A kind of longer status update

I have been in Prague a couple of days (1 week), and it has been kind of hectic. So hectic that this is my first opportunity to write about it.
It was on Thursday that I flew in from Uppsala. (Yes, Uppsala has an airport it is called Arlanda.) Just after getting off the plane things began to feel strangely familiar. I was met at the airport by Ray Salman who is responsible for me spending a few more days in Prague than originally planned. It has been a few years but Ray is a good friend from the old days in Prague and he has been in Uppsala performing with some other of my Czech friends and was a huge success at the Nordic Championships in Magic. We went to a restaurant and talked magic for four or five hours, a few other things as well, but since Ray was going to translate my lecture we talked quite a bit about that. And yes that is why I am spending a few more days in Prague than originally planned. Mostly I visited old friends but this way I got to work a bit as well.
I stayed the first night with Duo Absolon at their apartment witch included me spending a long time talking about magic again with Karel Ocelík. Fortunately I also got to sleep, and I slept very well.
Friday I moved to a hotel and saw nothing of Prague, I got a ride to the hotel and sat down in my room to write. I didn't bring any lecture notes from Sweden, partly because that would have been crazy when you may as well print them in Prague, and partly because I hadn't finished them. So I wrote like crazy looking at the watch. Ray had told me about a print shop at Karlovo náměstí and I looked on my watch on the way there, because either they would close at 17 and I would be without lecture notes or they close at 18 and everything would work out. On my way there I learned two things, that it is very easy to forget subway exits. It is no problem remembering where to enter the subway but to know exactly where you will get up is not easy when you are finding your way out. But I got out where I wanted at Karlovo náměstí and was met by a few drops of rain. And I also learned that if you want to write crime novels it is a good thing to be Swedish judging from the book advertisings in the metro. Unfortunately the print shop closed at 17, fortunately I met the person closing the shop, and she told me about a different place just around the corner. The second print shop managed my somewhat complicated order without a problem as I was waiting. Understandably I felt very lucky when I went back to the hotel in Kobilisy with all my material. And I managed it all on a 90 minutes ticket. Between the metro and my hotel I learned one more new thing buying something to eat, and that was that they have cancelled the 50Kc banknote.
Back at the hotel the evening continued with preparations for the lecture, I had no time for that before since I was writing like crazy. As can be understood I only slept a couple of hours before getting up in the morning.

I came to the venue of the lecture about 45 minutes before it was going to start and I found that people were waiting. I think the seminar went quite well and I finished in time for people to go to the Illusionists. (That's a big magic show that was in Prague on that day.) For some reason I thought that there would only be a performance at 15 so when I missed that one I went to Vyšehrad for my first excursion as a tourist. But after I found out that they had also an evening show I made sure to watch that one. This included getting hold of a ticket and I first tried a ticket office that apparently closed but on the way there I passed Staromětské náměstí and there I saw that one of my magic friends were doing a street performance. It ended up with me going to the O2 arena to buy the ticket there. It was worth the money since I got an inexpensive seat. It was not bad but it lacked the continuity that you get with a more limited cast. And since there were so many performers obviously some were better than others. One thing I liked a lot was that I ran into so many old friends, some that I had seen at the lecture and others that I hadn't seen there. If it wasn't for the fact that it was a magic show I wouldn't have recognised anyone at O2 now I met at least 10 people. But basically I was still working because I made a lot of notes from the show and tried to figure out what I thought worked and what was not so good.
All day Saturday I was carrying with me my umbrella but of course it wasn't raining. Sunday morning it still wasn't raining and I moved from one hotel to another hostel (at least more of a hostel than a hotel). Since it still wasn't raining I left the umbrella at the new place when I went to meet some friends that arrived in Prague the same day. One of my friends were going to give a lecture at the institute of organic chemistry and biochemistry the following day, When I was on my way to the metro there were a few drops of rain but I thought little of it. I still didn't think much of it as I left the metro at Dejvice but it kept raining and when I met my friends and we went to the Hrad in the rain, we also went back in the rain, met with the host of my friends and when went to the Hrad again in the rain, but this time with umbrellas. Went down to Malástrana and had some dinner at a nice vegan place. After we finished the dinner it was still raining and we saw Karlův most, went back to my friends hotel by subway and when I had to get back in the rain again.
Next morning it was not raining but my shoes were still wet, fortunately my room included a hair dryer so when I left that problem was taken care of. I was going to my friends lecture at two but before that I had time to show my other friend a little bit of Prague, we started at the castle once again. We took a different way down passing by the Swedish embassy and when we found our way to Muzeum alchymistů which was quite interesting. The tower named after the famous trickster Kelly was more interesting than the exhibition on the ground floor. We continued over Karlův most and saw the multimedia clockwork at Staroměstská radnice and a few more things before having to get back to Dejvice for the lecture. It was not that obvious to find the way to the institute although I had been there before. In the time I had been gone they put up new buildings along the way. But we got to the lecture in time, and we were not the only ones although the building was technically closed due to construction works.
After the lecture we had to find the restaurant we were going to have dinner in by ourselves since our host and one more Czech scientist would come later. This time it was a vegetarian restaurant and not unlike many such places they had advertisements for things the Czech skeptics might have a few things to say about. After our dinner the host had to go but the rest of us went to Palladium and a Starbucks so that some of us could get an Internet connection and do some work while the rest of us were social.
On Tuesday I went to my old work at the Ústavu fyzikální chemie Jaroslava Heyrovského AV ČR and I got there at a very good time, exactly at the time for lunch. Much looked the same but a few things had changed as well. But the people was as friendly as ever and I spent a few hours there distracting them from their work. One of my Czech friends was performing in a play that evening and kindly booked me a ticket, fortunately the theatre was quite close to another meeting I had that evening. Since I am an honorary member of the Motorlet magic club I wanted to try to see them. On my way to Motorlet I first found theatre Gong and got my ticket. For once I had to practice my Czech quite a lot. Almost no one in Motorlet speaks English, a few speaks German and one of the professional magicians actually know how to say ”hello” and ”thank you” in Swedish. The theatre was of course in Czech as well and since it was a comedy there were a lot of things I didn't get but it was fun all the same.
For my last day in Prague I decided to do some shopping. I was meeting some old friends in the evening but before that I looked for books and DVDs in Czech, I found some short texts, with explanation of grammar, vocabulary and with the text on a CD. I also found some good movies some Czech and others with Czech dubbing. It was the first day it felt like I had some time off and could actually just go around and relax. Taking it easy before meeting my friends at a restaurant in the vicinity of Národní divadlo. It felt a bit strange walking back to my hostel in the evening knowing that I had to leave Prague the following day.
Ray picked me up close to Masarykovo nádraží and kindly drove me to the airport at 11.40 and after a delay (not usual for a SAS flight) at 14.20 I took of from Prague heading back to Uppsala.

What I did last summer.

Well it is this past summer, not the one before that. The summer of 2013 that I spent planning the 15th European Skeptics Congress that was held in Stockholm in August.

Now you can actually see some of the talks from the congress since it was taped. The talks are availabel online to sometime in 2014.(Talks in English the rest in Swedish.) Enjoy.

http://www.ur.se/Produkter?q=Skeptikerkongressen

A complicated issue

This will not be something light and entertaining. I will talk about an issue that has dark and terrible connotations to some and is to others almost as important as the air they breath.

In my local newspaper there is an article in the cultural section of the paper ”Kosmopoliter skriver om ursprungsfixerad värld” (Cosmopolitans write about origin fixated world). In Sweden we have a nationalistic party and they sometimes quote out of context what one leader in the green party said; that if you ride the subway in Stockholm you are Swedish. To be a member of the SS you had to prove that you were of Germanic descent from the 18th century. There are a lot of people in the US that describe themselves as Italian or Irish without having been to any of these countries or maybe even knowing the language.

Origins are a very important issue to a lot of people but it is all a matter of opinion and there is very little respect for the fact that people may have different (very different) opinions.

There are two important parts when you discuss something like origin. How deep does it have to go and what implications should it have. The two parts are very different and should be held separate. Two other concepts that are important to keep apart are nationality and citizenship. Here citizenship is far less complicated it doesn't matter where you were born or by which parents, when you are a citizen you are on equal footing with all other citizen.
The last part is not entirely true. Try to become president of the United States and people might question your origins since only someone born American can become president.

To some people belonging in a place is easy, wherever you hang your hat is your home. To these people origin is not very important, what is important is the individual. To others the feeling of belonging requires history.

I was born in Svärdsjö a small village outside of Falun in Dalecarlia a province of Sweden. I feel very much at home in Svärdsjö since I grew up there. But I am not a Svärdsjöbo (native of Svärdsjö). My parents didn't come from Svärdsjö so I don't have that connection to the place, and believe me that the people living in Svärdsjö do know things like this. But it does not matter, I am treated in the same way as everyone else in Svärdsjö and if someone told me that I am not a real Svärdsjöbo I would agree. Though I do consider myself a mas (male from Dalecarlia) because one of my parents are from Dalecarlia and I have family ties going back as far as the 16th century. My other parent is from the province of Småland but I have never lived there.
I also consider myself Swedish since this is the country I live in, was born in, and that all my known ancestors was born and lived in. Frankly I don't consider someone with both parents from outside Sweden to be Swedish and this might upset some people. I would not be terrible upset if someone considered me to be a Svärdsjöbo as I guess quite a few people might do, Svärdsjö is my home and if people ask me were I am from that is the place. But I know that I don't have deep roots in Svärdsjö.

The important part here is that I realise that all of the above are my opinions. There is nothing true or false, nothing testable. Yet this is very important on an emotional level to many people. Since we are individuals we probably have varying needs of feeling that we belong in a place and we also have varying definitions of what it means to belong in a place.
It is worrying that many people talking about this issue don't acknowledge that it is both complicated and individual. With migration we will have people growing up in places there they will not feel that they belong even if they are born there, and we will have people that feel right at home just by riding the subway. No one is more right than the other.

Are these individual differences in how we feel that we belong in a place cultural or biological? Probably a mix of both. But we should be careful not to try to force one point of view on everyone else. You can't force people to feel Swedish just by claiming that nationality and citizenship should be the same thing some people might not agree.
What you should do is to treat people as individuals with varying needs to belong and recognise that some people find this complicated and important and others don't care at all. And above all you should not categorise people as good or bad because of where you feel they should belong.

Something to read

This will be an exercise in Swedish if there is anyone who follow this blog and doesn't know the language already. The Uppsala Student Union's newspaper have an article about me in the next issue but one can read it online from today.

What about hell?

This evening (perhaps yesterday evening depending on how quick I am to write this blog entry) I moderated a very interesting discussion. I had three very competent thinkers on theological matters discussing hell. The topic was formulated as ”Helvetet – vad ska man tro?” (Hell – what should one beleive?) The three trying to answer that question were Eskil Selander, Stefan Swärd, and Torsten Åhman and I will not try to describe their different positions. But I will say a few things.

I asked all three about if you can be a Christian without believing in hell and if you can be a Christian and believe in hell. And I am happy to say that they all said yes to both questions.

One question from the audience concerned if dead people can communicate with the living. I don't think that it happens, and unlike the question about hell it is not a question outside of experience.
People are of course free to believe what ever they want, and concerning hell there is not possible to know anything empirically about it, so it is all a matter of faith. That implies that “what people should believe about hell” can be discussed for a very, very long time. (We discussed it for exactly two hours.) But the question about communication with the other side is either supported by empirical data or it is not, once the existing evidence has been weighted the discussion is over. (Though to be realistic it is unlikely that people will agree about the evaluation of the data.)

A lot more can be said on the issue of testable claims, and even more about faith, but I leave that for some other time.

First impressions

A lot of people have heard how important first impressions are. In English you can state this in the wordplay ”first impressions last”. In Swedish we do not have this possibility but we are constantly told by so called communication experts that the first impression is the most important in all types of contact with humans (and some will doubtless say that it is true for animals as well).
I do not disagree that first impressions are very important. The first impression you give people will probably determine their ”gut reaction” to who you are and what you say.
But I have never seen any scientific study that shows that the first impression is the most important. (Though I must confess that I have not been looking for one. There are plenty of studies that show that first impressions are important but not that they are the most important.) What I find very strange is that people seem to forget how important the last impression is. After all the last impression is what you leave a person with.
Of course it is often necessary to make a good first impression if you want to be given the chance of inflicting your audience with a last impression of who you are and what you have to say. But if one consider that statement, it implies that the first impression is only a necessary mean to get the opportunity to give a last impression. Thus it appears like the last impression is the important one.
I think we should be very glad that the last impression is important, probably more important than the first impression. It is not considered correct to have prejudices today. Prejudice is the ultimate first impression, you decide that what women or black people have to say is unimportant. Or you might “know” that gypsies are thieves. If it wasn't for the fact that last impressions are more important than first impressions these groups of people might not have been able to teach people to listen to them and trust them.
Make sure to make a great last impression.

What is the data telling us?

Yesterday I was dismayed by one of the Swedish tabloids, I have forgotten which one. It is not uncommon that I give a sigh when I see the tabloids but I frankly believe that to work as a journalist at one of those papers you must either be wilfully ignorant or just plain stupid.
The headline of the story was something like ”find out the IQ of the men living in your area”. The ”article” was apparently based on 10 years of data and it was not difficult to figure out that it was probably based on the IQ test that all men took at age 18-19 when Sweden had general conscription. Apart from the fact that there were probably more important things happening in the world on that day. It is also remarkable that who ever wrote it seemed to think that the data would be of any relevance today. As if people don't move after they turned 19.
I would also claim that not only do people move but where they move might actually be correlated to their IQ.

Can magic be art?

I have read a few things about the art of magic, far less about the art of mentalism. What people say about this art is not always flattering. Some say that magicians are the ones that talk about art while dancers or painters do art. Others have said that magic is what people with no talent do if they want to stand on stage.
Unfortunately I have to agree.
I think one of the problems with magic is that we as magicians and mentalists spend a lot of time thinking about what the audience never perceive. We are thinking less on what we want to communicate to the audience. Magic is very different from singing, acting and painting, but art is not different from art. Art has to communicate something.
But there are other kinds of entertainment than art forms like music, acting, or dancing. People can be entertained by a juggler or acrobat, and those kind of acts can contain drama; drama in the form of a performer struggling to succeed. Those are acts that display skill and entertain in that way, they can also contain art but they don't have to.
I think that a lot of magic fall into the trap of being a display of skill and not art. There are very skilled performers that can display this skill so that the audience is left with no other explanation than that it was done by magic. But there are also a lot of performers who will perform tricks that the audience will not be able to explain, though they will know that it is not magic. I believe that these “tricks” are mostly performed as a display of skill and even some of the “magic” is a display of skill rather than art.
So what defines a great artist? I don't have the answer but I believe that at least one part of the answer is that a great artist do art because there is something that has to be said. A great artist do not do art to be seen. There is nothing wrong in itself in wanting to be seen and be on stage, but that will not produce art and definitely not great art.
If your motivation is to be seen, magic might be one of the better options. To become an acrobat or juggler requires a lot of practice if you want to be tolerable, while magic only requires a lot of practice in case you want to be really good. Magic is in its nature a secret art, while everyone can see how juggler does what he does, and if he is successful or not, people are not able to judge magic as easily.
So I have to give the critics right in that magic is perfect for people who have no talent but want to be on stage. To be a good juggler, singer or actor you have either to practice more and/or be better at communicating your emotions to an audience. As a magician you can much easier fake skill, that is after all what it is all about.
But is it true that magicians talk about art rather than do art? I think this is true as well. The ability to brake the laws of nature is from a dramatic perspective immensely strong, it will produce a feeling of astonishment more than any other art form is capable of. But why? I don't think many magicians are trying to say something about the world or try to open up their hart to the audience. This is what art is about, to communicate something. I think that we need to communicate something more than the moment of astonishment if we want magic to be an art.
Many magicians feel that what we do deserves to be an art, but very few seem to think about what they want to say. We want people to experience the moment of astonishment and resign to the obvious fact that magic is an art just because we magicians believe this moment to be something inherently beautiful.
So we talk about how what we do is an art, and we talk among ourselves about how we create this moment of astonishment. Because we want to create astonishment we often talk about the things that the audience will never see, that which we use to create this feeling of wonder. We choreograph movements in detail to create an illusion but spend little time trying to create an emotion. We create scripts that will hide manipulation but not always convey a massage.
It does not have to be this way but the fact is that although magic is an easy way to get on stage it is a very hard way to create art. A singer will have to practice a lot to be good but will have little problem to create art.
So what they say about magic is probably true, it is true because magic is easy if you want to get on stage, and magic is very hard if you want to create art.

Academia

I might have said it before, indeed I am sure that I have, but maybe not here in my blog.
”I love academia”
Today I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture where I learned loads of new stuff (new to me that is) about the Greek bronze age.
I am attending a course about ancient temples and cult places. For me it is basically because I want to learn more about the oracles during this time. But in the process I am picking up all kinds of interesting facts. Like that the word ”labyrinth” might be derived from the word for double axe ”labys”. The people at Knossos apparently liked carving double axes on the walls.
I also learned that the suffix ”-unda” or ”-anda” in Swedish, as found in names of places like Bergunda, have the meaning ”rich in”. So i.e. Bergunda is rich in ”berg”, have a lot of mountains. And I learned this because the same suffix was used 600 B.C. in present day Turkey.
As if that wasn't enough I had another course beginning yesterday about the scientific cultures of knowledge which is a course in the field of history of science and ideas. I think that course will be very interesting because we had a great discussion, not so much about what science is (which you talk about in philosophy) but how science and knowledge has been perceived throughout time and in different cultures.
It is so invigorating to meet new knowledge and new ideas. It is almost so that I forget how much more there is that I will never have time to learn in this life.

Inspiration

Yesterday I went to an inspiration day hosted by the aid organisation Diakonia. To be fare I mostly went because my father who is an activist persuaded me to come so that we could do something together. But all the same the day was not completely wasted from an inspirational point of view. I don't think that I will start to work with international aid just yet but it was interesting to get to meet so many engaging and active people.

From the speakers I found two quite interesting. David Orlic talking about his thoughts about the way to use Internet in campaigns and how successful campaigns work. Unfortunately there is quite a step to go from an analysis of how successful campaigns work to how you construct a successful campaign. The claim that you do not need money to create a successful campaign is true but I doubt that it implies that money can't buy you better chances to have a successful campaign.
We got to hear about the ideas that one should try to go from talk to action, message to news, and from audience to participants. You also have to fit your launch to what he described as the cultural calender. Over all it was an interesting talk and you might actually have heard of one of his accomplishments. The very strange idea that the Swedish government should give up their twitter account to more or less random Swedish people for a week each, made it to news media in China and the US. In the US it was mentioned in the New York Times and the Colbert Report. (The following interview with Paul Krugman is also worth watching.) Although I guess that of those two it was only the New York Times that wrote something about what the campaign was about, getting people to notice that Sweden is a progressive country.
The talk also put a lot on stress on who the audience trust and I came to think of the old saying “What the audience wants is sincerity, once you can fake that you got it.” Though David did not recommend that you try and fake it.

The other speaker was one of the entertainers, a guy with really good material in a mix of stand-up, spoken word, and songs. His name is Emil Jensen if you have an opportunity to see him, do that!