With multiple gun shootings in Finland over the last couple of years, a couple of which taking place in schools, Finland is now on high alert.

The response resembles more out of an inner-city school in some hard-knocked American industrial city, than that of a frozen northern tundra of a country famous otherwise for its mobile phones and sauna.

Getting through the door at Järvenpää High School requires an electronic key these days. Once inside, students leave their coats and bags at a monitored rack. Students too are under the close watch of video cameras.

The school’s pupils say the measures add a sense of security.

“It feels safe here, and we’re not afraid to come to school, especially in light of the school shootings. We know outsiders can’t get in,” says Sini Huuskola, a student at the school.

There we have it.  Scandinavia ghetto-rized, one cold corner at a time.

If language is in fact an artifact of culture, then what does the way we name family members say about us?

In Chinese, the naming conventions for every member of the family is dependent on their gender, whether the relationship stems from the father or the mother’s side, and their age in relation to you or your parents.

For example, the concept of an “aunt” is dependent on whether the aunt is directly related to either the mother’s or the father’s side, whether they are older or younger, and whether they are siblings to your parents or married into the family.

Another example, my dad’s younger sister’s son would have a different name (a variation of the concept of cousin), than if he was the son of my dad’s older sister.  And that would still be different than if he was the son of my dad’s older brother.

Still with me?

Anyway, when this is all too much, go Dutch.  In the lowlands, the words neefje and nichtje, which covers not only the ideas of nephew and niece, but also cousins of the same sex.  That’s to say, in a cross-generational sweep of generalization, a female cousin of yours bears the same concept as a niece, and a male cousin of yours is the same as a nephew.

As a result, most Dutch have trouble with the concept of cousins, which I suppose, in a familial sense, is probably just as remote as niece and nephews.

On Swedish quirks, which include:

• Early morning birthday gift-giving rituals: I think there’s something quirky about birthdays in all these northern European mini-states.  The Dutch bake their own cake and serve everyone but themselves on their birthdays, not to mention the circle party where everyone congratulates you and your family, presumably, for making it through another round of intolerably insufferable family gatherings.
• Shitty customer service: Again, much to be desired in much of the Continent. Yes, you need to pay yourself (often at exorbitant rates, of 20-30 cents per minute) to reach customer service.  No, there’s no guarantee you’ll reach anyone within a reasonable amount of time. Yes of course the lines are closed on nights and weekends. And yes, to have someone tell you something is simply “impossible” is the most likely outcome of your concerted efforts.
• Odd breakfast spread combos like apple sauce on cereals: The Dutch has its own mind-boggling combination of breakfast specialties that include chocolate bits on top of butter and spread on biscuits.
• And wordsthatsticktogetherthatmakesyounauseous: Although English seems to be the exception in this case, in its refusal to jive with the rest of its ancestral Germanic cousins in putting words together with no breathing space in between.

By car, that is.  According to a German paper, chauffeuring your kids to school not only denies them of physical exercises, but can also impair their social developments.

The Rabenmutter cultural spell lingers.

via Planet Germany

I heard about this movie last year, and just got around to watching it.

Here’s what the movie got right:

- The film was made in Egypt, you can tell because the whole deal with traffic is pretty much spot on. There’s no real concept of traffic lanes in Egypt, nor does the concept of traffic lights exist – there are none.  Taxis are from the 60s, some release toxic fume from the inside.  But most of the time you are poisoned from the pollution from out the window.  Keeping the taxi drivers awake is also important.

- Patricia Clarkson’s character’s surprise in having men follow her everywhere when she goes out in blouses and skirts.  Women get this pretty quickly: you either cover up, or you are “asking for it”.  Unwanted sexual attention that is.  And it goes without saying that every Arabic men that approaches you on the street will have no trouble telling you how beautiful you are. Without fail.

- There are too many camels and not enough donkeys in the film. There are more donkeys in Egypt.

- Yes, you will be offered hot hibiscus tea all the time, even when it’s 40 degrees outside and you are trying to cool down. Tea is usually served with spoonfuls of sugar.

- The gushing new foreigner, and the cynical long-term expat.

- When Clarkson says, I’ll write something about street children, and Tareq says, you don’t live here, it’s complicated.  Right on.

- Everyone you meet seems to be studying some combination of language and tourism. Becoming a tour guide and one day running their own travel agency seems to be the best prospects for a lot of young people.  I have heard every major language spoken while I was there, including impeccable Chinese while inside the Egyptian Museum.

- “Tomorrow I will take the day off.”  Many Egyptian men that endlessly wander the street seem to have this luxury. Under-employment and outright unemployment seems to be a chronic malaise.

Where it’s not one hundred percent:

- It’s not that hot in November. During the days, you can get by with a sleeveless shirt, but it’s no sweltering heat.  At night, it gets chilly fast.

- Venturing out to the oasis doesn’t really count as going out in Cairo.  The white desert is a few hours away, and you need a 4×4 jeep to get out there.  These trips are done overnight, usually with Bedouin tour guides.

- Sailing on the Nile: it’s almost pointless to sail on the Niles during smoggy days, you can’t see three meters from the boat.  Most people sail at night, while eating on one of those boat restaurants.  Much cooler, plus the pollution would’ve been more settled by then.

- “I’m not married.” That’s what all Egyptian men say.  And they are all married. Some maybe twice. In real life, Tareq would tell Clarkson he’s not married while being married with three kids and they’d carry on a torrid affair. She’d find out years later, heart broken, and go back to Egypt and find a younger lover.

- It’s impossible to just see the pyramids without hoards of people trying to sell you everything from fruits, postcards, to camel rides. It’s not a stroll down the Niles either with the smog and traffic.

- And no other tourists around the pyramids?  What is this, a scene straight from Murder on the Niles?

- The movie portrayed the relationship between the two characters as some kind of accidental rediscovery of love for Clarkson and Tareq.  In reality, Egyptian men make a sport out of flirting and sleeping with foreign women.  The worst are those in Cairo that wander the streets, and tour guides. It is not uncommon to see very young Egyptian men with middle-aged European women.  There are even villages in Upper Egypt filled with such couples. The sexual politics of Egypt is very particular, and this is but a romanticized version of such daily occurrences.

Over the weekend, I met a couple of guys that actually lived (and one still living) in the city-state of Luxemburg.  There’s around half a million of people residing in all of the 999 square miles of the country. But in the word of the young French banker-type, “the real Luxemburgish are all in hiding.”

Over the years, the country has literally been taken over by the neighbouring Italians, Germans and French, not to count the influx of Eastern Europeans once the EU borders opened.  Most work in banking and related service industries.  Taxes are lower (both consumption and income), wages are higher, so many make the 1-2 hour cross-border commutes everyday back to their home countries.

Both of these guys described the country as an incredibly dull place, with little to do except making money and going out to bars, and with no redeeming qualities of other well-known banking countries (and tax havens) like Switzerland and Monaco.  Nor were they kind about the locals – red-neck farmers driving Ferraris – since selling their land to the banking businesses, and I’m guessing from some of the rich mineral deposits in the south of the country too.

I look forward to visiting someday.

Flemish art has a pretty religious slant and violent undercurrent to it. This one, Last Judgement, visited by Colin Farrell and Brandon Gleeson in In Bruges, by Hieronymus Bosch.

The Judgment of Cambyses, story from Herodotus where the corrupt judge Sisamnes, guilty of taking a bribe, was taken and skinned.  His son takes his place as the judge, with his father’s skin draped over the chair.  Charming tale.

- The city has some serious history. Some of the buildings are close to 900 years old. Buildings rightly expose the histories behind them, e.g. drawings depicting medieval torture methods such as chopping off prisoners limbs, which the Belgians incidentally later took to the Congo, and which later spread to other parts of Africa.

- It’s not a city many non-Europeans might have heard of, but the place is bustling. Schools are out, and many people are vacationing. That, combined with the summer sale – which the Belgians formally announce and market (July 1-7 in case you are interested), has the shopping streets jam packed.

- The whole city is on construction. One of the large pleins is completely squared off for renovation, almost every single church in the city has some part of it worked on, every second or third houses you see around the city centre has a painter or scaffolding in front of it. Quick round-up of the skyline totals at least 20 cranes. Apparently much of the city’s sewage and phone line system’s getting a makeover. The city is very old and beautiful, but some parts do need some serious work. Infrastructure, gentrification or fiscal stimulus, the construction sector’s keeping a lot of people employed.

- Ghent has a castle smack in the middle of it. A real, gigantuan castle.

- Housing looks much more spacious than the NL, with houses in the city center with built-in garages. Prices are much lower too. There are also a lot if for rent and for sale signs all around the city. In comparison, the Dutch housing market has all but frozen up in the last half year in anticipation of less favorable changes in mortgage interest subsidies.

- Ghent is for the most part, Dutch speaking. In my limited interaction with the service industry however, a high proportion of those are French-speaking. Perhaps better economies and better pay up north?

- I’ve come to look at dogs as a sort of rough barometer on the general prosperity and economic well-being of a place. Friendly, submissive and diverse breeds of dogs tend to signal more well-adjusted and comfortable communities, which most Dutch cities are. Aggressive and few breeds-dominated ones usually come with places with more unresolved social issues. Vienna and its subways filled with punks and their muzzled pit bulls, and certain districts of Berlin with the skinheads and their German shepherds come to mind. Ghent sits somewhere in between.

Hilarious account on the growth in Indian immigration in a small New Jersey town, which experienced the same kind of demographic and population shift that countless other towns and cities must have gone through in North America.

In the 11 years I lived in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, that area transformed from a place with gangs and hookers to a place with gays and transvestite hookers to a place with artists and no hookers to a place with rich families and, I’m guessing, mistresses who live a lot like hookers.

And what successful assimilation looks like, tongue in cheek.

[I]f you look at the current Facebook photos of students at my old high school, J.P. Stevens, which would be very creepy of you, you’ll see that, while the population seems at least half Indian, a lot of them look like the Italian Guidos I grew up with in the 1980s: gold chains, gelled hair, unbuttoned shirts. In fact, they are called Guindians. Their assimilation is so wonderfully American that if the Statue of Liberty could shed a tear, she would. Because of the amount of cologne they wear.

From an obituary of Norman Macrae, whom was the deputy editor of The Economist for 23 years.

For all his interest in the rest of the world, he was a very English figure.  His ideas were rooted in the English liberalism of the 19th century – a liberalism that celebrated the individual over the collective, progress over reaction, free thought over superstition.

And on his championship of limited governance and individual freedom:

His 1975 survey on America’s 200th birthday, in which he chastises the Democrats for flirting with the Fabian cult of government expertise, conservatives for flirting with religious extremism, and business for underinvesting in innovation, might easily be a portrait of Barack Obama’s America. Big government has been on the march for much of the past decade. The Beijing consensus celebrates the alliance of big government and big companies. Much of the public sector has resisted the power of vouchers and internal markets.

Since the fifteenth century, the world has been dominated by Europe and taught by Europe and exploited by Europe and made by Europe. After the calamitous experiences of the first half of the twentieth century, Europe had had enough, not least of itself and its own recent history.

The French novelist and essayist is less concerned with the immediate political woes of Brussels and Strasbourg than with a collapse of self-confidence and a spirit of self-flagellation he finds among the former colonizers and masters of the world. This is supposedly manifested in various ways: a drop in the birthrate so drastic that populations are no longer growing and will soon decline in Spain and Italy; a reflexive hostility to the United States, and also to Israel; a self-hating or “miserablist” narrative of national and continental history; and a groveling, guilt-induced refusal to take seriously the threat from militant Islam, a threat which comes not only from as far away as Iran and Afghanistan but more and more from within, as greatly increased Muslim populations challenge, not only by their numbers, but also by their vigor and sometimes their violence, a post-Christian Europe which doesn’t believe in itself anymore and too often retreats into sour Trotzreaktionen.

EU enlargement to the east, integrating the populations within, faced with an increasingly distant America and rising powers elsewhere, what is Europe’s place this century?

Online and citizen-journalism seems to have succeeded in South Korea, but not in Japan.

Japan, with its cultural disdain for those who stick out from the crowd, may be inhospitable terrain for the reader-turned-reporter model, Mr. Takeuchi said.

[A]nother reason for Japan’s resistance to alternative sites is the relative absence of social and political divisions. In politically polarized South Korea, OhmyNews thrived by appealing to young, liberal readers.

“It is only when the society sees itself as having conflicting interests that it will seek out new viewpoints and information,” said Toshinao Sasaki, the author of about two dozen books on the Internet in Japan.

Media experts say Japan has yet to see such critical questioning of its establishment press. They say most Japanese remain at least passively accepting of the nation’s big newspapers and television networks.

On top of the cultural and political differences between these two neighbours, does this also have to do with demographics?

This is South Korea’s population profile.

And this is Japan’s.

South Korea is aging fast, but it still boasts a median age that’s almost 7 years younger than Japan.  A younger, politically divided, and more restless cultural undercurrent seems to be driving this battle.

Chinese high school students went through the grueling university entrance exam called gaokao this week. This is one of the most important experiences in a young Chinese person’s life, and whole families and cities gear up for it.  Some of the more entertaining essay questions include:

National (I): Why chase mice when there are fish to eat?

National (II): What is light reading?

Beijing: Looking at the stars with your feet on the ground

Shanghai: Danish fishermen – “When Danes go fishing, they carry with them a ruler. When they catch a fish, they will measure it and toss it back if it is not long enough. They say, ‘Isn’t it better to let the little ones grow up?’ More than two thousand years ago in our country, Mencius said, ‘If fine nets do not enter the pools, there will be more fish and turtles than can be eaten.’ And in fact this principle runs throughout many areas of our lives.”

Tianjin: The world I live in

Chongqing: Tough problems

Jiangsu: Green Life – “Green is vibrant, visually pleasing. Green is intertwined in life and ecology. Today, there is a new concept of green, one that is closely connected to the lives of every person.”

Guangdong: Neighbors – “We are neighbors and rely on each other. You might be visible or invisible. It is impossible to avoid having neighbors, but you can make a choice.”

Shandong: Light and shadow – ‘”All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.’ – Leo Tolstoy.”

Hunan: Morning

Jiangxi: Recovering childhood – “Why do we want to recover childhood? Because society it too utilitarian, children have too much pressure, and childhood ends too early. Society needs innocence and required a return to childhood.”

Fujian: The birth of Grimm’s Fairy Tales – “The brothers Grimm felt that there was a connection between folk tales and human history, but after collecting many of them without finding that connection, they gave up. Later on, a friend chanced across the things they had compiled, and arranged with a publisher to have it published, becoming what we know as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”

Sichuan: Points and Life – “A point can form a line, can form a plane, can form a body. Life is like a few unregulated points which can be connected into countless lines, which can then form different planes, which can then form different geometric objects.”

Shaanxi: Success and the environment – (1) A tropical fish placed in a fishbowl will only grow three inches long; placed in a pond, it can grow quite large. (2) Wolves are so strong and powerful because they live in an outdoor environment. (3) A psychologist picked ten people and told them they had extraordinary talent. They then went on to find success. Later, the psychologist admitted that they were just ordinary people.

Hainan and Ningxia: Participation

Is China becoming more violent? Patrick Chovanec asks:

Yesterday, a 40 year-old woman went on a rampage onboard an overnight sleeper train in northeastern China, stabbing and wounding nine people as they slept before she was wrestled to the ground by fellow passengers.  The same day, a 46 year-old bank guard opened fire outside a courthouse in central Hunan province, shooting three judges dead and wounding three others before killing himself.  The man was reportedly upset about the division of assets in his divorce case.  These two incidents come on top of a series of bloody knife attacks aimed at schoolchildren that have left 17 people (including 15 children) dead, and dozens injured.

Certainly, the availability of online media has amplified the reach of random acts of violence, so that previously local acts of violence can now suddenly make the news around the country.

But the question remains whether random violence of this nature occurred previously at the current level of frequency.  Has the pressure of such rapid modernization over the past three decades, and the toxic byproduct issues in living environment, income inequality, corruption, housing, etc, driven more and more lower-income classes, in the words of one of the commentators, postal?

Some bloggers think so.

Han Han, one of the country’s most popular bloggers (and a huge irritant to the authorities), wrote that killing the weak was seen by the attackers as the most effective way of exacting revenge on a society “that has no way out”. He said that local governments should send the guards at official buildings to help protect schools, “because a government that can’t protect children doesn’t need so many people to protect itself”.

Others say a lack of mental health help compounds the problem.

A newspaper in the central province of Henan said that while the West had many NGOs that could help people suffering from mental distress, in China there were very few. This, it said, led to problems becoming bottled up and eventually erupting in violence.

Some philosophical musings for the weekend, on the idea of Utopia, and the mistakes we make fumbling towards the light.

Here is an example. A Chinese social critic in the 1930s might have observed tenant peasant farming in North China; he/she might have argued that the system was exploitative, unfair, and inefficient (three different social values); and he/she might have argued that the collective farm was a superior alternative, being more democratic, fair, and efficient.  The collective farm might have been offered as a utopian alternative to tenant farming.

So the collective farm is likely not to be a utopian solution to China’s rural problems in 1930.  And in fact, subsequent history confirms this conclusion; the Great Leap Forward famine was the consequence of many of these institutional failures.

And here lies the risk behind our overwhemling urge to do good, or better in the world.  Experiences have shown us the very word “utopia” signals something distinctly opposite most of the time – it gives us dystopia.

The idea of emancipatory agency: that it is possible for us humans to restructure our social institutions in a direction that fits our fundamental values better than the present institutions do.  And it is worth underlining how important, but also how risky, this effort is: important, because it gives a basis for thinking that we can create a better world; and risky, because many of the worst historical experiences of modern memory came from “utopian” efforts to redefine society.

So, Utopia, better ingested in small dosages, and slowly?