De-Lurk

Hey all you regular Dear Readers, how are you doing this early winter? I know pretty much how John, Birger and Phillip are. But there are signs that others are reading regularly, just not commenting all the time, or at all. I’m not just thinking of Ingvar, Seth, Aquadraco, Lassi, SoundEagle, Jan, Sean, Eric L and Erik van R. Lurkers, please de-lurk briefly and tell us how things are with you! For instance, aren’t any ladies reading this sausage fest? How is everybody in northerly latitudes coping with the shorter days?

Author: Martin R

Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, boardgamer, geocacher and father of two.

29 thoughts on “De-Lurk”

  2. Hullo! I, too, am giving you a wave wearing my best lurker’s frock. It’s summer here in Australia & hurtling toward longest day, so cannot complain about dark-and-drear, despite it being an El Niño year.

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      1. Yes, a quick look at your blog reveals that you do know, describing your subscribers as bats in the belfry. Nice one.

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      2. Which also explains the name of your blog. Duh – took me a little while to figure that one out.

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  3. I have only had time today to quickly browse Pipistrello’s blog and her other two sites (well, I was captivated enough to look all of the way through one of her sites – eye candy). But my recommendation is that they are well worth visiting. Well worth it – uplifting. Quite cheered me up. I plan to go back when I have time to read more.

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    1. Hullo Mr. Massey. Thank you most kindly for your fine words and I’m glad the right note about my pages was struck with you. I hadn’t expected a mere moment of de-lurking around this excellent site would cast my, ahem, goodly self in some reflected glory 🙂

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  4. Hi – I have been lurking here for several years. I enjoy reading your blog and its comments. I too am female. I live in Cambridge, England. The short days haven’t been getting me down, but the effects of Covid on life in general have.

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      1. Thanks, Martin. Yes, I am due to have my third, booster jab next weekend. Hope you enjoyed Cambridge – there’s a lot to see.

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    2. Italo – a funny story for you, or maybe you won’t think it is funny. One of my Brasilian friends certainly did not see the funny side.

      So, one year I met up with my friend Professor Pedrito Rocha Filho, Dean of Engineering at PUC in Rio de Janeiro, at an international engineering conference in Singapore. Everyone kept addressing him as “Professor Filho”, except for the small number of Portuguese speakers at that conference. Singapore is a long way from Brasil.

      When the time finally came for Pedrito to give his presentation to the conference, after being introduced by the Chairman of that Session as “Professor Filho”, he started by stating: “My name is Pedrito Rocha. In Portuguese, Filho means “son”, so that is how we say “junior” after someone’s name. My father is Pedrito Rocha Senior, and I am Pedrito Rocha Junior. Please do not call me Professor Filho. You should call me Professor Rocha.”

      Pedrito then gave his technical presentation, after which everyone applauded politely, and the Chairman of the Session, who had been sitting on the stage next to him throughout his presentation, went to the microphone and said: “Thank you Professor Filho for that very interesting presentation.” The look on Pedrito’s face was priceless, while voices from the audience were all laughing and calling out: “IT’S PROFESSOR ROCHA!!!”

      I had dinner with Pedrito that night, and he definitely could not see the funny side of it. I met up with him again at a conference in Rio the following year, and reminded him of the Singapore conference, and he still could not see the funny side of it. Well, at least in Rio, no one called him “Professor Junior.”

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      1. There is something in Germany called a Juniorprofessor. It is the start of a tenure-track career. Until recently, there were no tenure-track jobs in Germany, mainly to avoid nepotism. Of course, that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater; requiring an external candidate as a matter of principle is just as bad as hiring a local candidate as a matter of principle. Elsewhere, it might be called “assistant professor” or perhaps “temporary lecturer (tenure-track)”. It’s a better job for most than the typical postdoc, but they should have come up with a better name.

        Not putting effort into finding good names unfortunately has tradition in Germany (but probably elsewhere as well). There are some who think that things sound better if they are in English (even if there is no international aspect involved) and, even worse, it is often bad or bogus or non-existent English.

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      2. Hello, John. It sure is a funny story! I believe your friend Pedrito was in a bad mood that night. Proper names and last names in Brazil are a complicated matter, no doubt about it – I even know some “Juniors” who don’t share their fathers’ names.

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  6. OK, since you’re inviting de-lurking. I’ve had an avocational interest in archeology for a long time, and Swedish archeology is even more interesting because, before I retired, I worked for a company with a major engineering office and factory in Vasteras (don’t know how to do Scandinavian diacriticals with this software; sorry) so I got to visit there and Stockholm a number of times. There were also trips to Nykoping to visit Studsvik, and to Sandviken. By now, you may have guessed what industry I was in and maybe even what company. Always enjoyed visiting Sweden, because I didn’t feel guilty about not speaking Swedish, and I could always get around by reading the signs as if they were misspelled German. Favorite spot: the Medeltijdsmuseum in Stockholm. It amused me that we have towns in the US (Acoma, e.g.) that are older than Stockholm, at least as an organized city.

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  7. Still checking in occasionally from the Antipodes here in NZ. Working up to a warm wet summer here, with a La Nina climatic pattern. A bit shakey at the moment as we’re still in our delayed, long tail Delta infection pattern here, waiting to see if we’ve vaccinated enough as we finally lower restrictions a bit.

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      1. Don’t know. That was my impression as well, plus total only 44 fatalities, but I read that a lot of people in NZ have been calling for an independent enquiry into how the Delta surge has been handled. The political opposition, obviously, but a lot of the citizenry as well. That really surprised me.

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      2. The last independent enquiry into how NZ has managed the response to a pandemic was in relation to the ‘Spanish ‘Flu’ when 8,000+ people died, but a disproportionate number of Māori. Seems like people are saying the same thing in relation to this.

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      3. We’re still doing quite well, mostly through sheer luck of having a relatively competent government (our leftish but actually Neoliberal labour party, so their competence has gaps if money talks), and our opposition has been going through massive meltdown and leader changes. The calls for enquiry are coming only from the nuttiest, or from the ‘Oh, who cares if old people die, what about my economy’ types, the rest of us are actually pretty fine with stuff. It has hammered the tourist industry, but as an earth scientist, I’m watching the Pine Island/Thwaites glacier front, and basically running 10% of our economy on bringing rubberneckers here by burning Kerosene in the stratosphere is a stupid idea anyway.

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  8. Thanks for the very informative reply, Zane. ABC News blew up the calls for enquiry to make it sound like it was a majority thing.

    I am not remotely surprised that facts on the ground differ from MSM stories, particularly coming from the West Island (do Kiwis still refer to Oz that way LOL?)

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  9. Hi Martin; things are going ok here on the eastern coast of Australia. Inland they’ve been having floods, in Western Australia there have been bushfires, but in my little part of the continent it’s been soggy but not too bad.
    I’m up to date with vaccinations and looking forward to seeing the family in Sydney for Christmas.

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