And here are some blog entries on the topic of plagiarism - surely to be a growth item...
Anything with a wiki reference:
Now this is the list of rants on a more personal nature. It includes the recipe stuff, and the fish, not to mention all the rants about Germany.
Jakob Nielson is so right - the timeline archive for a blog just sucks. I need to have a thematic archive, but blogger does not have such a beast. So I will fix this by adding some posts that will eventually hit the archives, but will have nice URLS, that I can then stick in the templates. This one links to rants on didaktics. More to follow!
I guess that's the reason they celebrate the Feast of St. Stephan's as the second day of Christmas in Europe - more chance to have a white Christmas!
The rain turned to snow on Dec. 26 - just a few centimeters at first, then a storm came over and dumped about
15 cm. I shovelled the walk and then made a big, fat angel in the snow - haven't done that for years. Wanted to shock my guys at breakfast when they looked out the window. But we got another 10 cm of snow over night, so the walk was snowed in again and my angel had disappeared.
I walked to town to get the paper and some rolls, it is just 20 minutes walk and I would have needed twice that to shovel out and de-ice the car. It was a winter wonderland, the trees laden with clean snow. I ate lots of it off the trees on the way down! The sky was leaden, but laced with tones of red. All of a sudden it seemed that the clouds had dropped out of the sky, and it began to snow - first little hailstones, then big fat snowflakes. The air was so clean and cold, it felt really wonderful.
The coffee tasted double good when I got home! We then shoveled out the car and drove to Lund - in a snowstorm. The car swerved merrily around each corner, giving the ESP, or EPS, or whatever the fancy electronic anti-swerving device is called, some exercise. The highway was not cleared, so we had a little caravan of cars, slowly making their way along. About halfway to Lund the snow stopped and the sun came out gleaming - exactly what one expects for a white Christmas!
We made it to Lund and did some shopping before watching Narnia. We started a tradition with a friend, watching the LOTR films every Christmas in Ystad. So we decided to make do with Narnia, but after the film a hard discussion broke out as to whether this film or the latest Harry Potter film was worst. We decided to go to the movies again next year, but it will not be a family fantasy film. Hope the film industry produces something more to our liking.
I decided to actually attend a Julotta this morning. I had attended one maybe 15 years ago, crossing a lake by spark up in Dalarna with a friend to get there. This morning I "just" had to take the car to town, 7 km away. Upon getting up at 6 for the 7 am service I decided I had to skip breakfast - it was 2 degrees under zero and the car was coated in ice!
Getting inside the car was a challange - it had rained all day Christmas Eve and the doors were frozen shut. I managed to jimmey the hatchback open, and could crawl into the station wagon end, but of course I still had the net installed so the car could be packed full of stuff. I had to remove the netting and get the back seats moved down with frozen fingers, and then was able to throw my weight against the door to get it opened. Had to repeat this twice, once for the back seat and once for the front seat.
I spent 20 minutes scraping away the ice with a broken ice scraper. I made a mental note to splurge on a new one and made it to town with just a few minutes to spare. I parked near 3 other cars thinking well, now we are 4, maybe even 7 people. I opened the big door of the church - to a crush of humanity! Would you believe, there were all sorts of people, some even younger than me, who actually got up for 7am in the morning! Okay, every year it is getting easier to be younger than me, but I still normally manage to drastically lower the average age of the service I am attending.
Well, this should be some service! But the priest-of-the-day was the old drone, he can really put you to sleep with his monotone voice. I had hoped on something like the Danish church had promised, all about the foreigners discussion, but it was just something Christmasy. I don't understand how the rest of the people stayed awake! But maybe it was the expectation of going home that kept them awake - coming out of the church to a breaking, icy dawn was quite breathtaking. The sky was painted a light blue streaked with many red tones, the trees were dusted with frost. I took a right instead of a left and took the long way home, just to relish these gorgeous moments - with nary a car in sight. Maybe this is why the people get up so early on Christmas Morning.
Ha en god forsättning på helgen!
During a discussion with two diploma students today about the recent Wikipedia "scandal" one of the students noted that the analogy that people are using is completely wrong. Wikipedia should not be compared with printed encyclopedias such as the Britannica, although they may be striving to get there some day. What the Wikipedia gives you in the way of an answer is about what you would get if you called across to a colleague in the next cubicle or called a friend on the phone and asked them, "Say, do you know what X is?".
The only difference is that with Wikipedia, you have 600.000 or maybe 700.000 friends out there, ready to answer your question at a moment's notice. You know that this may not be the authoritative answer, but it is pretty good for starters.
My handball team was celebrating the annual Christmas party after our terrible 20:4 loss against SCC. This is my first year with the team, so it was my first participation. Lucky me, I missed out on some of the annual presents that make the rounds every year. Apparently Helga found the wall hanging useful for keeping out the draughts in her cabin in Sweden, so that has disappeared. Petra got the porcelin bird, as well as a big stone and a little camping chair.
I was complaining about my present to a friend, who wrote:
"Julklapp is funny, you always get stuff you don't need ;) or that is toooo horrible to use ;) "
I think it was Steffi that made this present for me, she had such an angelic look on her face when I unwrapped the mess - a big box containing:
1) stupid, large, green and purple cloth floral arrangement
2) a crocheted, glittery bag for keeping kleenex in (probably so you can clean up after puking about the flowers)
3) two wooden pegs for juggling
4) a Santa Clause baggy with a bag of gummi bears and two little bottles of horrible sweet schnapps.
The schnapps might please a guest. The gummi bears will be in my office for students until they disappear. The plant will look lovely next to my plastic, animated, talking George Bush doll. I shall have to redecorate, though, and move the stones and shells somewhere else, anything natural will clash with the plant.
I mean, I actually donated something, well, useful to the Julklapp effort: a two-piece china bear that when you take it apart, makes into an egg cup and a salt shaker. Oh yes, it is green. Somehow, green is not the color to be looking at in the mornings, that's why it's been on the shelf for years, I forget who gave it to me. May have been a Julklapp.
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