like most of everyone else, seems to think that waldorf is entirely benign.

Wet-on-wet painting cannot possibly harm our children!

anthroposophy, waldorf

Random quote:

Evolution is telling you that you’re like an animal.

Actually, you don’t need evolution to tell you that at all. See, it’s blatantly obvious just using your senses (and perhaps a scalpel and a microscope). Your skeleton looks just like an animal’s. Your heart too. And your lungs, and eyes, and intestines. In fact every part of you looks exactly like an animal down to the molecules of DNA that represent you.

Humans are so obviously animals in every aspect that one wonders how this ever escaped anyone’s attention before Darwin. Did we really need to understand why humans “are like animals” before we could even see that that was the case? I sort of doubt it.

evolution, biology

I’ve had a bit of a weird summer. I could go through all the reasons why I haven’t blogged but seriously, who cares? I still do want to blog though. I have, however, come to realise that if I’m to be able to stay interested in this thing, it’s going to have to become a bit … broader. It must, in fact, be allowed to include ALL of my Life - not just science and secularism.

Well ok, not all of my life. The Doctor wouldn’t appreciate me babbling There are some things the world simply isn’t ready to know. But expect posts on a broader variety of topics in the future. Also expect there to be short posts, and irregular posting. In fact, expect this blog to behave exactly the way it should NOT behave if I were aiming for a lot of readers.

Revamping of the layout will probably happen sometime soon. I can never resist an excuse to redecorate my virtual world.

See you around…