Tekstit

Sateenkaarisukulaiset

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Suomen kieltä pidetään kielioppinsa vuoksi vaikeana, ovathan 15 sijamuotoa harvinainen tapa hoitaa se, minkä useimmat kielet hoitavat prepositioin. Silti, suomalaisille nuo sijamuodot eivät suinkaan liene yhtä vaikea osa suomea kuin esimerkiksi yhdyssanat. Tai ne viheliäiset perheen nimet: kuka se kyty olikaan, vai onko se lanko? Pride -viikon ajankohtainen huomio on, että suomen varsin tarkat perheen nimet - ja myös esimerkiksi ruotsin ja englannin svär-  ja in-law -johdannaiset - ovat sukupuolittavat ja vanhanaikaiset. Perhesuhteen lisäksi ne vaihtelevat sukupuolen mukaan. Ovat leimaavat suorastaan: eihän esimerkiksi appia voi vihata kuten anoppia. Natoon ei ole syytä mennä! Naimisiin kuitenkin, muuten ei ansaitse perhenimistä moniakaan, ellei nyt sitten sanota vaikka avovävy tai avoanoppi! Ruotsinkielessä on jo otettu käyttöön suomenkielen inspiroimana yleispronomi hen  merkitsemään samaa kuin hän , ja kovaa vauhtia se korvaa sanat hon ja han . Samalla tavalla voisimme nyt suome
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The big deal of small talk

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To some of us, small talk is a big deal. Why is that? The whole activity is merely aiming at opening up a conversation, not to be a full display of character. But is that the point, that in order to properly open up a conversation, you need somehow to show your true colours? Ideally, you would be entertaining, either leading up to small jokes or at least wittily leaning into them when they are served. Whatever the case, I have learned that small talk can be made a lot easier by following a few simple rules. First, be prepared. You are usually not in  a situation where a need to small talk arises unexpetedly, and hence you can prepare a few subjects of you own before going to a cocktail party of a seminar. Or you can, to make sure you are always prepared, think of  a few opening lines every morning so that if a sudden small talk situation arises, you are not coming out of the blue. Second, stick to suitable subjects. Here the FORD rule is a good formula. Friends, Occupation, Rec
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Bionics is unnatural - no, wait, natural

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In the case of scientific enhancement of healthy humans – bionics – much of the ethical argumentation for and against it seems to revolve around whether or not it is natural. While it is is a  naturalistic fallacy  to draw moral conclusions from such claims, as David Hume and G.E. Moore have taught us not to do, this is often done. I suppose there are few who would say it is not OK to rescue lives using implantable machines but how about enhancing the body and/or mind of those in no need of rescuing? You can, clearly, say that it is not natural to implant things into a person who was born one way. On the other hand, you may say it is natural to do so, as it is a next logical step in the evolution of mankind, and Darwinian evolution is natural. Both claims have their merits, and his shows that, it matters  what kind of natural  you mean. If you want to entangle your ethics in the question of naturalism, you need to choose. There are some alternatives for the moral d
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Teen spirit

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Those who were of a certain age in the heyday of grunge music really know what teen spirit smells like. We, who missed that, have to settle for our own experiences for such olfactory impressions. As father to two teen-age daughters, who are quite well brought up in matters of hygiene, this is seldom something I encounter, though it is a familiar phenomenon since sometimes a band of teens of both sexes invade the house, leaving after them... well, you know, some teen spirit. What I frequently meet, though, are a few teen-behaviours worthy of neologisms for their proper understanding and inclusion into our language: Teen spilling   (noun. Swe:Tonårsrest, Fin: Teinijätös)  is one of my favourite frustrations. It means that little drop of milk left in the container or that last one biscuit in the box of cookies, left for the impression that all did not run out and - I believe above all - so that the teenager would be spared dealing with the waste. My younger daughter, in particular, is suf
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Honestly

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I will know an honest man when he lies about being so I am sure you have all encountered, and perhaps done it yourself, that a sentence is started with " honestly..."  or " to be honest..."  or some similar token of intended special sincerity . It is a peculiar thing to say. Is it to be taken that the speaker otherwise is not speaking in earnest, that nothing else said has been or will be honest or true? Or, as I would like to think, so that what follows is something that should be treated with elevated suspicion? There is a company in the United States that is called Honest Inc.and it runs the website honest.com, peddling consumer goods. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would ever trust shopping there. I have sometimes had a tricky relationship with the truth. As I child, I would have rather lied than take the consequences of something bad I did, and so I did. And lied about lying. Later in life,  to be honest,  I have not had dif
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Killing your darlings

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I know this is horribly pretentious, but let me tell you one thing I have discovered about penmanship: It is much more about deleting than writing. Taken quite literally, it has to be a little bit more writing than deleting, since eventually there is some text on the screen or paper, but as an activity on the whole, the  art of removal  is what makes for good or bad prose. Deletion, selection, deletion, correction and so forth. I have worked somewhat with business development. The same laws of intellectual selection apply there. You and your team will have many more ideas than you will ever try out on the market. Of course, this is well known, and today business schools will even teach you to  fail fast , meaning, I suppose, that looking for a winner, you should actually carry out much more than will ever fly. Doing that in business, my money would run out too soon for even a few of my ideas, but writing does not cost a penny and it is fun. I think everyone should do it. Keep a diary.
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Loskaeetos

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Me suomalaiset olemme tottuneet syys-talvisin, keväisinkin, rämpimään loskassa. Siitä käsittääkseni sai nimensä Miki Kuusen ja hänen kumppaniviisikkonsa vuonna 2008 perustama start-up -yritystapahtuma Loska, eli Slush . Virallisen tiedon, eli Wikipedian, mukaan " Slushin tavoitteena on saattaa yhteen kansainvälisiä kasvuyrityksiä, sijoittajia ja mediaa sekä auttaa yrittäjiä menestymään ja nostamaan yrityksensä maailman parhaaksi valitsemallaan toimialalla. " Tavoite on kunnianhimoinen ja kannatettava. Sanon nyt heti, että en ole käynyt tapahtumassa, enkä siten tietenkään voi arvioida sen sisältöä. Sen verran kuitenkin seuraan aikaani, että olen huomannut minkälaista yrittäjäeetosta se ruokkii. Tiedän myös, että tapahtuman huipennus on Pitching-kilpailu, jossa yrittäjiä palkitaan siitä, että osaavat esittää myyvästi liikeideansa, osoittavat kykynsä myydä yrityksensä osakkeita, ei niinkään tuotteita. Varmasti tapahtumalla on meriittinsä, mutta se myös palvoo yrittäjäkuvaa
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