The Debate that Ate January passed me by without my much noticing, as we are having term start here, and I am swamped - swamped as in trying to claw my way through the email heap, with no noticeable success. Still, now that I am back at the Internets, it keeps bothering me. I am a reader-response scholar: questions of how people read obviously ( Read more... )

The reading from Isaiah on Christmas Eve:

Det folk som vandrar i mörkret
      ser ett stort ljus,
      över dem som bor i mörkrets land
      strålar ljuset fram.
 Du låter jublet stiga,
      du gör glädjen stor.
      De gläds inför dig
      som man gläds vid skörden,
      som man jublar när bytet fördelas.
Oket som tyngde dem,
      stången på deras ( Read more... )

And this commercial I can really live with.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alllxxM6vBE

One of the art gallieries in Stockholm recently showed a number of sometimes rather provocative images of Christ, under the title Uppenbar(a)t (Revealed), and while the Church of Sweden supported the exhibition, some of the other churches went, well, bananas. The only Christian daily in Sweden pointed out, with some justification, that it is not ( Read more... )

On the other hand, there are unpleasant news. They are sending a Romani family back to Croatia, including the two daughters who have spent the last two years on a secret address due to their father's physical abuse. The daughters - one of whom was born in Sweden - are now going back 'home.' With their father. The minister for migration says that it ( Read more... )

I should really not be reading newspapers. Or at least I should not be reading the comments to the articles online.

( Read more... )

"Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you ( Read more... )

When reading the preface of a science fiction book, I came across the statement that, had everyone on the flights on 11 September 2001 had a six-inch hunting knife, things would have ended differently. This kind of statement annoys me, due to the armchair quarterbacking, and I will proceed to wax verbal, or even verbose, on this.

( Ranting on violence )

To all my US friends: congratulation on the election results (yes, I'm assuming you're all Democrats. so sue me)!

The good thing about the current debate in the Swedish Parliament is that it looks like we'll have a gender-neutral marriage law soon. The bad thing about it is that it reminds me, forcefully, of the level of nuttery we get here, too. This issue brings out of the woodwork all the people who feel that gay marriage will a) make their own marriages ( Read more... )