Monday, November 19, 2007

Bilingual Introduction

I have for a long time thought about joining the masses of (more or less) intellectual exhibitionists on the web, who shamelesly parade their lives, thoughts and emotions in a public diary (as opposed to hiding and locking away their diaries, as people used to do). I'm not presumptuous enough to think that anyone besides myself will actually read what I post here, so I will use this blog as an opportunity perhaps to vent some steam and write less carefully than I might in a more traditional publication. I will doubtless offend many potential readers, but as the number of actual readers will probably remain low, I think that will be acceptable. In any case, I don't intend to provoke, offend, hurt, or cause anything negative to anyone who does not deserve it, so I can only hope that the readers will be wise enough to understand the purpose of this blog and so avoid such effects. I have a website for my more academic texts (among other things).

I'm a philosopher (a lover of wisdom, therefore a seeker of truth) and I hope much of the content of my blog will reflect this. I am a grad student working (very slowly) on my Ph.D. thesis, so I'm not a professional philosopher (yet).

I am also a student of history, working on my M.A. thesis. This will probably be reflected less by the content of my blog.

What I fear will take more space here, though, I fear will be my comments on boardgames and roleplaying games. These are my hobbies and they take much of my time and especially money, so I will probably often write about them here.

Other content will be whatever I happen to think of at a given time, and may vary considerably.

I will now mention that I am not a native English writer, because I hope to avoid accusations of slaughtering this fantastic language by doing so. :-)
I intend to write and publish these texts quickly (although infrequently and perhaps not very often), so this will likely excacerbate the flaws of my writing, as I may even forgo consulting a dictionary and therefore end up writing utter nonsense. But again, this blog is not intented as an academic podium, so it should matter very little.

One thing that I've been pondering lately, is whether to use English or my native Finnish in this blog. I will most likely end up using both (and who knows, perhaps even some other languages if I feel like it), but probably reserve Finnish posts only for subject matter that I assume will be of interest mostly or only for the Finnish readers out there.

And now a few words in my "mother tongue":

Jos ymmärsit tätä edeltävän tekstin, älä turhaan jatka lukemista. Toistan vain muutaman pääkohdan.

Olen tamperelainen filosofian (FM+ eli teen väitöskirjaa) ja historian (FM- eli teen gradua) opiskelija. Blogini tarkoitus on toimia vain julkisena päiväkirjana, johon kirjoitan milloin mitäkin. Tarkoitukseni ei ole provosoida, loukata, tai tehdä mitään pahaa sitä ansaitsemattomille. Aion kirjoittaa melkein mitä vain sylki suuhun tuo - tai siis tässä tapauksessa kai näppäimistölle? - joten voin vain toivoa, että lukijani, jos sellaisia on, ymmärtävät kirjoitukseni terapeuttisen tarkoituksen, eivätkä turhaan vedä hernettä nenäänsä.

Aihepiirini tulevat olevaan lähinnä filosofian ja harrastamieni lautapelien ja roolipelien suunnalla. Näiden lisäksi siis kuitenkin mitä tahansa mitä jostain syystä haluan sanoa, tulee olemaan täällä luettavana. Asiallisempia tai akateemisempia tekstejäni niistä kiinnostuneet voivat etsiä kotisivultani.

Kirjoituskieleni tullee olemaan lähinnä englanti laajemman potentiaalisen kiinnostuksen omaavissa aiheissa, mutta ainoastaan suomalaisia kiinnostavista asioista kirjoittanen suomeksi. Muitakin kieliä saatan mielijohteesta satunnaisesti käyttää, tehden varmasti siten kuvaannollista väkivaltaa kyseisille kielille.

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