Just about every person who has read anything related to business in the past five or so years will not have been able to miss Clayton Christensen, the guy behind the concept of disruptions and disruptive technologies. His idea is that good companies fail because they are too good at serving their best customers and are not able to give proper value to underlying disruptions, which eventually dethrone said company.
He may have an idea, possibly because he's from Harvard but also possibly because it seems true in quite many cases. Now, I'll extend the trail of thought on why big companies fail. Or not necessarily why they fail but why they become uninteresting. It's related to physical attributes, namely the fact that by definition, big companies are BIG. That is, big as in fat. And fatness is not a good thing, since it makes moving difficult and all so slow and you break a sweat just by thinking of any type of action. Fat also attracts parasites. Parasites are especially annoying in big companies because they dig in and fortify themselves. They have their own nice sandbox via which they can suck wealth from the company and justify their existence.
Big companies also require tons of administrative positions. Management. The issue here is that when professional managers step in, they lose all touch with reality. Who the hell even knows what the customer wants. In some cases, entities from within the company start living a life of their own, doing things for the sake of doing things. Not because it increases customer value or because it increases shareholder value. But perhaps because when idle people are idle long enough, they get an urge to actually do something. And if they can't do anything intelligent, then they do the next best thing: type up Powerpoint slides and manage technologies. People start attending more and more meetings and becoming more busy and all the while, reality turns upside down and becomes distorted. This doesn't matter in a big company because the cash cows from yesteryear are still bringing in the cash and papers can be shuffled around at ever increasing speeds.
A total farce are the meetings which are attended by fortysomething people who are all management and who start making decisions. At some point they figure out that making technical decisions might require some understanding, and that it might just be better to make a rule saying that the meeting will not discuss any sorts of technical details. Only high-level stuff. Not that it would matter, since technology is now created in a vacuum, again not for the sake of the user or the customer but for the sake of doing things.
So, the big company starts living a life of its own. It does the same thing that it has always done, but it will not renew itself without massive layoffs and a strict diet and exercise routine. But it doesn't matter, because money keeps coming in and people can feel secure by pushing papers around. It may be that the company won't be able to understand or identify the disruptions. But it may also be that even though upper management says that it is committed to change, nobody really gives a damn. Hell, you might actually have to do something tangible if the status quo rocks.
But fear not, big companies are useful because while they once were cutting edge companies and on the edge of cool, they are now still able to provide commodity platforms. Somebody has to provide the base on which small companies can create the new cool. And the new cool is where there is no fat, because fat is not tolerated and extreme pragmatism is king. You solve a concrete problem with a tangible solution and demonstrate end-user value or you die. No safety nets, no Powerpoints, only solutions, services, and products. Responses are sharp and the small company can rapidly realign itself and reinvent itself without too much drama. And it is this reason why mid-management in established companies is afraid of the lean and mean approach. To cite Gordon Gekko, the norm in large corporations seems not to be survival of the fittest, but instead survival of the unfittest. Since the fit ones have already left to exploit the potential provided by the fat companies.
It is very simple: when the fat guy gets stuck in the door, you merely remove his wallet and go in through the window, leaving him to ponder about the greater things in life. But at least he won't die since he has plenty of nutrition around his stomach region...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Regarding last miles
As I mentioned before, I ran the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon, earlier this year. It was an experience that taught very many things, and is still teaching on some parallels. One of the biggest mistakes I made was when I started off too quickly. If you're not in a decent enough shape, starting off too quickly will be the end of you, as it was for my run. The last miles were pure torture.
Similar things hold true for other parallels, e.g. work. Right now I'm sort of running up against a wall with a work project. As was the case for the half-marathon, I have a more or less good idea about what the route looks like and how to get to the finish. But I'm running out of energy and it feels that the road has turned into a swamp. In this case I think the biggest issues were that initially I didn't have that good an idea about what I was getting involved in. In hindsight the picture is always a lot more clear, but this has been a decently steep learning process in which I set off too quickly without thoroughly understanding the landscape and the routes.
This is also applicable to relationships. Running too fast in light of your physical condition and abilities will only cause cramps and a severe drop in energy levels as well as a possibility for not finishing at all, or at least in an unsatisfactory manner.
Similar things hold true for other parallels, e.g. work. Right now I'm sort of running up against a wall with a work project. As was the case for the half-marathon, I have a more or less good idea about what the route looks like and how to get to the finish. But I'm running out of energy and it feels that the road has turned into a swamp. In this case I think the biggest issues were that initially I didn't have that good an idea about what I was getting involved in. In hindsight the picture is always a lot more clear, but this has been a decently steep learning process in which I set off too quickly without thoroughly understanding the landscape and the routes.
This is also applicable to relationships. Running too fast in light of your physical condition and abilities will only cause cramps and a severe drop in energy levels as well as a possibility for not finishing at all, or at least in an unsatisfactory manner.
It's funny...
It's funny, people can firmly stand by some principle and be a cheerleader for an idea, yet at the same time it is not even that difficult to do precisely the opposite. And it's even more funny how anyone and everyone is capable of that. You. Me. Everyone. Very deceptive, very annoying, very despicable.
I'm having a bad week, a bad month, and a seriously bad year. But not so much bad that not something good, too. At least the skin is getting thicker and I'm getting more cynical.
(Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, if you were thinking about driving around town drunk this weekend while also high on crack and stark naked while masturbating with a prostitute you picked up and ending up crashing into a parked car... Sorry, you're apparently too late, according to this article.)
I'm having a bad week, a bad month, and a seriously bad year. But not so much bad that not something good, too. At least the skin is getting thicker and I'm getting more cynical.
(Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, if you were thinking about driving around town drunk this weekend while also high on crack and stark naked while masturbating with a prostitute you picked up and ending up crashing into a parked car... Sorry, you're apparently too late, according to this article.)
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Religion
Religion is a widespread mental illness, of which the defining feature is delusional belief in a powerful invisible being who is always watching you and will punish you if you don't follow their will (the paranoid delusions found in schizophrenia are often similar).
Part of the definition of religion, according to the Uncyclopedia.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Will to act
While listing shortcomings in key areas, another that easily comes to mind is the will to act. A strong will is often considered a good trait in people, with the exception of some special cases (the army comes to mind; strong-willed individuals may not be as easy to sculpt and fit into the standardized mold that a person has to fit if he is to succeed in armed service--this all is also applicable to areas where strict conformance to a certain model is required and where individualism is not rewarded). But where will is general, the will to act is more specific. It is one thing to know what to do and roughly how to do it, but it is a separate thing to motivate oneself to move. The reasons for not moving might be many.
Martial arts have different dimensions and to be a good combatant, the person should excel in as many of these dimensions as possible. Off the back of my head, these dimensions might include technique, strength/agility/physical attributes, and of course the will to act. Technique is crucial when facing situations where raw strength might be overwhelmed. How does one fight multiple attackers if one has not mastered the technique and learned the skills required for surviving such a situation. Mastering the technique, however, is sort of pointless if one is lacking the required physical strength and other similar attributes and cannot execute the technique. But thirdly, all of this is pointless if the person freezes and for one reason or another won't execute any sort of action at the crucial moment.
This all is, of course, at a high enough abstraction level that it is applicable to many different areas. In war, one must know how to wield a weapon efficiently and precisely, be able to execute the technique, but all is lost if at the crucial moment the soldier is not capable of pulling the trigger. In a business environment many projects fail due to hesitation. In night clubs, many men leave alone as they have failed to act (or if they have acted, they have failed in other areas, in this case they typically leave with the help of the bouncer at the end of the night).
Interestingly enough, people are unhappy quite often, but are not willing to do anything about it. I can identify this in myself. It is as if I'm at the slope of a mountain. I know in which direction the peak is, but I have stopped moving. I am unwilling to take risks to get to the peak in fear of falling or getting lost or overall shaking the status quo. Many students are unwilling to graduate for the fear of having to change their life, go outside their current comfort zones and move onward. Many people stay in violent relationships for the fear of provoking even more violence or for the fear of being alone. Others fail projects because they fear failure. The common attribute here is fear. Of course there are other things also inhibiting people from the will to act, but fear is one of the more prominent ones.
In the early 1990s I was living in California and a prominent brand, at least in some circles, was No Fear. No Fear has since been attached to extreme sports, but the idea of advocating a No Fear approach to everything was a good one. The company was based in Carslbad, very nearby, which might explain the reason why I still own two or three No Fear baseball caps. If previously fear was on an individual level, I would say that the collective fear of different things, as embodied in the United States of America these days, is even worse. When an individual fears, it is terrible, but when a whole nation is gripped by fear, history changes directions. Americans might wish to take a look towards Carlsbad and find their No Fear attitude yet again, step up, and demand their freedom back from the oppressors, who ironically can be found very close to home, this time round. From Washington.
Martial arts have different dimensions and to be a good combatant, the person should excel in as many of these dimensions as possible. Off the back of my head, these dimensions might include technique, strength/agility/physical attributes, and of course the will to act. Technique is crucial when facing situations where raw strength might be overwhelmed. How does one fight multiple attackers if one has not mastered the technique and learned the skills required for surviving such a situation. Mastering the technique, however, is sort of pointless if one is lacking the required physical strength and other similar attributes and cannot execute the technique. But thirdly, all of this is pointless if the person freezes and for one reason or another won't execute any sort of action at the crucial moment.
This all is, of course, at a high enough abstraction level that it is applicable to many different areas. In war, one must know how to wield a weapon efficiently and precisely, be able to execute the technique, but all is lost if at the crucial moment the soldier is not capable of pulling the trigger. In a business environment many projects fail due to hesitation. In night clubs, many men leave alone as they have failed to act (or if they have acted, they have failed in other areas, in this case they typically leave with the help of the bouncer at the end of the night).
Interestingly enough, people are unhappy quite often, but are not willing to do anything about it. I can identify this in myself. It is as if I'm at the slope of a mountain. I know in which direction the peak is, but I have stopped moving. I am unwilling to take risks to get to the peak in fear of falling or getting lost or overall shaking the status quo. Many students are unwilling to graduate for the fear of having to change their life, go outside their current comfort zones and move onward. Many people stay in violent relationships for the fear of provoking even more violence or for the fear of being alone. Others fail projects because they fear failure. The common attribute here is fear. Of course there are other things also inhibiting people from the will to act, but fear is one of the more prominent ones.
In the early 1990s I was living in California and a prominent brand, at least in some circles, was No Fear. No Fear has since been attached to extreme sports, but the idea of advocating a No Fear approach to everything was a good one. The company was based in Carslbad, very nearby, which might explain the reason why I still own two or three No Fear baseball caps. If previously fear was on an individual level, I would say that the collective fear of different things, as embodied in the United States of America these days, is even worse. When an individual fears, it is terrible, but when a whole nation is gripped by fear, history changes directions. Americans might wish to take a look towards Carlsbad and find their No Fear attitude yet again, step up, and demand their freedom back from the oppressors, who ironically can be found very close to home, this time round. From Washington.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The difficulty of casual
Dressing well for formal occasions or business is in fact surprisingly trivial, unlike most people would have you believe. It isn't difficult to pick out a suit or a tie or decide which knot to use. In fact, everything related with dressing well while being in a city is more or less simple: using common sense and the rules set forth by the more knowledgable dandies of the past will allow anyone to look stylish.
The difficulties start emerging when one does not go to the office. Or to the theater or the opera. What does one wear on the weekends, when sporting a spiffy pinstriped suit is not really an option? That, I guess, is one of the key questions which separate well dressed men from the rest. And as of now, I have no clue as to what a well dressed man should wear outside the office. Depends on the weather, depends on the activity. The choices are endless and closet space is finite. So in short, according to this definition and distinction, I am not really in any way a knowledgeable dresser.
The difficulties start emerging when one does not go to the office. Or to the theater or the opera. What does one wear on the weekends, when sporting a spiffy pinstriped suit is not really an option? That, I guess, is one of the key questions which separate well dressed men from the rest. And as of now, I have no clue as to what a well dressed man should wear outside the office. Depends on the weather, depends on the activity. The choices are endless and closet space is finite. So in short, according to this definition and distinction, I am not really in any way a knowledgeable dresser.
Friday, August 08, 2008
On Deltas
Delta commonly refers to the Delta Air Lines, the second largest airline in the world in terms of passengers. I personally haven't had the pleasure of enjoying their services, but if other airlines are to be considered when plotting a trend, I don't really feel that bad. Hopefully no more flying for a while. Except for a possible trip to Oktoberfest as Luftwaffe seems to be offering dirt cheap tickets to Munich in September.
Beside those horrid jet-propelled sardine cans, delta should also bring back to mind the math and physics classes from school (you know, that place you go to get certified...). Delta signifies change or difference in a value and quite often absolute change. I never really did get around to switching my mindset to completely embrace relative change. Absolute change was always a lot more concrete: you invested 1k at 10e per share and the share price is now 11e, meaning that the delta is 1e in share price or 100e in your total investment's value. Of course +10% would've also worked, but then it gets tricky when you're mentally tracking values and one day it goes +5%, then -0.47% and then +1.53%. A lot easier to just remember that it was at 11e and now it's at about 11.67e.
The problematic thing with looking at absolute change is that, because it's absolute, it sort of makes you lose perspective. An increase of 1e from 10e is only a 10% increase whereas it's a 100% increase from 1e to 2e. Meaning? Instead of the 1.1k, you would now have 2k. But because of this absolute mindset, a conscious effort needs to be made to grasp this as it's not embedded directly into the way the world is perceived. At least not for me.
As is so often the case, the "real" world applications and implications are also sort of interesting. When things are going well, you demand relatively high successes. But after a crash, you're still in the same mindset and demanding similar absolute increases in your well being, without realizing that in a relative sense the demands are entirely ludicrous. Gyms, for instance, are nice places if your intent is to obtain the physique of Christian Bale (who we're incidentally going to see in the new Batman movie later today, and who makes an absolutely brilliant Patrick Bateman). The problem is that while you're pumping iron, you slowly gain strength and mass. Well, that's not really the problem. The problem arises when you go on a break, maybe because of a surgical operation which requires you to take a couple of months off from physical exercise. Now go back to the gym and demand similar absolute values and perform the routines from a couple of months back. The result? You guessed it: moving your arms or squatting down will, well, cause pain.
But to summarize, one thing that I should take away from this is that I need to learn to look at things from a relative perspective. Small absolute increases my be large relative increases and always going for the absolute highest payoff may not be realistic or even feasible. But I guess age will also correct this flaw...
Beside those horrid jet-propelled sardine cans, delta should also bring back to mind the math and physics classes from school (you know, that place you go to get certified...). Delta signifies change or difference in a value and quite often absolute change. I never really did get around to switching my mindset to completely embrace relative change. Absolute change was always a lot more concrete: you invested 1k at 10e per share and the share price is now 11e, meaning that the delta is 1e in share price or 100e in your total investment's value. Of course +10% would've also worked, but then it gets tricky when you're mentally tracking values and one day it goes +5%, then -0.47% and then +1.53%. A lot easier to just remember that it was at 11e and now it's at about 11.67e.
The problematic thing with looking at absolute change is that, because it's absolute, it sort of makes you lose perspective. An increase of 1e from 10e is only a 10% increase whereas it's a 100% increase from 1e to 2e. Meaning? Instead of the 1.1k, you would now have 2k. But because of this absolute mindset, a conscious effort needs to be made to grasp this as it's not embedded directly into the way the world is perceived. At least not for me.
As is so often the case, the "real" world applications and implications are also sort of interesting. When things are going well, you demand relatively high successes. But after a crash, you're still in the same mindset and demanding similar absolute increases in your well being, without realizing that in a relative sense the demands are entirely ludicrous. Gyms, for instance, are nice places if your intent is to obtain the physique of Christian Bale (who we're incidentally going to see in the new Batman movie later today, and who makes an absolutely brilliant Patrick Bateman). The problem is that while you're pumping iron, you slowly gain strength and mass. Well, that's not really the problem. The problem arises when you go on a break, maybe because of a surgical operation which requires you to take a couple of months off from physical exercise. Now go back to the gym and demand similar absolute values and perform the routines from a couple of months back. The result? You guessed it: moving your arms or squatting down will, well, cause pain.
But to summarize, one thing that I should take away from this is that I need to learn to look at things from a relative perspective. Small absolute increases my be large relative increases and always going for the absolute highest payoff may not be realistic or even feasible. But I guess age will also correct this flaw...
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Schools and certifications
Schools are starting again in Finland shortly and many school-goers are having a difficult time to motivate themselves to do their best. Not so with my cousin, who is very eager to get to first grade, but alas, I fear that even she will wake up one morning and decide that school is annoying. Of course the parents are always going on about how important it is to go to school and do your best, and as is typical, they are right. The motivation, however, may sometimes be borderline despotic: "You'll go to school because the law says so, as do I."
This morning I actually got around to wondering what it is that you actually get from schools. Of course when you look at grades 1-6, you're taught to read, write, do basic mathematical operations. Then of course the long process of conditioning the child to adhere to authorities and to just follow instructions is started. But the further along the road you go, the less important things become. Now, don't get me wrong, learning the history of the egyptians is important, as is learning that F=ma and that you can derive many interesting other formulas from it. But if I reflect what I'm doing in school, most of the lectures are about topics that can't really be applied to real world things, at least not without experience. It's nice to listen to smart people drone on and on about competitive advantage or corporate strategy, but then what? You won't really learn anything as such, nor does the exam grade really tell anything either. The topics are such that you need to go the extra mile yourself and think about them. And even then they'll require years of experience before you can really say that you're starting to understand them.
So, if in primary school you are taught discipline and given a basic set of tools with which you can search for information and process information with, what's the rest about? In some way I can't help but think that it's all a very long and tedious certification process. Sort of like when company XYZ decides that it wants start shipping products that utilize technology ABC as part of a network. XYZ needs to obtain a certificate for their implementation to show others that they know how to talk ABC. Of course XYZ may also skip the certification and just implement the specification and it will still work, even without the certification.
What is the point of a certification, then? As is the case with technology certifications, the lack of school certifications does not necessarily mean that a person is somehow lesser. And from the other side, possessing a certificate that certifies that XYZ's product complies with the ABC spec does not necessarily mean anything, as the certification process may also be flawed. But if the product displays the logo of the certifying organization, it certainly goes a long way to suggest that it should work. It decreases the risk involved. Same goes for schools. Schools ram students through a pipeline, more or less. Some are especially efficient and have a good reputation. Their graduates go on to brilliant places, further enhancing the value of the certifier in the eyes of the clients, in this case the employers who are highering the graduates.
The employer is naturally trying to minimize the risk associated with new recruits, and certificates are one easy way to screen people. If you hold an engineering degree from MIT and it is commonly known that degrees awarded by MIT require quite a bit of work, then the expected value increases as the associated risk for negative outcome decreases and the risk for positive outcome increases. Of course, a person may not be MIT-certified, meaning that the risk increases. But it may be that the person is very brilliant too. But the issue is still that even though every company says that they are highering the top 5%, that can't be true, since then the other 95% of the workforce would be unemployed. So regardless of the fact that rockstar employees are very nice, in the long run you'll end up also employing people who are average, or even below average. And situations like these increase when the company grows. And all of a sudden the fact that you are able to decrease risk, decrease the volatility of candidates, becomes very attractive.
So from one perspective schools can be seen as certificate awarding institutes. Their interest, typically, is to keep up churning out very competitive people. This serves both of their customer groups: the students and the companies employing the graduates. If the graduates are of high quality, the companies will compete more for the graduates. This in turn signals the students that the school has a good reputation and that the graduates from the school are often recruited into good positions. Interestingly enough, though, some schools have to be worse for the other schools to be better. Only 50% of schools can be above average schools, after all.
In light of this, it seems, a rationale player should optimize her studies to be able to obtain certificates with high enough marks to gain access to better schools and earn more certificates. This is at least the route of a risk-averse player. A risk neutral or risk-seeking player, however, may be more satisfied with skipping the certificates and aiming to provide good expected value by looking for unlimited upsides, however unlikely they are. In fact, this trail of thought would lead us to a discussion about how engineers and other boring people are often clustered very closely into the average of a Gaussian distribution whereas artists and other more free-spirited people tend to not follow a Gaussian distribution and instead have more people cluttered at both ends of the scale (i.e. some become very successful and others never break even near to success--think about actors).
This morning I actually got around to wondering what it is that you actually get from schools. Of course when you look at grades 1-6, you're taught to read, write, do basic mathematical operations. Then of course the long process of conditioning the child to adhere to authorities and to just follow instructions is started. But the further along the road you go, the less important things become. Now, don't get me wrong, learning the history of the egyptians is important, as is learning that F=ma and that you can derive many interesting other formulas from it. But if I reflect what I'm doing in school, most of the lectures are about topics that can't really be applied to real world things, at least not without experience. It's nice to listen to smart people drone on and on about competitive advantage or corporate strategy, but then what? You won't really learn anything as such, nor does the exam grade really tell anything either. The topics are such that you need to go the extra mile yourself and think about them. And even then they'll require years of experience before you can really say that you're starting to understand them.
So, if in primary school you are taught discipline and given a basic set of tools with which you can search for information and process information with, what's the rest about? In some way I can't help but think that it's all a very long and tedious certification process. Sort of like when company XYZ decides that it wants start shipping products that utilize technology ABC as part of a network. XYZ needs to obtain a certificate for their implementation to show others that they know how to talk ABC. Of course XYZ may also skip the certification and just implement the specification and it will still work, even without the certification.
What is the point of a certification, then? As is the case with technology certifications, the lack of school certifications does not necessarily mean that a person is somehow lesser. And from the other side, possessing a certificate that certifies that XYZ's product complies with the ABC spec does not necessarily mean anything, as the certification process may also be flawed. But if the product displays the logo of the certifying organization, it certainly goes a long way to suggest that it should work. It decreases the risk involved. Same goes for schools. Schools ram students through a pipeline, more or less. Some are especially efficient and have a good reputation. Their graduates go on to brilliant places, further enhancing the value of the certifier in the eyes of the clients, in this case the employers who are highering the graduates.
The employer is naturally trying to minimize the risk associated with new recruits, and certificates are one easy way to screen people. If you hold an engineering degree from MIT and it is commonly known that degrees awarded by MIT require quite a bit of work, then the expected value increases as the associated risk for negative outcome decreases and the risk for positive outcome increases. Of course, a person may not be MIT-certified, meaning that the risk increases. But it may be that the person is very brilliant too. But the issue is still that even though every company says that they are highering the top 5%, that can't be true, since then the other 95% of the workforce would be unemployed. So regardless of the fact that rockstar employees are very nice, in the long run you'll end up also employing people who are average, or even below average. And situations like these increase when the company grows. And all of a sudden the fact that you are able to decrease risk, decrease the volatility of candidates, becomes very attractive.
So from one perspective schools can be seen as certificate awarding institutes. Their interest, typically, is to keep up churning out very competitive people. This serves both of their customer groups: the students and the companies employing the graduates. If the graduates are of high quality, the companies will compete more for the graduates. This in turn signals the students that the school has a good reputation and that the graduates from the school are often recruited into good positions. Interestingly enough, though, some schools have to be worse for the other schools to be better. Only 50% of schools can be above average schools, after all.
In light of this, it seems, a rationale player should optimize her studies to be able to obtain certificates with high enough marks to gain access to better schools and earn more certificates. This is at least the route of a risk-averse player. A risk neutral or risk-seeking player, however, may be more satisfied with skipping the certificates and aiming to provide good expected value by looking for unlimited upsides, however unlikely they are. In fact, this trail of thought would lead us to a discussion about how engineers and other boring people are often clustered very closely into the average of a Gaussian distribution whereas artists and other more free-spirited people tend to not follow a Gaussian distribution and instead have more people cluttered at both ends of the scale (i.e. some become very successful and others never break even near to success--think about actors).
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Innovation
Everyone needs to be innovative today. If you're not innovating, shame on you. But even innovation by itself is not enough as innovation should be accelerated. You need to beat your competitors in innovation, lest you be left behind. So, what exactly is innovation?
Apparently innovation is, according to Mckeown, the radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes, and in services. Apparently some also feel that it is synonymous to the output of a process. But wait a minute, this becomes interesting. It seems that innovation can be created with a process. In engineering a process is often understood to be a serious of operations done to an input to obtain some sort of output. Fair enough: let's devise a process for innovation. You take some inputs, for instance creative ideas, apply a magical formula and out comes innovation. And of course accelerating innovation just means that you engineer your black box to speed up the process.
Now, according to my understanding, an important part of a process is that the process creates consistent outputs. If I have a manufacturing process for creating nuts and bolts, it's not very nice if the variation between the individual nuts and bolts is too big. In business, processes are often used to ensure consistent actions and is the opposite of what rock stars and divas do: Sarbanes-Oxley attempts to ensure that the processes of companies are well defined and adhered to so that individuals within a company can't create new Enrons and Worldcoms. Innovative accounting is the enemy of Sarbanes-Oxley, so to say.
But wait, if the point of processes is to introduce standardized ways of working or applying transformations and operations to inputs, that doesn't really sound very radical. Alright, maybe we're talking about incremental change, then. Incremental isn't necessarily radical; it may be a fair deal slower and the impact more minute. But it is often understood that innovation should create something new, and it should be substantially different from the previous in order to be considered an innovation. If you consider a field where an entity, say a company, might have a very solid foothold, the company might be able to plan and devise a very clear roadmap of incremental enhancements. 3G comes to mind, for some odd reason. Would someone consider a minor increment in the evolution of a technology an innovation? I guess one could, but I would still venture that it is neither radical nor necessarily substantially different from prior things (sustaining technologies vs. disruptive technologies, if we cite Christensen).
Now, my hypothesis is that innovation cannot be manufactured with rigid and well defined processes. It's not something that can be really grasped and managed in a consistent enough way so that one could say that Innovation Process A, B, or C could consistently bring significant value. In fact, intuitively an innovation process sounds like an oxymoron. Most innovation management processes, I guess, start by assuming that a great enough set of "creative ideas" are present. The a screening process of sorts kicks in and gets rid of the ideas that aren't relevant or promising. Transforms and other actions are then performed in some way and finally out comes innovation, as previously noted. At different steps along the way the process gets rid of more and more ideas; the motivation comes from Darwin and the idea is that only the fit will survive and that eventually only the best and most valuable ideas persist. But the truly greatest innovations have been creations of coincidence. It should not be assumed that visionary people have been able to foresee the consequences of their doings, unlike what analysts and other people watching the world from the rear view mirror would have you believe. There's always too much chance and uncertainty involved.
Look at entrepreneurs. For every Google there are a million and one failures. Google didn't become what it now is because Larry and Sergey were that much more special than the competition. Of course they are incredibly talented, but so are the other guys. They just happened to be talented enough (threshold criteria), but also in the right place at the right time with the right idea. One shouldn't over-analyze things and downplay the significance of chance. Nassim Taleb has written very interesting books on the subject.
So to summarize, really great innovation can seldom be created with rigid processes enforced by bureaucrats. Innovation management processes may be fine and dandy, but they create predictable and minute things. Creative chaos is overlooked by technocrats and boards and the concept of innovation has been done a great disservice by the aforementioned parties, who have consciously or unconsciously devalued innovation and all things related by placing it on every Powerpoint slide that they can. It's disgusting. And that's why corporate innovation is silly; it'll just happen if it is allowed to and if the processes don't kill it. It's like love, you can't force it.
Apparently innovation is, according to Mckeown, the radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes, and in services. Apparently some also feel that it is synonymous to the output of a process. But wait a minute, this becomes interesting. It seems that innovation can be created with a process. In engineering a process is often understood to be a serious of operations done to an input to obtain some sort of output. Fair enough: let's devise a process for innovation. You take some inputs, for instance creative ideas, apply a magical formula and out comes innovation. And of course accelerating innovation just means that you engineer your black box to speed up the process.
Now, according to my understanding, an important part of a process is that the process creates consistent outputs. If I have a manufacturing process for creating nuts and bolts, it's not very nice if the variation between the individual nuts and bolts is too big. In business, processes are often used to ensure consistent actions and is the opposite of what rock stars and divas do: Sarbanes-Oxley attempts to ensure that the processes of companies are well defined and adhered to so that individuals within a company can't create new Enrons and Worldcoms. Innovative accounting is the enemy of Sarbanes-Oxley, so to say.
But wait, if the point of processes is to introduce standardized ways of working or applying transformations and operations to inputs, that doesn't really sound very radical. Alright, maybe we're talking about incremental change, then. Incremental isn't necessarily radical; it may be a fair deal slower and the impact more minute. But it is often understood that innovation should create something new, and it should be substantially different from the previous in order to be considered an innovation. If you consider a field where an entity, say a company, might have a very solid foothold, the company might be able to plan and devise a very clear roadmap of incremental enhancements. 3G comes to mind, for some odd reason. Would someone consider a minor increment in the evolution of a technology an innovation? I guess one could, but I would still venture that it is neither radical nor necessarily substantially different from prior things (sustaining technologies vs. disruptive technologies, if we cite Christensen).
Now, my hypothesis is that innovation cannot be manufactured with rigid and well defined processes. It's not something that can be really grasped and managed in a consistent enough way so that one could say that Innovation Process A, B, or C could consistently bring significant value. In fact, intuitively an innovation process sounds like an oxymoron. Most innovation management processes, I guess, start by assuming that a great enough set of "creative ideas" are present. The a screening process of sorts kicks in and gets rid of the ideas that aren't relevant or promising. Transforms and other actions are then performed in some way and finally out comes innovation, as previously noted. At different steps along the way the process gets rid of more and more ideas; the motivation comes from Darwin and the idea is that only the fit will survive and that eventually only the best and most valuable ideas persist. But the truly greatest innovations have been creations of coincidence. It should not be assumed that visionary people have been able to foresee the consequences of their doings, unlike what analysts and other people watching the world from the rear view mirror would have you believe. There's always too much chance and uncertainty involved.
Look at entrepreneurs. For every Google there are a million and one failures. Google didn't become what it now is because Larry and Sergey were that much more special than the competition. Of course they are incredibly talented, but so are the other guys. They just happened to be talented enough (threshold criteria), but also in the right place at the right time with the right idea. One shouldn't over-analyze things and downplay the significance of chance. Nassim Taleb has written very interesting books on the subject.
So to summarize, really great innovation can seldom be created with rigid processes enforced by bureaucrats. Innovation management processes may be fine and dandy, but they create predictable and minute things. Creative chaos is overlooked by technocrats and boards and the concept of innovation has been done a great disservice by the aforementioned parties, who have consciously or unconsciously devalued innovation and all things related by placing it on every Powerpoint slide that they can. It's disgusting. And that's why corporate innovation is silly; it'll just happen if it is allowed to and if the processes don't kill it. It's like love, you can't force it.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Gifts and begging
From a very early age on children are taught not to beg. Yet when I was little, this rule went largely unnoticed. The person who happened to have a bag of treats was of course the center of attention with others hanging around begging and pleading to get their share of the candy. Adults were of course doing there best to teach some basic manners to us and get us to understand that a constant process of begging and moaning is very irritating and degrading and that it is something that should not be engaged in.
Fast-forward a decade or two and the lessons have been learned. Accepting money is not as clear cut as one would assume. I'm still a student and during the first two years of my studies I didn't work during the semesters, so much budget was quite limited. In part things were helped by the occasional subsidy of 50 euros from my parents, which allowed me to get the soy sauce for the rice, so to say. But accepting the money does dig into oneself. In a way, at least according to how I interpret it, it is a way of someone to enforce their authority over you. You take the money and regardless of the terms (be it a gift or whatever), you're still indebted to the other person. In a way you are no longer on the same level.
This might in fact also explain why students in Finland typically stear clear of student loans, even though they are state-backed and fairly cheap loans. But you tie yourself to a bank and agree to give away some of your freedoms in order to attempt to pay back the loan at some point. With inter-person money transfers, things get even more tedious. Some people may initially seem to be giving you gifts, but may implicitly assume that when a certain moment comes along that you know what to do.
According to traditional etiquette, men should treat women to dinners. Contemporary feminism will have its views and I would venture a guess that they are against this practice as it is yet another ancient relic which men use to demonstrate their authority over women. But quite many women still do expect the man to pick up the bill. This in turn translates to an interesting phenomenon concerning the transfer of wealth between the genders, especially during weekends.
So amidst the rise of feminism and the attempt for gender equality (I know, they are not synonyms...) it is quite interesting to see that women are partly becoming more aggressive in attempting to utilize the lax monetary policies followed by many men. The more interesting practice was one which I encountered last weekend in Turku. While waiting at a bar counter, I was rapidly approached by two girls. One started snuggling up to me and it was pretty obvious that she was trying to get a drink for herself and her friend. Or maybe I'm just so drop-dead handsome that it was that instead. Anyway, to see what would happen, I decided to play dumb and move myself a bit further. And lo-and-behold, the girl followed, still initiating slight physical contact. Finally I couldn't help myself anymore but decided to ask what it is that she wanted. And I was shocked to hear that they wanted drinks (well, ok, I wasn't shocked). So being me, I of course complied and ordered myself a beer and two glasses of ice water for the girls and walked away with my beer.
But this begs the question of where the line between normal behavior and whoring goes. I would in fact considering the actions of this specific girl to be borderline whoring as it was quite clear that leveraging the assets afforded to the more beautiful gender in a fashion like this was so blatant that it cannot be interpreted in any other way. The question becomes more difficult during e.g. dinners. My own personal policy is that during dates, I typically tend to offer to pay for small things if I was the one inviting the other party, but I reserve the right to go Dutch if I feel like it. It is a lot rarer that I let the girl pay everything, but it has also happened. But she has to insist upon it strongly before I give up this pleasure.
However, as is the policy that is suggested by different PUAs (pick-up artists), I do not buy drinks for strange women who I just met in nightclubs. Period. That is not only to save my hard earned cash but also to offer the chance to keep the field level. If I'd buy the drink, then a gift would already have been given and this would imply that I may demand something in return. And that sort of starting position is already becoming biased and slanted and offers too many angles for both sides to try to play. And as much fun as playing is, a distorted field spoils it for everyone involved.
Fast-forward a decade or two and the lessons have been learned. Accepting money is not as clear cut as one would assume. I'm still a student and during the first two years of my studies I didn't work during the semesters, so much budget was quite limited. In part things were helped by the occasional subsidy of 50 euros from my parents, which allowed me to get the soy sauce for the rice, so to say. But accepting the money does dig into oneself. In a way, at least according to how I interpret it, it is a way of someone to enforce their authority over you. You take the money and regardless of the terms (be it a gift or whatever), you're still indebted to the other person. In a way you are no longer on the same level.
This might in fact also explain why students in Finland typically stear clear of student loans, even though they are state-backed and fairly cheap loans. But you tie yourself to a bank and agree to give away some of your freedoms in order to attempt to pay back the loan at some point. With inter-person money transfers, things get even more tedious. Some people may initially seem to be giving you gifts, but may implicitly assume that when a certain moment comes along that you know what to do.
According to traditional etiquette, men should treat women to dinners. Contemporary feminism will have its views and I would venture a guess that they are against this practice as it is yet another ancient relic which men use to demonstrate their authority over women. But quite many women still do expect the man to pick up the bill. This in turn translates to an interesting phenomenon concerning the transfer of wealth between the genders, especially during weekends.
So amidst the rise of feminism and the attempt for gender equality (I know, they are not synonyms...) it is quite interesting to see that women are partly becoming more aggressive in attempting to utilize the lax monetary policies followed by many men. The more interesting practice was one which I encountered last weekend in Turku. While waiting at a bar counter, I was rapidly approached by two girls. One started snuggling up to me and it was pretty obvious that she was trying to get a drink for herself and her friend. Or maybe I'm just so drop-dead handsome that it was that instead. Anyway, to see what would happen, I decided to play dumb and move myself a bit further. And lo-and-behold, the girl followed, still initiating slight physical contact. Finally I couldn't help myself anymore but decided to ask what it is that she wanted. And I was shocked to hear that they wanted drinks (well, ok, I wasn't shocked). So being me, I of course complied and ordered myself a beer and two glasses of ice water for the girls and walked away with my beer.
But this begs the question of where the line between normal behavior and whoring goes. I would in fact considering the actions of this specific girl to be borderline whoring as it was quite clear that leveraging the assets afforded to the more beautiful gender in a fashion like this was so blatant that it cannot be interpreted in any other way. The question becomes more difficult during e.g. dinners. My own personal policy is that during dates, I typically tend to offer to pay for small things if I was the one inviting the other party, but I reserve the right to go Dutch if I feel like it. It is a lot rarer that I let the girl pay everything, but it has also happened. But she has to insist upon it strongly before I give up this pleasure.
However, as is the policy that is suggested by different PUAs (pick-up artists), I do not buy drinks for strange women who I just met in nightclubs. Period. That is not only to save my hard earned cash but also to offer the chance to keep the field level. If I'd buy the drink, then a gift would already have been given and this would imply that I may demand something in return. And that sort of starting position is already becoming biased and slanted and offers too many angles for both sides to try to play. And as much fun as playing is, a distorted field spoils it for everyone involved.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Risks
As part of a project at work, we had a discussion about risks quite a while back. Risks are inherently interesting as intuitively everyone is continuously evaluating their probabilities and impacts, whether or not they recognize it. Do I cross the street now? Do I quit my job? Do I enter this relationship?
Risks are also interesting in the way that the ones that you can sort of attempt to foresee and prepare for are seldom the ones that are really the ones to look out for. Nassim Taleb wrote a very fascinating book on the improbable and he brings up a case of casinos. Casinos are in a sense the pinnacle of probability-related studies; everything is calculated and risks analyzed. The house always wins. And recently they've been very heavily investing on technology to catch cheaters. And they're very good at it. But according to Taleb, the top four individual losses that were accumulated by an unnamed casino were not because of cheaters or amazing streaks of luck, but in fact they were caused by the very improbable; risks that nobody had even thought about. These incidents ranged from a disgruntled builder threating to blow up the building to an employee forgetting to file some forms to the tax authorities to the head of the casino dipping into the casino's funds to pay the ransom to release his daughter, and so on.
Similarily Taleb suggests that instead of spending too much effort on catching cheaters in your life, you should focus on minimizing the downside and subjecting yourself to risky situations that have unlimited upsides. Rich people become rich by inheriting their riches or if they don't, then by being lucky. If rich people became rich by being talented and intelligent, then the world is very broken, since I know very many very intelligent people who are not rich.
What about implications to relationships? Well, if one understands risk to be the combination of probabilities of events and the impacts of the same events, then one should, again, focus on managing the downside by minimizing exposure to risks with negative outcomes. Minimize probabilities and impacts. But herein lies another interesting conflict. Relationships are based on trust. I trust that you will not harm me. But if you effectively manage risks and downsides, what might in fact happen is that trust will not grow. If I tell you that I trust you, but am all the time covering my rear and making sure that exits are close by, would you really believe me? And therein lies the pickle.
But in fact, as contradicting as it is, I guess it's just a question of decision making. On one hand by minimizing the downside you also restrict the upside. But by aiming for infinite bliss and happiness and the unrestricted upside, you also, by definition, subject yourself to an ever increasing amount of negative risks as well. The question is where one decides to draw the line. If the meteor hits and the negative risks materialize, will it kill you? Or send you back into the stone age emotionally, physically, mentally, financially, and so on?
So... T-bills, stock, or derivatives?
Risks are also interesting in the way that the ones that you can sort of attempt to foresee and prepare for are seldom the ones that are really the ones to look out for. Nassim Taleb wrote a very fascinating book on the improbable and he brings up a case of casinos. Casinos are in a sense the pinnacle of probability-related studies; everything is calculated and risks analyzed. The house always wins. And recently they've been very heavily investing on technology to catch cheaters. And they're very good at it. But according to Taleb, the top four individual losses that were accumulated by an unnamed casino were not because of cheaters or amazing streaks of luck, but in fact they were caused by the very improbable; risks that nobody had even thought about. These incidents ranged from a disgruntled builder threating to blow up the building to an employee forgetting to file some forms to the tax authorities to the head of the casino dipping into the casino's funds to pay the ransom to release his daughter, and so on.
Similarily Taleb suggests that instead of spending too much effort on catching cheaters in your life, you should focus on minimizing the downside and subjecting yourself to risky situations that have unlimited upsides. Rich people become rich by inheriting their riches or if they don't, then by being lucky. If rich people became rich by being talented and intelligent, then the world is very broken, since I know very many very intelligent people who are not rich.
What about implications to relationships? Well, if one understands risk to be the combination of probabilities of events and the impacts of the same events, then one should, again, focus on managing the downside by minimizing exposure to risks with negative outcomes. Minimize probabilities and impacts. But herein lies another interesting conflict. Relationships are based on trust. I trust that you will not harm me. But if you effectively manage risks and downsides, what might in fact happen is that trust will not grow. If I tell you that I trust you, but am all the time covering my rear and making sure that exits are close by, would you really believe me? And therein lies the pickle.
But in fact, as contradicting as it is, I guess it's just a question of decision making. On one hand by minimizing the downside you also restrict the upside. But by aiming for infinite bliss and happiness and the unrestricted upside, you also, by definition, subject yourself to an ever increasing amount of negative risks as well. The question is where one decides to draw the line. If the meteor hits and the negative risks materialize, will it kill you? Or send you back into the stone age emotionally, physically, mentally, financially, and so on?
So... T-bills, stock, or derivatives?
Evenings
Antti may have gotten his Alfa Romeo, but we've shared a common passion before too: Italy. I still have to thank him for getting me interested in Italian cuisine, and even though I still can't cook to save my life, I'm at least interested in taking small steps to learn. And today, after finally washing my dishes last night, I decided that it was time to cook some tortellinis and have some white wine.
Earlier this evening I finally met R's fiance and was able to give them the hot air balloon trip as an engagement/house warming present. And, it was worth it. I think they were very surprised and even happier about the present.
Anyway, fast forward and I'm back at home and what's a better way to spend a Tuesday evening than to have tortellinis, white wine, enjoy the company of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and plan a trip to Germany. Perfect. Oh, and I had to put an end to the watch fever I've been having, since yesterday I nearly bought an IWC, and that would've been quite a bit too expensive. So I bought a Tag Heuer Carrera instead. Oh well. At least I "saved" a couple of thousand euros...
Earlier this evening I finally met R's fiance and was able to give them the hot air balloon trip as an engagement/house warming present. And, it was worth it. I think they were very surprised and even happier about the present.
Anyway, fast forward and I'm back at home and what's a better way to spend a Tuesday evening than to have tortellinis, white wine, enjoy the company of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and plan a trip to Germany. Perfect. Oh, and I had to put an end to the watch fever I've been having, since yesterday I nearly bought an IWC, and that would've been quite a bit too expensive. So I bought a Tag Heuer Carrera instead. Oh well. At least I "saved" a couple of thousand euros...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Rhetorics
I recently started reading Naomi Klein's newest piece of work, The Shock Doctrine. However, I won't delve into the actual substance of the book as I haven't finished it yet, but an interesting point came to my mind about it already. Her work revolves heavily around economics, which is traditionally a quite tedious subject in school and which consists of endless hours of staring at diagrams and trying to understand how things work. But her book doesn't remind me of the course books in economics that I've read. Instead it reads more like The Da Vinci Code, and that isn't necessarily meant to be a complement.
Klein has, however, mastered the art of rhetorics. Her style of writing is very provocative and if one is not careful in understanding what she is saying, she can be very persuasive. However, it is clear that being such a, shall we say, shocking book, it has to cut some corners and go to extreme interpretations in order to achieve the sensational nature and aura. And for me it is always a warning sign when any sort of "serious" book reads like the tabloids. Needless to say, Klein's book is full of fairly far fetched interpretations and even some oddities.
At the start of the book Klein goes to use neoconservatism and neoliberalism rather interchangeably. She then suggests that Friedman is a neoconservatist. And at this point alarm bells should be ringing. Granted, this is very much a nitpicking issue about terminology, but according to my limited understanding of things, neoconservatism is more or less what the Bush administration is about, neoliberalism is closer to libertarianism, which in turn holds pretty much the opposite views as the neocon crowd when the discussion turns to governmental issues. Neolibertarianism in turn is a strange combination of neoconservatism and libertarianism, but I personally just don't understand this school of thought as it seems sort of inconsistent with itself. And out of these, I would understand Friedman to have been a libertarian. And libertarianism itself can, according to Friedman, be defined in two different ways. But maybe I'll just stop with this word play as I'm not even trained in political philosophy.
But, if this should start sounding the alarm bells, one will soon notice that Klein does present a vast amount of all sorts of trivia statistics. And naturally most of her evidence does appear to support her case. But the zeal with which she presents these bits of information begs the question regarding where the figures are from and whether or not she has just picked the bits and pieces of the puzzle that support her conspiracy theory. Granted, I am very biased, but I have this feeling that free trade and free markets as such have increased the overall wealth and that in the grand scheme of things poverty has decreased in the world. Maybe some places have gone in the opposite direction, but at large things are going in the better direction, and I am fairly certain that if one digs around, one will find a lot of numbers to support this.
I promised that I wouldn't go into details, but I do agree with Klein that there is something fishy going on these days. But I have a gut feeling that the real relevant issue isn't about whether or not free trade and free markets are enforced upon people by use of violence and coersion. I think the fishy business revolves more around the corporatism and the dealing out of e.g. rebuilding contracts in Iraq in a very nepotistic fashion, etc. The bad apples seem to be the people in charge of the big companies and the big governments. To my understanding the libertarian point of view is that the influence of goverments should be made as minimal as possible, but not any more minimal than that. One might argue that by forbidding the goverment from engaging in interventionism in the scale that it can according to the neocons that the end result is undoubtedly a winner-takes-all situation where a single company will eventually gain a monopoly. Granted, that is a fair point and I would imagine that, besides the ultra hard liners of laissez-faire, many libertarians would agree that a monopoly may not serve the interests of very many people and that healthy competition would be a better option. This is by no means an easy discussion, but the point I'm trying to make is that where Klein has some decent points, she's in fact succumbing to her own trap and indeed using the "shock" from Iraq and natural catastrophies and so on to sell people her own thoughts and ideas, and that is precisely what she is speaking out against.
So to sum it up, saying that Milton Friedman is the devil behind all the suffering today is in my opinion quite a harsh statement. If one reads Klein's complaints very carefully, one will notice that she and Friedman are not in fact very similar, at least according to how she portrays Friedman. Reality, again, might be even more different. But hey, at least she does know the noble art of rhetorics.
Klein has, however, mastered the art of rhetorics. Her style of writing is very provocative and if one is not careful in understanding what she is saying, she can be very persuasive. However, it is clear that being such a, shall we say, shocking book, it has to cut some corners and go to extreme interpretations in order to achieve the sensational nature and aura. And for me it is always a warning sign when any sort of "serious" book reads like the tabloids. Needless to say, Klein's book is full of fairly far fetched interpretations and even some oddities.
At the start of the book Klein goes to use neoconservatism and neoliberalism rather interchangeably. She then suggests that Friedman is a neoconservatist. And at this point alarm bells should be ringing. Granted, this is very much a nitpicking issue about terminology, but according to my limited understanding of things, neoconservatism is more or less what the Bush administration is about, neoliberalism is closer to libertarianism, which in turn holds pretty much the opposite views as the neocon crowd when the discussion turns to governmental issues. Neolibertarianism in turn is a strange combination of neoconservatism and libertarianism, but I personally just don't understand this school of thought as it seems sort of inconsistent with itself. And out of these, I would understand Friedman to have been a libertarian. And libertarianism itself can, according to Friedman, be defined in two different ways. But maybe I'll just stop with this word play as I'm not even trained in political philosophy.
But, if this should start sounding the alarm bells, one will soon notice that Klein does present a vast amount of all sorts of trivia statistics. And naturally most of her evidence does appear to support her case. But the zeal with which she presents these bits of information begs the question regarding where the figures are from and whether or not she has just picked the bits and pieces of the puzzle that support her conspiracy theory. Granted, I am very biased, but I have this feeling that free trade and free markets as such have increased the overall wealth and that in the grand scheme of things poverty has decreased in the world. Maybe some places have gone in the opposite direction, but at large things are going in the better direction, and I am fairly certain that if one digs around, one will find a lot of numbers to support this.
I promised that I wouldn't go into details, but I do agree with Klein that there is something fishy going on these days. But I have a gut feeling that the real relevant issue isn't about whether or not free trade and free markets are enforced upon people by use of violence and coersion. I think the fishy business revolves more around the corporatism and the dealing out of e.g. rebuilding contracts in Iraq in a very nepotistic fashion, etc. The bad apples seem to be the people in charge of the big companies and the big governments. To my understanding the libertarian point of view is that the influence of goverments should be made as minimal as possible, but not any more minimal than that. One might argue that by forbidding the goverment from engaging in interventionism in the scale that it can according to the neocons that the end result is undoubtedly a winner-takes-all situation where a single company will eventually gain a monopoly. Granted, that is a fair point and I would imagine that, besides the ultra hard liners of laissez-faire, many libertarians would agree that a monopoly may not serve the interests of very many people and that healthy competition would be a better option. This is by no means an easy discussion, but the point I'm trying to make is that where Klein has some decent points, she's in fact succumbing to her own trap and indeed using the "shock" from Iraq and natural catastrophies and so on to sell people her own thoughts and ideas, and that is precisely what she is speaking out against.
So to sum it up, saying that Milton Friedman is the devil behind all the suffering today is in my opinion quite a harsh statement. If one reads Klein's complaints very carefully, one will notice that she and Friedman are not in fact very similar, at least according to how she portrays Friedman. Reality, again, might be even more different. But hey, at least she does know the noble art of rhetorics.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Speaking of Porsches...
A friend of mine recently picked up an Alfa Romeo 147. Among the core arguments for the car were things like "It says benzina next to the fuel gage!" and that "It will be broken all the time since it's an Italian car, but it won't matter as it is so beautiful!" This sort of mindset is driven by the view that passion is enough. I contest this point by arguing the exact opposite point: passion, while needed to some extent, typically just gets you in trouble. That is not to say that passion is bad, but it cannot be the only thing. An analogy would be a relationship. While passion is crucial from the outset, if there is no other substance, no respect, no kinship, the relationship will be a short and painful one.
Porsche has been criticized by some people for being too engineered a car. They say that it lacks soul, it lacks the aforementioned passion. That it is cold and sterile. That it is too rationale. Maybe so. But there is beauty in engineering. It is backed by numbers and hard facts. But it has its own spirit, its own soul, and its pride. The engine is at the back, as it has just about always been. It is up for debate whether or not this is a good or a bad thing, but they've kept their head and have not changed their minds about it. Some may call this stubborn, but it need not be seen in such negative light: it may be also seen to be consistency and strong will, both considered to be good traits.
But in fact the discussion around passion versus engineering comes again to the question of balance. When doing analysis work on strategic questions, taking a purely quantitative approach will always result in incorrect results, because the initial numbers are always wrong and the models always lacking. But a purely qualitative approach is not any better either, as it just hangs high in the air and lacks firm numbers to back feelings with. No one will make a multi-million dollar decision based solely on gut feeling. But because mathematics is considered by many to be tedious and boring, it is often overlooked or not utilized properly. Waving hands around with qualitative analysis is a lot easier and a lot more fun than analyzing numbers, so that is too often what gets done instead.
In relationships, passion ignites the chain of events. But too often the boring things are overlooked and it is assumed that strong enough passion will conquer all. In a number of years, however, reality will hit and gravity will kick in. And at that point it would be nice to know that the ground work has been done properly and that effort need not be spent on fought on things that are not at the core: fire fighting by attempting to kill the smoke while the fire is elsewhere seldom helps with anything. Same thing with cars; the first year or two with a car might be nice and everything works. The design of the body might be nice, but when you come up between a rock and a hard place, you do want to know that the engineers have done the mathematics and that the airbags will deploy and the body will stay intact, protecting you and your significant other so that you two can continue having a passionate relationship.
And with that, I'll leave you with a two-part video about the new Porsche 911 Turbo (977), which is not only engineered, but it is engineered with passion. And it is pretty damn sexy as well... And Antti, good luck with the Alfa. And I'm sure it'll be a fun and nice car.
Porsche has been criticized by some people for being too engineered a car. They say that it lacks soul, it lacks the aforementioned passion. That it is cold and sterile. That it is too rationale. Maybe so. But there is beauty in engineering. It is backed by numbers and hard facts. But it has its own spirit, its own soul, and its pride. The engine is at the back, as it has just about always been. It is up for debate whether or not this is a good or a bad thing, but they've kept their head and have not changed their minds about it. Some may call this stubborn, but it need not be seen in such negative light: it may be also seen to be consistency and strong will, both considered to be good traits.
But in fact the discussion around passion versus engineering comes again to the question of balance. When doing analysis work on strategic questions, taking a purely quantitative approach will always result in incorrect results, because the initial numbers are always wrong and the models always lacking. But a purely qualitative approach is not any better either, as it just hangs high in the air and lacks firm numbers to back feelings with. No one will make a multi-million dollar decision based solely on gut feeling. But because mathematics is considered by many to be tedious and boring, it is often overlooked or not utilized properly. Waving hands around with qualitative analysis is a lot easier and a lot more fun than analyzing numbers, so that is too often what gets done instead.
In relationships, passion ignites the chain of events. But too often the boring things are overlooked and it is assumed that strong enough passion will conquer all. In a number of years, however, reality will hit and gravity will kick in. And at that point it would be nice to know that the ground work has been done properly and that effort need not be spent on fought on things that are not at the core: fire fighting by attempting to kill the smoke while the fire is elsewhere seldom helps with anything. Same thing with cars; the first year or two with a car might be nice and everything works. The design of the body might be nice, but when you come up between a rock and a hard place, you do want to know that the engineers have done the mathematics and that the airbags will deploy and the body will stay intact, protecting you and your significant other so that you two can continue having a passionate relationship.
And with that, I'll leave you with a two-part video about the new Porsche 911 Turbo (977), which is not only engineered, but it is engineered with passion. And it is pretty damn sexy as well... And Antti, good luck with the Alfa. And I'm sure it'll be a fun and nice car.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Perfect moments
Sometimes you get this image of a perfect moment in your mind. I personally find that these sorts of pictures that you can vision act as good guides for evaluating where you're going and what you want. They tell quite a bit about you and what you're going through as well as where you want to be. It's up for debate whether or not they need to be realistic; the realistic pictures may help you set your more concrete plans, but unrealistic images act sort of in the same way as brand building and communication; they convey values and tell about things like what one perceives as aesthetic and pleasing, amongst other things. So here's one of the latest:
New England. A road running through a deciduous forest. Autumn time. The leaves are turning brown and a brief and light rain has just passed, leaving the brand new, black tarmac slightly wet. It's morning, but the sun is already out and shining through the clouds. A Porsche 911 Turbo. An International Watch Company Il Destriero Scafusiae. Shifting the manual gearbox, the satisfying feeling it provides. Slight smile. A short, brown leather jacket. Leaves gradually falling from the trees, but are then shifted aside by the air stream of the car. The end of the golf season and a course that is still 40 kilometers away. Perfect greens. The car's player is playing Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters. A new page in life, ready for new complications. The Porsche just flies through the roads. The watch and its 750 pieces advance slowly, in a perfect and harmonious motion. Elegance. A European on American soil.
I guess one could go on, but the point is undoubtedly clear. It is doubtfel that I'll ever own a Porsche. Or an IWC, let alone an Il Destriero Scafusiae. This is worrisomely signals a materialistic view of life, but it doesn't matter. Both are fine pieces of engineering, the peaks of their respective fields. They are products that are near perfection and provide pleasure by merely existing. One can enjoy everything they represent. Drive the car and enjoy it without anyone ever seeing it. Enjoy the watch without anyone else ever understanding the complexity of it or what it represents.
New England. A road running through a deciduous forest. Autumn time. The leaves are turning brown and a brief and light rain has just passed, leaving the brand new, black tarmac slightly wet. It's morning, but the sun is already out and shining through the clouds. A Porsche 911 Turbo. An International Watch Company Il Destriero Scafusiae. Shifting the manual gearbox, the satisfying feeling it provides. Slight smile. A short, brown leather jacket. Leaves gradually falling from the trees, but are then shifted aside by the air stream of the car. The end of the golf season and a course that is still 40 kilometers away. Perfect greens. The car's player is playing Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters. A new page in life, ready for new complications. The Porsche just flies through the roads. The watch and its 750 pieces advance slowly, in a perfect and harmonious motion. Elegance. A European on American soil.
I guess one could go on, but the point is undoubtedly clear. It is doubtfel that I'll ever own a Porsche. Or an IWC, let alone an Il Destriero Scafusiae. This is worrisomely signals a materialistic view of life, but it doesn't matter. Both are fine pieces of engineering, the peaks of their respective fields. They are products that are near perfection and provide pleasure by merely existing. One can enjoy everything they represent. Drive the car and enjoy it without anyone ever seeing it. Enjoy the watch without anyone else ever understanding the complexity of it or what it represents.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Slipping
Well, looks like my discipline in regards to keeping my blog has been slipping slightly again. But in my defence, the weather has been a bit too warm for my taste, as I'm not really a summer person. In my opinion the perfect temperature is between five and ten degrees. Mainly because those temperatures aren't too cold, but you can still wear an overcoat.
It also appears that the golf club has laid off pretty much all the course workers. Proof of this surfaced earlier this morning when I kept losing my golf balls into the rough, which had been allowed to grow quite long. I can sort of understand the decision as it increases the difficulty of the course, but it still feels very artificial and increasing the difficulty of a pseudo-links course that's been built into the middle of a field is, well, difficult. Sufficient to say, I ended up playing 9 holes before getting fed up and marching to the club and applying Napoleon's age old adage: "In victory, you deserve champagne. In defeat, you need champagne." This spawned some questions as to whether or not I had scored a hole-in-one, but I was able to get some understanding looks after explaining that I was merely following the guidance of Napoleon--after all, one should never question the teachings of great military leaders. Too bad Sun Tzu wasn't French, or we would undoubtedly be allowed to drink a lot more champagne.
As for work, things are getting interesting again. On Friday I received quite a thorough kick in the head which quickly made me realize that I am not in control of the situation anymore and I should seriously start acting in a more decisive manner and demonstrating more concrete leadership with our portfolio planning work, lest we be in grave trouble again. Fortunately this humiliation occured at this point and not in a few months time, as now I still have time to actually work out proper schedules and plans for how to execute everything. And who knows, maybe for 2H08 I'll actually be able to earn my bonuses...
It also appears that the golf club has laid off pretty much all the course workers. Proof of this surfaced earlier this morning when I kept losing my golf balls into the rough, which had been allowed to grow quite long. I can sort of understand the decision as it increases the difficulty of the course, but it still feels very artificial and increasing the difficulty of a pseudo-links course that's been built into the middle of a field is, well, difficult. Sufficient to say, I ended up playing 9 holes before getting fed up and marching to the club and applying Napoleon's age old adage: "In victory, you deserve champagne. In defeat, you need champagne." This spawned some questions as to whether or not I had scored a hole-in-one, but I was able to get some understanding looks after explaining that I was merely following the guidance of Napoleon--after all, one should never question the teachings of great military leaders. Too bad Sun Tzu wasn't French, or we would undoubtedly be allowed to drink a lot more champagne.
As for work, things are getting interesting again. On Friday I received quite a thorough kick in the head which quickly made me realize that I am not in control of the situation anymore and I should seriously start acting in a more decisive manner and demonstrating more concrete leadership with our portfolio planning work, lest we be in grave trouble again. Fortunately this humiliation occured at this point and not in a few months time, as now I still have time to actually work out proper schedules and plans for how to execute everything. And who knows, maybe for 2H08 I'll actually be able to earn my bonuses...
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Running
Earlier today I went on the first "real" run after the surgery. I have run a grand total of about 15 kilometers since the surgery, but decided to stop the runs because of the close temporal proximity of the operation and the fact that I was not entirely confident that running on a hard surface would be the best thing when trying to heal jaws that are attached to your skull by mere titanium plates. Additionally ever since the Helsinki City Run I had had small issues with my left foot. It would get this nasty pain at around the instep of the foot after about five kilometers.
Anyway, as said, today was the first time that I actually ran. I started from my flat with an aim of first running along the northern shore of Lauttasaari and then over the bridges to Kaskisaari and Lehtisaari and finally to Keilaniemi and then back to Lauttasaari. So around the Keilalahti bay. I would imagine that the run was about 12-13 kilometers, give or take a bit. The weather was quite decent with a temperature of about 16 degrees and only a minor breeze. And the run was absolutely epic! For the first time in a while running was easy and very enjoyable. Up until and including the HCR, the runs had been sort of forced; ram things through any way possible.
This time round, it was amazing. I was sort of worried about what the sick leave might have done to my health and whether or not I could even run the entire way without stopping. The start was quite typical, nothing out of the ordinary. After about 3-4 kilometers I noticed that my left foot wasn't acting up at all. The scenery was also brilliant; I have never actually run around Keilalahti even though I've lived in Lauttasaari now for about four years. After getting to Kuusisaari I started getting a bit tired, but continued to push on and on the bridge to Keilaniemi this sort of strange feeling came up. I was getting more and more tired but my speed kept steady and slowly it became easier and easier to run. I've read about the runner's high previously, but I don't think I would quite classify this experience as such, because it wasn't as strong as what others have described and the distance that I was running wasn't the typical 20-30 miles that people typically talk about when they mention a runner's high. But I would say that I was able to achieve a type of flow from Keilaniemi onwards.
Timewise the run was pretty much exactly an hour long, meaning that I was in fact running surprisingly quickly considering my overall shape. Towards the end I was actually starting to worry about whether or not I could go on until the finish and whether or not I would lose the flow if I slowed down. I ended up walking rapidly for a bit less than the last kilometer just to cool down and because the situation was so strange for me. The description may sound funny, but I've never encountered this while running. I have, however, encountered similar situations a couple of times while golfing. At some point you might be able to achieve a flow during a golf round; you stop thinking about your game and you just find a type of balance. That's when you are able to play amazing rounds and get hooked on the game. So, I guess this experience should serve as a very good motivator to start ramping up my running again and slowly increasing the distances in search of the magical runner's high.
Anyway, as said, today was the first time that I actually ran. I started from my flat with an aim of first running along the northern shore of Lauttasaari and then over the bridges to Kaskisaari and Lehtisaari and finally to Keilaniemi and then back to Lauttasaari. So around the Keilalahti bay. I would imagine that the run was about 12-13 kilometers, give or take a bit. The weather was quite decent with a temperature of about 16 degrees and only a minor breeze. And the run was absolutely epic! For the first time in a while running was easy and very enjoyable. Up until and including the HCR, the runs had been sort of forced; ram things through any way possible.
This time round, it was amazing. I was sort of worried about what the sick leave might have done to my health and whether or not I could even run the entire way without stopping. The start was quite typical, nothing out of the ordinary. After about 3-4 kilometers I noticed that my left foot wasn't acting up at all. The scenery was also brilliant; I have never actually run around Keilalahti even though I've lived in Lauttasaari now for about four years. After getting to Kuusisaari I started getting a bit tired, but continued to push on and on the bridge to Keilaniemi this sort of strange feeling came up. I was getting more and more tired but my speed kept steady and slowly it became easier and easier to run. I've read about the runner's high previously, but I don't think I would quite classify this experience as such, because it wasn't as strong as what others have described and the distance that I was running wasn't the typical 20-30 miles that people typically talk about when they mention a runner's high. But I would say that I was able to achieve a type of flow from Keilaniemi onwards.
Timewise the run was pretty much exactly an hour long, meaning that I was in fact running surprisingly quickly considering my overall shape. Towards the end I was actually starting to worry about whether or not I could go on until the finish and whether or not I would lose the flow if I slowed down. I ended up walking rapidly for a bit less than the last kilometer just to cool down and because the situation was so strange for me. The description may sound funny, but I've never encountered this while running. I have, however, encountered similar situations a couple of times while golfing. At some point you might be able to achieve a flow during a golf round; you stop thinking about your game and you just find a type of balance. That's when you are able to play amazing rounds and get hooked on the game. So, I guess this experience should serve as a very good motivator to start ramping up my running again and slowly increasing the distances in search of the magical runner's high.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The modern man
The modern man is an ironic thing. Because of history's nature, the modern man must accept the consequences of his fathers and pay the penalty for the previously masculine world. No longer is the modern man allowed to in any way criticize or oppress women. The modern man knows that gender equality is the thing to work towards and his collaboration is to remove himself from the new status quo; to not object to the brave new world of women.
Motherhood is obviously a purely patriarchal construct that is used to oppress women and make sure that women are never able to reach the positions and salaries that men are able to. The woman sacrifices herself and takes the burden of motherhood on her shoulders. The modern man knows that motherhood is not a gift, it is a burden that must be shared. As are household duties. In fact, if all things were equal, the modern man should in fact care for the child and the household while the woman is free to do as she pleases, be it an increased focus on her career or exercise her newly found sexual freedoms. After all, marriage itself is again an oppressive patriarchal construct--a deal between the bride's father and the groom.
The modern man knows that women are not objects and that scantily clad women are in fact doing a disservice for other women. He knows that a woman is never too thin or too thick, just right. He also knows that he is in no position to comment on the lifestyle choices of the woman. After all, a woman need not answer to any man. Yet the modern man is also very aware that he must work in keeping a trim body, since the underwear commercials in which men appear are commonly acknowledged to be acceptable. Physically the modern man has a fat percentage that approaches zero and has a flawless skin as well as a neat six-pack of abs. He knows that he if he fails at this, he is a slob and having a beer with the mates is unacceptable, since male bondage is typically around quintessentially male subjects. Circles where women haven't traditionally had any sort of foothold. Formula, ice hockey, and technical gadgets. But he knows that this is wrong, since the previous men have used their power to keep women out of these fields. Mathematics and other sciences have been dominated by men, which is very unfair as it promotes a masculine view of the world.
In fact, the modern man knows that gender quotas are a good thing. At least 50% of any group must be women, otherwise the women are being oppressed. A company whose board has a woman majority is visionary and modern whereas the opposite company is old-fashioned and discriminating. But the modern man knows that gender equality means that women ultimately have the power to decide what it means. The modern man must still protect the queen and country; women should need not trouble themselves with issues of war. The modern man also knows that it is his duty to fix broken things and make sure the cars work.
In sports, the modern man knows that having separate categories for male and female competitors is bad as it discriminates women. But having separate categories is also good, because if men were to compete with women, women would be again oppressed in certain sports in which the male physique offers an unfair advantage to men, e.g. through power. As contradicting as this sounds, the modern man does not see it as in reality it isn't contradicting at all. In fact the modern man knows that the world does not have any contradictions, since the modern man is very well aware that his place in the modern world is to stay quiet and out of the way of the modern woman, who in all equality is the most equal of beings and thus allowed to rule the world. Of course the modern man is again smart enough not to say this out loud.
Motherhood is obviously a purely patriarchal construct that is used to oppress women and make sure that women are never able to reach the positions and salaries that men are able to. The woman sacrifices herself and takes the burden of motherhood on her shoulders. The modern man knows that motherhood is not a gift, it is a burden that must be shared. As are household duties. In fact, if all things were equal, the modern man should in fact care for the child and the household while the woman is free to do as she pleases, be it an increased focus on her career or exercise her newly found sexual freedoms. After all, marriage itself is again an oppressive patriarchal construct--a deal between the bride's father and the groom.
The modern man knows that women are not objects and that scantily clad women are in fact doing a disservice for other women. He knows that a woman is never too thin or too thick, just right. He also knows that he is in no position to comment on the lifestyle choices of the woman. After all, a woman need not answer to any man. Yet the modern man is also very aware that he must work in keeping a trim body, since the underwear commercials in which men appear are commonly acknowledged to be acceptable. Physically the modern man has a fat percentage that approaches zero and has a flawless skin as well as a neat six-pack of abs. He knows that he if he fails at this, he is a slob and having a beer with the mates is unacceptable, since male bondage is typically around quintessentially male subjects. Circles where women haven't traditionally had any sort of foothold. Formula, ice hockey, and technical gadgets. But he knows that this is wrong, since the previous men have used their power to keep women out of these fields. Mathematics and other sciences have been dominated by men, which is very unfair as it promotes a masculine view of the world.
In fact, the modern man knows that gender quotas are a good thing. At least 50% of any group must be women, otherwise the women are being oppressed. A company whose board has a woman majority is visionary and modern whereas the opposite company is old-fashioned and discriminating. But the modern man knows that gender equality means that women ultimately have the power to decide what it means. The modern man must still protect the queen and country; women should need not trouble themselves with issues of war. The modern man also knows that it is his duty to fix broken things and make sure the cars work.
In sports, the modern man knows that having separate categories for male and female competitors is bad as it discriminates women. But having separate categories is also good, because if men were to compete with women, women would be again oppressed in certain sports in which the male physique offers an unfair advantage to men, e.g. through power. As contradicting as this sounds, the modern man does not see it as in reality it isn't contradicting at all. In fact the modern man knows that the world does not have any contradictions, since the modern man is very well aware that his place in the modern world is to stay quiet and out of the way of the modern woman, who in all equality is the most equal of beings and thus allowed to rule the world. Of course the modern man is again smart enough not to say this out loud.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
On sports
Many people have often mistaken me for some sort of an elitist or snob when it comes to sports. I always find this a rather funny claim as such, since in the modern world where aristocracy is rare and the former class hierarchies of e.g. the British have been disappearing, it's questionable whether one can even raise one sport above another on this dimension.
Take, for instance, golf. Golf is a good walk spoiled, as pointed out by Mr. Twain. It is deemed as an elitist sport by some people, yet they are wrong. They assume that golf is only played by affluent people, or at least this is how I perceive their strongest argument. Yet they fail to see that in modern times, golf is not a very expensive sport. A friend of mine in grade school used to play ice hockey and drove motocross. Both are miles more expensive than golf. Granted, if one wishes to join the older and more exclusive clubs, membership will cost more. But again, this holds true for all aspects of life, and golf as such is in no way an exceptional sport. It is comparable to a nice walk in the park during the weekend, and not that many people think of taking a walk as anything fancy--golf is no different.
Fencing is another interesting example. It is again understood by some to be an exclusive or snobbish sport, yet fencing has always been one of the most widely spread forms of doing combat, regardless of social class. The history is long and as a sport, fencing has only recently evolved into what it is these days. The fundamentals are simple: score points by hitting your opponent while keeping on the piste. Different weapons have different rule sets and there is a certain dress code in place for safety reasons; one must remember that one of the most important things about any sport is to ensure that decent safety measures are in place so that nobody gets hurt. The only possible rationale behind the assumption that fencing is an elitist sport is that it used to be the de facto method of nobility to rid the world of each other, namely in duels, during the 18th and 19th centuries. And even then, many other people practiced fencing, regardless of social class.
Some people have thrown snide remarks about how I must only prefer polo. I must admit that my connections to polo are nonexistent; I've been to see polo once or twice, but that's about it. I'm not capable of riding a horse and even if I were, my left-handedness would mean that I would not be able to play it. Now, with polo I'll admit that it is slightly more exclusive, but that is primarily because it is similar to sailing in the sense that it requires larger financial investments; in sailing you must have a boat and in polo you must have a horse. But if you look at the history of polo, it in fact has served the purpose of being a training routine for horsemen, used for teaching discipline and precise handling of a horse. When it turned into a more widely acknowledged sport, owning the horse was again the possible deal breaker, but to my understanding the exclusivity of the sport is very much questionable.
I could go on, but I don't think there would be a point. For some reason I have a feeling that the hostility is based more on people not being familiar with different sports. Everyone has played football, baseball, hockey, etc. in school and are more or less familiar with them. These are good games for schools, since they require little or no preparations and are very safe for kids. Giving swords adolescents and watching them poke each others' eyes out would cause a lot more liability issues. But because people are not familiar with these sorts of "rarer" (yes, I know, in reality none of the above sports, with the exception of polo, is that rare), people are afraid of them. A similar situation can be seen in the typical Finnish attitude toward foreign people. To my annoyance, during my primary school period, my class was full of ignorant and scared people who were afraid of everything that was slightly upsetting their perception of the status quo.
Another related thing is that even though everyone attempts to be a unique individual, people in fact cluster very much and are hostile to people from outside their clusters. As everyone who's ever been to junior high will know, getting bullied doesn't require much; just that you in some way stand out from the crowd. Now, an interesting thing to think about is this: take for instance golf and football. Both are very popular sports, but football is arguably the larger one. Golf has a certain stigma attached to it. So analogically the football crowd is the gray mass in junior high, and golf is that smaller group that stays out of the former group and just goes in its own way. Now think about the behavior of footballists and golfers. Just a thought experiment one could take a bit further...
Take, for instance, golf. Golf is a good walk spoiled, as pointed out by Mr. Twain. It is deemed as an elitist sport by some people, yet they are wrong. They assume that golf is only played by affluent people, or at least this is how I perceive their strongest argument. Yet they fail to see that in modern times, golf is not a very expensive sport. A friend of mine in grade school used to play ice hockey and drove motocross. Both are miles more expensive than golf. Granted, if one wishes to join the older and more exclusive clubs, membership will cost more. But again, this holds true for all aspects of life, and golf as such is in no way an exceptional sport. It is comparable to a nice walk in the park during the weekend, and not that many people think of taking a walk as anything fancy--golf is no different.
Fencing is another interesting example. It is again understood by some to be an exclusive or snobbish sport, yet fencing has always been one of the most widely spread forms of doing combat, regardless of social class. The history is long and as a sport, fencing has only recently evolved into what it is these days. The fundamentals are simple: score points by hitting your opponent while keeping on the piste. Different weapons have different rule sets and there is a certain dress code in place for safety reasons; one must remember that one of the most important things about any sport is to ensure that decent safety measures are in place so that nobody gets hurt. The only possible rationale behind the assumption that fencing is an elitist sport is that it used to be the de facto method of nobility to rid the world of each other, namely in duels, during the 18th and 19th centuries. And even then, many other people practiced fencing, regardless of social class.
Some people have thrown snide remarks about how I must only prefer polo. I must admit that my connections to polo are nonexistent; I've been to see polo once or twice, but that's about it. I'm not capable of riding a horse and even if I were, my left-handedness would mean that I would not be able to play it. Now, with polo I'll admit that it is slightly more exclusive, but that is primarily because it is similar to sailing in the sense that it requires larger financial investments; in sailing you must have a boat and in polo you must have a horse. But if you look at the history of polo, it in fact has served the purpose of being a training routine for horsemen, used for teaching discipline and precise handling of a horse. When it turned into a more widely acknowledged sport, owning the horse was again the possible deal breaker, but to my understanding the exclusivity of the sport is very much questionable.
I could go on, but I don't think there would be a point. For some reason I have a feeling that the hostility is based more on people not being familiar with different sports. Everyone has played football, baseball, hockey, etc. in school and are more or less familiar with them. These are good games for schools, since they require little or no preparations and are very safe for kids. Giving swords adolescents and watching them poke each others' eyes out would cause a lot more liability issues. But because people are not familiar with these sorts of "rarer" (yes, I know, in reality none of the above sports, with the exception of polo, is that rare), people are afraid of them. A similar situation can be seen in the typical Finnish attitude toward foreign people. To my annoyance, during my primary school period, my class was full of ignorant and scared people who were afraid of everything that was slightly upsetting their perception of the status quo.
Another related thing is that even though everyone attempts to be a unique individual, people in fact cluster very much and are hostile to people from outside their clusters. As everyone who's ever been to junior high will know, getting bullied doesn't require much; just that you in some way stand out from the crowd. Now, an interesting thing to think about is this: take for instance golf and football. Both are very popular sports, but football is arguably the larger one. Golf has a certain stigma attached to it. So analogically the football crowd is the gray mass in junior high, and golf is that smaller group that stays out of the former group and just goes in its own way. Now think about the behavior of footballists and golfers. Just a thought experiment one could take a bit further...
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Feminism? Masculism?
A friend of mine recently posted a link to an article called Men's Silence is Women's Gold. The main point is that women seem to have been able to fairly effectively domesticate the wild man and put him between the stove and the fist, so to say. Gender equality is of course important, as always, but it somehow indeed feels that with all the lobbying for women's rights and such, men are getting trampled and we're just staying quiet about that.
Another interesting thing related to this was that today on Facebook I noticed that some people I know had joined a group called "Kotirauhaa - Naisiin kohdistuvan parisuhdeväkivallan vastainen kampanja", which roughly translates to "Domestic peace - A campaign against domestic violence against women", or something to that extent. What the hell? Can domestic violence only be against women and not against men? At this point I call bullshit; this is precisely the attitude that makes me get incredibly annoyed with all the trendy feminist organizations. The problem isn't with men hitting women or women subjecting men to psychological violence, the core problem is about intra-relationship violence between partners. In my opinion gender doesn't have anything to do with it. Hell, does this mean that partners of the same gender never resort to violence? I guess it might be, considering that they are typically quite a bit more enlightened about all things related to equality than your average heterosexual.
This sort of behavior from these liberal feminists and whatnots is not only short-sighted, but also very offensive and degrading. It is undoubtedly true that if we look back in history, women have been treated very badly at times, but does it really give the moral authority to women to cut men's balls and shift the power to blatantly oppress others to them? Right now it feels that both feminism and masculism are extremist hard-line ideologies and both are very dangerous to the general equilibrium. It's already very good that people associate extreme masculism with negative things, but we should also try to understand that feminist organizations are none the better and should be treated with the same disgust and prejudice as their patriarchal opposites.
Another interesting thing related to this was that today on Facebook I noticed that some people I know had joined a group called "Kotirauhaa - Naisiin kohdistuvan parisuhdeväkivallan vastainen kampanja", which roughly translates to "Domestic peace - A campaign against domestic violence against women", or something to that extent. What the hell? Can domestic violence only be against women and not against men? At this point I call bullshit; this is precisely the attitude that makes me get incredibly annoyed with all the trendy feminist organizations. The problem isn't with men hitting women or women subjecting men to psychological violence, the core problem is about intra-relationship violence between partners. In my opinion gender doesn't have anything to do with it. Hell, does this mean that partners of the same gender never resort to violence? I guess it might be, considering that they are typically quite a bit more enlightened about all things related to equality than your average heterosexual.
This sort of behavior from these liberal feminists and whatnots is not only short-sighted, but also very offensive and degrading. It is undoubtedly true that if we look back in history, women have been treated very badly at times, but does it really give the moral authority to women to cut men's balls and shift the power to blatantly oppress others to them? Right now it feels that both feminism and masculism are extremist hard-line ideologies and both are very dangerous to the general equilibrium. It's already very good that people associate extreme masculism with negative things, but we should also try to understand that feminist organizations are none the better and should be treated with the same disgust and prejudice as their patriarchal opposites.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
On women's clothing and men
I hold the view that as a man, I can nor need understand anything about women's clothing. I readily admit that it is way out of my grasp and more often than not I haven't the faintest idea what looks good and what doesn't. As such, I often remain silent about this subject and when I don't, I rely only on my very subjective and uneducated opinions, which are undoubtedly very wrong, if one attempts to verify their correctness from the fairer gender.
That said, I saw the new Sex and the City movie last night and I have to say that not only did it appear that Finnish females dress in an awful and horribly tacky and unoriginal way, but it might do good for a decent portion of them to get acquainted with a track suit or running gear in general. And yes, I will get stoned for this, but so be it. And I know, I'm being mean. ;)
That said, I saw the new Sex and the City movie last night and I have to say that not only did it appear that Finnish females dress in an awful and horribly tacky and unoriginal way, but it might do good for a decent portion of them to get acquainted with a track suit or running gear in general. And yes, I will get stoned for this, but so be it. And I know, I'm being mean. ;)
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
On men's clothing and women
Considering the appalling state of dress in the current world, it may sometimes be warranted that women lend a helping hand to the men who struggle with clothing and looking good. However, as was so brilliantly phrased by Nicholas Antongiavanni:
There has never been a well-dressed man who was dressed by women; for their tastes diverge from ours; and though they may recognize what looks good when they see it on you, they cannot recognize it in stores, being by their nature drawn to the latest fashions, the quality of which was given above.
This holds very true and is precisely the reason why I obtain my clothes by consulting mainly myself and not others, especially not women. Women's opinions may be interesting to hear, but in the context of men's clothing, especially if the man himself knows even a bit about the subject, should be discarded. I'll venture a guess that this is also the reason why the tailors who cut for men have always been men.
Now, I guess at this point I have to also point out that the above mainly works for men's clothing, not the adolescent male fashion nonsense and other similar areas. But again, these areas are of no real interest in this discussion, considering that stylish men know better than that.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Two weeks later...
Well, it's been pretty much two weeks since the operation and I guess it's time to recap a bit. Overall the experience this far has been a lot less painful than what I'd anticipated; I was even able to get rid of the heavier painkillers less then a week after the operation, opting instead for three daily dosages of ibuprofen. The swelling and bruises subsided fairly quickly, with some minor swelling still present in the maxilla area. A general numbness still plagues the lower parts of the face, but my upper lip and the area around the nose have some feeling in them. So to summarize, the outward appearance is starting to look very good, but the issues with the nerve are still troubling me. Medicine-wise yesterday I finally got through all the other medicines with the exception of the ibuprofen, so that's also nice.
The sick leave itself has been, well, semi-interesting. It's been the first time that I've really been forced to slow down in years. Right from the outset I began to clear the backlog of books from my night stand and thus far I've gone through Jeremy Clarkson's Don't Stop Me Now, Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, as well as Nicholas Antongiavanni's The Suit. Fortunately with three more weeks to go, I still have a ton to read.
The operation itself was on a Tuesday, and during the following weekend I set out for short walks around the countryside. The surgeons suggested that I should try to get out walking as soon as possible as it would help with the swelling. And it certainly did help, as far as I could tell. Yesterday I exchanged walking for some jogging and went for a 5km jog both in the morning and the afternoon. It's quite apparent that what little stamina and health I had before the operation are now gone and while the 5km jogs didn't really kill me, they were notably more difficult than the 10km jogs before. But I guess I'll try to run at least 5km each day to slowly get my strength back, but as of now I officially decided that I will not under any circumstance take part in the Helsinki City Marathon. I was, however, thinking that if I find some interesting half marathon somewhere during the autumn, I might try that again. As for golf, I haven't really gotten to the course yet, but was planning of trying that too later in the week.
Eating started off as fairly tricky and my diet from the outset consisted of a liquid diet. Since then things like mashed potatoes and minced meat have been proven to be a fairly nice meal. The doctors suggested that I should prepare for an up to 7 kg drop in weight. So far I started off with a pre-surgery weight of 84kg and at worst my weight dropped to 79.5kg, but quickly regained to about 81-82kg, so this seems to have also worked out fairly well. I'm still waiting for the six week mark when I can officially started chewing soft things. One of the things that makes eating very difficult right now is a thing called the splint. It's a plastic rail which attached to the teeth of the upper jaw and helps guide the lower jaw into place by utilizing rubber bands. This, I've been told, would be removed at the four week mark, so still two more weeks to go.
One of the more interesting parts of a sick leave is that officially you are not allowed to do any work, namely because of insurance related issues. If you injure yourself during the sick leave and it turns out that you were working, no insurance would cover that. That said, I may have attended a couple of conference calls already and prepared some slide sets, kept my inbox clean, etc. But that's only for my own sanity, as doing small tasks for work really helps during a time period when in essence you're forced to be with yourself for weeks and weeks, instead of being able to run around town and so on.
The sick leave itself has been, well, semi-interesting. It's been the first time that I've really been forced to slow down in years. Right from the outset I began to clear the backlog of books from my night stand and thus far I've gone through Jeremy Clarkson's Don't Stop Me Now, Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, as well as Nicholas Antongiavanni's The Suit. Fortunately with three more weeks to go, I still have a ton to read.
The operation itself was on a Tuesday, and during the following weekend I set out for short walks around the countryside. The surgeons suggested that I should try to get out walking as soon as possible as it would help with the swelling. And it certainly did help, as far as I could tell. Yesterday I exchanged walking for some jogging and went for a 5km jog both in the morning and the afternoon. It's quite apparent that what little stamina and health I had before the operation are now gone and while the 5km jogs didn't really kill me, they were notably more difficult than the 10km jogs before. But I guess I'll try to run at least 5km each day to slowly get my strength back, but as of now I officially decided that I will not under any circumstance take part in the Helsinki City Marathon. I was, however, thinking that if I find some interesting half marathon somewhere during the autumn, I might try that again. As for golf, I haven't really gotten to the course yet, but was planning of trying that too later in the week.
Eating started off as fairly tricky and my diet from the outset consisted of a liquid diet. Since then things like mashed potatoes and minced meat have been proven to be a fairly nice meal. The doctors suggested that I should prepare for an up to 7 kg drop in weight. So far I started off with a pre-surgery weight of 84kg and at worst my weight dropped to 79.5kg, but quickly regained to about 81-82kg, so this seems to have also worked out fairly well. I'm still waiting for the six week mark when I can officially started chewing soft things. One of the things that makes eating very difficult right now is a thing called the splint. It's a plastic rail which attached to the teeth of the upper jaw and helps guide the lower jaw into place by utilizing rubber bands. This, I've been told, would be removed at the four week mark, so still two more weeks to go.
One of the more interesting parts of a sick leave is that officially you are not allowed to do any work, namely because of insurance related issues. If you injure yourself during the sick leave and it turns out that you were working, no insurance would cover that. That said, I may have attended a couple of conference calls already and prepared some slide sets, kept my inbox clean, etc. But that's only for my own sanity, as doing small tasks for work really helps during a time period when in essence you're forced to be with yourself for weeks and weeks, instead of being able to run around town and so on.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Re: Divorces, compatibility, and wages
Daniel recently brought up a point in my previous entry about how it was insulting to divide wives into trophy wives and achieving wives and that I completely discarded the domestic stay-at-home wife. Short answer: yes, I did discard the group from the discussion, mainly because it was of no interest in this scope. As Daniel will also note, the article from The Times that I referred to was also speaking about the alpha males. I can with quite a safe assumption say that I nor any of the people who read this blog qualify in that category of (U)HNWIs. In the same way it is insulting for us normal men that I didn't cover us.
As for the domestic stay-at-home wife... Well... Different people have different values. I can sort of see the point of an arrangement like this. I personally do not prefer one, since in my view in a family both spouses should engage in both working and domestic lives. It's a question of balance. Managing a household is obviously not easy and I can imagine it must include tons of tensions, be they political, financial, or whatever. And if one spouse works and the other runs the household, the overall setting is in imbalance and might trigger outbursts when they start questioning the amount of effort that each puts into the overall (an analogy might be how marketing and R&D never seem to get along in corporations). However, here again holds the point that there are different types of families. Some families require much household effort (households with e.g. many children, pets, etc.) whereas other families/pairs may not put any effort on household issues and prefer to subcontract them to third parties.
A family that resides in an urban setting and employs the services of cleaners and nannies, amongst others, the role of the stay-at-home wife is at best questionable. One might argue that with (U)HNWIs, these are often the cases, meaning that while simplifying the situation, two archetypal roles arise: the achieving wife and the trophy wife (which has the questionable workload of drinking wine and spending their spouses' wealth).
I hope this helped to alleviate some of Daniel's concerns.
As for the domestic stay-at-home wife... Well... Different people have different values. I can sort of see the point of an arrangement like this. I personally do not prefer one, since in my view in a family both spouses should engage in both working and domestic lives. It's a question of balance. Managing a household is obviously not easy and I can imagine it must include tons of tensions, be they political, financial, or whatever. And if one spouse works and the other runs the household, the overall setting is in imbalance and might trigger outbursts when they start questioning the amount of effort that each puts into the overall (an analogy might be how marketing and R&D never seem to get along in corporations). However, here again holds the point that there are different types of families. Some families require much household effort (households with e.g. many children, pets, etc.) whereas other families/pairs may not put any effort on household issues and prefer to subcontract them to third parties.
A family that resides in an urban setting and employs the services of cleaners and nannies, amongst others, the role of the stay-at-home wife is at best questionable. One might argue that with (U)HNWIs, these are often the cases, meaning that while simplifying the situation, two archetypal roles arise: the achieving wife and the trophy wife (which has the questionable workload of drinking wine and spending their spouses' wealth).
I hope this helped to alleviate some of Daniel's concerns.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Divorces, compatibility, and wages
It appears that the amount of divorces has been accelerating in Britain quite drastically recently. It's not really that surprising considering how the banking industry is in quite a turmoil and all the trophy wives are packing their bags and leaving while they can still take a part of their spouses' fortunes with them.
But on a more positive note, The Times ran a story a year and a half back about how successful men are ditching their trophy wives. This is of course a nice thing and personally I'm also a believer in the view that my wife should also aim high (i.e. I'm not taking any freeloaders with me). So hopefully in the future the time for gold diggers in this area will be over. Of course this spawns new questions (or old questions) about gender equality, values, and compatibility. What sort of people are compatible? Why? Where's the balance between home and work lives and how the children are raised? And so on...
Anyway, the article from The Times brings some other interesting views. Previously the concept of trophy wife has been a pejorative one, but now that successful men are looking for successful women, worries about equality and elite "power couples" arise. I guess we can never be satisfied with any sort of state we're in. And in a related topic, wage equality has been a big topic in Finland again recently with some journalists writing about how women should demand higher salaries. And this is a very good point, since women should demand higher salaries if they feel they want and deserve higher salaries! Actually, that guidance is not even gender specific, since that's what I also do.
Related to the wage equalities, Helsingin Sanomat recently released a story where someone had interviewed male and female graduates and asked them how much they would like to get paid in the initial job. Men were asking for over 4 000 euros per year more than their female counterparts! Additional studies suggest that men are able to increase the wage disparity by switching jobs often and achieving raises that way, whereas women are much more loyal to their employers and do not move as much. So, in light of this, I'm all for gender equality, but right now I think that instead of just bitching and moaning about it, women should actively pursue higher wages by actions instead of just pointing fingers around. It may be that previously the playing field has been biased towards men, but the field is evening out right now, so the old excuses of gender-based racism just don't cut it anymore.
And on an entirely different note, I recently ordered some fabric samples from the UK, so I'll hopefully be able to get my suits for this autumn ordered pretty soon! And I'm waiting for my brand-spankin'-new, custom-made shoes from Left to arrive some time during next week. Life's certainly good right now.
But on a more positive note, The Times ran a story a year and a half back about how successful men are ditching their trophy wives. This is of course a nice thing and personally I'm also a believer in the view that my wife should also aim high (i.e. I'm not taking any freeloaders with me). So hopefully in the future the time for gold diggers in this area will be over. Of course this spawns new questions (or old questions) about gender equality, values, and compatibility. What sort of people are compatible? Why? Where's the balance between home and work lives and how the children are raised? And so on...
Anyway, the article from The Times brings some other interesting views. Previously the concept of trophy wife has been a pejorative one, but now that successful men are looking for successful women, worries about equality and elite "power couples" arise. I guess we can never be satisfied with any sort of state we're in. And in a related topic, wage equality has been a big topic in Finland again recently with some journalists writing about how women should demand higher salaries. And this is a very good point, since women should demand higher salaries if they feel they want and deserve higher salaries! Actually, that guidance is not even gender specific, since that's what I also do.
Related to the wage equalities, Helsingin Sanomat recently released a story where someone had interviewed male and female graduates and asked them how much they would like to get paid in the initial job. Men were asking for over 4 000 euros per year more than their female counterparts! Additional studies suggest that men are able to increase the wage disparity by switching jobs often and achieving raises that way, whereas women are much more loyal to their employers and do not move as much. So, in light of this, I'm all for gender equality, but right now I think that instead of just bitching and moaning about it, women should actively pursue higher wages by actions instead of just pointing fingers around. It may be that previously the playing field has been biased towards men, but the field is evening out right now, so the old excuses of gender-based racism just don't cut it anymore.
And on an entirely different note, I recently ordered some fabric samples from the UK, so I'll hopefully be able to get my suits for this autumn ordered pretty soon! And I'm waiting for my brand-spankin'-new, custom-made shoes from Left to arrive some time during next week. Life's certainly good right now.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
On the Forgotten Art of Brunching
Brunching is one of the best ways to spend a Sunday, hands down. It is a brilliant way to start a slow day by enjoying an early lunch or a late breakfast with good friends and other acquaintances in a decent and relaxed setting. And at the same time you can pamper yourself with the small luxuries in life--maybe have a glass of champagne while casually chatting and observing the world move by.
But alas, we're in Finland, and the culture of brunching never really got on here. That itself isn't anything surprising considering how ill-customed brutes Finns are. Sophistication shouldn't even be mentioned in the same paragraph. But maybe, just maybe, this will slowly change, too. And other people can also slowly start appreciating how relaxing it is to just spend time in this elegant way.
One of the biggest reasons, perhaps, why brunches haven't caught on with Finns is because brunches are typically served on weekends, and more importantly during the morning. The culture in Finland is one where people typically end up staying awake until the early hours on weekends, getting entirely hammered more often than not. So again, this brings us back to the question of cultivated drinking habits and elegance. I'll say no more of that, as I've previously made my sentiments fairly well known.
But early mornings are in fact great by themselves. During my sick leave thus far, I've learned to appreciate them as I get up a lot more early now than when I was working. It's not uncommon for me to get between five and six o'clock these days and just lounge around for a while. This is one habit that I should really try to move into my everyday routine after I end my leave in a few weeks, too. But in fact, there isn't anything new here that I didn't unconsciously know before. In retrospect some of the greatest times in the past have been early golf rounds on weekend mornings when the weather is still nice and cool and the course is very much empty.
Maybe this all just goes to demonstrate how sickened my way of life has become during the past few years and how I can improve my overall level of happiness by just rotating my sleeping schedule a bit. Or maybe it's just the fact that the past week has been unique in the sense that for the first time in quite a while, I've done neither real work or school work and just been idling along and doing quite a bit of reading and enjoying life (to the extent that one can enjoy life while being dosed up on painkillers and attempting to recover from an osteotomy to the facial region).
But alas, we're in Finland, and the culture of brunching never really got on here. That itself isn't anything surprising considering how ill-customed brutes Finns are. Sophistication shouldn't even be mentioned in the same paragraph. But maybe, just maybe, this will slowly change, too. And other people can also slowly start appreciating how relaxing it is to just spend time in this elegant way.
One of the biggest reasons, perhaps, why brunches haven't caught on with Finns is because brunches are typically served on weekends, and more importantly during the morning. The culture in Finland is one where people typically end up staying awake until the early hours on weekends, getting entirely hammered more often than not. So again, this brings us back to the question of cultivated drinking habits and elegance. I'll say no more of that, as I've previously made my sentiments fairly well known.
But early mornings are in fact great by themselves. During my sick leave thus far, I've learned to appreciate them as I get up a lot more early now than when I was working. It's not uncommon for me to get between five and six o'clock these days and just lounge around for a while. This is one habit that I should really try to move into my everyday routine after I end my leave in a few weeks, too. But in fact, there isn't anything new here that I didn't unconsciously know before. In retrospect some of the greatest times in the past have been early golf rounds on weekend mornings when the weather is still nice and cool and the course is very much empty.
Maybe this all just goes to demonstrate how sickened my way of life has become during the past few years and how I can improve my overall level of happiness by just rotating my sleeping schedule a bit. Or maybe it's just the fact that the past week has been unique in the sense that for the first time in quite a while, I've done neither real work or school work and just been idling along and doing quite a bit of reading and enjoying life (to the extent that one can enjoy life while being dosed up on painkillers and attempting to recover from an osteotomy to the facial region).
Monday, May 26, 2008
The Thomas Crown Walk
Just about everyone is always capable of devising a list of improvements for themselves, be they cosmetic or otherwise. Whole industries have been born around what is in essence mere vanity. And people are in fact willing to put in a lot of time, effort, and money to achieve these improvements. Of course the motivators can be intrinsic or extrinsic and a debate could be spawned around which is better. But it's precisely the reason why women take so long when getting ready to go out on a Saturday evening. Everything has to be perfect from the outset, even though tradition and experience tells that more often than not, especially with younger females, the nights typically end more or less badly. But regardless, it's the mental image from the outset that matters.
But fortunately not all things can be bought with money and not all things related to vanity are productized. I'm a huge fan of The Thomas Crown Affair (both versions, although I slightly prefer Brosnan's interpretation as it isn't as outdated, if you will, as the McQueen version). Thomas Crown is more or less the epitome of style, elegance, and understated chic (ok, this last one is debatable). Granted, I wouldn't mind having his town house or his Jaeger-LeCoultre. But what I really envy is his walk. It is just brilliant.
Very early on in the Brosnan interpretation, Thomas Crown enters the office after leaving his briefcase in the museum. This is the scene where you can see the walk. The posture is good and upright. Very balanced and graceful. It oozes a certain type of sophistication. But then it is also very American; it's strong and assertive, something that you would indeed expect from a great 21st century industrialist, in this case a banker. But it isn't rigid. Through an analogy, his walk is sort of like what a good handshake should be like: firm but gentle, enough to signal that you are powerful, but not a brute. And that's what I like about his walk. Maybe I'm digging into it a bit too much and it is certainly a vanity thing, but still... Check out the scene if you have the movie and you'll see.
But fortunately not all things can be bought with money and not all things related to vanity are productized. I'm a huge fan of The Thomas Crown Affair (both versions, although I slightly prefer Brosnan's interpretation as it isn't as outdated, if you will, as the McQueen version). Thomas Crown is more or less the epitome of style, elegance, and understated chic (ok, this last one is debatable). Granted, I wouldn't mind having his town house or his Jaeger-LeCoultre. But what I really envy is his walk. It is just brilliant.
Very early on in the Brosnan interpretation, Thomas Crown enters the office after leaving his briefcase in the museum. This is the scene where you can see the walk. The posture is good and upright. Very balanced and graceful. It oozes a certain type of sophistication. But then it is also very American; it's strong and assertive, something that you would indeed expect from a great 21st century industrialist, in this case a banker. But it isn't rigid. Through an analogy, his walk is sort of like what a good handshake should be like: firm but gentle, enough to signal that you are powerful, but not a brute. And that's what I like about his walk. Maybe I'm digging into it a bit too much and it is certainly a vanity thing, but still... Check out the scene if you have the movie and you'll see.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Minorities
These days it seems that the middle class is a minority that nobody really identifies with. It's so... Mediocre. The people who are so boring and bland that you just can't remember their names or any interesting bit about their lives if your own life depended on it. The people who in primary school used to make up the bunch of people who you never even knew existed. All the jocks either went to work as mechanics or went off to some school on some scholarship. The geeks will undoubtedly found multi-billion dollar companies and rule the world. The prom queens, who knows... Married their high school sweethearts and are now in a dead end relationship with two children and a low wage job.
I was recently invited to a class reunion for our junior high class. I still haven't decided if I can be bothered to go, but it got me thinking about what ever happens to these people you never remember. I guess they go on to live a more or less decent life and don't make that much noise about themselves. One could say that because it's such a middle of the road solution, the value systems and the entire lifestyle is sort of, well, ok. And considering this, it's amazing how in the elections, for instance, all the runners are more or less promising perks and benefits to all other groups, especially those of low income. I'm going to get crucified for saying this, but why should I care about those groups at all these days? All the political correctness is making sure that these lower classes are not forgotten when all the while the quiet and hard working middle class is baring the hits in the form of double taxation of dividends, for instance.
All the while the value systems have also changed and it's no longer trendy to just be a part of the middle class or the upper middle class. It's so bland; everyone has to be a rock star and everyone is optimizing their life over the next 15 minutes. Or, that is, everyone who's in any way visible, at least. In my opinion, why should actually start promoting the mid class way of living more; add some spice to it and market it off as the preferred way of living. I know it's harsh and I know that many people have many different types of problems which mean that they might be at a slight disadvantage and need to be subsidized by the state. To some extent. But seriously, offer a level playing field and stop pampering the classes who won't pull their weight around. Maybe it's harsh, but why should the hard working, middle class blokes pull around the dead weight of everyone else while the low class bitches and moans about their situation without actually doing anything about it and the upper classes can rely on wealth management specialists to keep themselves going strong forever. It's just so ironic that the majority of citizens who make up the middle class of a nation have all of a sudden gone mute and become a minority and are just going along with the increasing amount of freeloaders.
I was recently invited to a class reunion for our junior high class. I still haven't decided if I can be bothered to go, but it got me thinking about what ever happens to these people you never remember. I guess they go on to live a more or less decent life and don't make that much noise about themselves. One could say that because it's such a middle of the road solution, the value systems and the entire lifestyle is sort of, well, ok. And considering this, it's amazing how in the elections, for instance, all the runners are more or less promising perks and benefits to all other groups, especially those of low income. I'm going to get crucified for saying this, but why should I care about those groups at all these days? All the political correctness is making sure that these lower classes are not forgotten when all the while the quiet and hard working middle class is baring the hits in the form of double taxation of dividends, for instance.
All the while the value systems have also changed and it's no longer trendy to just be a part of the middle class or the upper middle class. It's so bland; everyone has to be a rock star and everyone is optimizing their life over the next 15 minutes. Or, that is, everyone who's in any way visible, at least. In my opinion, why should actually start promoting the mid class way of living more; add some spice to it and market it off as the preferred way of living. I know it's harsh and I know that many people have many different types of problems which mean that they might be at a slight disadvantage and need to be subsidized by the state. To some extent. But seriously, offer a level playing field and stop pampering the classes who won't pull their weight around. Maybe it's harsh, but why should the hard working, middle class blokes pull around the dead weight of everyone else while the low class bitches and moans about their situation without actually doing anything about it and the upper classes can rely on wealth management specialists to keep themselves going strong forever. It's just so ironic that the majority of citizens who make up the middle class of a nation have all of a sudden gone mute and become a minority and are just going along with the increasing amount of freeloaders.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Day 3
Well, Tuesday came and went and some jaws were moved and some titanium was inserted. Not much recollection of the day, in fact I guess I slept most of the day. Which in retrospect might've been a very good thing as hospitals aren't really my favorite place to spend the time. That said, the Surgical Hospital in Helsinki is decent enough with its historical atmosphere.
Anyway, it's such an unreal feeling. It's back to basics; speaking is difficult, eating is nigh impossible and it just feels that even though you're offered more than enough painkillers, there's no real point in abusing them. And worst of all is the numbness. When you feel your lip, you know something should happen, you should feel something. But you don't. You try, but to no avail. All in all, it's a very disturbing feeling.
Two factors seem to contribute toward the difficulty in actually keeping any sort of edible substance in your mouth for long enough to allow you to swallow it: firstly the complete lack of control and feeling over your lip means that you have no sense of when things start going wrong, i.e. when all that liquid-y stuff is starting to go towards your shirt. I know, it sounds quite humorous and I guess it sort of is. The second factor is that in all honesty, even if you could move your lips and have any sort of feeling from them, you still couldn't move your mouth that much.
I guess I could go on and describe all sorts of other interesting situations that an operation of this type operation leads to, but I fear that it wouldn't be that interesting. Suffice to say, I survived the six hour operation in a more or less decent shape. And slowly but surely I'm pulling myself back together. I was in fact thinking that tomorrow I might as well go for my first "long" walk outside and see if I can get my energy levels back to normal.
Oh, and I did start unwrapping my work mailbox, but it appears that the instant you step out of the office, things fall apart. So I guess I have my weekend's work cut out for me.
Anyway, it's such an unreal feeling. It's back to basics; speaking is difficult, eating is nigh impossible and it just feels that even though you're offered more than enough painkillers, there's no real point in abusing them. And worst of all is the numbness. When you feel your lip, you know something should happen, you should feel something. But you don't. You try, but to no avail. All in all, it's a very disturbing feeling.
Two factors seem to contribute toward the difficulty in actually keeping any sort of edible substance in your mouth for long enough to allow you to swallow it: firstly the complete lack of control and feeling over your lip means that you have no sense of when things start going wrong, i.e. when all that liquid-y stuff is starting to go towards your shirt. I know, it sounds quite humorous and I guess it sort of is. The second factor is that in all honesty, even if you could move your lips and have any sort of feeling from them, you still couldn't move your mouth that much.
I guess I could go on and describe all sorts of other interesting situations that an operation of this type operation leads to, but I fear that it wouldn't be that interesting. Suffice to say, I survived the six hour operation in a more or less decent shape. And slowly but surely I'm pulling myself back together. I was in fact thinking that tomorrow I might as well go for my first "long" walk outside and see if I can get my energy levels back to normal.
Oh, and I did start unwrapping my work mailbox, but it appears that the instant you step out of the office, things fall apart. So I guess I have my weekend's work cut out for me.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Feelings before the storm
Well, in a bit more than 24 hours I should be embarking on the quest to have my jaws spliced and diced a bit. And up until now I haven't really had time to think about it that much. The surgery itself has just been an annoying blip in the radar, something that forces me to temporarily skip work. But for the past couple of hours I decided, for some unknown reason, to read a bit about the experiences of some other people who've gone through or are starting to go through the same process as me. Interestingly enough it seems that most of the people writing are women and most of them are complaining about all types of complications that have arisen.
It's only now for the first time that I've actually thought about the fact that maybe I won't be fully up to speed again in two weeks time and maybe this thing will take a bit longer. And that is an incredibly annoying thought, since I really want to get back to work. Being idle is not fun and the end of 1H08 is coming up and I still need to earn my bonuses.
So, to sum up some feelings, I'm not really worried about the surgery. But I am worried and annoyed about the possibility that things will take time. Oh well, time to go face the (preliminary) music in about 7 and a half hours, so I might as well sleep a bit before that.
It's only now for the first time that I've actually thought about the fact that maybe I won't be fully up to speed again in two weeks time and maybe this thing will take a bit longer. And that is an incredibly annoying thought, since I really want to get back to work. Being idle is not fun and the end of 1H08 is coming up and I still need to earn my bonuses.
So, to sum up some feelings, I'm not really worried about the surgery. But I am worried and annoyed about the possibility that things will take time. Oh well, time to go face the (preliminary) music in about 7 and a half hours, so I might as well sleep a bit before that.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Pain and suffering
Pain and suffering just got a new definition after today. Mental pain, emotional pain? Those are for wussies. Real men get their pain in the only real form: physical pain. Todays experience in pain originates not from previously mentioned maxillofacial surgeries, but instead from the Helsinki City Run, the half-marathon little sister of the Helsinki City Marathon. Sufficient to say, the time was appalling; 2 hours and 31 minutes. Some people will know that I was targetting 2 hours and 30 minutes, but deep down I was somewhat confident that I could achieve a better time. But disaster struck in many forms and ultimately it was my own stupidity that caused me to get knocked from my 2 hour target down 25%.
First of all, saying that I've neglected my training would be an understatement. This is the primary reason for the headaches lateron. No explanations, I just dropped the ball here. Secondly, my approach to eating properly and getting enough energy right before the run (i.e. today and yesterday) was very appalling and at the starting line I was already cursing for not having had more to drink earlier in the day.
The race was started in three waves, which depended on the target times you had given the organizers. I was in the third wave, more than halfway behind the front. The start was slow due to the amounts of people running. So my first mistake of the run was when I got fed up with the situation and started passing by people while trying to clear room for myself. Silly idea; I ended up starting too fast. At the ten kilometer mark I noticed that I was doing a respectable one hour per kilometer pace, but that was obviously way too fast for me. The problems for me started at around the 13 kilometer mark, slightly before the third watering point. This was when my pace started to drop a bit. At the 16 kilometer mark I hit a wall, just one kilometer before the last watering point. I couldn't help but slow down and walk. I had more or less killed my legs.
Deciding to walk is in no way a shameful thing, in my books at least. But it does bring some new problems. The temperatures were already falling, my legs were burning acid, and I passed the last watering point and drank too many (two) glasses of Gatorade. I didn't feel like running, so I continued to walk with a quick pace. But I was walking for too long, since the coldness hit in and after that even thinking about running was pretty much out of the question. Only half a kilometer before the finish line did I decide to start running. So this more or less destroyed all hopes for a respectable time.
Some other practical issues further helping with the downfall was that for some reason the chest plate of my heartrate monitor wasn't working and I wasn't getting any heartrate levels, so I was feeling with gut instinct, which in my case is pretty much nonexistent. Additionally I wasn't able to spot any rabbits or pacesetters of any sort nearby and I didn't have any sort of method of getting feedback on the pace that I was running, aside from doing basic divisions at every kilometer mark. It is, of course, very debatable whether or not I would've understood that I was going way too fast in the first place, even if I'd had access to some sort of speed information.
So to sum it up, the experience was... Horrible. But teaching, in a way. I'm not sure that I'll even attempt to run a marathon this year, but I was thinking of seeing if there is some other half-marathon later in the summer in which I could participate...
Friday, May 09, 2008
The Son of Man
I'm on the right. The anonymous business man with a bowler hat. My friend is on the left.
And on a completely unrelated note, I've posted my BSc thesis, On Offshore Outsourcing Motivators, online. It's not a terribly good paper, but oh well. I guess it will pass anyway.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Wrapping things up
As an exercise it is quite a unique project to try to tie up all the loose ends in your life. The scenario is one where you put your life in pause for about a month and you have to leave it in a shape that is able to survive the pause without everything falling apart. It's not as trivial as it sounds, in fact. It's surprising how many todo-items one can have in a life and not really recognize it, and the rate at which new ones appear is even more amazing. One thing I've learned in the past few weeks is to just say no to things that I do not have time to do.
My personal project over the past years has been one which is reaching is culmination in about a week and a half and carries the name of orthognathic surgery. To summarize briefly for those of you who are not aware of the types of oral and maxillofacial surgeries, the purpose of the operation is to move the upper and lower jaws around to create a better fit. The motivations are primarily medical and secondarily cosmetic, although it is by no means a vanity affair due to the long time and quite a bit of pain associated with the process.
I personally classify facial surgeries amongst the most risky surgeries. The basis is in the fact that people create their self image based to a decently large degree on their face. If you look at images of people's bodies with faces covered, it is fairly difficult to determine who is in the picture. And when you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, you should always recognize yourself. But when you start changing things about your facial structure, the affects are enormous, especially on a psychological level. You may still recognize yourself from the image in the mirror, but regardless of how small the change, you're still not fully able to comprehend that it's you in the mirror. That sort of happened during the last surgery a bit over two years ago. And it will happen this time, too, with the exception that the changes will be slightly bigger.
But as an exercise in humility, I do warmly suggest taking part in operations like this. It does get you thinking quite a bit about who you are and how you define yourself. The positive part is that according to academic studies, the cosmetic enhancements afforded by the surgeries are also often very positive and while in Finland, you can also get the state to subsidize the otherwise very expensive process to a very large degree.
As for wrapping things up, I guess I have quite a way to go still. For some odd reason I'm still accepting more action points at work and I just noticed that I will not have the time or the energy to do all the exams that I had planned for this exam period. But regardless, I think that I will be able to get a satisfactory closure to this chapter by the end of next week. After that it'll be painkillers and golf for quite a while.
And on a completely different note, Nanda got my portrait finished recently and I'll be getting it to my flat in a couple of days. Hurray!
My personal project over the past years has been one which is reaching is culmination in about a week and a half and carries the name of orthognathic surgery. To summarize briefly for those of you who are not aware of the types of oral and maxillofacial surgeries, the purpose of the operation is to move the upper and lower jaws around to create a better fit. The motivations are primarily medical and secondarily cosmetic, although it is by no means a vanity affair due to the long time and quite a bit of pain associated with the process.
I personally classify facial surgeries amongst the most risky surgeries. The basis is in the fact that people create their self image based to a decently large degree on their face. If you look at images of people's bodies with faces covered, it is fairly difficult to determine who is in the picture. And when you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, you should always recognize yourself. But when you start changing things about your facial structure, the affects are enormous, especially on a psychological level. You may still recognize yourself from the image in the mirror, but regardless of how small the change, you're still not fully able to comprehend that it's you in the mirror. That sort of happened during the last surgery a bit over two years ago. And it will happen this time, too, with the exception that the changes will be slightly bigger.
But as an exercise in humility, I do warmly suggest taking part in operations like this. It does get you thinking quite a bit about who you are and how you define yourself. The positive part is that according to academic studies, the cosmetic enhancements afforded by the surgeries are also often very positive and while in Finland, you can also get the state to subsidize the otherwise very expensive process to a very large degree.
As for wrapping things up, I guess I have quite a way to go still. For some odd reason I'm still accepting more action points at work and I just noticed that I will not have the time or the energy to do all the exams that I had planned for this exam period. But regardless, I think that I will be able to get a satisfactory closure to this chapter by the end of next week. After that it'll be painkillers and golf for quite a while.
And on a completely different note, Nanda got my portrait finished recently and I'll be getting it to my flat in a couple of days. Hurray!
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Savile Row Revisited
I've been neglecting my blogroll recently, but it turns out that Thomas Mahon has in fact been busy again and there's a rather interesting 20 minute video on what he does and about bespoke clothing. I won't be a bore and drone on and on about this, so I'll just paste the video here...
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Competitiveness
We've all engaged in competitions from time to time, some of us more often than others. Some people enjoy competing and some shun it entirely. Usually the first forms of competitive behavior appear very early on as children. The competitive aspect might be argued to be one where the child feels that it has to compete for the attention of an adult. And then comes football (no, not the vulgar American version, but proper European football). And ice hockey. And golf. And school. And work. And so on. To say that I'm a competitive person would be worthy of an Understatement of the Year award.
Competitive situations, however, get out the bad things in me. In fact, that is one reason why I stopped actively engaging in sports competitions: winning wasn't everything, it was the only thing. Anything beside the first place was a disappointment and I was a very bad loser. So eventually I found the error of my ways and decided that competing is just silly and that I should just steer clear of such situations.
Recently I've taken a slight u-turn again and I've been thinking of where this non-competitive path has been leading me. In fact, even though I've been saying constantly that I'm not competing with anyone or anything, that's not entirely true. On some subconscious level I just couldn't turn the mode off. But, that might not actually be such a bad thing after all. I think that instead of treating competitions as something inherently bad, the problem was indeed with me and how I handled victories and defeats.
A life without competition is in fact terribly boring. Competitions don't even necessarily have to always be against other people. You can compete against yourself, also. Identify and push your own limits. Ayrton Senna has been quoted as saying (to paraphrase a bit) that every day a person should explore their limits and boundaries and push them a bit further, ever so slightly past the breaking point. It is this which in turn allows a person to achieve continuous development, an evolution of sorts. Some clever bloke could, for instance, tie this view to Nietzsche's teachings or alternatively to the views of growth by subjecting oneself to situations outside of one's comfort zone.
So in light of this, competitions are not only fun, but they're very useful. Granted, if competition is overdone, it might have some negative side-effects to it. But then again, overdoing anything is often bad. My fear is, however, that if one continues to avoid competitions, the end result is that of boring mediocrity. Of course different people perceive this topic differently, but I just have this feeling that either people who are able to elevate themselves above competitions are very smart or then they are very dumb. Maybe some day I'll figure out which. But in the mean time I just got my ticket to the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon that is taking place next weekend. That's a new frontier for me in which I can push my own limits and at the same time see how I fare against a friend of mine, who has apparently been ever so slightly (*cough*) more active in training for the event. So if I lose, and I most likely will, then it just goes to show that I've neglected the proper training routine and that I'm worse at running half-marathons than my friend is. But fortunately the positive thing about losing is that it is always very annoying, and the trick is to not make a habit out of it...
Competitive situations, however, get out the bad things in me. In fact, that is one reason why I stopped actively engaging in sports competitions: winning wasn't everything, it was the only thing. Anything beside the first place was a disappointment and I was a very bad loser. So eventually I found the error of my ways and decided that competing is just silly and that I should just steer clear of such situations.
Recently I've taken a slight u-turn again and I've been thinking of where this non-competitive path has been leading me. In fact, even though I've been saying constantly that I'm not competing with anyone or anything, that's not entirely true. On some subconscious level I just couldn't turn the mode off. But, that might not actually be such a bad thing after all. I think that instead of treating competitions as something inherently bad, the problem was indeed with me and how I handled victories and defeats.
A life without competition is in fact terribly boring. Competitions don't even necessarily have to always be against other people. You can compete against yourself, also. Identify and push your own limits. Ayrton Senna has been quoted as saying (to paraphrase a bit) that every day a person should explore their limits and boundaries and push them a bit further, ever so slightly past the breaking point. It is this which in turn allows a person to achieve continuous development, an evolution of sorts. Some clever bloke could, for instance, tie this view to Nietzsche's teachings or alternatively to the views of growth by subjecting oneself to situations outside of one's comfort zone.
So in light of this, competitions are not only fun, but they're very useful. Granted, if competition is overdone, it might have some negative side-effects to it. But then again, overdoing anything is often bad. My fear is, however, that if one continues to avoid competitions, the end result is that of boring mediocrity. Of course different people perceive this topic differently, but I just have this feeling that either people who are able to elevate themselves above competitions are very smart or then they are very dumb. Maybe some day I'll figure out which. But in the mean time I just got my ticket to the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon that is taking place next weekend. That's a new frontier for me in which I can push my own limits and at the same time see how I fare against a friend of mine, who has apparently been ever so slightly (*cough*) more active in training for the event. So if I lose, and I most likely will, then it just goes to show that I've neglected the proper training routine and that I'm worse at running half-marathons than my friend is. But fortunately the positive thing about losing is that it is always very annoying, and the trick is to not make a habit out of it...
Sunday, May 04, 2008
I'm a bad man
Recently there's been a prominent debate going on in the Finnish media surrounding women's studies and the related shebang. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I have no clue about the subject and the rationale behind it. Apparently it has something to do with the idea that sciences in general have traditionally been dominated by men and that they are based on the point-of-view of men and that because of this all things should be considered questionable. I don't see how gravity is a matter of opinion, but oh well, if it gives you kicks, go ahead and question it all you want.
Another view that I kept stumbling across that men have always dominated women. I'm of course young enough that I don't have any sort of real feeling about this, but I've been led to understand that traditionally men have indeed dominated the world more than women. These sorts of things can, I guess, be seen in the overall patriarchal way that the world has previously been run (e.g. men dominating politics, economics, etc.). Right now, however, it seems that things are going in the better direction and things like universal suffrage are considered obvious things. The problem I have with all this is that the previously mentioned views and the discussions tend to revolve around how badly women are treated and how unequal the world is--but only from the men vs. women axel.
Maybe I'm just stupid and dumb (and this is in fact very likely, all things considered), but I don't really see the point of the fight and how it is more important than just saying that inequality of rights between different groups is bad. Of course if I say that I think it is silly to continue fighting about how bad off women are thanks to the manipulative and bad men, I am of course an ignoramus and a racist. And of course the debate is important, at least to a certain extent. But how is it more important than if gaining equality between different races so that e.g. Jewish people wouldn't need to live in a world with anti-Semitism and that handicapped people wouldn't be disadvantaged when applying jobs.
And on the parallel of me being an idiot, I, for the love of life, can't understand why the discussion about genders is at all interesting. About half of the people are born as male, the other half as female. I'm a Finn and a friend of mine a Brit. I was born with green eyes and another friend of mine with blue eyes. Yet when discussing nationalities and the different colors of eyes, I don't get the feeling that I'm getting attacked. But every time the discussion turns to genders and women's studies, I get the feeling that by default I am a bad person, mainly because I happen to be a man.
But, maybe I've misunderstood the whole point. Regardless, I still have the gut feeling that this whole thing is more about pointing fingers at people than anything else and that the effort spent here could be used to accomplish more concrete results if people would just snap out of the pedantic asshole mode and start actually thinking about real problems that don't revolve around the fundamental question of what types of internal and external organs different people have. And do note that I've used the term "people" as opposed to "men and women". Because in the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't matter what gender you happen to be as there are more important problems at hand right now.
Another view that I kept stumbling across that men have always dominated women. I'm of course young enough that I don't have any sort of real feeling about this, but I've been led to understand that traditionally men have indeed dominated the world more than women. These sorts of things can, I guess, be seen in the overall patriarchal way that the world has previously been run (e.g. men dominating politics, economics, etc.). Right now, however, it seems that things are going in the better direction and things like universal suffrage are considered obvious things. The problem I have with all this is that the previously mentioned views and the discussions tend to revolve around how badly women are treated and how unequal the world is--but only from the men vs. women axel.
Maybe I'm just stupid and dumb (and this is in fact very likely, all things considered), but I don't really see the point of the fight and how it is more important than just saying that inequality of rights between different groups is bad. Of course if I say that I think it is silly to continue fighting about how bad off women are thanks to the manipulative and bad men, I am of course an ignoramus and a racist. And of course the debate is important, at least to a certain extent. But how is it more important than if gaining equality between different races so that e.g. Jewish people wouldn't need to live in a world with anti-Semitism and that handicapped people wouldn't be disadvantaged when applying jobs.
And on the parallel of me being an idiot, I, for the love of life, can't understand why the discussion about genders is at all interesting. About half of the people are born as male, the other half as female. I'm a Finn and a friend of mine a Brit. I was born with green eyes and another friend of mine with blue eyes. Yet when discussing nationalities and the different colors of eyes, I don't get the feeling that I'm getting attacked. But every time the discussion turns to genders and women's studies, I get the feeling that by default I am a bad person, mainly because I happen to be a man.
But, maybe I've misunderstood the whole point. Regardless, I still have the gut feeling that this whole thing is more about pointing fingers at people than anything else and that the effort spent here could be used to accomplish more concrete results if people would just snap out of the pedantic asshole mode and start actually thinking about real problems that don't revolve around the fundamental question of what types of internal and external organs different people have. And do note that I've used the term "people" as opposed to "men and women". Because in the grand scheme of things, it shouldn't matter what gender you happen to be as there are more important problems at hand right now.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Satisfaction
A core thing in life is happiness and everyone is making a scramble for it. It's a land grab, essentially, with the exception that whereas landgrabs are typically zero-sum games, happiness isn't. It's in fact a very typical case of a game where synergies can be witnessed. You can become happier when making other people also more happy--win-win. So everything's fine and dandy and we can all live happily ever after.
There are views that one way to achieve happiness is to be satisfied and content. The idea, I guess, is related to finding your own inner peace and silencing down your inner voices and discarding want. In an optimal situation you would be without want and just content with everything, at balance.
The general idea is good and again has plenty to do with finding equilibriums. But I can't help but reflect a bit on satisfaction. I'm of course nowhere near any sort of balance (in fact I'm more or less recklessly flying from one maximum to another), but I still get the feeling that whereas you're supposed to calm down your wants and search for satisfaction, I can't help but think that instead of traveling in a train full of screaming children, I would be a lot more content and satisfied with traveling in a quiet and elegant Jaguar XF while listening to Astrud Gilberto sing The Girl From Ipanema. This also extends to many other aspects of life as well. Now the holier people will point out that I'm again wanting things, but oh well. I still think that if just being "satisfied" and "content" is the key to happiness, I want to be satisfied and content in peace and quiet, and in style.
There are views that one way to achieve happiness is to be satisfied and content. The idea, I guess, is related to finding your own inner peace and silencing down your inner voices and discarding want. In an optimal situation you would be without want and just content with everything, at balance.
The general idea is good and again has plenty to do with finding equilibriums. But I can't help but reflect a bit on satisfaction. I'm of course nowhere near any sort of balance (in fact I'm more or less recklessly flying from one maximum to another), but I still get the feeling that whereas you're supposed to calm down your wants and search for satisfaction, I can't help but think that instead of traveling in a train full of screaming children, I would be a lot more content and satisfied with traveling in a quiet and elegant Jaguar XF while listening to Astrud Gilberto sing The Girl From Ipanema. This also extends to many other aspects of life as well. Now the holier people will point out that I'm again wanting things, but oh well. I still think that if just being "satisfied" and "content" is the key to happiness, I want to be satisfied and content in peace and quiet, and in style.
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