Why are Hemuli and Cow about to Climb a mountain?

I wish all friends and strangers merry Christmas by inviting you to write your own Christmas story. Why are Hemuli and Cow about to climb a mountain?

(The picture was a reflection on our living room wall of two of Tekla's new toys after the presents had been opened.)

Change and definition

Michel Foucault wrote in his Archeology of Knowledge

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same [...] Let us leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order."

I discovered this from a book called FOUCAULT. A Very Short Introduction. I guess the sentiment kind of overrules the very notion of writing a very short introduction, or indeed, any introduction.

In any case, I wanted to share this snippet of wisdom with the lonely abyss of cyberspace. It is a reminder that the act of definition is also an act of freezing something, that is, an act of violence. None of us wants to be reduced to a set of axioms.

Been listening to Keith Jarrett's new album while working, a set of solo improvisations on the piano. Improvisation if anything portrays one's appreciation to the fluidity of things of which Foucault so eloquently reminds us.

On coiled springs and reflective capability

In an interview of Chick Corea's Electric band, drummer Dave Weckl was described by the magazine (Downbeat) as a 'coiled spring'. When a roadie passed by and met the drummer's gaze, Weckl was immediately handed a pair of sticks and he immeditely began playing patterns on his knees.

Lately, I have felt the same coiled spring effect. As the season is coming to an end, things tend to pile up. I become nervous and tense. On moments like this, I tend to lose any capability to reflect. This, I think, also means that you hand out a valuable aspect in your life. At EGOS last summer, my fiend and colleague Wendelin told me that every evening, he spends some time reflecting on the day. I find the practice of making time like that very compelling, yet how you find such a mood utterly escapes me, being the wound-up father of two that I am.

There are moments where reflection is enabled more easily, such as jogging or strolling, particularly when I am alone in a foreign environment. Indeed, strolling in a foreign environment "to get the feel of the place" is the absolute opposite to the frenetic "taxi from the airport" -type of life one often experiences abroad, a combination of security and disconnectedness. This was another important insight I got from Wendelin, getting a feel of a place by getting involved in it, walking through it.

Recently, a friend commented this blog ( - and I thought I was yelling into the emptiness of the cyberspace -), asking whether I always have such a placid state of mind, calm and composed. He said that he gets a sense of peace by reading this blog. I was really surprised about this - in a sense I have had the most hectic autumn that I've had in a long time, with the birth of our son, moving, changing jobs, and so on. Then I realized, that indeed, writing this blog is a way to stop and reflect, summarizing and narrativizing the chaos going through my consciousness.

Maybe this is indeed a more general aspect to blogs: people seem to appear more calm and composed in their blogs. As such, they are wonderful channels for everyday escapism for readers, as you get to share some of that sense of calm when you tap into somebody else's process.

Rituals and practice of science

I was honored to participate in two public defenses (public examinations of PhD theses) last weekend. On friday, I made my debut as an opponent (thesis examiner) for a thesis focused on the tension between continuous and planned change in a knowledge intensive organization. On saturday, my wife and I were invited to the public defense and doctoral party of my cousin Markus, a musicologist. His thesis is an examination of (the classical pianist) Glenn Gould.

I was a bit nervous about my debut as an opponent. Would I be able to rise to the occasion and present a sound and balanced critique of the thesis? As the occasion got nearer, however, I began to realize that it really was not about me rising to an occasion. A public defense is maybe the most valuable ritual in our local scientific community where the practice of science is revealed to the public. The point really is not about appearing to be smart but to re-enact the practice of science, scientific debate to the public, thus in a small way, re-establishing the very practice of science. The public defense in the end is not about anybody appearing to be smart, but letting the practice of science have the spotlight. You should be prepared and do your best, but in the end, it is not about you.


My cousin Markus did well in his defense, or so I hear. We ended up skipping the actual defense because of child care arrangement, but at his party, everybody seemed happy. It was striking to navigate from a group of business scholars to a group of ethnomusicologists and seeing the very same practice of science being re-enacted. In her speech at the doctoral party, the opponent for Markus's thesis addressed the doctoral party as an event where scientific enemies meet and reconcile their differences for the evening, bowing down to the same idol that is science. I liked that notion.