So far the human body is weak

Here’s to all ya Masters out there.

Sick. I can’t believe it. I am double sick. Last week I was issued sick leave from work due to a near-total-mental-collapse. That’s when I began thinking about research after a few months pause. I’m also changing jobs and the future work will be better for me.

But now, I’m sick. I had bubbles in my stomach last night and spent a few messy hours in the toilet. Aren’t you glad I told you that. 🙂

Perhaps it’s something I ate or then I caught the bug last night when I attended the first ever Master Class for a Good Society. It’s a two month program run by the University of Helsinki and LähiTapiola Group. Why this is is due to the fairly new idea of connecting university level education with businesses. This time the idea is to connect people from different fields (especially including the humanities) to the world of business and problem solving.

The program rests on the idea of Social Entrepreneurship or more widely “BIg Society”. It was a good start with, I think, 40-50 attendees. I sat in a table full of clever young professionals and one of the Mentors, a person I deeply respect, Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto form the parliament (The Greens of Finland party).

In any case, I’m sick now and I have to cancel my short talk at the Sociology Days in Turku. All is not lost since I did manage to solve some theoretical problems while working on the text. But, there is a sense of not belonging. They are thinking of revitalizing the Finnish Network for the Sociology of Knowledge and I hope they do and I hope I can be a part of it.

So far, waiting for my FrenchPress to hatch me a nice mug of strong, bacteria killing, coffee.

Stick your neck out

I began this day over a cup of coffee with a very inspiring chap from Ireland. Among other things he is a professional journalist so we began talking about international publishing. What else?

I mentioned him my blog and that it was supposed to be ‘a blog about my PhD’. “You never mentioned you had an English language blog”, he replied. Due to my almost total lack of self esteem I apologized and gave him the address.

In a way, that’s the reason I am writing now. In the beginning I thought this blog would be a serious installment of my academic thinking. At least I thought my blog would inspire research into (and about) Transhumanism. Now I understand that this is a blog for me first and for you (who I still believe are out there) second.

And that’s not bad. In fact, that’s just the honesty a project like this needs.

Right now I am sitting and writing this in bed. Next to me is my wife and my 3 year old daughter. She has trouble sleeping tonight and I’m waiting for her to calm down so that I can piece together my talk for the Sociology Day. There was a rescheduling and my talk is on Thursday. No worries, I have it covered.

The Annual Sociology Days in Turku begin on Thursday and I’ll post a report on the whole ordeal later this week.