Waffles

When I grew up, my mother used to make waffles quite a bit. With her visiting for a whole week, I decided to invest in a waffle iron for some childhood nostalgia, although slightly updated with smoked salmon, smetana and chives.

Later in the afternoon, I went for a premier run with the Reebok “All Terrain Craze” trail shoes that I found on a bargain sale back in February. Although the laces kept coming undone, I would say that the overall verdict is still quite positive but I will have to wait until the snow melts and some real trail running before I can tell for sure.

Evaluation

With the marking finally behind me, I had a chance to look through the student evaluation from the same public administration course and it certainly renewed my hope in the profession. Reading about all the learning that has taken place and how fascinated the students have become about politics reminded me of why I really like teaching these kinds of courses, especially to students who have not chosen political science as their major.

Unfortunately, between the marking madness and an intermittent cold, I have not been able to make much use of the spring sunshine but at least I have been able to go to the gym twice this week. With only six weeks left to Umåker Trail and then just two more weeks until Stockholm Marathon, I really need to build some mileage if I am to make any meaningful improvement on my Marrakech time...

Springtime

While far from Canal Street, something is nevertheless underway with carport avalanches and melting mountains of snow. Still, I would not put my hopes too high considering that it did snow in mid-May the other year.

With Anna away at the ISA conference in Toronto and Eddie having a high fever, the last days have been a bit upside down. Luckily my mother was kind enough to take the train up here from Kalmar to help out so I have made at least some progress with the 120+ exams that I have to mark before the end of this week. As such, I am afraid it will be marking rather than blogging once I have finished my alcohol free “Nanny State” pale ale and the pesto pasta salad.

Vitalba

And now the conclusion.

One week later, I can finally report that Vitalba turned into an interesting but unusual acquaintance. Spontaneously fermented in Georgian amphoras, the wine has an intense golden colour and tastes of apples and peaches. While I may not buy a second bottle myself it is definitely a wine I would recommend, especially if you feel a bit nostalgic about Bologna and its surroundings.

I spent most of the morning cleaning the house and marking exams but, when the sun came out, I could not resist a quick lake run. In the afternoon, the beautiful spring weather continued so we decided to swing by the library with the kids to pick up some new books.

The Red Angel

If only a red angel could appear from the future and help me come up with some new exam questions for the police students. As this is unlikely to happen, I am stuck procrastinating by looking through Lonely Planet Kenya and feeling thankful for the fact that all the coffee I drink has not yet led to gastric catarrh. If it ever does however, I think this caffeine smoothie would be a good temporary substitute.

Unravelled

When teaching 30 hours per week, it was perhaps inevitable that my attention would eventually slip and that I would make a joke that was off mark. The good thing with teaching this much is that I got a chance to see the same students already today and apologize.

Otherwise, I was able to swing by a clinic this afternoon and get a yellow fever vaccination. While downtown, I also managed to pick up a new småparti bottle of pinot noir from Otago on the South Island which, morbidly as it sounds, reminded me of the Christchurch carnage that happened just days ago. Thinking back on my own visit to the city in 2013, I cannot imagine a more welcoming place. Despite the earthquake, the city had an outworldly sorrowless quality to it, almost as if it existed outside the normal plane of existence and it is truly unfathomable that someone could feel so much hate in such a place.

Another virtual race

After my first virtual race through Bosque El Olivar in Lima back in November and my February race along the western shore of Nydalasjön, today turned out to be the last day for completing the NYC Half Marathon Virtual 5k. Unfortunately, there is a yellow warning for snowfall in effect right now so I had to be a bit careful.

Otherwise, Eddie and I have been reading a book about fifty female pioneers and scientists, including Valentina Teresjkova, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and, of course, Marie Curie with her great quote: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less”.

Kachumbari

Like the previous weekend, Eddie and I have been watching an episode of “The Last Will of the Geographer” which this time climbed the Austrian Alps before heading out on the great Puszta of Hungary. Sharing this with Eddie reminds me of all the things I want him to be able to discover in his life but also how extremely fortunate I have been myself and how much I have been able to see.

More than renewables versus nuclear, this is perhaps the reason why I object so strongly to these calls for “climate activism”. I do not want the world of my kids to be smaller or more limited than the one I inherited. On the contrary, I want the 21st century to be one of truly great discoveries and adventures beyond our wildest imagination. We will not solve climate change by limiting our appetite or rolling back the physical, spiritual and cultural emancipation of the last few hundred years. Every minute that we spend dividing ourselves and narcissistically comparing our carbon footprints is a minute that we do not spend accelerating the transition to a world where everyone can live a life with open horizons.

That is not the same as recklessness. We need to care for our local environment and recycle our household waste. But frugality cannot be the solution in a world of eight billion people. Or to put it differently, shaming “influencers” on Instagram for their international travel is not particularly Star Trek. We need the very opposite mentality, one that doubles down and takes back the initiative. With this in mind, I made an East African kachumbari salad and saffron rice for lunch while dreaming of Lamu. Within a few generations, we can build a world without borders and solitary identities. Let’s get to it!

Strikes

Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of kids worldwide joined Greta Thunberg in her strike for “climate action”. From the beginning, I have had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, and unlike say the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, it remains most unclear what kind of “action” it is that Greta and the others actually demand. On the other hand, bringing climate change higher up on the political agenda could in theory be a good thing but, given the current policy paradigm, I have my doubts about this as well.

If “climate action” translates into renewed neo-colonial efforts to impose “sustainable energy transitions” on poor people in the developing world or the destruction of yet more forests at home in the name of a “circular bioeconomy”, I think we should rightfully be worried about where we are heading. As much as my default orientation is to always side with “young people”, this is a case when hyperbolic talk of an “existential crisis” may just further lock in renewable energy and make the task of global decarbonization even more difficult.

New Eden

Since I have not at all spent late evenings watching David Zaritsky and “The Bond Experience”, it is of course strange that I have suddenly come in possession of a Riviera Polo from Sunspel.

After a lengthy conversation on the universality of weather exceptionalism earlier today, I should perhaps not say anything but, yes, it was awful to bike home in the freezing rain and sleet so I thought I deserved some culinary dreaming. As such, dressed in the same cotton mesh jersey as Daniel Craig wears in Casino Royale, I set about mixing basil, pine nuts, honey, habanero and olive oil which turned into a perfect escapist dinner.

How about the Vitalba wine from Emilia-Romagna? I do not know since it was just props but I hope to get back with a review in a week or so.

Saints of Imperfection

Aged in whiskey barrels, Apothic has come up with a special “Inferno” blend that most certainly would make Buffy smile. Pan frying some potato gnocchi with mozzarella and basil on my nuclear-powered stove, I was equally thrilled to see the latest report from the Breakthrough Institute with “cases studies in universal electrification” as it is spot on for the paper I am working on for the ISA conference in Accra.

Meanwhile, most of the world’s airlines have grounded their Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircrafts in response to Sunday’s crash in Addis Ababa. Until the causes behind that crash as well as the one in Indonesia back in October have been fully understood, it seems like the only possible response. With two MAX flights behind me and two more booked for the summer, it feels especially good to know that a thorough investigation is underway. Still, it is worth remembering how safe modern aviation actually is. The fact that more than four billion people could travel by air in 2017 without the loss of a single life is an incredible achievement and a powerful argument against those who distrust large-scale technological systems and only see human imperfection.

Point of Light

Resuming the tradition of naming blog posts after StarTrek Discovery episodes, the man cold finally vanished and I was able to head out with my friend Elias for a picture perfect run around the lake this morning.

Otherwise, I have spent most of the day booking classrooms for the fall semester. After giving my talk at Bokmässan last year, I intentionally left a few days free around this year’s Bokmässa in case I will be invited to give a follow-up talk. If so, do you guys have any ideas of what you want me to talk about more specifically?

Bjäre

To somehow make up for their core business, Systembolaget has been selling alcohol free drinks for a few years now. When looking for the latest batch of #småparti, I instead found this bottle of apples and hop from the northwesternmost part of Skåne known as the Bjäre Peninsula. Surrounded by blue glittering seas, I can hardly think of a better place to be an apple.

Since yesterday, the kids are back in Umeå and the skies have cleared up. Unfortunately, I am still down with a cold and feeling quite miserable, despite ibuprofen and lots of strong coffee. Thus, rather than heading out in the snow, Eddie and I are watching an episode of “The Last Will of the Geographer” which took us to Yorkshire and then further north to the Inner Hebrides. It made me think that after these city marathons, I really should try a trail marathon somewhere on the British Isles.

Time travel

As much as I reject deterministic doctrines, it was perhaps inevitable that I would eventually sign up for a free trial month of Netflix in order to watch the second season of Star Trek Discovery.

Avoiding giving away any spoilers, it had me thinking again about the long-term future of humanity, Fermi’s paradox and all those other things as I made my morning coffee. One thought in particular occurred to me. Either time travel to the past is indeed impossible or someone is actively ensuring the integrity of the timeline further down in history. With regard to Fermi, the latter would be a rather reassuring prospect, unless of course civilizations emerge all the time but wipe themselves out as soon as they become technologically capable. In that case our own existence in the present would not necessarily be an indication of that humanity will make it safely through the Great Filter.

Taking in these grander perspectives on comparative evolution at least makes me smile a bit about the academic research people are doing on “resilience” and “sustainability”. But the flipside of that coin is that it is perhaps good that most people do not seem to fully recognize the fragility of the human enterprise or how close we could be to achieving technological maturity. It would be foolish to suggest that all of this will be determined within my own lifetime or something but, over the course of the 21st century, I think we will have a fairly good sense of where we are ultimately heading. I guess we are all in for surprises. 

Gläserner Mensch

Back in December, my mother sent me a package with a new winter hat for William. Unfortunately, it got lost in the mail somehow and never made it to Umeå. Then, just the other day, I received a notification from the postal service (or what is left of it) that I had a package waiting for me. Thus, after finishing the last lecture of this marathon week, I biked down to Strömpilen to pick it up, only to discover that it was just the, almost equally delayed, “Forecast” from Monocle that had finally arrived.

After reading about child-perspective city planning in Rotterdam and street artists stencilling 33 poetic verses on pedestrian crossings in Madrid, I decided that it was time to make a rustic spaghetti carbonara with pasta water as emulsifier, pancetta and lots of Pecorino Romano (no cream comes near my carbonara). Playing with the old IXUS camera, I thought I could turn the perspective around for once, adding another layer of “Durchleuchtung” as the Germans would say. Buon appetito!

Diabetes or asteroid?

Normally when I am alone, I am travelling somewhere. This time, it is everyone else who has travelled.

I work my way through my to-do list, completing every easy task until I run into the difficult ones, like figuring out what kind of arguments that would actually bite on those who long ago stopped listening to arguments. In an excellent article published today, Ted Nordhaus and Alex Trembath ask the question if climate change is more like an asteroid or diabetes? If it is indeed an asteroid, as suggested by for instance our own Staffan Laestadius when he calls for “comprehensive political change”, it is of course problematic to begin your argument by outright rejecting the only technology that historically has made possible emissions cuts proportionally commensurate with the targets of the Paris Agreement and instead arrive at a long list of partisan demands that is eerily identical to what these authors used to promote long before climate change came into vogue.

Some have suggested that climate radicalism is nevertheless warranted in order to move the “Overton window” and that we should “aim for communism in order to hit social democracy”. As I have made clear over and over again, I could not disagree more with this kind of analysis as I believe that it will only deepen our partisan divides. On this theme, Ted and Alex make the following observation which is worth quoting in full:

“it is not clear that the army of egalitarian millenarians that the climate movement is mobilizing will be willing to sign on to the necessary compromises — politically, economically, and technologically — that would be necessary to actually address the problem. Anyone who doubts this need only direct their gaze toward the other side of the political spectrum, where conservatives and Republicans are now entirely captive to the nativist forces they have unleashed over the last decade in their battles with Obama-era progressives”

With this in mind, the problem remains, what kind of evidence would the Green New Dealers need to reconsider their insistance on a 100% renewable energy future? Clearly, neither rising emissions nor doubling electricity prices seem to matter, as such “facts” only seem to vindicate their deep-held belief that "capitalism" is unsustainable...

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Tomorrow I have six more hours of lectures coming up and I need to finish my last preparations. Looking through the latest issue of Monocle I realize that almost a whole month has passed since we were in Paris. In Swedish, we have this expression “oxveckorna” (“ox weeks”) to describe this time of the year and it could not be any more appropriate.

Home alone

Returning home after eight hours in the classroom, I crash over the latest Condé Nast Traveller and a post-ironic avocado sandwich with pomegranate.

This week, the kids are down in Gothenburg and I have to admit that it feels strange to suddenly have a whole house for myself. Over the weekend, the abstract that I submitted to the ISA conference in Accra got accepted and I was able to secure some very affordable tickets with Turkish Airlines, meaning that Rawls & Me will be able to add another great adventure to its tales before the summer is over.

Otherwise, I am reading the new report by Bonn-based “Germanwatch” which shows Germany failing further behind on its climate goals. The report reminds me of my class on the philosophy of science when I talk about Thomas Kuhn and how paradigm shifts happen, how anomalies or discrepancies begin to accumulate and how it becomes harder and harder to explain reality within the old paradigm. Even the main headlines of the report, such as “mixed signals on the decarbonisation of the global energy system: again rising emissions despite decreasing costs of renewable energy”, speak of how close the cognitive bubble is from bursting but also what profound paradigm shift that will be needed for people to realize that renewable energy in fact locks in fossil fuels and, as such, makes a deep decarbonization of society impossible. Despite a decade of multi-billion euro annual investments, wind only made up 3.2% of Germany’s final energy mix in 2018 and solar even less at 1.5% with the tiny remaining fleet of nuclear reactors providing 6.4% (a fleet that now will be closed down in the coming two, three years)…

Koutoubia

Last night, I was running under polar lights. Instead of stopping to take a picture, I decided to just take in the moment. That was after all one of the reasons why I discontinued Instagram and the like, to be more present in the world rather than always trying to capture it. Still, I like drifting back in time, for instance to the evening after finishing Marrakech International Marathon and the park in front of the Koutoubia Mosque.

The other day I felt that Rawls & Me has become rather monotone with mostly running and cooking, both of little interest to the wider world I presume. I was thinking that I need to say something more serious about the recent outburst of climate Malthusianism and the limits of public imagination but I have already said those things (and so have others). And right now, I am truly flooded by teaching, including 35 exams written by future police officers that I still have to mark, so bear with me and I promise to come back with new energy in a while on Monday.