| Jan 3, 2006 | The quest for the future-proof plot | |
| The promised spoils of information technology are: Unfettered communication with anyone; the accumulated knowledge of humanity available instantly; and information about the world... | ||
| Nov 26, 2005 | Googliography: Honor Holland | |
| Back in January of this year, I wrote about Viola IlmaThis post makes more sense if you first read Viola's googliography., an older... | ||
| Nov 23, 2005 | Qualis.com | |
| I've just finished Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown — and what an engrossing novel it is. The prose is luxuriant but the pace... | ||
| Sep 23, 2005 | Judging wines by their labels | |
| It's Friday after work in Kungsholmen, and once again I find myself standing in line to take the numbered ticket that saves a... | ||
| Aug 14, 2005 | Borges and the Eternal Orangutans | |
| Coincidence is destiny. Had I not forgotten my security card as I left the office early on Friday, I would never have been... | ||
| Jul 7, 2005 | Flightblogging (properly) | |
| I was eager to play early adopter and try SAS's inflight wireless web connection on my flight to New York, and have now... | ||
| Jul 3, 2005 | Archipelago postcard | |
| On the northwestern edge of Sandˆn, in the Stockholm archipelago, there is a rocky outcropping that is a perfect place to watch the... | ||
| Jun 28, 2005 | Berlin IV: Holocaust Memorial | |
| Behind the memorial, the Reichstag's new dome, the chariot atop the Brandenburg Gate, and a crane helping rebuild Berlin. A bit laden with... | ||
| Jun 28, 2005 | Berlin III: Reichstag | |
| The glass dome atop the Reichstag is a wonderful piece of architecture that fulfills its symbolic duty — reminding legislators below that they... | ||
| Jun 26, 2005 | Berlin II: Tempelhof | |
| Berlin Templehof airport is an instant favorite. The main building supports a huge arching overhang that swallows planes whole. The architecture is monumental,... | ||
| Jun 26, 2005 | Berlin I | |
| Argentina vs. Mexico in the Federation cup, and many Berliners in Prenzlauer berg were out watching on the sidewalks on a sunny summer... | ||
| Jun 8, 2005 | Google politicking | |
| People [Swedish] like to collect instances of google journalism — where journalists google a term and cite the number of hits they get... | ||
| Jun 6, 2005 | Thin-slicing my brain | |
| Almost two weeks ago, fellow Bloggforum panel member HÂkan tried to infect me with the booklisting virus that's been doing the rounds of... | ||
| Jun 1, 2005 | Dokubloggar | |
| NÂgon har skickat mig en (tror jag) hemlig minnesanteckningThis is marginalia placed at the very start of the Dokubloggar post. Soon, it will... | ||
| May 22, 2005 | On Graphemectomy at the New York Times | |
| The New York Times has an article today about Dag Hammarskjˆld's diary cum autobiography, translated into English and published posthumously in 1964 as... | ||
| May 20, 2005 | Sith pith | |
| As I walked home from Episode III, the view from Slussen reminded me of night encroaching on Naboo: The classical turrets and spires... | ||
| Apr 6, 2005 | Jan Yoors redux | |
| By the grace of Google, Kore Yoors found my recent post about him and his father, Jan Yoors, and contacted me. It was... | ||
| Mar 28, 2005 | Christina Olsons hus | |
| The translation, sort of:Exactly 10 years ago this Easter Weekend, while I was at grad school in Washington DC, I was faced with... | ||
| Mar 13, 2005 | Googliografi: Jan Yoors | |
| Fˆrsta i serien: Viola IlmaDen fˆrsta gÂngen jag bodde i New York var mellan 1976 och 1982, som barn, och d gick jag... | ||
| Nov 22, 2004 | Stockholm International Film Festival | |
| The 15th iteration of the Stockholm International Film Festival is up and running as of a few days ago, and lasts until next... | ||
| Oct 29, 2004 | Cold comfort | |
| If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example. Top 10 reasons why Osama Bin... | ||
| Oct 28, 2004 | Political blogs are from Mars, community blogs are from Venus | |
| Annica Tiger has written two interesting posts (with good comment streams) on women bloggers in Sweden, asking in particular why so few are... | ||
| Oct 1, 2004 | Sleepwriting | |
| Must. Stay. Awake. For. The. Debate. This effort is very much being helped along by Marc in Berlin who insisted I read over... | ||
| Sep 29, 2004 | Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, IX | |
| The ninth in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seatingNine: Culinary relativismEight: PreÎmptive planningSeven: Premature masticationSix: Irrational discalceationFive: Radiotj‰nst i Kiruna ABFour: Temporal engineeringThree: Tunnelbana... | ||
| Jul 24, 2004 | Perfect Day 2 (July 23, 2004) | |
| Perfect Day 1 was May 5, 2002.If somebody were to ask me to describe a perfect summer vacation day, it might go something... | ||
| Jun 17, 2004 | Swedish chef, cont. | |
| — They are going to get that Swedish chef someday. — Who is? — The Smorgasbord of Health. For 20 minutes of guaranteed... | ||
| May 2, 2004 | Weekend report | |
| I have seen the future, and it is taller than me. On the occasion, it was also drunker — the occasion being Walpurgis,... | ||
| Apr 25, 2004 | Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, IV | |
| The fourth in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seatingNine: Culinary relativismEight: PreÎmptive planningSeven: Premature mastication. For some time, it has been apparent to me... | ||
| Apr 23, 2004 | Public service announcement | |
| This week it was the annual joke show on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion, that liberal gem of a radio show hosted by... | ||
| Apr 1, 2004 | Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, III | |
| The third in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seatingNine: Culinary relativismEight: PreÎmptive planning. In New York, planning a typical night's entertainment went something like... | ||
| Mar 26, 2004 | Dogs of War | |
| To paraphrase David Denby, David Denby has lost it. The New Yorker's movie critic now notorious for doing really idiotic things and then... | ||
| Mar 26, 2004 | Top ten things I hate about Stockholm, II | |
| The second in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seating.Nine: Culinary relativism. I am a food racist. There, I've said it. I'm not proud about... | ||
| Mar 1, 2004 | Blondes of the blogosphere | |
| Anonymous blogs are undeniably the blondes of the blogosphere: They have more fun. Look at TMFTML, Eurotrash, Belle de Jour, d-nasty, Old Hag... | ||
| Feb 28, 2004 | SoFo | |
| New York has SoHo, NoHo, Nolita, TriBeCa and Dumbo, so why can't Stockholm? Last year, somebody had that very thought, opened a cafÈ... | ||
| Feb 5, 2004 | Feud for thought | |
| Let's pretend for a moment, for the sake of a nifty segue and the argument that follows it, that Eskimos do indeed have... | ||
| Feb 4, 2004 | The wallet | |
| Discovered via the "Oddly Enough" section of Yahoo! news: A wallet lost by an 18-year old girl in southern Sweden 40 years ago... | ||
| Feb 2, 2004 | It takes two to sambo | |
| Stockholm is being overrun with small children. Everyone's getting them. This is a wonderful thing, but where do they come from? How do... | ||
| Jan 28, 2004 | Top ten things I hate about Stockholm | |
| The first in an occasional series.Ten: Predatory seating. Why do normally civil Stockholmers turn French when they set foot inside McDonalds? All the... | ||
| Jan 22, 2004 | Snˆvit in person | |
| Blogged Wednesday afternoon:Historiska Museet's cafeteria abuts the courtyard where Snˆvit is installed, and I am sitting there now, with an unimpeded view of... | ||
| Jan 20, 2004 | How very unfortunate | |
| I thought I'd seen her somewhere before. She was on the posters advertising the exhibit. I didn't put two and two together until... | ||
| Jan 19, 2004 | Compromising Snow White | |
| I tried to go see the exhibit containing "Snow White and The Madness of Truth" todayFirst, read this morning's post.. At the door,... | ||
| Jan 19, 2004 | Is it ever right to deface art? | |
| Israel's ambassador to Sweden triggered a major diplomatic row between the two countries this weekend when he disrupted an installation piece depicting a... | ||
| Jan 9, 2004 | Ingrid Thulin | |
| A free rag on the subway to work this morning carried the news in a few grafs: Ingrid Thulin, who so memorably played... | ||
| Dec 21, 2003 | Freedom Tower | |
| Freedom TowerFirst, read Felix's detailed tour of Freedom Tower, unveiled Friday. He was my eyes and ears for this post. What follows is... | ||
| Dec 13, 2003 | A post of whose kind there are far too many on the web | |
| I'm back from being away from the web for a week, precipitated by an exploding power adapter whose replacement I kept postponing the... | ||
| Nov 22, 2003 | Tu bi Âr nÂgot tu bi | |
| To be or not to be(or what is Sweden's suicide rate, once and for all?)Here is a loose translation of what I just... | ||
| Nov 16, 2003 | Any Way the Wind Blows | |
| As promised, I just saw Any Way the Wind Blows at the Stockholm Film Festival. By all means buy the soundtrack, but don't... | ||
| Nov 11, 2003 | About Antwerp | |
| The Stockholm International Film Festival is nearly upon us again. This year there is a Belgian film showing, Any Way the Wind Blows,... | ||
| Nov 5, 2003 | Swish Nobels | |
| The Volokh Conspiracy has a spirited defence going of Swiss creativity, for the most part successful, marred only by its dependence on dubious... | ||
| Oct 23, 2003 | Photo competition | |
| Who among my friends gets to win photography competitions? Franzi, that's who! (She's now a Leica richer.) The photo is of Olivier and... | ||
| Oct 23, 2003 | 40th Anniversary Issue | |
| Why do book reviews have to be so damn descriptive? All too often, one need only choose between reading the book or reading... | ||
| Oct 16, 2003 | Flightblog II: Pompeii | |
| So much to blog, so little battery... I've just finished Pompeii by Robert HarrisFlightblog I is here. I had noticed it last weekend... | ||
| Oct 2, 2003 | Pop and Circumstance | |
| The view from my office is straight into the upper stories of Stockholm's Royal palace, across the street. Nobody ever seems to be... | ||
| Sep 18, 2003 | Sushi blogrolls | |
| On Wednesday night, 10 active members of the Stockholm blogging community got together for sushi and conversation. While I had never met another... | ||
| Sep 5, 2003 | Remainders | |
| IKEA's product naming conventions exposed. Next time I need to send an anonymous letter, forget cutting words from newspapers; I'm going straight for... | ||
| Aug 11, 2003 | Skellig Michael and Great Blasket | |
| Skellig Michael is a rock jutting 217 meters straight out of the Atlantic swell some 14 km off Ireland's westernmost coast. It bears... | ||
| Aug 9, 2003 | Dublin survival notes | |
| Dublin has the best bookstores I've ever seen. They're like the London specialty ones, but cheaper. In this town, the section for books... | ||
| Jul 31, 2003 | Dublin: notes | |
| The worst thing I could say about Dublin is that visually, it is probably the EU's least impressive capitalProbably, because I have yet... | ||
| Jul 24, 2003 | Travelog: Ireland | |
| My experiences in Ireland so far have come to revolve around two major themes: Battling the great Irish bandwidth famineThis famine is at... | ||
| Jul 6, 2003 | How the Irish saved civilization? By blogging it. | |
| I've finally read How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill, and as I expected, it contains a number of big ideas. Among... | ||
| Jun 24, 2003 | Fear and loathing in Hummelmora | |
| Last weekend I was witness to the most important Swedish ritual of the year — Midsommar — wherein small children are converted to... | ||
| Jun 17, 2003 | May I introduce Miss Philips? | |
| Zed and Clarice swept through town over the weekend, bringing Georgian cognac The cognac came labeled with a strange and wonderful script I... | ||
| Jun 11, 2003 | Rubadubbing the wrong way | |
| NYCulture vulture Felix Salmon reviews Dramaten's New York production of Ibsen's Ghosts at BAM, directed by Ingmar Bergman. He can't get over the... | ||
| Jun 1, 2003 | Great reads | |
| Here are some great reads I've come across over the past week: An article by Dan Bilefsky in the Wall Street Journal details... | ||
| May 24, 2003 | The (Euro)Vision thing | |
| 21:07 CET: I thought I might blog the EuroVision song contest (ESC) in semi-real time. It's starting just now in Riga, Latvia, and... | ||
| May 8, 2003 | 24 nya fotografer | |
| Anna Lekvall is having her first "real" photo exhibit, as part of a group show with fellow classmates from Kulturama. Needless to say,... | ||
| Apr 30, 2003 | Lawrence of Arabia: The Interview | |
| Mr. Lawrence, gentlemen, thank you for taking the time to talk with me. If an indication of greatness in a work of art... | ||
| Apr 28, 2003 | Draken | |
| There Sweden has the highest per-capita number of cinema screens in Europe, according to this book, which is also the source of the... | ||
| Apr 27, 2003 | Anthony Lane on Lilja 4-Ever | |
| The New Yorker, arriving in Stockholm with a month's delay, has been unreadable of late, because nothing destroys my interest in a thriller... | ||
| Mar 29, 2003 | La Bohème | |
| I went to La Bohème at the Kungliga Operan on Thursday. Curiously, they've decided to set the Opera in a Södermalm-ish present day,... | ||
| Mar 17, 2003 | Swedish cultural extremes, part II | |
| On Saturday, Helena (Gustavsson, from SAIS Bologna days) and her sambo Christer sambo: person you live with but are not married to.hosted an... | ||
| Mar 17, 2003 | Swedish cultural extremes, part I | |
| Friday night, I finally got to see Lukas Moodysson's Lilja 4-everAnd it pains me to say it, but he is barely three months... | ||
| Mar 13, 2003 | A blog on both your houses | |
| WWII was brought home via the radio. Vietnam via TV. Gulf War I via live TV. Gulf War II will be blogged. We've... | ||
| Mar 12, 2003 | In search of the European blog | |
| I was all ready with my thesis as to why there are no blogs in Europe, why nobody here even knows what a... | ||
| Jan 30, 2003 | The new art of flightblogging, | |
| Wherein you blog whatever you deem worth mentioning during a battery's worth of computer time between London and New York despite critical faculties... | ||
| Dec 23, 2002 | World Trade Center proposals: | |
| Some of the skyscrapers proposed last week for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center might be grand, but what's the point of... | ||
| Dec 16, 2002 | Demean Streets? | |
| David Denby's review of Scorcese's Gangs of New York in The New Yorker finds too many faults with it to even call it... | ||
| Dec 9, 2002 | Let Freudom Ring | |
| My inbox this morning had an email with a spelling mistake that I suspect is not a typo. It referred to someone I... | ||
| Dec 5, 2002 | Continued travails in Swedish... | |
| There are two kinds of Swedes in the winter. One kind is moody, depressed, melancholic, alcoholic, and as a result not too productive.... | ||
| Nov 21, 2002 | Meaner Streets | |
| The hype for Scorcese's Gangs of New York is ratcheted up a notch, and I for one hope it's all true. Except for... | ||
| Nov 18, 2002 | Onion Alert | |
| Every so often, The Onion gets it fabulously right.... | ||
| Nov 9, 2002 | That's a moray | |
| I think I first came across the word 'awry' when I was 10 or so, probably during the month that summer when I... | ||
| Oct 29, 2002 | Morrissey meats the New Model Army | |
| Last weekend kicked off with a Morrissey concert. I freely admit I have never been a big fan off his. Until embarrassingly recently... | ||
| Oct 19, 2002 | The faint praise I have ever heard | |
| The IHT's People section today carries a quote attributed to David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, about his fiction and literary editor... | ||
| Oct 9, 2002 | Fun facts about the Swedish language II | |
| In Swedish, a little means a lot. If you say, "I have a little pain" (Jag är lite ont) you are in fact... | ||
| Oct 6, 2002 | Mission Antarctica: Winning the War of Meaning over Consumerism | |
| Felix has put up a page for his sister Rhian Salmon, who is going to Antarctica for a year or two, in part... | ||
| Oct 2, 2002 | Fun facts about the Swedish language | |
| The alphabet goes from A to Ö ; there is no W, but after Z we get an Å (oh), an Ä (ay)... | ||
| Sep 19, 2002 | Return to Barcelona | |
| I was last in Barcelona 10 years ago, almost to the day, after having spent the Olympics there chauffeuring (and sometimes translating) for... | ||
| Aug 27, 2002 | Mostly Moses | |
| Last weekend the parents and I drove to the Sinai peninsula to root around St. Catherine's Monastery, at the base of Mount Sinai,... | ||
| Aug 13, 2002 | And now for something completely | |
| And now for something completely different: Tales of the Plush Cthulhu... | ||
| Aug 9, 2002 | Hollywood smitten with God, God smites back | |
| God punishes Joe Eszterhas for Showgirls, although Joe is under the impression that his smoking is to blame, so he makes a deal... | ||
| Jul 30, 2002 | A reason to move to London | |
| A certain Leah McLaren writes a hilarious account of how British men are such hopeless romantics. And she really does stress hopeless. It... | ||
| Jul 18, 2002 | Trend watch - Post-nuptial agreements | |
| Just seen on CNBC: A segment on the post-nuptial agreement (!) for those who forgot to get a pre-nup. How on earth is... | ||
| Jul 18, 2002 | World Trade Center update | |
| I agree with Felix that I don't really like any of the proposals; they remind me too much of Canberra, or Brasilia--mainly because... | ||
| Jul 16, 2002 | World Trade Center proposals | |
| The 6 official proposals for rebuilding the World Trade Center site have been unveiled and are up on the web. Make sure to... | ||
| Jul 12, 2002 | Emerging trend watch | |
| Clubs have always had DJs. They would bring their records and spin. More recently, DJs have been been using laptops to create live... | ||
| Jul 2, 2002 | World Cup redux | |
| Good guys finish last. Belgium got the Cup's equivalent of 'A for effort' by winning FIFA's fair play award. If only we'd taken... | ||
| Jun 24, 2002 | Cup Runneth Over-time | |
| Another reason why the east coast is better than the west coast: New York cops don't care if England fans are screaming their... | ||
| Jun 24, 2002 | Movies: Minority Report | |
| Minority Report is a fantastic movie that everybody must rush to go see twice. It melds Spielberg's knack for movie magic with riveting... | ||
| Jun 17, 2002 | Belgique: Nul Points! | |
| And so Belgium's World Cup ambitions end with a 2-0 loss against Brazil, despite an early Belgian goal that was disallowed by a... | ||
| Jun 4, 2002 | Blog map of NYC | |
| Blog maps: what a great idea, and probably the next big thing in the blogging universe. Of course, New York is leading the... | ||
| Jun 4, 2002 | Good headers | |
| This is as good a story as any to broach the topic of the World Cup. From a bleary conversation this past weekend... | ||
| Apr 18, 2002 | But is it Art? | |
| I was in London a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed with the Tate Modern, London's newest major art destination. But... | ||
| Mar 13, 2002 | Sharbat Gula | |
| National Geographic has tracked down the subject of one of its most famous covers ever. The beautiful Pashtun girl with bright green... | ||
| Feb 11, 2002 | Zen One on St. Marks | |
| Six years ago Tom Atkins and Uta Harnischfeger introduced me to Sandobe, a miniscule 4-table Korean sushi den on 11th & 1st run... | ||
| Jan 22, 2002 | Salmon has now gone mad | |
| Salmon has now gone mad. Just this weekend, he's posted no fewer than 2 new pieces on l'affair Sullivan ñ an affair, I... | ||
| Jan 18, 2002 | Fuck Enron | |
| Simon Clark swears this song by Liz Phair is called Fuck Enron.... | ||
| Jan 18, 2002 | Priceless Armani | |
| Armani blouse: $1,800 Armani jacket: $5,000 Armani shoes: $2,200 Being disgusted by all this luxury: Priceless... | ||
| Dec 20, 2001 | The Oscars bet | |
| For the record, here is the bet between Felix Salmon and myself: "BVC" shall mean "bottle of vintage champagne" throughout. "LOTR" shall mean... | ||
| Dec 18, 2001 | Amazing Scrabble game | |
| Yesterday's 2001 World Scrabble Championship finals, held in Las Vegas, produced an amazing game.... | ||
| Dec 3, 2001 | Art alert | |
| Most likely you visit my site because you know me or because you have impeccable taste. If you also happen to be in... | ||
| Nov 24, 2001 | Surfing report | |
| The 70's European motoring experience involved me sitting in the back of my (well, technically my parents') rare 2-door Audi 100 LS as... | ||
| Nov 7, 2001 | Movie review: AmÈlie | |
| Oh, look, another movie review. Iíll keep it short. Go see AmÈlie. More fun is discussing the minority of critics who chastise the... | ||
| Oct 25, 2001 | Surf report | |
| I resisted for over 5 years, but when I switched from DSL to cable-based internet access a few weeks ago the pricing was... | ||
| Oct 15, 2001 | Urban tribes | |
| Felix alerted me to this New York Times Sunday Magazine article. It's a very accurate description of the social life my friends and... | ||
| Sep 27, 2001 | I quit smoking a year ago | |
| I almost forgot. September 26 was an anniversary of sorts: I quit smoking a year ago. To commemorate the occasion I unwittingly arranged... | ||
| Aug 21, 2001 | photogenic abandoned buildings | |
| There are many photogenic abandoned buildings in Belgium. Some of them are on a new favorite site.... | ||
| Aug 3, 2001 | Oslo | |
| Two days in Oslo is an experience of the near future, if you're an optimist. Everybody has a cell phone, debit/credit card use... | ||
| Jul 25, 2001 | Film review: Timecode, Memento | |
| The possibilities for non-linear storytelling that DVD technology provides are obvious, but until now these have been squandered on the decidedly plot-free travails... | ||
| Jul 6, 2001 | Petra photos | |
| The black-and-white photos from my trip to Petra in January 2001 are finally sorted, scanned and presented after a fashion. Feel free to... | ||
| Jul 4, 2001 | Film review: A.I. | |
| A.I. A.I., directed by Steven Spielberg but storyboarded by Stanley Kubrick, is a subversive movie. As with all great science fiction works, the... | ||
| Jun 19, 2001 | Phaemon's dog was right | |
| At the end of Robert Graves's historical novel Claudius the God, emperor Claudius visits Vitellius, a dying courtier. Claudius ask the man why... | ||
| Jun 14, 2001 | King Herod Agrippa I | |
| King Herod Agrippa I was a brilliant diplomat and ruler who secured the best possible deal for the Jews (and himself) under the... | ||
| Jun 8, 2001 | Coolest photography site | |
| My favorite site on the internet at the moment: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, photographer for Czar Nicholas II, made color (!) pictures years before... | ||
| Jun 7, 2001 | Movie review: Our Song | |
| New York is being treated to a gem of a movie right now: Our Song. Set in deepest Brooklyn during the summer of... | ||