Thirteen Forty Five

Joined by my fox from Örebro, I entered the SJ lounge just as it opened at 6 am this morning for a post-run breakfast. Though I was able to catch some spring sunshine with Anna and the kids on Sunday as we walked up to Lyckan for waffles, much of the past weekend has been spent in front of the computer finalizing my grant application to the Swedish Research Council.

As for less important things, Air New Zealand is launching its own wine label called “Thirteen Forty Five”, a name that is paying tribute to the airline’s inaugural flight from Auckland to Sydney, which covered a distance of 1,345 miles 85 years ago. With all the dark things going on right now, it is indeed tempting to dream of an easier existence at the other end of the world. With regard to Trump and Ukraine, I remain divided though since our overriding obligation to posterity must be to avoid a nuclear apocalypse and, with that in mind, I have a hard time seeing how appeasing Russia can really be a bad thing, whatever the moral loss may be in the present. Besides, the chance of regime collapse in Russia presumably increases monotonically for every year that passes so, to some extent, it is about waiting it out.