tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63498761139419637562024-03-13T17:10:24.255+01:00Lucienin kirjastoTerohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-58699765086402724602023-03-03T15:19:00.005+01:002023-03-03T15:26:37.409+01:00Suomalainen small talk<p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Vuonna 2023: "Suomalaiset eivät osaa small talkia"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Aleksis Kivi, 1870:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">-Terve miestä, sinä Rajamäen Mikko! Kuinka jaksat ja mitä uusia maailmalta?</span></i></p><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">-Sekalaista, sekalaista, sekä hyvää että pahaa, mutta ainapa, koira vieköön, hyvä kuitenkin täällä päällimmäisenä keikkuu, ja tämän elämän retkutus käy laatuun.</span></i><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mitähän tuossa välissä tapahtui?</span></p></div>Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-54257180444979883162022-08-11T15:00:00.003+02:002023-03-08T15:49:02.698+01:00There's a problem<p> Eventually, you realize that part of the process is redundant.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtmLJTCdNxUIwr4zTXV3QQvkrugdaL5jBatT2Dro4hwSCAnDlYPyy_yU-444N3mDtgHvzMrc9X-TXoxbGtC9PZUMP8-UevJCJSKYzxwwmkbelYUTwBxQq70v7GNOMHMo-CdlE53dRUB8cIqpTE0QwcyvSQ9jnt-5rFEezs1JsIAlzmEVWox806AnC9/s752/Screenshot%202022-08-11%20145707.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="752" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtmLJTCdNxUIwr4zTXV3QQvkrugdaL5jBatT2Dro4hwSCAnDlYPyy_yU-444N3mDtgHvzMrc9X-TXoxbGtC9PZUMP8-UevJCJSKYzxwwmkbelYUTwBxQq70v7GNOMHMo-CdlE53dRUB8cIqpTE0QwcyvSQ9jnt-5rFEezs1JsIAlzmEVWox806AnC9/s320/Screenshot%202022-08-11%20145707.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><br /><p><br /></p>Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-91065955628742494872022-07-13T12:46:00.003+02:002023-03-08T15:51:30.811+01:00How to read American football scores<p>One reason I love American football is the scoring system. The way it's balanced is genius: you can tell a lot about a match just by looking at the score. See how many points your team scored and consult this handy chart:</p><p><br /></p><p>0 - Your team sucks</p><p>1 - Something really weird happened. Also, your team sucks.</p><p>2 - Oh look, a safety</p><p>3 - Normal. And you got blown out.</p><p>4 - What's with all the safeties?</p><p>5 - Oh look, a safety</p><p>6 - At least your kicker got involved, one way or another</p><p>7 - Normal</p><p>8 - A two-point conversion, I guess? Cool</p><p>9 - Normal-ish</p><p>10 - Normal</p><p>11 - You got two-pointers somehow, so probably not totally boring</p><p>12 - Seriously, is this all field goals?</p><p>13 - I hope your kicker didn't miss an extra point</p><p>14 - Normal</p><p>15 - This game didn't follow a script. You probably lost, though.</p><p>16 - You missed an extra point, were chasing and converted two-pointers, or cannot find the end zone. In any case, this cannot be good</p><p>17 - Normal</p><p>18+ - Your over had a chance</p>Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-47578701254213953372018-05-20T18:49:00.003+02:002018-05-20T18:57:35.064+02:00A Philosophical Barber ShopA colleague and me came up with a business idea. This cannot fail.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD9CgKSo1qVB1v3nJ0ZPMCtQ1JBZT3-oe7IWuwnAeoB-Md7MnWccNypRnK1gEtLaNGtAPuKvmB_4dqyc_eDqeM-KT9qJsihpDVdzQIV4mW_q1lKNSVsTWzU21OCnsl6V9txwo44BMHNXE/s1600/Mallisto_eng_png.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="910" data-original-width="764" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD9CgKSo1qVB1v3nJ0ZPMCtQ1JBZT3-oe7IWuwnAeoB-Md7MnWccNypRnK1gEtLaNGtAPuKvmB_4dqyc_eDqeM-KT9qJsihpDVdzQIV4mW_q1lKNSVsTWzU21OCnsl6V9txwo44BMHNXE/s640/Mallisto_eng_png.PNG" width="537" /></a></div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-62881034535250416222017-01-19T21:24:00.002+01:002023-03-09T11:15:37.684+01:00The adorable search for the Finnish national dishBeing an expatriate changes you. Among other things, it makes you look at your old homeland with a mix of newly found objectivity and immense affection. I got a shot of those sentiments a while ago when a <a href="https://promo.meltwater.fi/kansallisruoka">popular vote to choose a national dish for Finland was announced</a>.<br />
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Years ago, when Parma and Helsinki were competing over where to locate the European Food Safety Authority, Silvio Berlusconi made fun of the primitiveness of the Finnish food culture. After reading the list of 12 candidates, chosen by an appointed panel, of the national dish vote... I am alternating between adoring Finns' simple, no-nonsense attitude toward food, and chuckling to myself while imagining what Berlusconi would have said about this array of awesomeness. Since I'm family, I am allowed to have a bit of good-spirited fun, right? Let us look at the entries one by one...<br />
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<b>Pea soup</b>. A bowl of guaranteed hyper-accelerator of intestinal gases, digested with mustard. It is the traditional weekly Thursday meal in the Finnish army. The following night is known in the barracks as "the night of the flapping blankets."<br />
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<b>Fish soup</b>. It is a soup that has fish in it. It certainly gets points for elegant simplicity.<br />
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<b>Mämmi</b>. A traditional dessert famous for its uncanny resemblance to human excrement. Nowadays associated with Easter, which I assume was originally some sort of religious self-punishment ritual.<br />
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<b>Dark rye bread</b>. This one actually makes perfect sense. It is Finnish, it is delicious, and it is one of exactly two foods whose absence one bothers to register when living abroad.<br />
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<b>Karelian pies</b>. This is the other one.<br />
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<b>Viili</b>. One of the many variations of the theme "a fancy kind of spoiled milk".<br />
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<b>Pizza</b>. ... OK, at this point, the panel apparently just gave up and admitted there are less than 12 Finnish-invented foods in existence.<br />
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<b>Blueberry pie</b>. I did not know there was something specifically Finnish about this. At least it tastes good unless it belongs to the variant that has only some dry blueberry skins on top to fool an unsuspecting consumer into thinking that they will get actual berries.<br />
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<b>Fried herrings with potatoes</b>. I thought this was a potential winner (spoiler: turns out I was wrong). Fried herrings are delicious, and their combination with the ever-present boiled potatoes would symbolize Finnish food quite well. You'll get a gourmet version by placing a piece of dill on the potato.<br />
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<b>Karelian stew</b>. Pieces of meat floating in a mix of greasy water and mushy vegetables. It is not all bad, largely thanks to the grease. Since salt and grease make anything taste good, why does it not work when I mix salt and grease and try to eat the mixture? The world does not make any sense.<br />
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<b>Gravlax</b>. A dish of raw salmon, cured in salt, sugar, and dill, usually served as an appetizer. No, of course I did not need to look that up on Wikipedia.<br />
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<b>Liver casserole</b>. A revolting mass of indistinct substance that should be prohibited by the Geneva convention. It is so cheap that it is the country's most popular microwave meal (which was one reason cited for qualifying it as a candidate), so it doubles as a reminder that you are poor as hell. In the <a href="http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9206669">words of a panel member</a>, "If it is made of a moose calf's liver, for example, the rice replaced by barley, and eaten with mashed lingonberries, it is delicious". So, if you swap its ingredients with something else, cover it in a substance that blocks its taste, and kill a Bambi, it becomes edible. I'm sold.<br />
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Yes, I admit, a couple of these are genuinely worth longing for. But not having access to them is a fair price for not having the risk of being accidentally exposed to the rest.<br />
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The results are in, and <a href="http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9411496">dark rye bread won</a>, obviously. It is like Finland itself. Strong, sour, tough, and trustworthy. One of these days I'm going to go and get some.Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-82685489289147546512016-12-12T15:26:00.001+01:002023-03-08T15:53:58.241+01:00Dear UserDear user,<br />
<br />
You have requested to create a guest account to access our institution database. To facilitate the rapid success of the process, please follow these steps:<br />
<br />
1) Produce three paper copies of forms XF-1045 and XF-1087, fill them, and sign them with ultramarine RAL 5002 blue ink. Scan the originals and send them to us. We choose to employ the ambiguous term "us" instead of giving an actual e-mail address because otherwise somebody would actually have to take responsibility for this.<br />
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If you are unsure about how to fill forms XF-1045 and XF-1087, please see <a href="http://www.ascii-middle-finger.com/">this link</a> for instructions written in a language you do not read.<br />
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2) Send the originals in a single envelope to the Department of Informatics.<br />
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3) Check if the Department of Informatics actually exists at this point in space-time after the latest organizational upheaval. If yes, proceed to number 5. If not, proceed to number 4.<br />
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4) Send the documents to the department that most closely resembles the Department of Informatics. Don't ask. Your guess is as good as ours.<br />
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5) Send them again, because we probably lost the first ones.<br />
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6) Remind yourself why you are doing all this again.<br />
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7) Breed a horde of little green minions to storm the ramparts of the relevant department and deliver the documents personally.<br />
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8) नौ साल पहले एक गर्मियों में प्रशिक्षु के एक बुरा शरारत के कारण, इस अंतरिक्ष हिन्दी में पाठ का एक बुरा मशीन अनुवाद से भर जाता है, सचमुच क्योंकि कोई भी पिछले एक दशक में ये निर्देश ठीक करना हो गया है।<br />
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9) Wait for Uranus to approach perihelion.<br />
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10) Check if you still need access to the database. If yes, proceed to number 1. If not, proceed to number 11.<br />
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11) Process completed successfully.Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-56173187363664275352016-11-19T16:33:00.002+01:002023-03-08T16:12:09.588+01:00Trump, Authoritarianism, and Opposing Worldviews<div class="MsoNormal">
So, this happened.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first question might well be: Why should this be a big
deal for a non-American? After all, it was only a presidential election of a
foreign country, which is not supposed to be the business of non-Americans
anyway. The president of the United States is not almighty, will be as bound by
the realities of domestic and international politics as anyone else, and
certainly cannot make the country and its political system bow to his personal
will. It is surprising, considering what the polls seemed to indicate, and more
than a little weird, but so what?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I feel the need to bring some considerations together and
justify why it seems like a big deal. Why care so much about who won the United
States presidential election?<o:p></o:p></div>
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First, maybe this should have not been surprising. If
Trump’s victory came as a surprise, maybe that is just an indication that
something important about these times has escaped our attention. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It has been repeatedly pointed out that Trump’s success has
much to do with the anger and disillusionment of American lower middle and
working classes. These people are often by default suspicious of the federal
government, and they have been hit hard by economic trends, loss of jobs due
to globalization, and <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/">the polarization of income that shrinks the middle class</a>. These elections channeled much repressed anger. (Meanwhile, 370
economists, including some of the best in the world, <a href="http://time.com/4555032/economists-against-donald-trump/">assert that Trump’s economic promises are based on fallacies and misinformation</a>.) For people who do
not expect anything good from the established political factions, any radical
change may appear desirable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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However, that does not explain at all how Donald Trump, of
all people, came to win as the Republican nominee. Why on earth Trump? Just how
do people think he is going to be the solution to the problems mentioned above,
to such an extent that he managed to win despite almost non-existent support
from the Republican Party luminaries? Moreover, why do so many people on
this side of the Atlantic, people who have nothing significant to gain from changes in
the United States’ political direction, seem to be cheering for Trump?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Republican Party is generally thought of as the party of an unrestricted free market, extreme individualism, and social conservatism. But
as the party’s agonizing over Trump’s candidacy showed, he was not appealing to
the traditional Republican principles as such. Most clearly, Trump did not gain
his support because he was conservative -- he is not. He was supported because he was
radical. Something else is involved than just a tipping of the scales between
the two established American political powers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Republicans have been the party of law, order, and
security since the 1960s. At a time when racial riots and unrest caused by the
social rights struggles provoked fear and uncertainty, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism#party">the party employed the message of hard-handed security measures and aversion to social change</a>. Where Democrats
became the party more accommodating to social reform, Republicans came to
champion reluctance about extending the civil rights of minorities, even though
this was not inherently part and parcel with their other key doctrines. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus, today’s Republican party has come to encompass
mindsets that do not necessarily have much to do with each other. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10478400903028615?journalCode=hpli20">Karen Stenner’s detailed analysis</a> shows that what gets grouped together as the American “political
right” consists of three distinct dispositions: laissez-faire capitalism,
social conservatism, and an important third feature, <b>authoritarianism. </b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Authoritarianism, in the sense meant here, is the preference for uniformity and conformity in one’s surroundings, favoring hierarchy,
loyalty, and strong leadership. Since the early 1990s, there has been an
ingenious measurement device for the authoritarian psychological profile, which
sidesteps the methodological problems of asking people directly about their
political preferences. It consists of asking them about something universally
human, present in every culture, having prima facie nothing to do with
politics: child-rearing practices. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Questionnaires ask about the most desirable kinds of
upbringing for children. The respondents are asked what features they see as
most important for their children to have. They are asked if it is most
important to teach children <b>independence</b> or <b>respect for elders</b>; <b>self-reliance</b>
or <b>obedience</b>; <b>being considerate</b> or <b>being well-behaved</b>; and <b>curiosity</b> or <b>good
manners</b>. Picking the second preference in each pair has proven to be a reliable
indicator of authoritarian preferences. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What is interesting is that Trump’s success has been driven
by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/01/how-your-parenting-style-predicts-whether-you-support-donald-trump/">his appeal </a>to <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533">people with authoritarian preferences</a>. He did not only
gather the votes of social conservatives or disgruntled poor people: he
gathered the votes of authoritarians, who are many, and not by any means
confined to the political right. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is important to note that authoritarianism differs from
conservatism. What Stenner calls “status quo conservatism” may often support
the same causes as authoritarianism, but it is importantly different. According
to Stenner’s analysis, conservatism prefers stability and security in society,
resisting change and preferring established practices over reforms.
Conservatism is disposed to maintain the status quo, even when the status quo
includes many divisions and diversity in society. Authoritarianism, on the
other hand, is disposed to enforce uniformity, homogeneity, and strict social
hierarchies in society, even when this means drastic measures and a radical
upheaval of the status quo. Neither of the two is inherently connected with
laissez-faire capitalism. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Trump’s success starts to make more sense when one considers
the possibility that his message reached a large class of people with
authoritarian tendencies. With his self-assured and outrageous demeanor, he
portrayed himself as the kind of strongman leader who will force radical change upon the country, and disregards all kinds of typical political correctness which might stand in his way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another interesting hypothesis, also put forward by Stenner,
could explain why the political force of authoritarianism has not been more
evident before. The hypothesis is that authoritarian tendencies are often
latent until “activated”, and they are activated by perceived threats to social
order and personal security. The hypothesis makes a lot of sense, thinking about the effectiveness of the
standard political maneuver: underpinning the support of the ruling regime
by turning people’s attention to an outside threat. According to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00514.x/abstract">Hetherington and Suhay's study on Americans</a>, it is not only those with pre-existing authoritarian tendencies who are
susceptible to the effect. Also people without those tendencies may respond to
real or imagined threats by becoming more authoritarian. That is, by turning to strong
leadership, traditional values, and unity of the group.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When people experience uncertainty and fear, it seems to be
a natural reaction to turn to one’s community for safety, and become less
tolerant of diversity and differences of opinion in that community. People feeling threatened, either by physical dangers or by rapid changes in social norms, tend to seek safety, consciously or
unconsciously, from forceful leaders and uniformity, strict norms, and
structure. The racism that arises from activated authoritarianism is not so much
racism as such; it is, to use Stenner’s term, more general “difference-ism”.
This may explain the otherwise completely baffling phenomenon where hostile
attitudes, once they have become prominent against some minorities, seem to
target also evidently harmless groups, such as disabled people.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If it is true that (to simplify) scared people are more
prone to attach to authoritarian leaders, this may tell something illuminating
about totalitarian societies and dictatorships. It is easy enough to understand
that people can be scared into submission in a dictatorship. But the result of
living under a constant threat may be deeper than simple reluctant submission.
It might be that people can be scared into <i>actually
supporting </i>authoritarian regimes – the regime is a self-feeding machine that constantly provides the impetus for its own support.<o:p></o:p></div>
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According to Stenner, the authoritarian psychological
profile favors<o:p></o:p></div>
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“ ... structuring society and social interactions in ways that
enhance sameness and minimize diversity of people, beliefs, and behaviors. It
tends to produce a characteristic array of stances all of which have the effect
of glorifying, encouraging, and rewarding uniformity and disparaging,
suppressing, and punishing difference.”<i> (Stenner, "Three Kinds of Conservatism", Psychological Inquiry, 20, p. 143)</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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So, authoritarianism seems to be the preference for homogeneity and strength in unity and the distaste of diversity and difference. It
is certainly a widespread trait, although one rarely encounters it in a
completely outspoken or unqualified form in politics or social life – at least
until now. But there seems to be a less radical preference, which is closely
related to the authoritarian mindset, but even more humanly universal and
comprehensive: the preference for order and hierarchy. What I have in mind is a
mindset that does not oppose diversity as such, but demands that any existing
diversity is made sense of by classifying it in clear and permanent ways. It
demands that things, phenomena, and people have labels and that they wear
those labels on their sleeves. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Very many people who could be described as conservative or
authoritarian seem content to accept the existence of various kinds of
diversity if that diversity is made clear-cut and intelligible by labels and
classifying concepts. Let there be blacks in the neighborhood, as long as
they keep to themselves and do not try to become one of “us”; let there be
equal rights for women, as long as women do not try to become men and take over
“men’s jobs”; let there be equal rights for homosexual couples, as long as
homosexual partnerships do not constitute “marriage”. Nobody likes to find out
that their long-lasting ways to make sense of the world have gone obsolete, and
that their concepts no longer mean what they used to mean. Sticking to
traditional meanings of concepts and inherited worldviews is, like
authoritarianism, an expression of the tendency to seek safety in order and
tradition when the world outside seems to change too rapidly. It is probably no
accident that populists like Trump use <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0">name-calling</a> so extensively. Sticking
easily remembered, emotionally loaded labels to everyone and everything speaks
directly to his target audience. It feeds the audience’s urge to classify,
simplify, and know what is what.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, there might be an explanation as to why these
preferences seem so deeply alien to some. On the face of it, a preference for
order and homogeneity over ambiguity and diversity is a perfectly intelligible
need, and certainly not in any obvious way irrational. Why is it so baffling
and repulsive to many; to such an extent that well-educated people struggle to even understand
where authoritarian tendencies come from?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maybe somewhere on the bottom of all this lies a fundamental
difference in worldviews. On the one hand, there are people who see order as
the basic, “default” feature of the world. There is a pre-determined natural
order for things to be, and undesirable things are conceived as resulting from
the order’s being disturbed in one way or another. Order is the default state
of the human race and society. Whenever there is a deviation from the order, this is
attributable to some external agent, malicious or delusional, who must be
stopped before it breaks the world’s rightful structure apart. On the other
hand, there are people who see change as the basic, “default” feature of the
world. The only permanent thing is that everything changes. History, the story
of the human race, or the fates of societies do not follow any pre-determined
path, and much of the developments that shape our lives are attributable just
to random chance. People are fellow travelers in a chaotic and unpredictable
world that is not in any way inherently hospitable to them. The way to survive
is to build unity where there once was none, adapt, and develop. Circumstances
change, and societies change with them, whether we like it or not. The only
relevant choice is between controlled change as opposed to chaotic and
unpredictable change.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Something like the first worldview may be an unspoken and
non-reflected part of the authoritarian disposition, as well as those more
moderate mindsets that share features with it. The inability to understand or
relate to the first world-view, on the other hand, could be part of the reason
why the needs of authoritarians and their means of responding to threats seem
so alien to many. If something along these lines is right, it is no wonder if
authoritarians tend to be climate change deniers. It goes against a
basic building block of their worldview – the conviction that if things are just
left to run their course, things will fall back into their rightful order. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why is the election of Donald Trump a big deal? Because he
cannot be dismissed as a singular accident, a mere charismatic snake-oil
salesman, or a very-probably-one-term president brought about by a critical
amount of protest voters. He awakened politically a subset of people that is
permanently there and can be mobilized to support ruthless and radical
leaders, especially when there are high levels of fear and uncertainty in the
society. His success is part of the same nationalist, isolationist, and
disunifying trend that is growing in European politics, in Brexit, and
elsewhere. Now, when Trump’s themes, his campaigning style, and his surely
conscious choice to rather appear vigorous than worthy of respect, have won him
the White House, it is hard to believe that the same methods would not be
copied in European politics sooner or later. The European Trumps are probably
already on their way.<o:p></o:p></div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-78920356302287184722016-07-28T16:24:00.002+02:002023-03-08T16:18:29.419+01:00Collective stigmatizing does not belong in Western values<i>[My letter to the editor published in the newspaper Keskisuomalainen 26.7.2016. This is about a proposal by The Finns Party Youth, the youth organization of The Finns Party, which is currently taking part in the Finnish coalition government. The title was provided by the editors.]</i><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Finns Party Youth proposes the section about agitation
against a group to be removed from the Finnish penal code (ps-nuoret.fi,
21.7.2016). This would render it lawful to collectively stigmatize a group
based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability, as long as this
does not involve direct incitement to violence. According to the organization,
the penal code sections about agitation against a group and defamation of
religion are detrimental to defending Western values, as well as hindering open
discussion about criminal acts and human rights violations. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is rhetorically clever of The Finns Party Youth to appeal
to Western values and human rights. However, anyone who holds that it is
necessary to engage in agitation against a group or sect, as it is
characterized in the penal code, to defend the aforementioned rights and
values, needs to explain what his or her conception of Western values is like
in the first place. At the very least, those values should include the
principle of esteeming persons as individuals, based on their particular merits
and deeds, and not as parts of their native cultural or ethnic groups.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing prevents one from talking about tensions between
Islamic and Western cultures or the threat of fundamentalist terrorism without
expressing the critique in agitative terms. Reacting against an ominous
phenomenon is not, and should not be, the same thing as reacting against an
ethnic or religious group collectively associated with that phenomenon. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The media, politicians, and ordinary people always have a
chance to defend Western values and oppose the threat of violent fanaticism
without collectively judging groups as wholes. When masses of allies can be
found behind the fences we construct for ourselves, why should we be blind to
them? The yearly Arbaeen Procession of London Muslims in December 2015
abandoned its normal non-political nature and turned into a protest against
ISIS and terrorism practiced in the name of Islam. Occasions like this get limited media coverage,
maybe because they do not fit into a simple narrative about the relationship between Europe and Islam. Anyone who is concerned about human rights violations,
terrorism, or societal problems, can rest assured that the majority of European
Muslims share the same concerns. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Promoting our vital values through cooperation instead of
confrontation should be a value in itself.
At least if one is genuinely in it for those values, and not merely
categorically against certain groups of people in the name of homogeneous
culture. <o:p></o:p></div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-11434075317355612062016-07-13T19:55:00.001+02:002023-03-08T16:24:41.408+01:00The best thing about geocaching<div class="MsoNormal">
Last August, I was amazingly spontaneous for once. I
suddenly started geocaching. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFnjACZxWp45eCFeBopeZoS7eO3VRw8pRIRRIlNPWCixVGzoeGe-I4-5hFcV4KR9yO1FqkQKJ8DIfG_pKUHc2Jkven_iNnmllypxxZOBJAvOUGBpE2ez-UcZSqK6J3jEB1aIxY_3HzPsw/s1600/geo.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFnjACZxWp45eCFeBopeZoS7eO3VRw8pRIRRIlNPWCixVGzoeGe-I4-5hFcV4KR9yO1FqkQKJ8DIfG_pKUHc2Jkven_iNnmllypxxZOBJAvOUGBpE2ez-UcZSqK6J3jEB1aIxY_3HzPsw/s320/geo.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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You know – as it says on the website, it’s <a href="https://www.geocaching.com/play">the world’s largest treasure hunt</a>. There are boxes and containers all around us, big, small, and tiny, in urban and rural areas, stealthy buggers just waiting for a newbie
player to download a free app showing locations and descriptions of caches and
to go find these little treasures. It is a hobby that first saw the light of
day around the turn of the millennium, with the advent of the new advanced GPS
technology. Some pioneers of the technology wanted to test GPS accuracy by
hiding containers in the woods and seeing if others would be able to find them
based on their coordinates. That turned out to be more fun than could ever be
expected. Now, as we all have a GPS device in our pocket, millions of people
are into geocaching. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I had known about the concept, but I had never given it more
thought. Last summer, however, I was under more workload than usual, and I had
a craving for something new and exciting to refresh my head in the evenings.
Then I happened to land on the geocaching website and signed up to see if there
are caches in the area, only to find out that the nearest one was... 150 meters
from my front door, by the side of a little footpath I knew so well?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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That’s when it hit me: the exhilarating feeling that the
world around me was suddenly full of little secrets. Little hidden treasures
that you did not see until you went looking for them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m certainly not writing from the expert position of a
hardcore hobbyist. My current cache count is 74, which is not much compared to
the thousands or tens of thousands that geocaching veterans have. Still, in
those few months when I have had time for it, geocaching has given me loads of
fun and enjoyment, and I have become familiar with the good, the better, and
the best things about it. Speaking about those…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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For one thing, I went geocaching for exercise. Jogging and
cycling are good for health, but so hard to keep doing regularly without extra
motivation. Geocaching provided that motivation. Suddenly I was spending my
evenings on long cycling trips or discovering recreation grounds that I never
had known to exist. That was great.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Even better was the way geocaching makes your surroundings
come to life in a novel way. I was jogging up remote hills, going down forest
footpaths, inspecting walls, park benches, statues, and streetlights, reaching
into innocent-looking bushy pine trees to make them give away their secrets.
Uninteresting places that used to serve only as life’s wallpaper started to
become <i>my </i>places. They now had stories and memories attached to them – my story
of finding their secret, and the story of the kind soul who placed and
maintained the cache for the enjoyment of others. It was like the world started
to be populated with these little rabbit holes that most people knew nothing
about. There is some unashamedly childish joy in it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, it took me some time to start appreciating the
thing I now consider the best thing about geocaching. The best thing is that
this activity is possible for me in the first place. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After having started in the USA, geocaching has gone
worldwide. The global map of geocaches shows quite clearly, however, which
parts of the world are geocaching-friendly. Europe is pretty much covered in
caches, as are North America and Australia (well, the parts of the latter two
that are not covered in ice and sand respectively), Japan, and New Zealand.
Elsewhere caches are much more sporadic. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No wonder, of course. It makes sense that a purely
recreational activity like geocaching is strongly correlated with general
standards of living. It is something you do just for fun, and that requires
that your days have hours that are not needed for more vital things. Being able
to do things for fun is a luxury in itself. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there is a deeper point. Geocaching requires that you
can trust your environment – or maybe more to the point, that your environment
trusts you. In very many parts of the world that just is not true. I’ll explain
what I mean. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Geocaches need to be well hidden (and kept secret!) for two
reasons: to provide a challenge to the seeker, and to avoid being vandalized.
That is why they are either in relatively remote locations or extremely well
hidden in busier locations. In either case, looking for a geocache unavoidably
involves some snooping-around type of behavior that could look suspicious in
mistrustful eyes. Sometimes, when looking for a remote forest cache, the
thought has crossed my mind that someone could imagine me going to a drug stash
– or even more unfortunately, someone could have unknowingly placed a cache
near a real drug stash. It is only because those possibilities were improbable
enough that I felt comfortable hunting for the caches. Before I explicitly thought about it, I had never really appreciated the fact
that my environment poses no significant dangers of that type. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The same goes for urban caches. Sometimes I found myself
searching for a cache in an empty parking lot or by the side of a vacant
building. I was very aware that if an onlooker, guard, or even a policeman
should come and demand to know what I’m doing, I would owe them an explanation.
But for a long time, I just took for granted the obvious fact that, luckily, I
am of the right color and right appearance that I could always reasonably
count on the other to trust my explanation – and that I am in a country where
people generally ask before shooting. It could so easily be otherwise. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Right now Americans are enthusiastically embracing another
game that sends people out to explore: <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/07/entertainment/pokemon-go-australia-police/">Pokémon GO</a>. Much like geocaching, it
makes players go into the wide world searching for an element of magic and
mystery added to the everyday world – although in this case in the form of
virtual creatures rather than physical things. The sudden
explosion of success enjoyed by Pokémon GO has immediately made evident some
unwanted consequences this type of game may have. There was <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/tech/pokemon-go-crazy-events/">an incident of robbers using the game to lure victims into their trap</a>. And there is <a href="https://medium.com/mobile-lifestyle/warning-pokemon-go-is-a-death-sentence-if-you-are-a-black-man-acacb4bdae7f#.9bqm3ptpy">this story</a>
of a black American man starting the game in high spirits, then quitting with
the sad realization that playing could very realistically get him killed. It is
something that an unfortunate geocacher could realize as well. In many places,
wandering around a random location seemingly searching for something can be
more than just potentially goofy. If your appearance is wrong, it can be
lethally dangerous. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Geocachers sometimes run into bad experiences, but those
rarely seem to be more dangerous than angry landowners claiming (rightly or
otherwise) that a cache has been placed on their private property. (Geocaching is governed by a strict ethical code.) Still, when
thinking about going to an urban cache, I tend to consider quite carefully if
the cache is placed so that someone could misunderstand my intentions. Even if
the answer is no, another thought nowadays sometimes crosses my mind: If I was
a black man, could I do this?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moreover, it is very easy to forget that it is a blessing to
live in a society where an activity like geocaching is allowed to exist in the
first place. After all, it is a kind of playful secret society. The players have confidential information about hidden objects that contain
notes; the logbooks of geocaches generally contain only dates and names of
their finders, but in principle, they could be used to exchange any kind of
messages. In a more authoritarian society there would surely be a need to keep
a much more serious aura of secrecy around the geocaching hobby, just because
of the endless suspicions it might raise, no matter how innocent the
motivations of the players. After a totalitarian revolution, geocaching would
be among the first things to be banned. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There you have it: my opinion on the best thing about this
splendid hobby. <b>Geocaching is an expression of freedom</b>. Being able to do it
safely is an indication that you are allowed to make the world your playground.
The world around you exists for you and other fellow citizens, not the other
way around. You are allowed to go out there and spontaneously do things – <i>to go
out and play</i> – protected by the prima facie assumption that you are not doing anything
bad. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m glad I started geocaching because I came to appreciate
my privileges in a new way. The kind of basic trust the game requires is not a
part of the permanent structure of the world, something that could be taken
for granted. It is something that orderly societies have achieved through many
struggles and something that can very easily be lost. And that basic trust is
something that some people around me may not be enjoying, even though their lack is
invisible to me.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have never appreciated that basic trust more than
nowadays.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>(Credits for Pokémon GO-related posts in G+ to Janos Honkonen and Kaj Sotala.)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
[<b>EDIT 18.7.2016</b>: Some <a href="http://yle.fi/uutiset/mobiilipeli_pokemon_go_nostattaa_tunteita_venajalla_perkele_yrittaa_hajottaa_meidat_sisaltapain/9033861">Russian authorities</a> have realized that Pokémon GO is a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/16/russia-weighs-pokemon-go-regulations-ahead-officia/">threat to society</a>.]</div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-20582041278081027922016-07-05T20:30:00.002+02:002023-03-08T16:29:03.217+01:00What are you bad at?<div class="MsoNormal">
I have never had to recruit anyone or interview a candidate for
a position, and I wonder what it is like. I assume that a recruiter always wants
to find out the things the candidate is capable of doing. It would seem natural to
do this by asking: What are you good at?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think I would take a different approach. I would ask: What
are you bad at?<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp5gZNhKAkGScYZjshFuYUvgAVNA3yuTOkS8XUny7desSrklVl3ER5VKxx416nFtgBwmr0KsDYyEapgZ1JaWRwDToqV440XNw5wx8vZKZ0CrqkrPZJV1JdlOYVBQP_NhbeiOC-IHLiLmA/s1600/Failure_success.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp5gZNhKAkGScYZjshFuYUvgAVNA3yuTOkS8XUny7desSrklVl3ER5VKxx416nFtgBwmr0KsDYyEapgZ1JaWRwDToqV440XNw5wx8vZKZ0CrqkrPZJV1JdlOYVBQP_NhbeiOC-IHLiLmA/s320/Failure_success.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It takes some guts to stick your neck out and declare that
you are good at something. Take languages. I, for one, would be reluctant to
declare that I am good at <i>any </i>language, my native tongue Finnish included.
Outside of any particular context, one compares one’s native language competence to the masters of that language. When I think of someone who is good at
Finnish, I think of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eino_Leino">Eino Leino</a>. I am not like that, so am I good at Finnish? Or
am I good at English, when I do not have nearly native-like fluency in it, like some people
I know? On the other hand, if I had to list languages I am <i>bad </i>at, the result would
basically be the list of language skills in my CV, minus Finnish, and possibly
English. It would not occur to me to say that I’m bad at Japanese (because I do
not know any Japanese), but, I tell you, I’m really bad at Swedish and a
bunch of other languages. An interviewer would get more out of me by asking
what I am bad at. Moreover, if
I were a recruiter, I think I would see more favorably a
person who comes up with loads of things she is bad at, compared to one who
only can list her strengths.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reason is a platitude: Becoming good at anything goes
through a necessary period of being bad. More specifically, it takes a period
of being <i>abysmally bad</i> to even become “just bad” in anything. A person
who is bad at many things is just a person who does many things – probably a person who has a passion for doing more things than the hours of a day allow. Saying of oneself that one is bad at
X tells that the person implicitly counts X as belonging to her skill set (for
me, like Swedish and unlike Japanese), and, moreover, understands X well enough
to be able to say that she is not good at it yet. What a sad life it would be
if we were forced to always only cultivate our strongest skills, never having
time to become bad at anything! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Learning a new thing involves more than being awful at it. It also involves the gradually dawning, embarrassing, gut-wrenching understanding of
how awful one actually is. Understanding the nuances of a skill develops faster
than the skill itself. It is no wonder that something like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect">Dunning-Kruger effect</a> exists: the unskilled systematically overestimate their competence,
because they have not (yet) reached an understanding of what competence
demands. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This way lies a general problem of motivation in learning. In
your quest of reaching the blissful gardens of competence, what keeps you wading
through the seemingly endless wastelands of ineptitude, where your fate is to first become awful
and then increasingly aware of your awfulness?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is one answer. Very often, what you count as awful
turns out to be, objectively speaking, incredibly useful. It is time to go back
to the example of languages because nowhere is this truer than in the case of
languages. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a long time, languages were taught in schools in terms
of grammatical rules and strict translation assignments. The message was: This
is what you have to do to speak and write <i>right</i>. It seems that many people
claim to “not know” a language they spent years learning at school, just
because they cannot produce it perfectly. How could it be otherwise, if
perfection is the only point of comparison one ever gets? But generally, the
world outside is not interested in whether you go by the rules. It is
interested in whether it can communicate with you. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What does it take to be able to communicate in a language?
Or rather, let’s be ambitious. What does it take to be able to communicate in a
language perfectly? The answer seems to be: <i>A thousand words and a bit of grammar. </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The thousand most commonly used words of a language get the
job done. A thousand words are not much. Sure, they cannot be learned in a week,
but once they have been learned, they are a powerhouse. Even the hundred most
common words of a language have an enormous scope. According to <a href="http://yle.fi/uutiset/aiotko_opetella_uuden_kielen_tana_kesana__polyglotti_janne_saarikivi_jakaa_parhaat_vinkkinsa_kielten_opetteluun/9001302">polyglot Janne Saarikivi</a>, the hundred most common words comprise 25 percent of spoken
language. And with a thousand words – well, it is not possible to translate all
that one wishes, but there are enough resources in the thousand words to devise
alternative ways of saying anything one may wish to say. If you do not believe,
check out the principle in action: <a href="http://xkcd.com/">xkcd</a> cartoonist Randall Munroe’s book <a href="https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/#thebook">Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words</a>. Spacecraft launch escape system? “<a href="http://xkcd.com/1133/">Thing to help people to escape really fast if there’s a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space</a>”. Exactly. I wish we could force
politicians and academicians to stick to the thousand most common words for a
week. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Man, I feel motivated to learn more Swedish. I’m already bad
at it.<o:p></o:p></div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-28779265719397029982016-06-28T21:19:00.002+02:002023-03-08T16:35:54.537+01:00Iceland, you make us look even worse<div class="MsoNormal">
I have to admit: It gave me some serious goosebumps. Iceland just
beat England 2-1 in the Euro 2016 playoff. The effect on this side of the
screen was a mixture of admiration for the Icelanders and a sense of sympathy
for the English. It must sting to first have your Brexit-pumped masculine
national pride rise through the roof, and then get your ass kicked by Iceland
in a game you invented. I assume that now they know approximately how this guy
felt. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwjLsUTWEoixIwBt47GFa05rfLcgYOir-B7R__87QpnDXmnn5vFqpC0ML06XoaPXI0i_oePDO5LCkd2U8gwIX7_8GaXfGxwHztzUipyxypKoWQ_t_penXj3BqwOtNsOkqINbfNHddMsY/s1600/football-push.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwjLsUTWEoixIwBt47GFa05rfLcgYOir-B7R__87QpnDXmnn5vFqpC0ML06XoaPXI0i_oePDO5LCkd2U8gwIX7_8GaXfGxwHztzUipyxypKoWQ_t_penXj3BqwOtNsOkqINbfNHddMsY/s320/football-push.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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There was another aspect in the experience of watching that
ass-kicking spectacle, though. That aspect was due to a very specific fact: I
am a Finnish guy who likes international football. <o:p></o:p></div>
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To make a long story short, Finland has never qualified for a
major international tournament. And it is fair to say that there have been,
well, numerous efforts. The sport is not without traditions in Finland. The
1912 Olympics tournament saw the Finnish team, back then officially appearing
under the flag of Russia, finishing fourth. That still stands as the country’s best
international achievement. Let’s face it – if your main bragging rights is a fourth place from a tournament that has long since lost any real significance,
dates back to a time when you were technically not a country, and to an era
when about five countries in the world knew the concept of sports, things could
be better. But as a Finnish football fan, you quickly learn to take what you
can get. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Football in Finland in later days has had its peaks, however.
We have had Jari Litmanen achieving greatness in Ajax in the 90s. We have had
Sami Hyypiä captaining Liverpool FC. A couple of decades ago, there was even
something you could call a “golden generation”. There were a bunch of
high-class European top professionals. But even they never qualified for any
international tournaments. They were good, though – occasionally they had to <a href="https://youtu.be/aT-q65Qjy1M?t=76">score an own goal by their own goalkeeper’s arse in the second minute of added time</a> to escape such an anomaly. That’s how good they were. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In later years, it has been a bit worse. Nowadays that
arse-goal counts as “the good old times”. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But here’s the thing: It was all supposed to change for the
Euro 2016. Now 24 teams would qualify. That would give at least a sporting
chance to weaklings like Finland. And to top it all, for once we had luck in
the draw – or so we thought. Finland was drawn into a group with Northern
Ireland, Romania, and Hungary, which was unanimously, and excitedly, assessed
as relatively easy. Much like going up Mont Blanc in a wheelchair is relatively
easy if you first tried the Himalayas. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The result? A point from Romania, a point from Northern
Ireland, matches that absolutely nobody wants to remember, a sacked coach, and
a comforting feeling that at least some things in the chaotic world are still
permanent. Meanwhile, Iceland swept the floor with the Netherlands and
qualified. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That’s why Iceland’s heroics in the Euro 2016 come with an
extra twist. It is like the final and ultimate insult added to the gaping, incurable
injury that is known as supporting the Finnish national football team. I mean,
earlier we at least had a handful of excuses. You know, the usual – the long
winter, lack of resources, poor facilities, small talent pool. You cannot
expect a small nation trapped in the Nordic conditions to really compete in the
world’s biggest sport, not even momentarily, you said (and tried very hard to
ignore that Sweden exists). And then you watch Iceland beat England and march
into the quarterfinals. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, Iceland, the nation about the size of the city of
Tampere, physically existing as an ash-farting little island in the middle of the north Atlantic. It is not quite the center of the footballing world – or the
center of anything else. Hell, if a country’s history involves a major
emigration event <i>from there</i> to <i>Greenland</i>, it is not exactly Rome. But
man, those Icelanders are a tough tribe. It is safe to say that after England
was decimated by a country that literally has to send in every fourth of its
professional footballers to even field a team, the Finns are finally out of
excuses. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That is when a Finnish football fan finds a way to combine
crazy creativity with self-pity. The idea is this: Could we just fold the
national football team? Decide that we do not want to do this anymore? Is that
a thing you can do? Has anyone tried?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I mean, the voice of reason has to step in at some point. We
could just count our losses and admit that we never quite got the hang of this
football thing. We could keep amateur football, but leave the international
play to others, and use our limited resources for something that has even a
minuscule chance of success and does not produce national traumas on a yearly
basis, right? <o:p></o:p></div>
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The more you think about it, the better the idea gets. We
could make pacts with football academies and national football associations abroad. In
the rare cases when a kid with football talent grows up in Finland, we could
dispatch them to a partner country, to learn the language and integrate there,
so that they could quickly acquire new citizenship. We could still enjoy
seeing Finns in international games, only in other countries' squads. It is
sure that many more of the kids would reach that level after not having to
spend their youth in the footballing equivalent of Mordor. If we
negotiate the agreements right, we could reap great rewards. I mean, Norway has
not been that strong in international competition lately, right? Let’s strike a deal
with them: You get all our football talents, and you send us some of your
cross-country skiers (preferably some of the less asthmatic variety). We would
even gladly take just that one guy who is the fifth-fastest sprint skier in the
world, but never sees international competition because a single country is
only allowed to send four athletes. Everyone would be happy! <o:p></o:p></div>
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But then again, maybe it is not good to mess with the basic
building blocks of national identity. A Finn feels at home in a cozy mixture of
humility, self-belittling, and general pessimism. We like to be regularly
reminded that life is ultimately a hopeless march toward new disappointments.
After we somehow got disturbingly good in hockey, sports do not serve that purpose
quite like they used to. At least we can trust the good old football squad to
always carry that flag. Who am I kidding? In the next campaign we will be
cheering for them again, knowing that even if they do not qualify, they will
always continue to provide unforgettable experiences for new generations. There
will come a year when they’ll wait until the third minute of added time before
the inevitable arse-goal.</div>
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But lastly, and finally seriously: Iceland, you are awesome.
I hope to visit someday.<o:p></o:p></div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6349876113941963756.post-77969681832097248022016-06-28T21:02:00.001+02:002023-03-08T16:38:45.460+01:00Birth of a blog<div class="MsoNormal">
I think I need a blog of some sort. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And behold, I think I just created one. That happened
quickly. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s not because of a burning ambition to get read. The main reason for creating this is simple: It seems that occasionally I write texts that have no other natural home than an outlet of this sort, and maybe it is worthwhile to save at least some of them from being buried and forgotten. They are texts that do not go directly to academic writing (which is something I do) but are lengthy and/or otherwise unsuitable to be social media posts (which is not something I do much anyway). That last remark actually is one more reason for creating a blog. I am not active on social media, and I am also in general terrible at keeping in contact with people. A blog at least provides a way for anyone who is interested to ascertain that I continue to exist. </div>
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About the blog’s name: Although I’ll be
writing here in English, the name is in Finnish, mostly because it seems that every
single meaningful combination of English words already serves as the name for someone’s blog. It translates to ”Lucien’s Library”. It alludes to Neil Gaiman’s
<i>Sandman</i>, where Lucien’s Library was a place containing all the books that were
never written, but merely dreamed of by their potential authors. That’s where
all my books are. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Well, except for my PhD thesis, but I don’t think that
qualifies as a real book. Anyway, it exists, dates back to last year, and is called ”The Problem of Other Minds: Themes from Wittgenstein”. Mentioning it merely serves to inform that I do academic philosophy, which may explain the direction of some future content here. Not all of it, however, and maybe not even the most.<br />
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I guess that when starting a blog, one also assumes self-inflicted pressure to write fairly regularly. So, it is probably wise to begin with something infantile enough to set the bar comfortably low. So here goes with the next post, not with much seriousness... </div>
Terohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12977358230115020654noreply@blogger.com0