Feminism in Politics, Round 2

Again in Helsingin Sanomat someone called for the Finnish political parties to include the term feminism in their political manifestos. And in the very same article the very same person wrote, "there are as many feminisms as there are feminists".

I'm dying to ask her, "What good would it do to include in official party politics another term that no-one can really define? Don't we already have many enough of those fuzzy concepts? Why should political rhetoric be even more ambiguous than it is now?"

Why not call for political parties to include well-defined things that are entailed in modern 2000s Finnish feminism, such as preventing domestic violence, fighting income differences, and reconciling motherhood with working life? Why is the term so much more important than the things it represents?

Crisis of Leadership

Today's Helsingin Sanomat wrote about the "crisis of leadership" in Finnish enterprises: regular employees (who hold non-managerial positions) are increasingly reluctant to assume responsibility and leadership roles in teams.

Come on now! That "crisis" is a direct outcome of growing salary gaps. As long as companies hire ridiculously high-paid people whose job is to lead and manage, how can anyone seriously ask regular employees to bear a share of leading and managing? If you hire high-paid professional managers, also expect them to do the managing. Bigger salary, bigger responsibility, bigger workload. If you want your regular employees to assume responsibility, to lead, and to manage, you pay your regular employees more.

Academic Ideals

I'm getting tired with the factory called academia, and especially its marriage with the myopic rich man called industry. Is there much difference between them anymore? What I'm looking for now is a multidisciplinary place that has only one aim; to civilize people. Maybe someone can help me find one.

I mean no industrial funding, no internships. No syllabi, no compulsory attendance. No tests, no quizzes, no grading, no productivity goals, no PhD fast-tracks, no expiry dates. Definitely no degrees.

I mean experts of different trades coming together to discuss and teach each other. I wish to find and join such place; or if I can't find one, start one.

Practical? No.
Profitable? No.
Élitist? Maybe.
Idealistic? Definitely.

Problem-Solving Using Pascal

Roman, who is a brilliant computer scientist, wrote an intriguing blog entry about problems and solving them. There's indeed a dizzying number of books in computer science named "Problem Solving Using X" *.

Apart from computer science, very few academic fields consider practical problem-solving as their task. Other scientists say that problem-solving is not a scientific endeavor at all--they say that explaining, describing, predicting, and perhaps understanding, are scientists' tasks.

It makes you wonder, "What is this thing called computer science?" Is it a sort of science after all, or does the focus on problem-solving render it a sort of engineering?

* Replace X here with your favorite programming language. I will later deal with the disappointment of the poor sociologist when (s)he finds and reads a book called "Problem Solving Using Python".