Blog assignment No 6: Is there an intrinsic value in human science?

There are always two sides of a coin and we have to put some relevant questions: Can science solve all questions, or do new questions occur when one has been solved? Is the science that isn't the divine idea, but the way through which a human being tries do explain or manipulate complex systems in nature, a basic condition for life on earth in the future or does it maybe in the long run contribute to destruction of the earth, by promoting development of new products, among them weapons, and a constantly increasing demand for these products? Does science make us happier? Or smarter?

The scientific world is a world quite different from other worlds. The scientific world is very narrow, which means that a single person often for years deals with one question within a narrow field. The scientist is often satisfied with, or at least bound to that, while the aim is to prove that a thesis is true or to develop a better instrument to cure some particular illness, make aeroplanes fly better or explain the unseen. To achieve specific successful results, use of certain methods, like mathematical models or specific trial-and-error models, are required.

The scientific world is thus very destined, while it requires systemizing, although research sometimes is called free. Sometimes science also has tied close links to the business world and many companies are recruiting scientists in developing for instance new cars, new fuel, new genetically modified products; in the last case not seldom tied up by the pesticide industry.

Often, however, at least one more question occurs when another one is solved or as a result of a progress or an invention like an unforeseen side-effect or a new discovery. One well-known example of a new raised question is the discovery of the atom , which for some time was assumed to be the smallest part existing – until neutrons and protons were discovered. Another example is the human genome. When invented, the human being was assumed to be mapped out.

It didn’t last long, however, until a new result was presented about the importance of environment, when it comes to how the genes are responding or acting in their interaction with the environment, in order to promote or not promote the development of a certain illness. Now the scientists have taken two steps back again, telling that the genes are much more directing than previously assumed.

Another example is genetically modified organisms, GMO. Many crops are genetically modified to resist a particular pesticide, that kills everything that grows in the field except the modified crop itself. An unforeseen side-effect of this manipulation of nature, is the empoverishment of the biological manifoldness.

Another side effect is due to the possibility of mass-production, of fast transportation and of the world-market, namely the huge economical benefits from mass-production, which lead to obliterating e.g. a great part of the rain-forest in South America and other places.

So – at what extent does science contribute to the survival of the earth with all its species? Maybe we can consider it inevitable that the more we know, the longer we live and the healthier we become, the more we also produce and consume? Is this the inevitable other side of the coin?

Regarding how earth looks, that’s what it seems like. We don’t write in sand anymore or paint in the air, unless we for the moment are in lack of paper and pencil. Instead it leads to a huge consumption of instruments, measuring tools, computers, sky-labs, cyclotronic laboratories.....

Such tools have in turn paved the way to, instead of being satisfied with drinking cold or melted water directly or heating it on a small fire, our need of a nuclear plant to produce the required energy for heating a lot of water, lightening up a lot of homes, streets, factories...

Instead of letting the stars, the moon and the snow lighten up the northern winter nights, we need so much energy to lighten up the empty streets in the nights, that, according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we will soon lose our snow and ice, which is an effect of the climate change all this use of energy, including transportation, is assumed to cause.

If science makes it more complicated to boil water and causes an in general increased need of energi; does science make us happier, then? Does the chance World Wide Web offers to communicate over the net also make us actively prioritize this before seeing a friend over a cup of coffee and does this make us happier? I doubt it.

I don’t think that economic or scientific development necessarily or automatically leads to happiness. In a survey a couple of years ago, people in poor countries like Nigeria appeared to be the happiest. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_hap_net-lifestyle-happiness-net&int=-1

So – what is being achieved through science? Is science essential, our new religion?
Actually science can help to cure many illnesses, help explaining many things in a way that probably wouldn’t have been possible without science, help predicting what’s likely to happen in the future, make communication easier and much more. The question is, however, whether the costs are higher than the benefits.

Not every education, occupation or phenomenon can be called scientific, while many have never been proven to exist (phenomenon), nor been scientifically examined (education or occupation), but only practised or simply existing. Even if e.g. the effect of playing or singing can be or has been proven from some points of view, the full effect of a single practice can't be proven.

The reason is simply that every single thing in life is far too complicated to ever be explained in every existing sence. Just try to, in words, explain exactly and in detail how to tie the shoestrings. If you would succeed - walk out on the lawn and tell in detail everything you see within the closest square meter around you and in detail how it works. Probably no living human being manages that.

Therefore one maybe might have to believe in science, in order to keep the motivation, year after year. If so, belief in science in its extreme sometimes touches upon religion in the sence that one trusts its power to solve every problem. However, some of the basic conditions for science to work that way, not regarding its supposed inherent nature of contributing to solve the world's problems, but for the application of the scientific results, are economy and application.

Even if it lately has been proven that the brain-cells can be renewed and that colours and music promote the growth of new association ways in the brain – how is that being applied to elderly care or care for disabled people everywhere in the world, where needed? To what extent does economy conduct the possibilities for success? Does science and belief in science cause or imply worship of mammon or is science and application of its results entirely driven by inspiration and efforts?

In general we hope that new scientific results lead to a change to the better in e.g. care, but at the same time we have to realize that the level of access to money as well as other factors like e.g. illiteracy constitute a limitation, when it comes to at what extent scientific results can practically be applied. Access to educated staff is another limiting element.

My assumption is that science will continue to raise new questions but not necessarily ever give an answer to every basic question that has to do with e.g. survival, happiness, hope or dreams.

Nor will science solve all problems on earth. What we know is that love leads to life, while on the other hand the results of science can produce both death and life. My conclusion is thus that there is no intrinsic value of human science. Instead it’s a question of how scientific results are being used, to what extent and for what purpose, i.e. how we use the results we get from exploring the divine science; the only genuine science. The really smart one.

Blog assignment No 5: To be adult - a matter of value?

Can we judge age in terms of better or worse? Is it better to be young than to be old and if so - in what sence? Or is it better to be old than to be young? Is it better to be a child than to be an adult? Or the other way around?

There is a proverb saying:

The wisdom of an old
is like the winter sun:
It brightens up
without heating...

Another proverb says:

In contrary to the butterfly
we were born as butterflies
but die as caterpillars....

Both as small children and as older, maybe disabled, we are dependent on others to help us. As adults we are supposed to manage our lives ourselves. With that follows responsibility; something that not every adult person always manages to take on.

Problems in childhood can result in difficulties later in life and persons can get difficulties in assuming responsibility for both themselves and for others, like their families.

Maybe one can say that childhood is the time of learning and experimenting, while adolescence is the time of proving and producing.

If a child never gets the chance to make mistakes or to learn, but instead has to prove and to produce, adolescence might become hard, while time for playing, copying, imaging and for making mistakes too soon disappeared.

I have a memory from when I was about two years old. My father played with me: We made a tower by wooden bricks and let other bricks fall down in the middle of it. I was happy - maybe even happier than ever since! Does it sound strange?

Unfortunately not all children get the chance to play or to be out on their own, however. A survey in two suburbs of Stockholm in 2005 showed that only 89 % of the twelve-year-old children in one suburb and 75 % in the other were allowed to be out on their own.

It's important to let children be children and to play. Unfortunately that's not the case everywhere in the world! But it is also important to let a child try its own wings when time comes.

Around the age of twelve an important change is taking place and at that very age a change took place also in my life. From having been a child who always was out playing, sometimes also doing things that should have made my mother worried, suddenly my mother was frightened that something was going to happen and thus the happiest time of freedom and light-heartedness had become limited. The reason was something called puberty....

I think there are big values in every stage of life. The interesting thing is that things always can happen that you wouldn't even have dreamt about!

Life offers surprises and every stage of age has its values, why these stages not always or in every sense are comparable. The important matter is rather whether you are prepared to receive and accept it or not!

Blog assignment No 4, Should we legalize illegal drugs for medical purposes?

Should we legalize illegal drugs for medical purposes?

First I want to stress upon that there is a profound difference between “liberalize” the use of now illegal drugs and to “legalize” it.

To liberalize the use is to let it free, which means to let a drug addicted person take the full responsibility for his/her use, abuse or addiction and of the consequences. The state is no longer responsible for what happens to the drug addicted or can act against e.g. smuggling, while all trade with a legal drug then is free. No limits of production, trade or import is desired by the “liberals”, who want to let the individual freely choose kind of drug and also thus make the individual fully responsible for the extent, way or place of consuming this drug. The liberals also want to abolish all limits against free trade and purchase of alcohol.

To legalize an illegal drug, is to decriminalize the use of it, but not necessarily to let it completely free. Many legalizers can accept some kind of control regarding where the drug can possibly be sold, like in a drugstore. Some want to legalize the use of so called 'soft' drugs but not necessarily ‘hard’ drugs. Others want to focus on sellers and only decriminalize the use of the drug.

Today many drugs are illegal, while they are regarded being harmful to human being. Still some of them are refined and used for various medical purposes, like opium: The drug in its raw form is prohibited, although some cultivation is allowed for medical use. Codeine and morphine are examples of opium derivatives, used in health- and medical care.

Heroine, once introduced as a non-harmful replacement for morphine in order to cure addiction to morphine, is a half synthetic derivative from opium with no medical use and is therefore forbidden. Methadone is a 100 % synthetic substitute for heroine against heroine addiction. Methadone is also prescribed to cancer patients as an analgesic.

Cultivation of the cannabis plant is allowed only for medical research or horticultural or fibre purposes, according to the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs from 1961. In the preamble of the convention, medical use of narcotic drugs in general terms is being mentioned:


"PREAMBLE
The Parties,
Concerned with the health and welfare of mankind,
Recognizing that the medical use of narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering and that adequate provision must be made to ensure the availability of narcotic drugs for such purposes,"


The convention thus recognizes the use of a drug or its derivative for medical purposes. That, however, means that a strict legal framework must surround the production, utterly in order to prevent self-medication, abuse and addiction, which is considered to be risky and harmful to the individual. The initiative to the convention was taken by an Egyptian, while the patients in Egyptian mental hospitals to a great extent were treated for illnesses related to cannabis-abuse.

I think that the intentions that underlie the Single Convention are good. I think we need a framework that regulates production of illicit drugs. Legalizing illicit drugs is also associated with problems such as how to declare the efficacious substances. Cannabis, for instance, consists by more than sixty psychotropic substances, of which THC is one and also the most important for the euphoric effect, however the others have effect as well and also interact with each other and with THC in an unpredictable way. Alcoholic drinks only have one intoxicating substance, namely alcohol, which is easy to indicate the percentage of.

Although alcoholic drinks are intoxicating liquors, they have a long tradition in our northern countries - from heating the body in the cold winter and making a child fall asleep to cure a beginning cold. People also know how to produce an alcoholic drink, like wine, in the home. Still alcohol is not "liberalized", i.e. free, but instead "legalized", i.e. surrounded by several laws, which regulate everything from where to sell it, age limit both for consumption and purchase, import limits and so on.

My opinion is that psychotropic drugs with unpredictable effects and drugs where use convey a brisk risk for sudden deaths or have proved to convey high mortality also in small amounts, also in the future shall be prohibited. Use for medical purposes should thus be in a controlled way, in order to avoid undesired side effects, where medically active substances either have been derived or, where use of the original drug is allowed, prescribed on medical indication by a doctor, but as an exception and not as a matter of routine.

First Global Peace Index Ranks 121 Countries

First Global Peace Index Ranks 121 Countries

Blog assignment No 3, Why do stars, black holes and the moon fascinate us?

Photo: Olle Eriksson


When I sit in the outhouse at my summerhouse under the stars with the door widely open a late summer eve, I can see the Big Dipper. It's always there, like a familiar friend. What is it that has made stars and celestial phenomenon trig people's imagination throughout history?

In Persia there were stargazers, who on the top of the Victory mountain gazed at the stars and eventual phenomenons like falling stars. When a star fell or there was an unusual phenomenon visible in the sky, a regent or king was said to be born or to have died.

The "three wise men from the land of East", who came to give gifts to Jesus, or to the "new king", are told to have been"Magics", or stargazers from the Victory mountain. Also the Persians were namely waiting for an emperor, but an earthly one, who would be born in a cave by a virgin and who was going to save the world. The Magics traditionally wore hats formed as cones and still today the "starboys" in Sweden have cone formed hats with stars on, when we celebrate Lucia.

"A star" is defined as someone on the top, an idol, someone glorious that glitters and shines. We also classify people and things by giving them a different number of stars or give a star to i e the best brand.

However, stars fall, both on earth and in the sky but there is actually one star that shines more than the other and that also is visible in the daylight, namely the star we call the "evening star", the planet Venus. If you google the exact phrase "The evening star", you get 380 000 hits and if you google the key words "the evening star" you get more than 38 million hits. So what about God?


Venus

Well, God lives in the sky, of course, doesn't he? - and also heaven is there, they used to say. If you google "God" in English, you receive 140 million hits. In our own pre-Christian mythology it is said about the god Tor, that when there was a thunderstorm, Tor was angry and went into the sky, driving around among the clouds with his waggon, pulled by two billy goats, and fighting with his hammer, which was what caused the thunder. Tor is in old Nordic language 'Þórr', Anglo-Saxon'Þunor' and in old German 'Donar'. (Free Wikipedia). His name Tor is also related to modern Swedish "dunder", English "thunder" and German "Donner".

Obviously phenomenon in the sky, before which people have felt powerless, have made people both religious and worshiping. Also they have trigged our imagination much enough to finally make us wanting to investigate the planets and the universe, no matter costs or benefits. Studying the universe has thereby also become a way to explain and take control. What about the moon, then, our closest and most investigated neighbour?

Also the moon in its different stages is supposed to have a lot of impact on earth and life on it, from the phenomenon tide and growth, to birth and people's future. So why not just go there and see what it is like?! That's what the Americans actually did in 1969. That's at least what we've been told.

When I was in Washington DC in 1977, eight years after the first moon landing, I visited the Space Museum and touched a moon stone. I also went into a space lab, where one could travel into the human body with the same speed as the space rocket was heading towards the moon. The only big difference, beside the fact that it was faked, was that one travel was into microcosmos while the other one was into macrocosmos.

However, in August 15, 2006, one could read in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Nasa had lost the first moon landing: "Nasa har tappat bort första månladdningen"; that around 700 boxes with taped material from Apollo were missing, among them the film with Neil Armstrong's wellknown moon-walk but also his famous words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

I don't know if they have found it or will find it, but some people already claim that it's all a fake: Was it? Read the arguments and counterarguments on BBC Science & Nature: DID WE REALLY LAND ON THE MOON?

Whatever the truth is, we can assume that the sky with its stars, black holes, planets, including our moon and sun, also in the future will raise questions among mankind like: Where does the universe end, what is behind the stars, is there life anywhere else than on earth? It is to be hoped that some of the interest for the unknown will spill over to the planet that is most familiar to us: The Earth, Tellus. But maybe it's typical: We are more interested in what we can not reach than in what we can reach? Or aren't we?

Well, interestingly enough "Earth" gives 226 million hits at Google, which means 86 million more hits than "God". Is this a sign that we start to be more concerned about our earth, the more we get to know about universe, where we this far haven't found nor life or a visible God?

In fact science about space has given us insight in and knowledge about, among other things, how we can affect the thickness of the ozone layer and thereby the prerequisites for life on earth through our life style.

So, maybe the possibility to enter space has given some answers about the stars, the moon and the sun, but raised new questions about surviving on our own planet Earth. Left are then still questions that will continue to tickle our imagination, concerning macro- as well as microcosmos....

To end up where I started, at my summerhouse and its late summer starspangled sky, I will tell you something that happened one night at 2 am in August some years ago.

I opened the bedroom window to let som fresh air in and watched the sky with all its stars. It was so beautiful! Then I saw something like a small star far away, just like one of the other stars, however this one moved in the direction straight forward from my viewpoint. I kept standing watching it for some minutes, wondering what it was.

Then suddenly another one, just as small and shiny, came moving on from the right, heading towards the first one. When almost there, it changed direction and then they continued together, side by side out into the universe..........

***************************************End of blog, but read the follwing***:

Almost one week after having written this blog, I happened to find this film on the Internet. The interesting thing is that it is filmed on August 22, 2007, and I happened to see the phenomenon described above on August 22, I think 2003 or 2004. I remember the date, while I was intending to report my observation somewhere and also hear if some extraordinary exercise within the space industry had taken place or if anyone else but me had reported similar observations, but I never did. Regarding the date, this is almost too much of a coincidence.....or what do you think? Two space air crafts, side by side.... NB: Read the comments....aren't the palm-trees just too strikingly similar not to asume that it's a result of a computer and a user of it....? Well, space will probably still tickle our imagination as long as human beings remain on earth!

Is it due to the climate effect?

Yesterday I picked some ripe raspberries at my summer house. The normal time for raspberries is July, not the end of September. Is it the climate effect?

Blog assignment No 2, Academic English: What is a typical Swede?

When I was born, I had a lot of black hair, dark eyes and I actually looked kind of a small Chinese baby. Pretty soon the black hair was replaced by blond and I turned out to be a blond and blue-eyed child. What made me so dark? My sister and brothers had not been that dark when they were born.

Probably my darkness was due to the heritage of my mother. My mother was also very dark when she was born - so dark that people called her an exchange baby. In contrast to me, she remained dark, however. Her features witnessed about a heritage from Finnish and Valloon immigrants. Maybe that's typical - we Swedes are a mixture of immigrants.

The first ones came from the south, when the inland ice was melting down 10 000 years ago. The first tracks of a homogenous population however remain from raindeer holders, probably the Samish population that now populate the northern part of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Thus one could say that all others, that mainly came from the south, were immigrants, just the same way as all the Europeans that originally in the 16th century invaded South and North America, that for milleniums had been populated by Indians, were immigrants.

Still I think I'm a "typical" Swede, although my former chinese boyfriend once said that I was like a typical Chinese girl and my present Arabic thinks I am like an Arabic woman....So what does that indicate? That we have a lot in common, we people of the world?

Am I really a typical Swede, and what is that? Does the culture form us? Is there only one kind of Swede that is typical? What are the tracks that bring us together? Is it the understanding through a common language, the acceptance of the manifoldness and the comprehension of some common values?

Maybe it was easier to imagine a few years ago that one was a typical Swede? Or are there just many typical types of Swedes.....?

I lived in Uppsala for 26,5 years and I felt like a refugee, thrown out on a clay field. After my mother had died, I bought my old school (see top of this article) south of Kristinehamn, in the parish Södra Råda, municipality Gullspång, county Västra Götaland and in the province of Värmland.....where I was born and near the village where we used to rent a small, red cottage, 'stuga' in the summer, right by the lake during the first twelve years of my life.

I was back and I will not move to live anywhere else again, more than perhaps temporarily. Doesn't matter how much Sweden Uppsala was - I'm from Värmland and I don't know how typical that is. Probably not very typical, while it is one of the most sparsely populated provinces in Sweden and there are twentyfour more.

This is kind of a poem I wrote to my Chinese boyfriend once.....please judge : Do you think I seem to be something that could be called a typical Swede or not?

"I like the original Swedish

and I am, after all, a child of it -

Of the cold winter nights,

of the spring sun,

of the dew in the summer grass,

of bare feet

on forest paths,

of chilly summer nights

with the fog covering

the lake surface,

waiting for the sun to rise,

Of the big ice,

of hunters struggling for life,

of the mystery and isolation,

of the poor

and of the solid,

of straw

and of lumber"

My first job interview at Uppsala University

I have to tell you about how I got my job at Uppsala University. It was quite a few years ago, before I moved back to the town where I was born: Kristinehamn.

I had just visited the dentist, and you know how you feel when you have just mended a hole in your tooth (do you?) and the whole cheek feels swollen, you don't feel anything and you don't dare to say anything, in case you will bite your tongue.

That's the condition I was in when I entered the staircase, leading up to the head of department. He welcomed me to sit down and started to put me questions. I couldn't answer! At least I could almost say nothing at all. I told him I had visited the dentist and that I couldn't speak.

Instead I tried to compensate my lack of verbal capacity by smiling and seem friendly and interested. What should I do?! I was in a very bad position!

Then he said it: You will get the job!!

Oh, my gosh! I blessed the dentist, the candy, the..... well most of all my swollen cheek.

I don't exactly know what conclusion you will draw from this or if I shall make any general recommendations. Even if you are a very talkative person, in the long run it might not be a successful thing to see to that you have to run to the dentist just before going to the job interview. And remember - visiting a dentist is not free of charge in Sweden - far from it!

So, instead: Maybe you can just pretend you have just been to the dentist?

Good luck!

Blog assignment No 1, Academic English: Why do I study Academic English?

Welcome to my blog!

Why do I study Academic English?

The reason why I am studying this subject is not that I plan to write a thesis or scientific paper for a degree. The main reason is instead that I hope to be a better and more scilled user of the English language by widening my vocabulary and by learning academic terms.

In my work here at Karlstad University, I have worked with and will also work with some translations of different scientific papers, why I think this course will be useful to me also in my professional work.

Furthermore I guess it also might be a formal qualification that could be useful to have in case I would like to work abroad for some time.