Browsing the ‘Academic’ blogs section for this weeks BlogCatalog Spotlight I could not help but stop at this political science blog from Norway, particularly since I’m from Norway myself. It’s called Nachspiel at Polemarchus by Sverre Midthjell. Polemarchus may be familiar to anyone who has read Plato’s work The Republic, one of the most fundamental works of western political philosophy, but what is this Nachspiel?
Having lived in Germany for much of my life I have to say that the word Nachspiel is actually one of the worst aberrations of the Norwegian language, because it is taken from German, where it actually means ‘afterplay’, that is, whatever a couple does after it has…well…coupled. However, the Norwegian meaning is ‘afterparty’, that is a gathering between friends after having been to a party, and it is often at such late night or rather early morning afterpartys that the real political discussions take place.
On a sidenote, conversely, in Norway there is also a Vorspiel, aka ‘foreplay’, also taken from German, where it means, well, what it says it means, but in Norway it means having a get-together before going to a party. So if you ever come to Norway, and someone invites you to come to a Vorspiel, remember, it is a social invite, not a sexual invite.
But now I am digressing, so back to the blog:
“Nachspiel at Polemarchus” is a blog on political science, politics and related topics. I intend to write based on my academic work as well as personal thoughts and opinions. Some of the stuff will certainly be academically oriented, but I intend to try and present things in form that will be readable even to people without a master’s degree in political science.
Yeah…right. After reading most of the posts I have to say that while a Master degree in Political Science may not be required, it is certainly highly recommended. That said, the blog has quite a number of interesting posts, among which the most recent post, referring to the NYT POTUS tracker, showing how President Obama is currently spending his time, and what issues are getting the most attention.
Following Sverre’s posts back in time, there is also a funny, or actually sad story about how cost-benefit analyses never work out in economics nor do they work out in real life. I work a lot with cost-benefit in my dayjob, and this is a story I will remember.
Surprisingly, the blog deals less with Norwegian politics than I thought, perhaps not more than one out of ten posts are dedicated to the blogger’s home country. The rest is anything else, and Malaysia seems to be a favorite country.
I admit that this BlogCatalog Spotlight is not a a blog for the big masses, but perhaps for the few selected. On the other hand, isn’t that what the BlogCatalog Spotlight is about? To find obscure blogs that would otherwise continue their obscure life were it for their brief moment of fame in the BlogCatalog Spotlight? The more I read Nachspiel at Polemarchus, the more I enjoy it, and hopefully you will, too.
Written by Jan Husdal, BlogCatalog Blogger Advocate
http://www.husdal.com/
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