Saturday, October 20, 2007

Swedish Ingenuity Betters the World

The Swedes do some good work. They are a creative bunch really, maybe it’s all the time they spend in the dark during the winter. These are the people that brought the world IKEA and flat packaged furniture. Where else can you go and furnish your entire home, pack it all in your car, and get a hot dog for less than a dollar? Nowhere. Spectacular.

Not only have they brought the world cheap furniture but also dynamite. Alfred Nobel, the man whose name graces the Nobel Prizes in Stockholm, invented dynamite. Where would the world be without the ability to blow all kinds of stuff up. A better questions is, where would the cartoon world be without the use of dynamite. How many times did Wile E. Coyote get stuck with dynamite in his hands. Think of the comedic excellence we would have missed out on without this Swedish invention.

The Swedes Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis are also responsible for Kazaa, which obviously caused some problems with the whole music industry but come on, it’s just utilizing the technology available right? Those same guys though also brought us Skype. The best way to call people around the world for free. I call to the US all the time now and don’t pay a dime. All it takes is a microphone, speakers, and a decent internet connection and suddenly I’m back in contact with the good old family.

They even have their hand in the sciences, with a couple famous people coming out of Uppsala University. Anders Celsius came up with, you guessed it, the Celsius scale of measuring temperature. Of course the US completely ignored this, we couldn’t be bothered with taking that sort of European nonsense with us to America.

Carl von Linné decided it was a good idea to organize every single organism on the face of the planet. No small feat really. He is the man behind the nomenclature that is attached to everything. Biologists love him. High school biology students hate him.

And let’s not forget Absolut Vodka. A glorious Swedish vodka that usually doesn’t even score that well in vodka taste tests but has some of the best advertisements to grace the alcohol industry. Absolut Genius really.

Saab, Volvo, H&M, TetraPak, Ericsson, Electrolux, AstraZeneca. Well done Sweden. Well done.

8 comments:

  1. loved your photos! Love to see more!!

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  2. Anything for you! Well, at least some more pictures!

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  3. I know this post is old but I just had to share this with you.
    Since I live in New York I know quite a lot about the cities history (I'm a history nerd if you will) and I just found out that
    "The Bronx" is named after a swede(!) Jonas Jonson Brunk.

    :D

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  4. Eric, I'm a huge history nerd. And I love that fact. Well done, and feel free to keep them coming.

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  5. I was wondering, just how well known is Linné in the US? Do you really learn about him/his work in school?

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  6. Meh. Kind of. He gets mentioned in biology class when we discuss naming everything, but that's about it in my experience. Of course, I didn't continue studying biology after high school.

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