The other night, I had a dream in which I was visiting the US, where I met Sarah Palin. She brought her daughter into the room where we were conversing - her daughter was called Britney Spears and looked exactly like Hayden Panettiere - and asked me if I couldn’t hang out with her for the day. After all she led such a stressful extraordinary life and it would be nice for her to spend some time with a young woman her own age. An extraordinarily ordinary day.

Indeed, Bristol-aka-Hayden-aka-Britney agreed, and besides, she would really like to go shoe shopping. I looked down on my own shoes, used up and worn but still comfortable, stating (somewhat self-consciously) that while I do desperately need new shoes, I kind of don’t have any money, and besides shopping isn’t really my thing. (Seriously, I need my mother there.) They laughed kindly at me and said that money wouldn’t be an issue.

I woke up before anything else happened. I don’t know whether I should be happy I woke up before the dream had time to turn even weirder, or sad that I woke up in time to actually remember it. And although I don’t believe dreams really mean anything most of the time, it would be fun to see what those who make a living interpreting dreams would make of this.

palin, dreams

I decided to take a walk. On leaving the building, I was quite surprised to find out that it was raining. Somehow, I had completely missed this. Probably because my curtains are always drawn. Still, I always wear my trusty Tierra all-weather jacket outside, and it’s not like it was raining particularly heavily. So I went ahead with my walk.

I was richly rewarded with almost painfully beautiful scenery. The setting sun was colouring one half of the sky a rich sulphur yellow, and on the opposite side, the clearest rainbow I’ve ever witnessed frowned against slate-blue skies. I walked to the top of the hill I live on and had to crane my neck to ensure that yes, the rainbow actually went all the way up and down, and wasn’t one of those half-invisible half-measures. What’s more, one of its ends seems to be in Albydalen.

This is amusing to those of us who know that this is a part of Stockholm with very poor reputation. Supposedly the area is rampant with crime and sin and whatnot. Supposedly I should be thinking twice before going out on my own a rainy evening to get some air and stare raptly at the perfect image of rowanberries against dark green foliage.

Meh. The only thing I think twice about is whether I want a new camera badly enough to start begging people for money. My mobile camera really doesn’t do, well, anything, justice.

The sun and the rain made me smile. It reminded me that the world, in all its complexity and splendour, will still be here tomorrow - an assumption, true, but one based on rather a lot of experience - and that I should stop worrying so much.

rainbows

So. It turned out that the light of the end of the tunnel was actually a freight train. The relationship I was in had undergone a steady decline over the past couple of years and since my last blog post back in february, I’d say the pace of deterioration increased quite rapidly. Of course, I was unable to see this at the time, being intent to the point of obsession to keep us together. But when the freight train finally hit me (mid-June, this was) and my “british beau” announced that he was calling it for us … well, I was miserable, of course, for weeks. But it’s getting better.

Getting good enough that I’m starting to feel like sharing my thoughts with the world again.

Don’t get your hopes up (assuming there’s anyone reading this having any hopes at all…) - I have no idea where I want to take this blog, just as I have no idea where I want to take a lot of things in my life right now. Chances are it will get quite introspective, but I promise I will try to keep the emo at a minimum.

Until next time, I shall be playing WoW, looking for a job, selling honey and pondering what love is and what it does to you.

Sorry about the lack of posting lately, I’m in a bit of a slump. I got a couple of nice topics to blog from people who completed the tree quiz, so expect that up sometime … soonish.

In the meantime, if you happen to be a Stockholmer or visiting for whatever reason, I can recommend a visit to the old Observatory, where you for the measly sum of 50kr (bring cash!) can get a guided tour of the building - and of the history of Swedish astronomy. Their opening hours are a bit limited - a few hours on sundays, and during the darker months, tuesday and thursday evenings (with stargazing!).

It’s a nice building with a fascinating history, filled with peculiar old instruments and topped with a telescope. What’s not to like?

astronomy, stockholm, observatory, museum

I know, I know. It’s the oldest trick in the blogger’s manual - can’t think of anything to write about? Have a look at what people have been searching for when they stumbled over your blog, and then make fun of them!

But it’s just too much fun. So here we go again:

are koalas unicellular or multicellular
…oh dear. This question is so confused about basic biology that I daren’t answer it.

arguments against sarah palin
As much as I’d like to believe Sarah Palin was really just Tina Fey in disguise pulling a huge prank on the American public, unfortunately I actually believe she exists. Now if you ask me about arguments against God…

brain activity before death
All of it, I’d say. This is a common theme among keywords that lead to my site.

ex-christian guilt free
Probably moreso than before they became ex-, yes!

feed bees sugar cubes
Well, you could, but I’m not sure why you’d want to. We occasionally feed our bees table sugar when there’s been a dry spell or constant raining and they don’t have much food left. But in cube form? That seems unnecessarily expensive.

gay life in sweden
Yep, it’s not like we ever suffer from SAD or anything. Oh, wait, you were talking about homosexuals? Damn. I’ve no idea, then.

house md proves god doesn’t exist
Damn, that’d be the day. Actually, I hope it won’t happen. I’d pretty much be forced to marry Hugh Laurie then and I don’t think my boyfriend would appreciate that.

how hot can you heat honey
Presumably there’s no upper limit, although of course, after a while the molecular structures will fall apart and then it’s debatable whether it can really be called “honey” anymore. (The actual answer to the question is 40 centigrade. Heat it more than that for more than a few seconds and the healthy enzymes break apart and you’re left with just sugar.)

i worked in a bank, was this where i caught hepatitis
…yes, yes it was. No one should work in a bank, ever.

identifying my personal guardian angel using my date of birth
What, wait, is there some sort of directory of guardian angels where you can look them up or something? That’s so awesome!

if not a combover then what
ANYTHING! ANYTHING ELSE! ANYTHING BUT A COMBOVER! (I get a surprising number of hits from people looking for something to do with combovers. Hopefully, I have averted one or two disasters speaking out against them!)

is virgin beeswax ok on the face
Yes. Can’t have any of that slutty beeswax though. In fact, make sure it’s wearing a purity ring or at least has made a serious committment to not having sex before marriage. Saddlebacking is ok though.

losing virginity before and after pictures
This makes me wonder about the motives of the person googling. I think there’s three possibilities: Either it’s someone looking for virgin-fetish porn. Or, it’s a girl who doesn’t know what a vagina’s “supposed” to look like, and is worried something has gone wrong. Or, it’s a girl who’s done it but wants to claim to be a virgin and wonders if anyone would be able to tell. Both the latter options make me a little sad. A little sex ed goes a long way to help in cases like this!

what does the saying “life before death” mean?
That I don’t believe in an afterlife and want to focus on the life I have here and now instead.

why do bees leave hive in winter
… because they’re dead. Really. If you have no bees in your hive at the end of winter, that’s because they’ve died.

keywords, bees, sex, combovers, religion

One and a half months ago or so Greg Laden had the audacity to tag me for a meme. Man, how dare he! (I would be remiss not to point out that discovering that tag may have had something to do with me taking up blogging again.) Anyway, since being tagged is a binding contract on pain of eternal damnation, I better get it done, so here we go.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random arbitrary things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random arbitrary things … that’s idiotic. Any six things I come up with will quite obviously be anything but random - they will be stuff about myself that I personally consider interesting or quaint, or think that other people may find interesting or quaint. But here goes.

• I don’t read the news. Or watch the news, or listen to the news. I find “the news” obnoxious and annoying - it’s all other people’s opinions on what I ought to find interesting. And if I’m gonna have other people filter my news, it might as well be people who know what I’m interested in, or have the same interests. Which is why I get my news pretty much exclusively from friends and blogs.
• I like having my picture taken and sometimes worry that I’m overly narcissistic, even as I struggle with the same insecurities and self-image problems most people seem to suffer from.
• My boyfriend and I first met in Star Wars Galaxies, an mmorpg. (This was back in the days before WoW, when SWG was still a game worth playing.)
• Despite being a complete and utter slob, I love sorting things - everything from alphabetising books to pouring a tube of Smarties on a table and arranging them according to colour. I think my aversion to tidying my apartment is due to the fact that there is no intuitive, obvious way of sorting all the stuff I have, which makes me feel like no matter how clean the place is, it’s still basically a mess. This might just be a rationalisation though.
• I played the violin for about 13 years. Quitting was idiotic, but the musical education was still definitely worth it, as I now have pretty much perfect pitch.
• I suffer from a phobia of maths. I got reasonable grades despite (sometimes literally) sleeping through maths in high school, which means I can’t be hopeless at it, but pose a maths problem to me that’s more than basic arithmetics and watch me blanch and tremble.

Since I’ve been gone from the blogosphere for a while, I don’t really know who’s already done this meme and who hasn’t, so I might end up tagging some people who have. If you’re one of them, my apologies.

Anyway, here’s my list of tagees: Aardvarchaeology (already been tagged by Greg! how did I miss that?), Yttranden, KafirGirl, Anna Does Life, Paddy K and … YOU!

meme

Here we go again, back from another too-long, unannounced absence. And this time I failed to post a blog carnival, too!

(What happened? One thing: I was sick the days before it was to be posted and hence was unable to complete the carnival post as I only received like two submissions - TWO things: I was sick and only received like two submissions and then I couldn’t get hold of Irradiatus (who’s in charge of the carnival) - THREE things… you get where this is going. A number of circumstances conspired to stop me from posting the carnival, and then I was swept up in a flurry of real life activities precluding me from feeling inclined to blog much. Although I have no qualms about leaving my personal blog unattended, I feel horribly guilty about letting the Carnival of Evolution down. I will not offer to host a carnival again anytime soon, that’s for sure. I clearly can’t be trusted.)

So, what’s up? I’m on the last leg of a course called Molecular Ecology at the moment. It’s been good fun, studying a wide range of topics from population genetics to phylogeography to the use of pheromones in agriculture. It has definitely strengthened my resolve to focus on phylgenetics/systematics and historical biogeography in the future, as nothing makes my science gland tingle like those subjects. Unfortunately, I was handed a pretty dull topic for the last project on the course, so the last week is going to be a bit of a drag.

In other news, christmas has come and gone. If anyone’s curious about how a secular Swedish christmas is celebrated, I wrote about it last year. Also, on December 28 I passed the quarter-century milestone on my life’s journey (this being a very poetic way of saying I’m 25 and hence officially old - of course, if you ask my boyfriend, I’ve always been old, but on the morn of my birthday he upgraded me from “27″ to a “million billion years”). My birthday gift was a bed, which I’m very excited about, and which should arrive in a couple of weeks. Other news on the personal front include the fact that I finally caved in and took up WoW again. At the moment, however, I’m on a forced hiatus due to lack of money… And yes, I have used up my trials, thanks for asking.

On the humanism front, the Stockholm section of the Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation now has bi-weekly meetups at a café on Söder, which is good fun. One would think there’s a risk we run out of topics to talk about, but so far that hasn’t seemed to happen. After all, it’s not like we’re forbidden to discuss things outside of humanism. (Does sex count as on or off topic?) Also on the SHYO front, I co-authored an article in response to a letter to the editor in Kristianstadsbladet. It’s about morals, Darwin and nazis. I may translate it at some point. Tobias has also commented the letter on his brand new blog Yttranden (good luck with it, Tobias!).

That’s it for now. Now we all wait with baited breath to see how long I can keep it up this time…

humanism, biology, christmas

This is Sweden, at 0630: America, you made us proud today.

barack obama, obama, election

After rhetorics class today, I was discussing voice pitch with some classmates. It’s generally a good idea to assume a deep voice when speaking in front of an audience, to avoid sounding hysterical and give your subject matter some gravity. Of course, women are often at a bit of a disadvantage, seeing as how many of us don’t have very deep voices. In a desperate bid to be heard, it’s easy to start straining your voice and/or screaming - even if you have a microphone. (For the record, I’m an alto and don’t really have this problem.)

That this is a very real disadvantage has been made clear by american politics, where one of the main arguments against Hillary Clinton’s candidacy seemed to be that she has a shrill voice. And now, liberal bloggers who were pissed off by this unfair treatment of a female candidate are doing the very same thing against Sarah Palin. (Myers, I’m looking at you…) Just google ‘Palin “I hate her voice”‘, see what I mean.

Ok, so her voice is not very nice to listen to. But surely, she can’t help it? Sometimes no matter how much you train your voice, you simply can’t make it sound any better in front of an audience. Sure, she could do something about that accent, but … huh, wait a minute.

In the older clips she actually sounds like she has half a brain! The Salon piece covering this talks about her accent, but listen to her voice. It’s relaxed, soft, feminine and not shrill at all. She’s actually making an effort to sound awful.

Gosh darnit. There goes my argument.

sarah palin, rhetorics

Recent additions to my blogroll:

At Tetrapod Zoology, Darren Naish writes fun and informative posts about what’s starting to emerge as one of my favourite areas of biology.

KafirGirl is reading the Quran, so I don’t have to. Also, there are LOLmuslims. Really can’t beat that.

a Nadder!, written by Michael Fridman, is a little difficult to describe. It’s got a certain something, but I can’t quite tell what it is that sets it apart from other atheist blogs. Just go there and find out for yourself.

blogs