According to a Newsweek article Finland is the best country on earth.
Yay. Recognition that once again builds on top of the Pisa study, showing finnish schoolkids to be the best educated. But who’s counting – this may be the sole victory of the year for the nation (yes, in addition to two orienteering gold medals, that is).
When the laws fail, new ones are thought up on spot (in finnish only).
I’m pretty sure the suspect confiscation verdict will be overturned when actual lawyers get involved, this case is as weak as they get.
Thanks to Janne, the sad state of internet-savviness of the finnish green party is now on the table. Or the utter lack thereof.
I’m sure Jyrki Kasvi, whom I could now (following the move to Espoo) vote for, is not happy with the state of affairs.
And unless Kaisa Rastimo’s cluelessness is reined in, the vote for the greens remains just a prospect, not reality.
Finland had less than an auspicious start in the ice hockey world championship games in Germany.
A decisive 4-1 loss to Denmark (not exactly a hockey powerhouse to say the least) means that the two remaining games in the group stage have quite a bit more importance.
Until Finland got its first medal (a silver) in the Calgary olympics in 1988, the medals chronically avoided us, as Tekno-Kekko’s thorough analysis proves.
Next up: Germany on Monday evening. Germany, who managed to beat USA in their debut game in the tournament, so the bout is by no means a walk in the park.
Finnish authorities have launched nettivinkki, a red button service to inform of unsavoury content on the web.
Too bad the service has an invalid security certificate.
Google’s Streetview has expanded to cover Finland. The image have been taken last summer, so the country is fortunately not seen in its full November glory.
The HQ is visible, without any suspicious activity outside. Quite unlike what happened when Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne’s house was photographed.
I thought the annual showing of Disney’s Christmas greetings was a Finnish phenomenon.
Nope, according to an article in Slate, it’s even bigger in Sweden.
Suomensuojelija isn’t, despite its patriotic name, nothing more than a blog about the finnish language, and saving it from careless use.
According to Nomen est Omen, an award-winning data-mining product, my family name is 100% elite.
Mainly based on rarity of the name, I guess.
Lehti requests a link, and I comply: there’s no better place for kansalaisjournalismi in Finland.
A couple of recent pickups:
99+1 countries. I’m so far behind at mere 28.
Suomen Kuvalehti has a couple of good blogs: Kuvien Takaa (movies), Gourmet (like, food), polkom (domestic political stupidity)
and the new blog by Jari Lindholm – too bad the site does not have feeds, and the doormat page has severely cropped entries.
Found and logged my very first earth cache today.
An earth cache is a subtype of a geocache, one that highlights some sort of geological features of the area.
Right now there are almost six thousand earth caches defined, but just about thirty of them are located in Finland. Goes to show that we’re geologically not the most exciting country in the world, but there are still important ones undefined (such as Lappajärvi, the largest crater thus far found in Finland).
The finnish pirate party has amassed enough signatures and is now on the way to become a real party.
The corpse of Matti Inkinen, the vocalist for SIG, has been discovered.
While there is absolutely no evidence to support any accusations – the role of heavy medication and a tabloid journal attempting to expose him as a pedophile cannot be passed by.
Especially the latter cause is worrisome. The brave new century seems to have evolved its own causes of mass hysteria that allow the stripping off of humanity: terrorism and pedophilia are easy to claim, but harder to prove. Just as masses of failed raids have proven.
Helsingin Sanomat has published an article on mandatory sights in Finland (sadly, there seems to be no freely available version of it).
This continues the recent trend of thick books consisting of things to do before you die – be it albums, movies, golf rounds or, usually numbered 1001.
Hesari settled down with nine – making the list easy to check against:
Tammerkoski in Tampere
Seen multiple times, walked alongside the flow and taken pictures of the streaming waters. As expected, the minor fall is not a great sight any longer, but as a kid the effect was a lot more thundering.
Kilplisjärvi
Nope, haven’t been there. Yet.
Icrebreaker on Perämeri
Nope, haven’t been on an icebreaker anywhere. Though the idea of floating in the huge ship’s wake in a brightly colored survival suit is rather an appealing one.
Oulanka national park
Nope, another omission on the list. Haven’t been to Kuusamo at all.
Vartiovuori in Turku
An incomplete – I don’t know whether I’ve been here or not. Might have been here as a kid in the eighties, might not. But this is an easy pick if needed.
Ferry to Sweden
Multiple times. Though the last trip is a decade away. The ships used to be wonderlands of cheap candy and booze, taking finns to the advanced neighbour to the west. These days the ships are aging metal monsters, and the eastern upstart has pulled in equal to Sweden.
Kökar
Another curious omission, haven’t been to the Åland archipelago at all – only cruised through, on a ferry to Stockholm.
Viapori
Suomenlinna gets visited more or less annually. It’s an oasis of laid back atmosphere, within the city limits of Helsinki, and easily reached in fifteen minutes.
Steamboat cruise on Saimaa
Never been to Saimaa yet. And my only recollection of a steamboat ride is again from the early eighties – a ride from Virrat to Tampere did not leave much of a lasting impression.
So the tally is three (maybe four), meaning that there ought to be a lot more domestic travel.
Missed the Finnish wikipedia’s breaking 200k articles utterly.
Even though the finnish version nowhere near the quantity nor quality of the original, it’s still a useful reference.
This (like a few other things) got missed due to the holidays.
Paavo Lipponen, our grouchy ex-prime minister, has written an easter column (which does not, despite its name, have anything to do with blogs) that pretty much would guarantee a gold medal in Vancouver olympics if hubris was an officially sanctioned sport.
The recently published lumedemokratia book is heavily recommended to all who have doubts about the health of the domestic democracy, and especially to those who think Finland actually has one.
The book plots out a credible course for the country – one that explains why the pretense of democracy in Finland is patently false, the almighty consensus taking precedence over making decisions in a manner that benefits the citizens. Unless those citizens are members of a couple of priviledged groups, of course.
Even though Lumedemokratia is well written and easy to get through, the book plays the same note a couple of times too many. The role of the communist singers in the seventies is stressed out a bit too much. While the proto-Ultra Bra were obviously an annoying bunch, they do not deserve the same amount of scorn as politicians eager to sell out the country.
Which is, indeed, the very first topic of the book – the list of Stasi collaborators is still persistently unrevealed. Even though Finland has been an eager beaver in taking other countries to task, we’ve never had a truth commission of our own to root out who did what, and which excuse applies to them not being counted out as treason.
Finland is famous for only having room for one truth at a time. Sadly, in 2009, this book is by far not the hot topic it ought to be, rather losing out to the domestic version Dancing with Stars – yet another form of opiates to keep the masses placated.
The full selection of busted ads from Voima magazine are now available.
[ via Pohdiskeleva liftari. ]
Back in the days of high school, one of the jobs I considered was translating books.
Having read the recent editorial by a veteran of the profession, I’m glad I turned the other way. Uncertain conditions and criminally low salaries are not conducive to quality. The state of affairs is amongst worst off in Finland – even though the relative number of non-domestic books is very high.
(And yeah, I did co-translate two books in the mid-nineties, but that was more of an experiment than actual work.)
[ via kasa. ]
The list of the legislators who opposed/supported the snooping law has all of a sudden gone absent from the web.
Fortunately the data lives on.
[ via pinseri. ]
