Almost 50 40 (?) Ferraris gathered in Helsinki today. More pictures from the Senate square in my gallery, or in my Flickr set. If I find Flickr useful enough I might get rid of my Coppermine powered “Scenes from a memory” gallery.
Finnish mead, or “sima” as it is called locally, is a brew mostly connected with the Finnish Vappu (May Day) celebrations. Here’s my family’s ancient, secret recipe:
Ingredients:
Wash the lemons and peel them carefully. Boil the lemon peels and the sugar in a sufficently large pot. Stir well and let cool. Add rest of the water. Add the yeast to the lukewarm water. Let the mead ferment for 24 hours. Strain the mead into bottles and add one teaspoon of sugar and a couple of raisins to each bottle, store in a cool place (a fridge will do). The mead is ready when the raisins rise to the top, usually after a week.
The Finnish mead variety has a very low alcohol content, about 1%, so it’s a great drink for the whole family. Enjoy!
Another contribution to Valokuvatorstai photo challenge. This week’s topic was “No”.
Valokuvatorstai 44. haaste “Ei”.
Ei saa polttaa. Ei.
My contribution to valokuvatorstai / mikrokosmos.
Seems like a typical dutch scene? Look closer… More pictures from Madurodam in my gallery. Comments are welcome in English or Finnish, no Klingon this time please, unless you are Jyrki Kasvi.
Hollantilaista maisemaa. Tämän lähemmäksi mikrokosmosta, eli siis pienoismaailmaa, en halpis digipokkarilla ole vielä päässyt…
November 2003. An anonymous writer, posting his message on the Finnish Arvopaperi -magazine’s public forum, described the electronics subcontractor Elcoteq’s chairman of the Board, Antti Piippo, as a “drunk lunatic“. The message passed unnoticed, likely read only by few, although it is difficult to estimate a precise figure.
A year later Mr. Piippo stumbled upon the writing, most probably while googling for himself. He then filed a defamation suit against the writer, whose identity the police were able to trace. The case was closed in the Helsinki Court of Appeal in January of this year. The defendant was ordered to pay €2000 as compensation for the suffering he had inflicted upon Mr. Piippo, as well as €620 in legal fees. It’s worth mentioning that Mr. Piippo gets €600000 a year for serving as Elcoteq’s Chairman of the Board and is also the founder of the company, owning a significant portion of the company. How badly did he need the €2000?
There’s something seriously troubling about this case. A socially unimportant, anonymous writer slandering a prominent public figure is not uncommon in Finland, nor is it usually seen as socially unacceptable. If I walked into a bar in Helsinki, I would very likely hear a lot of people slander and mock politicians, business leaders and celebrities. Nobody would give a flying flock about it. I’m not a lawyer, but commom sense tells me that harmful, possibly incorrect comments about prominent figures by socially insignificant figures, should not be any basis for a lawsuit, unless carried out in a truly spectacular fashion and with overwhelming malice.
What’s interesting about this case is the fact that Mr. Piippo has been convicted of drunk driving. Exactly how inaccurate is it to call a drunk driver “a drunk“? Mr. Piippo has also been convicted of assaulting two women. According to the court Mr. Piippo tied up a 32-year-old woman’s arms and feet with rope and tried to shove tranquilizer in her mouth. He then hit a 26-year-old woman three times with a leather belt (See this article, in Finnish). Sounds pretty nuts, but without any medical record of mental illness, it would indeed be highly inappropriate to call him a lunatic.
The bottom line is that it’s not my place to judge Mr. Piippo, or anyone else for that matter. I know nothing of his family life, his alcohol usage, mental state, characteristics or personality. It would be too hasty to make any judgement about him based on these two sole cases. As a matter of fact I have great respect for his opinions on Finnish economy and politics, globalisation (which he thinks is the greatest peace movement to have emerged since WW2), and his criticism of the Finnish Comprehensive Income Policy Agreement. To simply label him as a drunk lunatic would be a gross understatement of his achievements. He does however, in my opinion, rightly deserve to be criticised for filing the looney defamation lawsuit, which brought him nothing but bad PR and only made the general public all the more aware of his past convictions.
This lawsuit tells me that the Finnish legal system is becoming increasingly American, to the effect that it is is starting to affect freedom of speech. This Americanization of the legal system might actually be good news for me, because now I can finally sue Moccamaster for my caffeine addiction.
Petteri Järvinen has an excellent article on this topic in the printed version of Tietokone magazine 5/2007 (Finnish).
Amount of money Microsoft has committed to spending on technology and investment in China over the next 5 years: $3.7 billion
Height of the largest Windows Vista ad bought by Microsoft, projected on the side of the Jin Mao tower in Shanghai: 421 meters
Price for a basic, legal copy of Microsoft Vista in China: $295
Price of a pirated copy of Microsoft Vista on the street in China: $1.30 to $4.00
244 genuine copies of Microsoft Vista sold in China in the first two weeks after its launch: PRICELESS!
Source: FP Passport
I started doing the second part of my driving exam today. In Finland the driving exam consists of two parts. After completing the first you get a temporary driver’s licence that’s valid for two years. After the second part you get a permanent licence. I’ve renewed my temporary licence twice already, paying €70 each time. So I’ve had the lousy temporary licence for more than four years now.
I hadn’t driven that much during the last few years, so I was more than a bit nervous attending an evaluative driving test today (arvioiva-ajo in Finnish). I friggin hate cars. I hate traffic and I hate driving, just the kind of atitude you need for a driving test (although you can’t fail the evaluative test, you just get feedback on how you’re driving). Surprisingly, the test was pretty fun and I almost enjoyed driving. The verdict was that I drive pretty well, although I could be a little more careful and take less risks in traffic. The emphasis was on economic driving. I first drove a rougly 11km round driving as I usually would, then did the same round, but following the instructions from the driving instructor. During the first round the car consumed 9.0 L/100km and the second round only 7.3 L/100km. The average speed was 32 km/h for the first round and 33 km/h for the second.
So just by changing your driving habits slightly, you can save 1.7 L/100km. If the average price of gas (petrol) in Finland is €1.3, this means you can save €2.21 per every 100 km. If every litre of gas produces roughly 2.3 kg of CO2, you can save 3.9 kg of CO2 per every 100 km. If you drive 20000 km per year, you can save €442 in a year with economic driving and produce 780 kg less CO2.
Therefore, if you want to save the world, learn economic driving and consume 19% less gas. If you fly, you don’t have to give a rat’s ass about the CO2 emissions from your vehicle, because you’ll be procucing 155.4 g of CO2 per rpk (revenue passenger kilometer) anyway. For example, if you fly 8769.8 kilometers from London to Los Angeles you’ll be contributing 3.18 tonnes of carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. We only have one atmosphere. That means I’ll be breathing your shit. Now if you really want to save the planet – don’t fly.
If you find it impossible to stop flying, you can at least quit breathing. An average human exhales 310 kg of carbon dioxide per year. It’s not much, but it’s still something.
Some might be wondering how 1 litre of gas can produce more than twice its own weight of CO2. I’ll let you think about. It’s just mind-boggling, isn’t it? 
I’ve written about hyperlinks before. I have argued that it is absolutely ludicrous that some websites want to prevent you from deep linking to content on their websites, or mandate special conditions for hyperlinking. I sent dozens of requests to such sites asking for permission to link to their sites. I was honored, but more than slightly amused, when I received a formal permission to link to the website of the government of Australia. Here it is again, a friggin government approved link!
Only one request was explicitly denied, the others never replied to my requests.
According to Tim Berners-Lee, on the web, to make reference without making a link is possible “but ineffective – like speaking but with a paper bag over your head.“
Linking is not only our fundamental right, it’s our duty. Not linking to relevant sources causes extreme frustration in most readers. I find it incredible that most online newspapers don’t link to external sites at all. Some, like engadget.com, even have a perverse habit of linking only to their own stories, whereas bloggers usually utilize a sane habit of linking.
I stumbled upon this article by John C. Dvorak. He argues (and quite rightly so) that overlinking is probably better than null-linking. He also discusses the concept of dimensional linking – the idea of different levels of links that can be turned on or off with the browser.
This would be a great idea for many sites, but no doubt difficult to implement without making it overly complex. Imagine a blog, where you could hide all unnecessary links with just one click, leaving only the really important links visible. Now wouldn’t that be awesome!
My contribution to Valokuvatorstai / kasvu.
Isommat edeltä ja pienemmät perässä. Juhlavaatteissa ei saa kiipeillä, varsinkaan tuonne, sieltähän voi pudota! Uteliaisuus kuitenkin voittaa, myös pienimmän. Täytyy kiivetä ja kurkistaa muurin yli. Se on välttämätön osa lapsen kasvua.
Muutamia suosikkejani tämänkertaisesta haasteesta, satunnaisin kommentein:
Christ is risen!
Truly He is risen!
