Nehaveigur

Category: Diversions

  • Growing Up Without TV

    I was driving my oldest kid back from kindergarten when she asked, “Papa, how come some houses don’t have a TV?” I realized that she had been looking through the living room windows we were driving past, noticing that while most of the houses had a TV screen on their…

  • The Blue Boat

    I recently came across the painting below. It beautifully captures what it’s like to paddle through a remote lake. A printout now hangs above my desk to remind me of canoe trips past and future.

  • Do Composers Die Young?

    When Mozart was my age, he was dead for five years already. He had gone from composing to decomposing. He wasn’t the only composer to die young. Chopin died at 39, Gershwin at 38, Felix Mendelssohn at 38. This made me wonder if there’s a pattern. Are composers splendid torches…

  • Medium-Message Discordance

    There’s something about the medium and the message disagreeing that tickles me. Maybe one day I’ll make signs that say “Brotherhood” in pink, surrounded by cute little flowers, or “Form follows function” in Comic Sans.

  • Bumper Stickers I’ve Known and Liked

    Americans don’t have opinions, they have bumper stickers Rich Hall Last summer, I finally found my favorite bumper sticker on an incredibly dilapidated truck I was stuck behind in heavy traffic. We were moving so slowly I was able to take a photo. The sticker says Tengo novia – I…

  • The Coffee Ban

    Swedes drink a lot of coffee, and at all times of the day. One of the few fragments of Swedish I remember from my time there is ingår påtår?, which means, are refills included? It’s important to know if the café you’re considering is going to give you free coffee…

  • The Enemy is Blandness

    Life, if you’re not careful, can be bland. Modern buildings, food, clothes, interior design, cars: They’re all very convenient, very safe and very bland. And it’s not just the things we buy, it’s the way we live. Statistically speaking, we have smaller families and fewer friends than we used to.…

  • Moments of Grace

    There are moments when I can feel grace. Driving home after a drink with colleagues or friends while the sun is setting. Everything is more significant, new and meaningful ideas come easily, the music I listen to on the car radio becomes sublime. I’m not angry or anxious even if…

  • Party Crashing

    My friend and his wive lived on a cemetery, where they rented a small apartment attached to the groundkeeper’s house. The location was ideally suited for hosting a Halloween Party, and my friend, being a DJ with an unusual but accurate sense for what music was called for, the ideal…

  • Travel Hesitancy

    Whenever I have to catch an early flight and get up at 4 am, I wonder, why I’m doing this to myself? Why don’t I stay home, sleep in and read a book? The dread peaks as I brush my teeth, glancing at my phone every few seconds, wondering if…

  • XKCD

    I’ve been following the web comic xkcd for almost two decades now. It’s usually good and sometimes brilliant. Here’s last Friday’s:

  • Intentions for 2025

  • Money or All This

    We’re spending the days between Christmas and New Year at a ranch house on the Eastern slope of Mt Shasta. There are no neighbors apart from two horses who show mild interest whenever the kids run to their enclosure, only to turn away in disappointment when it becomes clear that…

  • Steak

    This morning, I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch with milk and I liked it better than any of the four steaks (two mignons, one sirloin, one New York strip) I ate on a trip to the cattle latitudes of the United States. These steaks were served in steakhouses selected by colleagues…

  • Silent Night

    This time of the year, everywhere you go, you hear Christmas songs. Some of them have been around for a long time. Silent Night was composed 200 years ago in Austria, not far from where I grew up. If you want to refresh your memory of the melody, there are…

  • Things to Argue About Over the Holidays

    Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics by Dynomight. Also see part II and part III.

  • Malmö

    Crossing the Öresund Bridge that connects Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden, I knew a new part of my life was about to start. Most of the time, I recognize the transitions between phases in my life only retrospectively, but sometimes I’m aware as they happen. I had previously…

  • Sprouts

    Sprouts is a two-player game that only requires pen and paper. A number of nodes (“Sprouts”), but at least two, are drawn. The players take turn to connect two nodes and drawing a new node somewhere along the new edge. Connecting a node to itself is okay. The last player…

  • Brixton

    Emerging from Brixton tube station for the first time and stepping out into the street, I entered a world I hadn’t experienced before. It was loud, multiethnic and crowded but also drab like only London can be. Brixton market was in full swing, the fruit vendors were shouting, buses were…

  • The Original

    For three years, while working towards my PhD, I shared an office with eight to ten other students and postdocs. The office with its gray carpet was on the second floor of a brick building from the 1960s, the windows looking out over a gray parking lot under a gray…

  • Reality-Memory-History

    An attempt at visual expression. Perception-Memory-History would’ve been a better title.

  • Headless Mike

    Chicken who keep running around after their heads have been cut off are a common story told by people who have grown up on farms, including my mom. I always assumed that this headless-but-alive state lasts a few seconds at best, but in the 1940s a chicken called Mike stayed…

  • Yearning From Above

    I’m on a plane. This morning, I woke up in a Sheraton hotel room and this afternoon I’ll be in a corporate office with a glass wall on one side, a white board with week-old diagrams in blue and green on the other, and my desk in between. Looking out…

  • What My Father Did Wrong

    On my desk, I have a picture of my father together with a four year old girl. They both look at the camera. She’s not happy about having her picture taken in the way little girls sometimes are but my father looks more relaxed than on any other photo I…

  • Spend it Wisely

    Last week, my wife and I packed our kids into the car and drove four hours to a cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Early November is a good time to spend be there if it doesn’t rain. It didn’t, and on one of our walks we even saw a…

  • Phantom Time and World Ice

    Of the many, many conspiracy theories out there, here are two less known ones that I quite enjoy for their entertainment value: In 1991, Heribert Illig proposed that the years 614-911 AD didn’t happen. They are fake, made up. Charlemagne never existed, and all historical documents from those years are…

  • The Value of an Education

    Of my mother’s many siblings, there’s one I’m close with. When I was at high school, he gave me a summer job at his business, which was installing air conditioners in Vienna. I carried pipes and tools, drilled holes and patched walls. At the end of each day, I was…

  • Ice Cream for Lunch

    In the 1999 movie Ghost Dog, there’s a scene where an ice cream vendor hears that ice cream isn’t all that bad after all and can’t wait to pass the news on to his customers. “They say ice cream is really good for your health. Rich in calcium!”, he announces…

  • Wikibibliography

    I wish there were a website that curated the best resources to learn about any topic. For example, if I want to learn about the history of Kabul, Wikipedia offers an introduction, but there’s no list of links to the best documentaries, online courses, websites, papers, videos or X accounts…

  • Drinking, Smoking and Drugs

    Here’s writer Hunter S. Thompson’s daily routine, as reported by E. Jean Carroll. It’s likely made up, but of course the truth is a poor substitute for a good story.  Here‘s Thompson talking with Conan O’Brien a few months before he died.

  • The Five Salad Dressings

    Something about being an immigrant to the United States I wish someone had told me: You need to know the Five Salad Dressings. Being asked which dressing you want and in turn enquiring what’s available will earn you an eyeroll and immediately out you as either an immigrant or a…

  • California Anthem

    I’ve lived in the state for 10 years and only recently learned that California has an anthem. I’ve never heard it performed anywhere, for any occasion. It’s so obscure that I couldn’t even find any spoofs, hard as that may be to believe. The reason for its lack of prominence…

  • Ode to Carbonation

    There is no culinary experience I value more than sparkling water hitting the back of my throat. For optimal effect, the level of carbonation is as high as physically possible and a little lemon juice gives the bubbles extra oomph. I’ve loved fizzy water for as long as I can…

  • Madaus

    A few years ago, my uncle gave me an old book created by the German pharmaceutical company Madaus, which is nowadays part of Rottapharm Biotech, to celebrate their 50th birthday. There is no publication date, but since Madaus was founded in 1919, it’s probably from 1969. The book’s visual style also fits that era.…

  • A Lucky Guess

    A colleague and I were looking over a graph with same data he had produced. I didn’t understand it, so I asked him about a data point that stuck out. “Why is this one so big?” I asked, hoping that the answer wouldn’t turn out to be too obvious. He…

  • I Put my Toaster in the Dishwasher

    A 2012 blog post recently dug out by Slime Mold Time Mold points out that It is very difficult to discern the difference between Conventional Wisdom and Conventional Ignorance. For example, it may be fine to put a toaster in a dishwasher, despite everyone with a shred of common sense…

  • Happiness Only Real When Shared

    Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra Nevada at Donner Pass. One semi-trailer truck follows the next in a near-continuous train, connecting the mighty economy of California with those of the states further East. I was travelling on a different kind of road. The Pacific Crest Trail is a long distance hiking…

  • Monday Notes

    For the team I manage, I’ve instituted a 60-year-old management technique. Monday notes are a system for keeping track of what everyone is working on, flagging problems and suggesting solutions. I got the idea from reading about a similar system Wernher von Braun used during the early years of NASA.…

  • Bulwer-Lytton 2024

    The 2024 winners for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written, have been announced. Here are my favorites: His burnt flesh sizzling like a burger on the grill, blood pouring from his wounds like an overshaken cola, and…

  • Wearing a Dead Man’s Shirts

    When my friend died, I started wearing his shirts. He died the day after we celebrated Christmas eve, and last weekend his widow came over and gave me a dozen dress and casual shirts, a sports coat and a cashmere sweater. She said that of the many people he knew,…

  • Blitz Tourism

    We were vacationing in the Austrian alps. Our cabin was at the end of a small, winding road, on the edge of a pasture with views of the valley and the mountains beneath. When we were not learning how to milk a cow or how to use a scythe, we…

  • Ads from 1909

    Here are some ads from the March 1909 edition of Sunset Magazine. This poor fellow doesn’t get attention from the ladies because they prefer to listen to the gramophone instead of his awkward attempts at conversation. Bay Area cities used to beg people to move there. This was before the…

  • Tim’s Vermeer

    This is how I want to spend my retirement: Work on projects of my choosing, without having to consider financial constraints or whether others approve. Tim Jenison has the same attitude in the 2013 documentary Tim’s Vermeer. In this case, the project is the reproduction of a 17th century painting…

  • Sauerkraut Westerns

    You have probably come across spaghetti Westerns: Movies set in the Old West but made by Italians, starring Italians or filmed in Italy. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood is a famous example, but my favorite is They Call Me Trinity starring Bud Spencer and Terence…

  • Kokopelli

    He pops up in the most unexpected places. I’ve seen him on rocks, on traffic signs, on clothing. Here he is on the side of an excavator.

  • Against Binoculars

    I have nothing against birds. It’s impossible to look at one and, based on its appearance and the way it behaves, not ascribe a personality to it. The aggressive and curious way of bluejays reminds me of car salesmen. Even though birds amuse me, I never got into birdwatching, a…

  • Free Bumper Stickers!

    I’m worried that people could assume that I’m insecure, even though I’m confident and self-assured. To preempt this, I’ve designed bumper stickers that declare “I’m not insecure”. It’s something I need people to know. I then ordered the smallest possible amount, which was still more than I knew what to…

  • Time Well Wasted

    There are probably better ways to waste your life, but Twitter’s at least pretty efficient Eric Jarosinski Based on the many years of experience I have not getting things done, I consider myself an authority on wasting time. That’s why I’ll not defer to others on the subject. There’s a…

  • Bears

    Talk with backpackers anywhere in the Western United States, and eventually bears will come up. I’ve come across bears a few times and they now make me less anxious than they used to. I knew all along that that black bears aren’t dangerous to hikers who behave sensibly. After discovering…

  • Fourth of July

    The 4th of July is a day people spend with their families and friends, often over a barbecue. When my wife and I moved to America about ten years ago, we didn’t know many people yet. The first July 4th we spent here we didn’t get an invitation to a…

  • The Sound of Music

    When I mention that I’m from Austria, frequently The Sound of Music comes up. Chinese in their 40s and Americans in their 70s are especially likely to mention the film. In China, it used to be one of the few foreign films that were shown on TV until the 1990s…

  • Just Let Me Drink

    We went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered food and flight of sake. The waitress returned promptly with five small crystal glasses arranged on a slab of polished wood. She set them down in front of us and started to explain the origin and history of each. I started to…

  • Heroic Overeating

    When you are a kid, eating gets you respect. My siblings and I had a grandmotherly neighbor who took care of us when our parents were away. She loved to cook and few things made her happier than watching us eat. This become even more pronounced once she was diagnosed…

  • Bicycle Conversion

    Leaving a hardware store, I saw an e-bike unlike any I had seen before chained to a lamppost. It was a standard road bike with two motors added to the frame. They were connected to the rear wheel hub with separate bike chains. The battery was housed in a hard…

  • Misconceptions

    There’s more where that came from.

  • All the Magic

    Sandra’s seen a leprechaun, Eddie touched a troll Laurie danced with witches once, Charlie found some goblins’ gold. Donald heard a mermaid sing, Susy spied an elf, But all the magic I have known I’ve had to make myself. Shel Silverstein: Magic

  • More Luck Than Sense

    I’ve been thinking about parenting recently. Having had three kids within three years has something to do with it. Specifically, I’ve been wondering about how my parents brought me up. There are many things they’ve done for me, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that…

  • Two Very Good Movies

    A Man Called Otto: This is an example of a genre I enjoy. The genre is Grumpy old man with new neighbors. Other examples of GOMWNN are St Vincent (starring Bill Murray as GOM) and Gran Torino (GOM: Clint Eastwood). The story is that a grumpy man has lost his…

  • Hair-raising Haircuts

    Hairdressers are notorious for the quality of their small talk. Mine is different. While we started out with small talk, our conversations have taken a dark turn. She’s an Asian lady of around 65 with a strong accent. The first few times I went there we kept topics limited to…

  • Trains

    Trains are different in America. Like so many other things (people, portion sizes, cars, ambition), they’re bigger here than they were in Europe. The part of the United States where I live and that I’m most familiar with, which is California and the western states, the most frequently encountered kind…

  • The River: Drowning

    Most winters, the ice was strong enough for skating, as long as you avoided the fast flowing sections where it was much thinner. As a safety precaution, or so I told myself, I would first go out on a sled, reasoning that it’s impossible to fall through the ice that…

  • The River: Boats

    For Christmas, I wanted a kayak. For months, I had been poring over the catalogs of various suppliers, comparing specifications and accessories and looking at the pictures of people in kayaks exploring wild places. Finally Christmas eve arrived. The bell rang, the doors to the drawing room opened, and there…

  • The River: Power

    The mansion was built with the money the factory made my ancestors, and the factory was next to the river because it couldn’t have been anywhere else. During the mid-19th century, the cheapest way to generate power to run large machines was to house them next to a river, and…

  • The River: Turks

    For hundreds of years, the Habsburg and Ottoman empires waged war, a conflict that had its roots in the Crusades. The Ottomans besieged Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683. During the second siege, the Ottomans pillaged the Austrian countryside and terrorized the population, who to them, accustomed to the…

  • Early Bird

    Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird And catch the worm for your breakfast plate. If you’re a bird, be an early early bird – But if you’re a worm, sleep late. Shel Silverstein: Early Bird

  • The River: Fishing

    Beneath the surface, there were trout. On hot days they were suspended in the water without moving. My brother, for a few years, was obsessed by fishing and would frequently bring home trout for us to eat. In his room, he had a box with what to seven year old…

  • The River: Home

    There was the crumbling Belle Epoque mansion, and around the mansion was an overgrown park, and behind the park was the river. To get there, you had to leave the gravel paths that circled the mansion and venture into the tall grass. Once a year a neighboring farmer would bring…

  • Did You Do Your Best?

    Responsibility is a unique concept… You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you… If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can…

  • The Battle of the Bulge

    To hell with you, ignoble paunch, abhorrent in my sight! I gaze at your rotundity, and savage is my frown. I’ll rub you and I’ll scrub you and I’ll drub you day and night, But by the gods of symmetry I swear I’ll get you down. Your smooth and smug…

  • The Man Who Almost Discovered America

    Scientists go out there and discover things about how the world works. I’m a scientist and sometimes I discover stuff before breakfast. I’m like Christopher Columbus. I don’t make that comparison lightly. Columbus thought he had discovered a new continent, but it turns out that there were already millions of…

  • Three Cheers for Ignorance

    Knowledge is power! Knowledge is what our civilization is built on. All those medieval monks dedicating their lives to understanding how the universe works? You know more about it than they ever did. You know about atoms and planets and bacteria. They didn’t. Maybe they had some other kind of…

  • London Calling

    Don’t you just hate those market researchers calling you? They’re annoying. They’re persistent. If you make the mistake of answering your phone, they’ll steal your time. They ask you one irrelevant question after the next. Do you agree? Because I have something to tell you something. I’m not proud of…

  • How Not to Eat Well

    People worry a lot about food. Is it authentic? Is it healthy? Is it local? Is it organic? Is it sustainable? Is it The Best? You can see them at the grocery store, checking the labels. I do it myself. The most basic information on a food label is the…

  • The Alphabet of American Animals

    The armadillo, the armadillo has armor above but not below The bear, the bear has a lot of hair everywhere The coyote, the coyote can never let the chickens be The deer, the deer are always full of fear The eagle, the eagle, to hunt it is illegal The frog,…

  • Trust, But Verify

    “I want to double-click on that,” says the head of my division. We’re all sitting around a conference table and for once, there’s no laptop in sight. He is speaking figuratively, and since it’s 2024, he’s not using a sports metaphor but a one inspired by the action of pressing…