MA in Legislative Studies

Just found out today that my dissertation on party cohesion in the Lagting has been passed! I got a 68, 2 points shy of a distinction. It feels good to have passed, I started the course three years ago and it hasn’t always been easy studying part-time while a lot of other stuff has been going on in my life. It certainly wouldn’t have been possible without Hanna and the rest of my family’s support.

Unfortunately, I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed that I didn’t quite make the distinction… Nonetheless, some kind of celebration is definately in order!

Multi-tasking

Some people are multi-taskers and some are better at concentrating on one thing at a time. I fall firmly into the later category, but at the moment I’m getting a crash course in the later as the elections approach. My head was literally buzzing today with all the various things I was meant to be keeping track of. I’m somewhat of a perfectionist, so I like to do things well, and that, obviously, becomes harder as you have more things to do.

Politics is designed for multi-taskers. Frankly, my mind boggles at how those at the top of the political food chain manage it. I guess the key is compatmentalisation and the ability to prioritize well. Hopefully, I will develop them with practice!

To the bindery and the basket!

I’m sending my dissertation to the bindery in Hull tomorrow. It feels like an enormous relief to have reached this point. Almost everything has been on hold to get it finished on time. It wasn’t until the end of last week, after my supervisor had looked over it and given me some pretty positive feedback, that I finally started to relax a little.

After getting that positive feedback, I went out to the basketball court at Strandnäs school and shot a few baskets. It was late, but there were some young kids hanging around who asked if they could join me. Ok, I said. I seemed to be hitting everything. One of them asked me if I could do any tricks. I can’t. But I thought, what the hell, I’ll try and dunk it. And I did!!! On a ring at the right height! I was only a simple one-handed dunk, but a couple of weeks ago when I went out and tried, I couldn’t even grab on to the ring with two hands. Talk about being relaxed making a difference. Tragically, I have no video evidence. Still, I shall be starting on the weights soon, then it’ll be no problem! Will take my digital camera over there next time and put something up.

Just a quickie!

I’ve been extremely poor on the old blogging of late due to spending all my free time on trying to finish my dissertation. The deadline is only a couple of weeks away, so after that I shall be getting back into the swing of things for the election.

It’s not just the politics side of things I’m missing out on either. The town is currently overflowing with beautiful bodies because of the international beach volleyball tournament, and I’ve not had a chance to go and see any games. It’s not often I feel small, but I was stood at the checkout in citylivs yesterday behind two girls both of whom must have been at least three or four inches taller than me. There’s a more than usual multicultural feel about the place, and it always gives me a buzz when I hear people with different mother tongues all communicating in English.

P.S. Check out our new website!

Back from Holiday

I’m now back from my holiday in Kajana. It was the ideal kind of holiday for me: a no-stress holiday. We just relaxed. There was the mandatory Finnish sauna. Evening dips in the lake. A couple of nights drinking, including one evening spent in a Finnish Karajoke bar (Hanna sang!). Quite a bit of reading. And, although they do share an anti-government theme, I’ll wager that I’m one of an extremely small number worldwide who can list their summer reading as Ludwig von Mises’ “Liberalism” and JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. There were also trips to town to fetch supplies and do a little shopping (perhaps one of the economically literate can explain to me why most things seem so much cheaper up there?).

There were four generations of Hanna’s family on her mother’s side in our little cluster of cottages, and, despite the uber-Finnishness of Kajana, there was a strong European feel among our little group. There were five different nationalities present and four different mother tongues: Finnish, German, Swedish and English. The only bad thing about it was that the time seemed to go so quickly

A few pics:

Kajana1

Kajana2

Kajana3

I’m gonna dunk

Have decided to set myself a goal of being able to dunk in a game by next summer, before the Åland Street Basket competition.

I’m currently 185cm tall with a reach of 238cm. After warming up, with a run up, I can get up just enough to hold on with both hands to a hoop at regulation height (305cm). From a standing position my finger tips just scrape the ring. So then, I’d estimate my standing vertical at about 62cm and my running vertical at about 71cm. I can’t palm the ball, so I reckon that to be able to dunk consistently I need to add about 12cm. To dunk with relative ease in a game, I’d guess I need to add about 20cm to my vertical. A running vertical of 91cm, not that big an ask.

This guy’s got a 117cm vertical thanks to the right training.

Questions

Have been challenged to answer some questions by Fredrik, so here goes.

Sometimes it’s better not to be Consistent

There was a very thought-provoking leader in today’s Nya Åland. Nina Fellman brings up the case of the deputy chairman of the Swedish People’s Party in Finland; it appears that thirty years ago he was the editor of a a virulenty communist newspaper.

What the leader got me to thinking about was consistency. It’s often thought to be damaging to a person’s credibility if they’re not consistent. Strictly adhering to a given principle is therefore attractive, because it gives the adherent the reassurance of consistency. The search for one guiding principle on which we can build to solve the many problems that life provides us with is nothing new. I studied philosophy at university in England, and the choice was, in part, motivated by just such a desire. I still remember being told by one of my lecturers, correctly as it turned out, that studying philosophy wouldn’t be of much help in that direction.

Anyway, assuming the principle you adhere to is sound and you apply it consistently, how can you go wrong? The first problem is deciding whether a principle is sound. How do we know a principle is sound? How else but in how we feel about it, how we feel about the conclusions applying it leads us to and, most importantly, in how we feel about the results of that principle being applied in practise. The danger with overzealous dedication to one principle is that it becomes more than a guide. If our desire to be consistent leads us to override our feelings about what is right and wrong, or to conclude that we must learn to adjust the way we feel about something in order that we can be consistent, then I’d tentatively suggest that it is sometimes better not to be consistent.

No, I haven’t played basketball at a US university

A little clarification:

My name turned up in the sport section of the press today. I had gotten in touch with Krille Mattsson after reading an article about him trying to recruit players for the Island Games in 2009. He’s managed to get some players together, but unfortunately there seems to have been a misunderstanding about my abilities. I wish I had been good enough to play at a US university, but I actually didn’t even make the first team for my uni. However, I did play regularly at uni, and I would like to play in the Island Games. There’s a tournament here in Mariehamn next Wednesday, which I’ll be attending, but probably not participating in.

Here’s a clip of someone who has played basketball at a US university.

Basketball is the most beautiful sport on the planet.

The Poltical Artform of Not Answering Awkward Questions