Crumley Again

In a previous post I wrote about reading James Crumley's 'The Wrong Case' and figured out that the main character Milo Milodragovich should be 70 in the last book - well I wasn't too far off I just finished 'The Final Country' and Milo celebrates his 60th birthday. This was a truly good book. Demanding to read (bus rides are too short for a novel like this). There is a connection to Belize in the book, guess I'll have to visit that country someday. Some web pages with more info on Crumley are:

http://www.library.txstate.edu/swwc/archives/writers/crumley.html

<>
http://www.blackravenpress.com/Author%20pages/crumley.htm

The first is a link to archives where papers donated by Crumley are kept. That is for all of you that want to write a PhD thesis about the man. An interesting aside is that a book by Ray Bradbury has a character with the same last name - in recognition of the masterful creater of hard-boiled detectives. The second link is just some interesting biographical facts. Guess I'll have to start on the second series with the other PI.
Other books finished (like a tour of the world from Israel through Sierra Leone to Iraq and England): Kathy Reichs 'Cross Bones' - okay, but not among her best - and Minette Walters 'The Devil's Feather' - good, and among her best.

Then some music - Black Cadillac by Rosanne Cash - one I will listen to often

Zürich, South Africa, and the super bowl

I visited Zürich over the weekend - a meeting about biological control. The most interesting thing at the meeting was that I learned I am on the council of an organization that doesn't have financial difficulties. Sort of a new feeling. When travelling I carry books, which are most often easy reading detective type. I had two new (for me) authors Chris Mooney and Richard Kunzmann. The Kunzmann book "Bloody Harvests" is set in modern day Johannesburg. He uses the contrasts between black and white, reason and magic to full effect. I couldn't find Kunzmann's name on any of the usual mystery sites, but maybe it will be on soon - his second book will come out soon. As a testament to the enthralling book I just want to note that I missed my bus stop yesterday and while waiting in the Zürich airport I would have to remind myself that I was in Europe everytime I looked up from the book.
More on books - have quite a stack now, I have acquired a PIN code on my library card so I can search and reserve books on line. What a lovely thing for a library to have!
About another type of entertainment - the super bowl is coming up and, for the first time, the Seattle Seahawks are playing! They will meet the Pittsburg Steelers. I guess I'm going to have to side with the Seahawks. They have a starting quarterback who is only in his second pro year, not bad and the kind of thing legends are made of. I have no idea whether or not they will show the big game on TV here in Sweden, but this year it would be fun to watch!

Good week for the women

The world has two new leaders this week. Two impressive women. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a first on the African continent. The new president of Liberia. One link with a good description of her political background is found at :

http://www.womenwagingpeace.net/content/members/johnsonsirleaf.html

Another link in a blogg by some people who were in Liberia during the election last fall (and there are some interesting pictures there) is :

http://www.chrisandjolie.com/archives/2005/11/the_soccer_play.php

And then there is also Michelle Bachelet in Chile. Only the third woman to be elected in regular elections in Latin America. And from Salvador Allende's party. Her father died in prison under the 70's during the military dictatorship. The Swedish newspapers had a lot more about her than they did about Ellen. Probably because there were many Chileans who came to Sweden after Allende's murder. One good link for Michelle, written by Eduardo Gallardo is found at :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060115/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/chile_election

At the following Wahington Post site you can see a picture gallery from the elections and there is more information about Michelle:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/

Latest book and reading tips from the author

I am reading Nicole Krauss' The History of Love. And as usual I' m out on the net looking for info. Found some suggestions for reading - none of which I knew about earlier - maybe a new world opens up when you move out of the detective novel area.
"Danilo Kis, to begin with, who was born in 1935 in Yugoslavia. I'd suggest starting with Garden, Ashes (republished last year in an excellent translation by Dalkey Archive), an astonishing, beautiful story of a childhood lived during the Second World War, and of the transformative power of the imagination in the face of historical tragedy. Roberto Bolaño also comes to mind, a Chilean writer who died a few years ago, far too early, at the age of fifty. New Directions has just started to publish his books in English. By Night in Chile -- a deathbed confession written in one breath, a single, unbroken paragraph that covers the territory of a life -- is exquisite. I also love The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt and The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald. This morning I finished the Brazilian writer Chico Buarque's new novel, Budapest, and now I want to read it all over again, it's that good."
More interesting facts - Krauss is married to another young writer named Jonathan Safran Foer. Evidently they are both jewish and both have written two bestsellers. Foer's are "everything is illuminated" and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Something to look for at Ad Libris???

Japan and Tanzania

Have spent part of the day in two different parts of the world. I am reading a crime novel by a Japanese author, Natsuo Kirino, who is quite popular in Japan - but only had one book translated to English - OUT. The scene is working class Tokyo and the crime is murder of a husband by a battered wife. The people, although Japanese, are typical types for a crime novel. People doing stupid things to cover up stupid things and then even more mistakes are made. The jobs and scenery are different but the human element is much the same as in many crime novels I have read. Tells about the desperation of a live living on the margin with little or no hope that things will get better. The special thing is the strong character development and an overriding feeling of despair.
In DN today a wonderful article about a young man, Linus, who collected computer throw-aways and transported them to Tanzania. There he fixed them and started courses for teachers. This kid is only 21 years old. Some true and interesting comments "-Om jag alltid bodde i Tanzania skulle det jag tjänade där inte räcka till så mycket. Men pengarna jag arbetar ihop i Sverige blir så mycket mer värda när de används där nere . . . " Är det så att vi får vår höga levnadsstandard på andras bekostnad? Svårt att säga, men det kan vara en negativ sida till "välgörenhet". But on the other hand perhaps this is a future/freedom theme. It could be a way forward in my future, to adopt a village.

Africa and Academia

Have just finished a book by Dalene Matthee - about the forest in South Africa - where the main character is Big Foot. The book, Circles in a Forest, takes place in Knysna in the late 1880s. It was written in the middle 80s. While many of the themes relate to predjudice and making choices, a major point is the idea of conservation and the destruction of man, when he does not take care of his natural resources. Although the book is 30 years old the themes and characters are relevant today. Matthee died about a year ago. Another book I've read and enjoyed was Fiela's Child. A story about a white child adopted by a black family, also set in South Africa.
Some more on the theme of Africa - In DN today reports about a new hunger catastrophe. Not surprisingly the reports come from East Africa, the new slant is that this time northern Kenya is involved and the newspapers in Kenya are openly critical of the government's policies. This will probably go on and on. I have been in Africa and believe that it is possible to avoid these events, but when will a rational political solution be worked out? Today in UNT a book by Caroline Elkins (Britain's Gulag) is the subject of an essay. She brings to light the massive campaign against members of the Mau-Mau movement in the 50s. It remains to be seen whether or not anything will be done about the new information (other than to debate the truth of the reports).
Finally - Academia. Från Ronny Amjörnsson - ". . . inledde sina forskarstudier vid denna tid, karriärister som vi alla var, med blicken riktad mot högskolans snabbt växande arbetsmarknand . . ." - "I Umeå steg jag, inte minst genom bristen på jämnårig konkurrens, snabbt i graderna . . " Det var 70-talet men kanske även 80-talet på SLU? ". . tolv år som professor skrev jag min avskedsansökan . . . Vad jag vunnit är att jag slipper uppträda." Det känns verkligen sant.

Multiple equilibria & Klassresa

While writing the text for a proceedings paper from a talk I gave last November I have been reading a paper by Greg Dwyer in Nature (2004) and others about Gypsy moth population dynamics. Sometimes I don't understand what makes a paper attractive for publication in Nature. The paper by Dwyer is certainly interesting for me. It shows the importance of double processes - those that take place at low herbivore population levels and at high population levels. At low levels generalist predators may have the potential to make and impact while at high population levels a pest population needs enemies with a more intimate relationship (such as parasitoids and insect pathogenic virus). These are the kinds of multiple equilibria we found in our pinesawfly article. What Dwyer did was to add abiotic stochasticity and thereby added complexity which gave - not surprisingly - more complicated dynamics. I'd kind of like to explore this concept and can even see a possibility to try modelling Agricultural systems. Although the assumption of some regulating factor is difficult to deal with in Ag systems.
Ock Klassresan - från en bok av Ronny Ambjörnsson. Härlig beskrivning av arbetaregrabben som blir universitets professor. Ett nytt ord (för mig) : tetig. "Tetig var den som i något avseende avvek fron det normala." Och så till slut - om mentalitet: "Vi kan kalla den strävsamhetens och den ständiga verksamhetens mentalitet"

åtta ben och Jane Austen

Have been reading more about those wonderful spiders. There are the ones that use other spiders as prey. some members of the mimetid family pluck the threads of the webs of other spider species - mimicry of a prey landing in the web. When the web owner rushes out to take care of the assumed prey it is immediately bitten.
Then there are the "stealers". Spiders that live on or near another spider's web. Argyrodes females build webs near orb webs and attachs silk "signal lines" to the hub of the orb web. When the orb web spider has caught a prey and is wrapping it up then the Argyrodes slowly sneaks up to the hub where the prey is stored and takes it away. One observation was made of 45 Argyrodes parasitizing one orb web! You'd think that the host spider would catch on and go somewhere else. Bola spiders are also neat - there is one that "smells" like Spodoptera pheromones and when male moths come close the spider throughs out a sticky thread and catches the moth. Aren't spiders wonderful. Just found a wonderful website with som great spiders pics http://www.bugfeathers.com/ee.php/content/C4/
Another good one is http://www.spiderjoe.net/spiders/.

Now why, you ask, is there a picture of Jane Austen. Well the new movie of Pride and Predudice just came out here and I was reading the review. I love the story about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. But so few read the books these days. In the review it mentioned the winning concept of letting two people get together and everybody but those two know that they are made for each other - The story is how they come to realize it themselves. A simple theme done over and over, but it works - Is this like traits of spiders - for instance webs that work have been changed, refined, made better - but always the basic theme that works. A few other DN bits - selling the concept rather than the product - like Volvo cars that "strive to stir the soul". Performance is what counts - you have to get everyone's attention, sort of the same in Science today. Good solid work does not necessarily a scientific career make - you have to offer an image, a ready-made experience.

Jane Austen, yes - Some other interesting women - Sally Bauer, swam the English channel; Valerie Solanas, shot Andy Warhol; and playwright (Blasted) Sarah Kane, suicide at 28. Perhaps the most interesing of all is the woman who writes about them all - Sara Stridsberg.

Spiders is the subject of the day

Sexual dimorphism is common in spiders - One quite striking difference is that females may be very much larger in size than males. The other thing is the pedipalps, which are actually just legs without the metatarsus. On the left is a leg (over) and a pedipalp (under) of a tarantula. The spider with the red pedipalps is really cool . The males load the pedipalps with sperm before copulation and insert them into the female genitalia opening. Mating is preceeded by courtship - using behavior (following drag lines), pheromones , etc. It is a myth that the female will ususally eat the male after copulation - but the male should try to keep his distance!







The drawing below is of a typical mating position for crab spiders. The male (black) will signal and subdue the female by spinning threads around her legs.




The result of the copulation is, of course, eggs and to the left a female enclosing her eggs in a silken egg sac is shown. Above is an example of brood care in a wolf spider (Lycosidae). She is carrying her newly born babies on her back. It is also a good picture because the eyes and chelicera are very clear.

The Wrong Case

Just finished the first in a short series about Milo - who always needs a drink - by James Crumley. Emil gave me the book for Christmas and thanks to the net I could find out about the other books in the Milo series. So, in usual style, I moved to AdLibris and ordered the Dancing Bear and Final Country. Since Milo is 39 in the TWC written in 1975, he should be almost 70 in the last book , if time is real - Then he would have inherited his trust fund (to come to bear when he is 54 - if it were me I would be retired, and maybe I would be a drunk too). Unfortunately one book, a crossover called Bordersnakes, is not available. Guess I'll have to try to remember it for another time. There is another short series and also a book about Vietnam. Guess it can be time to do that.
Today was not a real success, but I did get the "docent utlåtande" mailed. Also cleaned a bit and started the proceedings article that I must get done by next week. Carol and Solveig are not directly over burdened with work. I'll have to work out what to keep them busy with.
The big news of the day is that Louise Hoffsten is going to be in Uppsala! This kind of thing lets me know that I don't have a lot of friends - Don't know who to ask to go with me, guess I can do it by myself.
The most interesting thing in the newspaper was that distance cources over the net are not very well received. I would like to develop a course - maybe on biological control, or some sort of modelling. But that will have to be if I get my "tjänst". Otherwise I can revert to the "Fly away home" book about coccinelids as a model for everything.

Christmas tree

One more christmas come and gone - housework created by the needles. Many things to think about and perhaps a blogg will help me remember

Sexbensblogg

Efter en dag med dödveds baggar ska jag nu börja tänka på vad en pseudodekan behöver göra den närmaste tiden. Jag hoppas att detta blogg kan hjälpa mig. Det blir ett sätt att kanske hålla reda på allt.

Imorgon skall:
1) docent uttlåtande gå iväg
2) Jeninahs grejor tas omhand
3)Danmark manuskripten bli klar

För fakulteten ska jag börja leta folk som kan hjälpa till med utvärderingar - Kom ihåg John Gulliver!