For the last month, there's been a discussion in Blogland about the town and gown divide and the problems of PhD programs in particular. Dorothea Salo seems to have kicked it off (see here and here), followed by Naomi (featuring Tim Burke in the comments, follow-up post here), Renee, Alex Golub (cannot find the post I remembered, but see "Microcosmographica Academica," March 13), Alex Halavais, and others.

I have plenty to say about this, but no time to say it and no conviction I won't change my mind tomorrow, so I'm saving most of it for that wonderful time after I finish my degree and fix up the essay section here. I will say now, though, that the single most irrational thing about academia for me is the dysfunctional money and career planning habits that the ivory tower life encourages and indeed, almost requires. Along these lines I was interested by some peripheral comments in the discussion (blue type is them, black type is me):

What's struck me most forcefully in my very limited sample set is the overwhelming extent to which one's status as sheep or goat seems to have been determined by a single factor: the relationship with one's doctoral advisor. (The Bellona Times, start reading with Proselytizers and Apostates. Oh, and my doctoral advisor just won a big teaching award, thank you for asking.)

Midway through my much-aided private college education, the Reagan administration started making Academe a gated community. The results were apparent by the time I graduated ... (The Bellona Times again, here and be sure to follow the link to here. This applies at the graduate level as well; that is, the opportunity cost for graduate school, especially in the US, is getting so high that you run an increasing risk of getting not always the brightest researchers and teachers, but the ones who can most afford that career relative to their other chances. This was always somewhat true, but more so after tuition hyperinflation started and after they started taxing graduate incomes in the mid-80s.)

[The view from inside the academy on what to do with the surplus PhDs we produce is:] 'let's continue to recruit people into our graduate programs even though we know they'll never find full-time work in the academy; after all, they can always find work afterwards as ... well, as something or other, Hollywood screenwriters or something...; [we] can't think of anything too specific, but the Ph.D. must surely serve as preparation for a wide variety of nonacademic careers.' I find this intellectually specious and morally bankrupt. (Slightly reformatted rendering of a view from The Invisible Adjunct, see posts here and here and (this just in, and it's a zinger) here, and maybe the workplace happiness task force I'm serving on would like to read about academic therapy as well)

This line intentionally left blank.
. . . posted by Diana 3/28/2003 03:49:05 AM

I missed the Oscar broadcast on Wednesday because I was staying up all night in my office to meet a deadline. I wonder how old I will be when I pull my last all-nighter - for something I have to do, I mean. I was sorry to miss the awards, not that I'm such a big movie fan, but it's something one must see in order to keep up with the culture. Kymm saw it though, and her synopsis is almost as good as being there:

Jennifer Garner is wearing a colour! A bright colour! Is that not against the rules of Life During Wartime? Blacks and dulls only, I'm certain that that was what the memo said. Stone the frivolous bitch!!

Geena Davis no longer dresses like an insane person. I'd say that's a shame, it was always one of the more interesting parts of Oscars past, trying to figure out what the hell she was thinking. Although the blue aviator glasses do give one pause.

Documentary Feature. As though anything besides Bowling For Columbine has a chance to win. And of course I was right. Are we sure that's Michael Moore? I've never seen him without his baseball cap, it could be a ringer. Ah no, he's talking about the war and the president as no-one else would, it's Michael Moore alright. Whether you agree with his views or not, you can't help but admire his great clanking balls of bronze. He must have to have his trousers especially made.

Full report here.
. . . posted by Diana 3/28/2003 03:03:34 AM

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Within 24 hours after getting the fifth largest number of votes of any candidate [1], Tony Halme had his first scandal. He called President Halonen a lesbian on a radio show - apparently, this is an insult - and then apologized under duress and amended it to "former president of SETA" (the national gay league, it's a longstanding item on her CV). A list of his other insults about "Somalit," "neekerit," foreigners, women, and so on is making the mailing list rounds. Tony Halme, MP for the Redneck Party - he'll be here till 2007, folks, try the reindeer fricassee.

Also: it just wouldn't be a war without a George Lakoff rant. I can't believe I've only gotten one copy of this so far, from the systemic functionalist list; the other 30 linguistics lists are sure to have it by the end of the week, plus rebuttals.

[1] This is called being a "vote rake" (ääniharava) or a "vote vacuum" (ääni-imuri). I also saw something like "vote hoard" (äänirohmu) this time around, referring to Miss Finland (third in the popularity contest).
. . . posted by Diana 3/19/2003 01:39:32 PM

Monday, March 17, 2003

I was wrong about everything, of course. The Center Party won the largest number of seats, mainly on the strength of voters in the provinces wanting a change; SDP still got the most votes in Helsinki and increased their number of seats. Anneli Jääteenmäki will most likely be the first woman Prime Minister; I didn't even realize this would be a first, since we're all now used to Tarja Halonen as president and Riitta Uosukainen (who just retired) as speaker of Parliament. It seems likely that there will be a Center-SDP government, with the Coalition, who lost seats, left out.

None of the hopeful new faces I listed two days ago got in, though Johanna Sumuvuori was agonizingly close - at one point the TV showed her picture and said she was probably going to get in, then rescinded it as the Greens lost a seat. For the most part, incumbents and ex-MPs who spent a few years at the European Parliament were re-elected. This is an older Parliament than the last two. But there were still some unconventional winners: singer Mikko Alatalo, track and field star Sari Essayah, shipyards magnate Martin Saarikangas [1], and professional boxer and writer Tony "Viking" Halme, who represents a tiny party that nobody was taking seriously, called the Perussuomalaiset ("Fundamental/Basic Finns," though their preferred translation is "True Finns").

Now the log cabins are being dismantled and the bouquets of party balloons that floated from prams on Saturday are gone - along with the brief liminal euphoria of election day. The weather is turning cold again and all the news is bad.

[1] who also holds the antiquated honorary government post of Titular Mining Counsellor, which sounds like something out of early Isaac Asimov. There are also Minister Counsellors, a higher honorary post that I've heard your friends can buy for you.
. . . posted by Diana 3/17/2003 09:01:19 AM

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Today was practically the only day of the election season with decent weather, and the candidates were out in force around their temporary clubhouses (picture to come). I accepted a Green Party newspaper from Minerva Krohn, Irina's lookalike sister, who is a doctor; a Leena Harkimo [1] jacket reflector from a Coalition person; a postcard of Anneli Jääteenmäki [2] from a Center Party person; and various ephemera from the Left League; and then Tuija Brax gave me an official Green Party compost bag with pictures of her and Heidi Hautala on it, to put the whole mess into.

[1] Leena Harkimo, MP, is the soon-to-be ex-wife of Hjallis Harkimo, the chinless playboy owner of the big hockey club Jokerit (the Jokers) [3]. The link is to a page of jokes about him. If I understand the supermarket magazines correctly, he has taken up with a young Green Party MP, Merikukka Forsius, whose first name could be translated as Seaflower, and who says, "He isn't funding my campaign - we don't discuss money."

[2] If the Center Party gets the largest number of votes, Jääteenmäki will probably be the next Prime Minister. She is fairly conservative for Finland - makes noises about law and order, and tax breaks to stimulate small business - but still, according to her platform, ten miles to the left of Margaret Thatcher and five miles to the left of Tony Blair. Practically the only scandal of the campaign was when she tried to imply Lipponen was more in favor of war in Iraq than he was, giving her the peace position. And if the Social Democrats get the largest number of votes, we're looking at a Lipponen III government, whose strongest recommendation resembles the lackluster incumbent campaign went in Wag the Dog: "Don't change horses in midstream."

[3] This is not the silliest hockey team name in Finland, by far. There is one up north that translates as "the Ermines" or "the Stoats."

The rather posh election cabin belonging to the Coalition Party.
. . . posted by Diana 3/15/2003 09:19:16 AM

Friday, March 14, 2003

On Sunday, Finnish citizens will vote in the most boring parliamentary election ever - I'm an election junkie and even I think it is boring. The only certainty is that a few very young women [1] or otherwise supposedly unconventional candidates [2] will be elected and the press will be all over them as if they are real groundbreakers and this proves that democracy works [3]. And of course it is good that the Finnish parliament is demographically diverse, represents the population more accurately than most legislatures do, and so on.

But at the same time, very little has been said during the campaign, or will be said during the results coverage about what the sitting MPs have actually done, and what the candidate MPs promise to do. The reason for this is not simply that politics has turned into a superficial beauty contest; there are structural factors involved [3]. In many other countries, there is an upper and a lower house, and the lower house members at least represent a specific patch of land whose residents they are expected to serve. In Finland, the seats are divided into 15 regional groups. There are 20 MPs from Helsinki at the moment, each of whom represents all of Helsinki, and there are 225 people running for those seats, including plenty of teachers and housewives and scientists and nurses who are not going to get in, but are helping gather votes from their friends and demographic peers for the parties they represent. The party gets seats based on its total number of votes, so votes for losing candidates are never entirely wasted.

Since there are 20 MPs from Helsinki, it becomes very difficult for any one of them to claim credit for anything good that the national government has done for the city. It's also difficult because much of the decisionmaking is done before debate meetings, rather than through them; and because there doesn't seem to be a culture of claiming authorship of a particular bill. The government writes bills, or parties working together in committees write bills. Even if it's the government, which these days is a coalition of just about all the parties except for the Flat Earth Party and the Meadow Party, you're still not going to hear people referring to a law as "The Lipponen Act." The group structure also makes it very difficult to blame any individual for representing you badly, because they can just shift the blame to the other local reps from the other parties [4].

Hence, the beauty contest.

And hence also the popularity of the various "vaalikones" (election machines) where you answer some questions and they tell you which candidates are closest to your views - although it's frequently acknowledged that you could go take the Which Buffy Character Are You? quiz and it would be about as helpful. See the Helsingin Sanomat vaalikone, YLE vaalikone, and MTV3 vaalikone (thanks to Ernestiina for the links).

[1] For example: in 1995, Säde Tahvanainen (Social Democrat from Joensuu, then 22); Janina Andersson and environmental lawyer Tuija Brax (Greens); kewpie doll Kirsi Piha (Coalition, the businessy party) who is now retiring to be a talk show host. In the 1996 EU elections, skiing champion Marjo Matikainen-Kallström (Coalition). In 1999, rock lyricist and single motherhood poster child Anni Sinnemäki (Greens).

[2] For example: in 1995, beret-wearing beatnik psychologist Veltto Virtanen (independent) and theater director Irina Krohn (Greens); in 1999, former Miss Finland Tanja Karpela (Center, the agrarian party).

[3] Possible fresh young faces this time: Johanna Sumuvuori (Greens), Aysu Shakir (SDP), Timo Riitamaa (Greens) (these three are already being treated as celebrities by the student newspaper), Sanna Hellström (Greens), Paavo Arhimäki (Left League, which begs to be distinguished from the two different hardcore Communist parties), Markus Drake (Greens, recently removed from the presidency of the Young Greens - at least I think that's what the Metro article said - for smoking dope in the Green party clubhouse - the log cabin outside Stockmann's where they hand out campaign materials). Most of these people were sitting in the Helsinki Student Union a few years ago when I was an alternate there.

[4] There are also historical reasons as well why this is a particularly vague election - for example, the public has now made the association between tax cuts and service cuts, so none of the major parties can loudly promise tax cuts although the Center Party is suggesting tax breaks for small business. The next four years are going to be a grim business of slicing a shrinking pie and everyone knows it.

[5] Except for the guy from Åland. Since he's the only MP from there, he has to run on his record.
. . . posted by Diana 3/14/2003 07:20:02 AM

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Most of my ballet classes take place on the heavy-industry side of Sörnäinen, in an area I have come to think of as the Fight Club district because of its unusual number of martial arts schools. On the main road is the judo place Anna-Maria used to take classes at, and a store selling gis and belts. For a while there was a tae kwon do school operating out of a fallout shelter (see below). In the same building as the ballet school there is something called the Combat Academy of Finland, which in the absence of an indigenous Finnish martial art specializes in krav maga, the fighting technique the Israeli army inherited from the Slovakian resistance. According to its fliers the Combat Academy also teaches "kickboxing, thaiboxing, shootfighting, jujutsu, boxing, ladythai, wingtsun and kali." I'm not sure what half of those are but I walk cautiously in Sörnäinen.

The classes I take are taught by Taru (not her real name), a young ballet teacher I loathed on sight when she substituted for my regular teacher last year. She looked exactly like the ballet dancer on a child's jewel box, little and blonde with a gauze skirt on over her leotard, and her style of dancing was simply obnoxious. It was what Edward Gorey has described as "all mannerisms," what Mark Morris has described as "dancing at you instead of for you," and what Dave Barry described in a recent column as "mincing." She minced. That was when she wasn't showing off how high she could kick and doing the "I can practically go on pointe in my bare feet and you can't" thing.

And yet a year later, here I am voluntarily taking class with this person. Why? For one thing, I had to admit she was a good teacher for my needs, explaining things rather more thoroughly than the average for a dance teacher (which is hardly at all). She learned everybody's name and gave reasonable corrections. She has also toned down the showoffiness and pointe dicksizing quite a bit. But the interesting thing was what happened when she got us in a regular class of her own. She invented torturous exercises, during which she would sit on a campstool and scream at us something like the following:

"NYT ROHKEASTI! TAISTELE! PYSY! PYSYPYSYPYSY! SITKEÄSTI! LOPPUUN ASTI! VIELÄ KYMMENEN SEKUNTIÄ! PYSY! ÄLÄ ANNA PERIKSI! ROHKEASTI! KORKEAT JÄLÄT! TAISTELEEEE! IHAN LOPPUUN ASTI!"

This sounds to me not like what ballet mistresses in the movies say to their classes, but what drill sergeants in the movies say to their corps. Roughly:

"NOW BOLDLY! FIGHT! KEEP IT UP! KEEPITUPKEEPITUPKEEPITUP! BE TOUGH! RIGHT TO THE END! TEN MORE SECONDS! KEEP IT UP! DON'T GIVE UP! BRAVELY! LEGS HIGH! KEEP STRUGGLING! BATTLE IT OUT! RIGHT TO THE END!"

In other words, in her head, she's running her own Fight Club.

The word that's conspicuously missing from her script is sisu, which foreigners are told is an untranslatably Finnish concept referring to fortitude in the face of hardship. It took me about five years to work out that a) it isn't untranslatably Finnish at all, since it literally means 'guts'; and b) nobody actually uses it, except when trying to impress foreigners. I've come across it a couple of times as a brand name (it's the name a very popular species of licorice, for example), but never in real life [1]. I've listened to many Independence Day and war anniversary and election speeches where you would expect to hear such a word - and never heard it. While Taru's fight words are the substance and sinew of those texts.

[1] Naturally as soon as I finished typing out that bit of snark, I started to come across sisu everywhere - in a book on Finnishness as a strategy, in an election slogan "Sydäntä ja sisua" ("Heart and guts"), for example. Clearly this bears looking into.
. . . posted by Diana 3/12/2003 08:17:18 AM

The answer to What's That appears in the comments below.
. . . posted by Diana 3/12/2003 07:57:58 AM

Monday, March 03, 2003

What's this? #2
If you know for sure, don't say it right away - make something up instead. You will need this image to properly appreciate the next entry.
. . . posted by Diana 3/3/2003 08:44:55 AM

Cigarette packaging in Finland is different. It's not just that there are unfamiliar off-brands like North State, Colt, and numbers 1, 3, and 5 in addition to the imported Marlboros and Camels; it's not just that the packages are delivered through oddly shaped vending machines at the supermarket checkout, it's the fact that they have serious warnings on them, warnings that would warm the heart of a militant antismoker - none of these discreet little Surgeon General Says footnotes for the Finns. Two of the following notices appear on the plastic wrapping of each pack of cigarettes, in big letters that take up two thirds of the front and back [1], with a black border around them:

Smoking can shorten lifespan.

Pharmacists and doctors can help you quit smoking.

Protect children - don't force them to breathe cigarette smoke.

Smoking can weaken circulation and cause impotence.

Smoking can endanger sperm and reduce fertility.

Pretty serious warnings, right? I never heard the ones about impotence and fertility before, which points to either exaggeration on one side or a coverup on the other. Not that any of it seems to stop people - 20 percent of Finnish men and 25 percent of Finnish women smoke, according to official statistics.

[1] And could be even bigger if they didn't have to be in both Finnish and Swedish.
. . . posted by Diana 3/3/2003 07:43:54 AM

July 2002, August 2002, September 2002
April 2002, May 2002, June 2002
January 2002, February 2002, March 2002
October 2001, November 2001, December 2001
July 2001, August 2001, September 2001
April 2001, May 2001, June 2001
January 2001, February 2001, March 2001
October 2000, November 2000, December 2000
July 2000, August 2000, September 2000
May 2000, June 2000