Go stand on a highway

I saw a demonstration of environmentalists today.

It made me feel like buying a car. Not because I am a contrarian bitch, although I do have those moments, but simply because I wanted to get home and the fuckers filled pretty much the whole width of Aleksanterinkatu and the trams weren't moving.

Downtown Helsinki has enough open space for people to demonstrate without blocking all the traffic in some particular place. For some reason every time I see a demonstration blocking all the traffic it's either the environmentalists or the "youths" supporting some squatters. Even the "peace marchers" with Hezbollah flags and t-shirts saying "bomb Israel" had the decency to let the trams through. The environmentalist cause is apparently too important for worrying about the mundane things like the reasonably smooth running of public transportation.

Also for some reason they tend to demonstrate right in the places where a lot of trams run (oh well, the places where the trams are supposed to run and usually do when the environmentalists are not there blocking the traffic). Has anyone ever heard of environmentalists demonstrating against the climate change on Kehä III? Me neither.

Not that I would really want them to block the traffic there either, but at least it would be more consistent than blocking the public transportation in the center of the city.

Could it be that they find it difficult to get there without cars? Maybe the effort of doing so would teach them why people who live there usually own cars in the first place.

A felon refugee camp?

One of the problems with the refugee admission systems in Europe is that if a refugee or even an asylum seeker turns out to be a serious criminal, you can't send them back like any other foreigner: either they might be in danger in their country of origin, or the return is for some reason technically impossible.

I think that the solution for this problem can and should be provided by the UN, in the same spirit of cooperation in which the countries accept refugees from the UN refugee camps.

The UN can establish a separate camp for the refugees whom their host countries have chosen to deport for being convicted felons. It should be separate from the normal refugee camps, and preferably far away from any local populations.

This should not be a punishment or prison camp. The idea is to provide convicted felons who have already served their time with a reasonably safe place to live if their country of citizenship is too dangerous to go to, and their habitual country of residence has kicked them out for being too much of a criminal. The standard of living should be about average for a UN refugee camp that's not in war zone. The residents should of course be free to leave at any time if they decide that their country of citizenship is not that dangerous after all, or if some new idiots decide to take them in.

I am sure this would greatly improve the goodwill of citizens towards the refugees.

Responsible adults

From a certain forum (link omitted to protect the guilty):

"We didn't use any birth control, because we are adults and know how to avoid an unwanted pregnancy."

- a woman asking advice on obtaining an abortion, referring to a coitus interruptus that turned out to be somewhat uninterrupted.

A thought for the day

Friendly teasing only works with actual friends.

Relatives are weird creatures

One of my cousins contacted me on Skype about six months ago, and we've been chatting occasionally ever since. Today was one of those days, and it brought a revelation.

Him: Hey Lida!

I do actually answer to that name, due to having had an elderly grandmother who used to confuse people's names. Here, however, after a minute of reflection I remembered that he is neither elderly nor my grandmother, and made a brilliant, though, as it turned out, erroneous deduction that he actually wanted to talk to Lida and clicked the wrong line in Skype. I decided to set him right.

Me: Hi! I am not Lida.

Him: Oops... Who ARE you?

Me: Vera.

Him: Oops... I thought you were Lida all that time.

Mind you, Lida does not share my last name, which also happens to be my Skype username. Go figure...

It must be contagious, because this cousin's wife has recently sent me a couple of emails under the mistaken assumption that I am my father.

Next year, a special program for Martians...

The Foreign Ministry says that more than half of the diplomas of the West African students who have applied for residence permits in June and July on order to study in Hamk are in fact fake.

The applicants are mostly from Ghana and Nigeria, and were selected in a test that was given in Ghana after 4 out of 5 Hamk's English-language technical programs turned out to be almost empty.

I am not asking why the students faked the papers. I'd probably do the same. I wanna know why the hell Hamk has 5 English-language programs, 4 of which are almost empty.

Hamk or Hämeen korkeakoulu is a technical college of about 7000 students in the historical province of Häme, which is now three smaller provinces. It has five degree programs in English, out of the total of 25: Automation Engineering, Construction Engineering, International Business, Mechanical Engineering and Production Technology, and Supply Chain Management. They are starting the sixth this fall: Industrial Management.

There are 1301 English-speaking people living in Häme, out of 22192 foreign language speakers, and a total population of 854593. Does this maybe explain why they are having a bit of trouble finding folks willing to study Supply Chain Management in English? Maybe somebody in there should also study demand a little bit? Maybe having 20% of the study programs in English is not such a bright idea in an area where 97% of population are Finnish speakers?

Finland offers free education to foreigners, including non-EU foreigners. It's very nice of them to do, of course, and I have myself benefited from that in my own time. However, from Finland's point of view I can see only two purposes in such generosity: getting some new educated workforce, or spreading and promoting the Finnish culture around the world. I don't see how having foreigners in their own separate English-language programs can benefit either of these.

It's even worse if those programs are meant for the foreign-born young people who are already living in Finland. How do they expect them to integrate and find work if their college environment is all English-speaking and if they don't speak Finnish in the first place? Yes, high-tech fields do accept non-Finnish-speaking employees, but in general this is Finland, and people speak Finnish here. OK, they speak Swedish in some places, but Häme isn't one of them. Not speaking any Finnish is a serious disadvantage, and not speaking any Finnish after having graduated from a Finnish college is even more so.

I don't mind it if some Africans with a genuine interest in Finland come to study something useful in some normal Finnish study program and stay to work, or even go back. I do mind spending the taxpayer money for a number of absolutely useless programs that the school cannot even fill without a hunting trip abroad.

At least it's not a capital offense...

A friend of mine is on trial tomorrow. For blasphemy, among other things. In Finland.

That's one thing I'd never expected to say outside of the role-playing game context, but it does unfortunately happen to be the case in real life.

The blasphemy consisted of saying that a certain prophet (police be upon him) liked children in more ways than one. I'd rather not be more specific, lest the holy inquisition thinks that I harbor some impure thoughts as well.

Instead I'll quote from Ayatollah Khomeini, the respected Shi'a religious authority who married a 10-year-old girl at the age of 27 (Clarification of Questions):

#2410. If a person contracts for himself a girl who has not reached puberty and before she finishes her ninth year enters the girl he must never have intercourse with her in case he causes her path of urine and menses or that of menses and stool to become one.

#2459. It is recommended that one hurries in giving husband to a daughter who has attained puberty, meaning that she is of the age of religious accountability. His Holiness, Sadegh, salutations to him, bade that it is one of a man's good fortunes that his daughter does not see menses in his own house.

And lest we forget the Sunnis, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh: "It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger. A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."

Khomeini is dead, but I am sure the Finnish authorities can try the Grand Mufti if he ever visits here. For defamation of his religion.

I can't brain today. I has the dumb.

I forgot a beer in the freezer, and the ice cream outside of the freezer. Three times today. I also forgot the butter somewhere, and am still looking for it. I was supposed to do some things, and I am sure I forgot half of them.

Usually this happens to me under severe stress, but currently the level of stress is just somewhere slightly above average. I guess sleeping five hours a day is starting to get to me.

I rarely manage to fall asleep before two, and at seven the evildoers start doing their work. Evil work. For whatever reason all the buildings in our yards decided to fix their yardward surfaces right now, and each hired a team of manic workaholic sociopaths who start their work every morning at seven with some very loud drilling.

Incidentally, if you read in the news that a naked woman attacked some construction workers with a steak knife, cut their hands and other useful organs off, and drilled overy one of their teeth with their own drills, remind the police that I would never do anything like that.

I took some work home over the weekend, and have been on call, too. Imagine my suprise when our VPN told me to bugger off. I don't know who broke it again, but currently the only thing that stands between our sysadmins and a heinous act of sadistic sodomy is the idea the sick leave resulting from shoving all our media object backups up their collective anus will further delay the VPN repair.

Hurrah!

One of my favorite blogs is active again.

The parents of the year and bad English

A few weeks ago there was a girl raped in Arizona. An 8-year-old girl, raped by 4 boys aged 14, 13, 10 and 9. All the participants were from Liberia.

This is quite a newsworthy event in and of itself, but it made really big news when the parents of the girl disowned her for dishonoring the family. They also said that they don't think anything should be done to the boys.

Now the parents are denying it, saying that they were misunderstood because of their poor English. I think they are lying, because the girl's older sister said pretty much the same thing, two different police investigators said it was not a misunderstanding, and various Liberian powers-that-be behaved like it was an unfortunate cultural feature, rather than shocking news.

If the family tried to avoid whatever shame having a raped daughter brings in Liberia, it didn't work. If the parents of the year had at least pretended to be real parents, the story might have never gone far beyond Arizona. Now even the Liberian president got to comment on it, so at least all Liberia knows what happened and probably who they are. Hope the child protection services find the child some better parents. Also hope that at least some Liberian parents - I am not holding breath for these particular ones - drew sensible conclusions from the event.

Anyway: the whole bunch of fuckers is suddenly unable to speak English. The parents, who say they came to the US 5 years ago, also claim thet they thought that "it's her fault" and "take her, I don't want her" actually meant "we love our dear girl and want to help her". Steven Tuopeh, the 14-year-old who is being tried as an adult, has come to the US in 2005 and "has limited understanding of English". The uncle of the two youngest boys, aged 9 and 10 (in some sources, 9 and 9) says that they came to the US 6 years ago and speak very limited English.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? I went to high school in the US; everyone who'd been there for 2 years understood English well and spoke it tolerably, regardless of whether they were from Russia, Iran, Israel, a Cambodian refugee camp, someplace unpronounceable in China, or Texas. And those were older kids (14+), for whom learning a new language is an effort. How the hell do you get a 9-year-old who'd lived in the country for 6 years and doesn't speak the language?

I understand that something like that might happen in a sufficiently big town where everyone around speaks the kids' native language. But we are not talking about Spanish-speaking kids in the most Spanish-speaking parts of El Paso. We are talking about Liberians in Phoenix, Arizona, a 1000-2000-person community in a city of 1.5 million. Not to mention that English is in fact the official language of Liberia, even though only a minority speaks it as their native language.

On a related note: there were a few discussions on IRC of whether the family was Muslim. They are not; they are Christian.

On a somewhat-related note: Liberia's ex-president Charles Taylor is on trial for rape, murder, mutilation and cannibalism. Maybe those Liberian boys just want to grow up to be like the president.

Tattoos

Am I imagining things, or am I seeing a lot more tattoos on people's bare arms and legs this summer than there were last summer?

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition

When I was a little kid 30 years ago, I read books about the Spanish inquisition, and how it burned people just on the mere accusation of blasphemy. I did think then that people must have been stupid and crazy in the middle ages, but nobody warned me that I'd be reading similar stuff in the news 30 years from then.

Not in Spain, obviously. In Pakistan. They burned 8 Christians accused of blasphemy.

According to Henningsen-Contreras statistics, Spanish inquisition executed on average a little over 5 persons a year during the years 1540-1700. Not that it's really relevant here.

It's called race, stupid

A little while ago I read a YLE article about how racism is hard on bicultural children.

The basic point is that people easily assume that bicultural children are not Finnish, even if they have lived all their lives in Finland, and sometimes speak English to them.

I certainly don't doubt that this is the case. I could dispute whether this is a manifestation of racism or just an educated guess on the part of the person making the assumption - this depends on whether you define all the assumptions on the basis of race as racist, on how justified the assumption is in a particular case (an area with a lot of non-white Finnish-speaking children vs. an area that doesn't have any), and on how insistent the person making the assumption is in their mistaken ways - but my point isn't about that. It's about the gross misuse of the term "bicultural", and indeed of the term "culture".

I know a number of Finnish people who grew up in bicultural families: Finnish-German, Finnish-English, Finnish-American, Finnish-Polish, etc. So far I have never observed strangers trying to speak English to them on the assumption that they must be not Finnish. I wonder why is that. Could it be because - gasp - they look like they are Finnish? Like, they look northern- or central-European?

The whole point of the article is about race, pure and simple. It's about people who are Finnish but don't look like that. And it's not about any controversial race topic, either. It's about race in the sense in which everybody not totally divorced from reality knows it exists: that the people with genetic heritage in different parts of the world tend to look different.

It's kind of funny that the author uses the words racism and racist quite easily, but avoids the word race completely.

The other rather mystical thing is that the author is writing about this as a problem affecting specifically biracial (or rather, as she says, "bicultural") children, although almost all the problems that she has mentioned - except the adoption assumption - would affect any non-white children growing up in Finland, as well as the darker varieties of white. Makes one wonder whether she herself considers monoracial non-white children growing up in Finland Finnish.

(To the more ethnically-oriented folks reading this: yes, I am aware that the word "Finnish" has an ethnic meaning as well, and that in that sense monoracial non-white children are not Finnish. I am using the word "Finnish" here in the sense of "carrier of Finnish culture", which one can obviously be regardless of race and ethnic origin.)

I wouldn't bitch about one badly written article that much, but it seems to me that more and more people, regardless of their political positions on race and/or immigration, have started using the word "culture" as a substitute for "race". It's not. Race is that thing you are born with. Culture is that thing that you learn when you are little, and learn more when you are bigger, and you can choose to learn other ones later, or not.

Hand disinfectant (gross topic warning)

The company where I work is kind of concerned about swine flu. They lecture us on washing hands all the time, and they put up the bottles of various hand disinfectants all over the place.

I probably benefit the most from the disinfectant. Just sit in front of the computer, rub it on my hands and enjoy the smell.

The one they put up in the women's toilet (LV) is really weird though. It has the exact consistency of the lubricant that comes out of a vagina during masturbation, and it is slightly sticky in the exact same way, so every time I come out of the toilet my hands feel like I've been jerking off for half an hour.

A teaching moment

The Gates-Crowley scandal has pretty much come to an end. A call to the police about the possible burglary in progress, the police's attempt to check it out, the resident freaking out and yelling at the police, his arrest - ill-advised or not - the president's comments - ill-advised or not, etc. Our peacemaker-in-chief managed to reconcile the professor and the officer with the help of a sufficient amount of beer. The nation had its teaching moment.

What exactly did we learn? Not being an officer of law, a professor of African-American studies or a president, but just a simple American woman with a computer and Net access, I have followed the story of the woman who called the possible burglary in, and learned the following things:

- don't ever mention the race of a possible suspect to a 911 dispatcher, even if they are asking about it. To be on the safe side, don't mention the sex, either. Or the species. Or the number. "N beings are trying to break down the door." Or, to be on a safer side, just don't call the police when you see somebody breaking into somewhere,
- if you have exercised bad judgment and called the police, record the call yourself, so that you can have immediately available proof that you have not in fact mentioned race or anything else that might possibly describe the suspect,
- if the suspected burglar turns out to be a sufficiently privileged person, retain an attorney.

A little media review

A horrible crime has happened in UK this month: a group of thugs attacked a man, stabbed him twice, poured acid over him and into his throat, and smashed his face with bricks. According to some sources, he lost both eyes; according to some sources, only one. Sme sources estimate burns at 50% of his skin, some 90%, and all of them say he lost his tongue.

Thoroughly unpleasant business. The public naturally wants to know who would do such thing and why. I decided to see what kind of coverage the press provides, and chose as my sample the first Google News grouping of that story that I found by googling acid+attack. The first 20 links that came up.

The actual facts of the case appear to be: a Danish Muslim man of Asian (in the British sense of the word) origin was friends with, or possibly had an affair with, a Muslim woman who was born in Britain and is of Pakistani origin. A group of people (in the loose sense of the word) consisting wholly or partially of the woman's relatives did the deed, seven were arrested, five of those released on bail, then one of those rearrested.

I have an unexplainable gut feeling that origins of the participants are not entirely irrelevant to the way the thing went, and should be mentioned. Let's see how good my 20 sources are at it:

Out of 20:

17 mentioned that the man in question was Danish, clearly the most relevant fact,
16 mentioned that there was a married Muslim woman involved in there,
9 said that the Danish man was Asian (in the British sense of the word), but only 3 said that he was Muslim,
13 mentioned honor, as in "honor crime",
4 mentioned the Pakistani origin of the woman,
3 mentioned that at least some of the perpetrators were the woman's relatives.

Of course you can make the case that they don't need to mention religion or culture, either because this is one of those unfortunate events that can happen to anyone with approximately the same probability, or quite the opposite: that anytime a man gets brutally attacked after spending time with a Muslim woman everybody with two brain cells knows who did it. I am not however sure that I approve of such journalism.

The honorary mention goes to BBC: here and here the only origin or motive detail they offer is that the man was Danish. No mention of Muslims and/or honor at all.

Oh my God! The racist police came to check on a break-in! You bastards!

When I was young and my parents bought their first home the police came over a few times to check on a possible burglary in progress. The reason was a malfunctioning alarm system. They came over, asked a few questions and left. Everything was very civil. After a few times we disconnected the alarm system altogether.

Later, in their new home, this happened again, this time due to an overly concerned neighbor. The last time she called the police was when my parents ordered an air conditioning system delivered. They weren't even home, and the police came and somehow managed to figure out that the workers delivering the air conditioner were not in fact burglars.

Happens all the time, really. Happens to the white, the black, the Asians and the Hispanic, and probably the Native Americans. Surely happens to the blacks more often than to everyone else, but usually everyone, including the black people, manages to sort it out with the police perfectly well.

It really takes a professor of African-American studies at Harvard University to fuck it up.

Henry Louis Gates was trying to force his own front door for some prefectly good reason, which was not, however, ovbious to a casual observer. A neighbor called in a possible burglary, which is not an unreasonable assumption to make if somebody you don't recognize is trying to break into a house. By the time the police arrived Gates and his driver already got through the back door and managed to force the front door.

At this point the cop usually says "hi, I am investigating a report on a possible burglary" or something along those lines, the owner/resident says "oh, my name is whatever and I live here", papers are checked if the police finds it necessary, both say "oops" and the cop leaves.

"I live here" is the right answer. "Why, because I am a black man in America" is the wrong answer, and so is "you have no idea who you are messing with". He is not messing with anyone, he is doing his job, which, among other things, includes investigating burglaries in progress. Whether or not the neighbor would have called it in if those were two white men forcing the front door is something you can speculate about in your African-American studies class, but for the sake of all our front doors I certainly hope she would've.

You especially don't follow the officer outside and keep screaming at them. This is what gets you arrested for being disorderly, which is exactly what happened to Gates.

Now the incident has made the national news, the mayor has apologized, the charges have been dropped, the officer has refused to apologize and he-who-cannot-be-called-chimp-in-chief has also criticized the police.

One thing is not entirely clear: what does Gates want the police to do if there is an actual burglary in progress? Come there, see if the burglars are African-American and decide that asking them about anything would be an undue act of racial profiling?

Jewish rage boy

There've been riots in Jerusalem lately, by ultra-Orthodox Jews, and in a way that makes me think that they are also trying to contend for the title of the religion of peace.

The original reason for the riots was The Most Unholy Parking Lot, which the city decided to keep open on Saturdays, which the ultra-Orthodox were a bit miffed about, partly because the Lord doesn't allow parking cars on Saturdays (surely must say so in the holy book somewhere), and partly because most of them can't afford a car.

The second reason was a differently sane ultra-Orthodox woman who did not bother feeding her three-year-old son. He is in a hospital now, and she is in a different hospital. The protesters maintain that she is not insane, she is ultra-Orthodox. The city is too polite to elaborate on the difference.

The city is, however, suing the protesters for vandalism. The city has also suspended municipal services to them (live and learn, France).

So far they have only burned 250 dumpsters, smashed 70 traffic lights and damaged some municipal vehicles. Sounds like a regular night in France, sure, but then Meah Shearim is a lot smaller than France.

Here is a picture gallery (flash). And hey, we got our own Jewish rage boy: making a speech, running away, caught.

Liikaa viinaa, munat kadoksissa

Lauantaina tuli juotua sen verran, että nyt on munat kadoksissa. Kananmunat. Neljä munaa, tai pikemminkin neljä valkuaista.

Muistan sen illan varsin hyvin, paitsi että en sitä, miten munille kävi. Jos olen vahingossa kaatanut ne pois, niin se ei ole suuri menetys, mutta jos ne on siellä jossain ja niissä kohta kehittyy älyllinen elämä...

Stereotypes

Somewhat in connection with the previous post:

IMO it's natural for people to form stereotypes of various groups of people: one extrapolates from the evidence available, and uses those rules in the absence of the further evidence.

Moreover, if the issue in question is something really important to the person forming the stereotypes, they tend to be stronger: it is really important to all of us not to be attacked in the street, and we avoid the kinds of people that we deem to be the most likely attackers, even if we are fully aware that most likely they aren't. We just don't want to take the risk.

Going from the specific to the general seems quite natural to me. What I don't understand about the stereotypes is some people's tendency to go from the general to the specific, especially in the presense of the evidence to the contrary. Surely people must realize that not everything in the world conforms to their stereotypes, and that stereotypes are just guidelines, and not always good ones. Many of them are rooted in reality, but quite a few aren't.

What is this tendency to ignore the evidence based upon? Surely can't be evolutionary.