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.