Pictures from the demonstration against internet censorship here.

Image by katchi

On February 12, 2008 an Internet activist’s website was blacklisted in Finland, because it contained a list of domains censored in Finland. That list naturally has links to sites which the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation claims contain child pornography. However, many domains on that list were found to contain no child pornography, or pornography of any kind at all. It’s also worth considering that according to the Finnish law, only sites which contain illegal material and that are hosted abroad can be censored.

It’s very troubling to think that the police has extended the scope of the law on their own initiative. When asked why Google, which links to plenty of censored sites, isn’t censored, Lars Henriksson of the NBI replied “It [Google] isn’t a website, it’s a browser.” It would help if the NBI hired someone who has actually seen a computer… The level of incompetence in the NBI is just staggering.

The biggest problem with the current censorship system in Finland is not in the technical implementation of the system (which is very poor by any standard) but rather in the fundamental nature of any censorship system – nothing is done to get rid of the illegal material, it’s just hidden from view. Out of sight out of mind. The people who support the censorship system aren’t creepy despotic politicians who want to establish an authoritarian regime in Finland (or at least I hope so). Nope, they just want your vote, they just want you to believe they’re fighting hard against child pornography, when in fact they haven’t done jack shit to get rid of the problem.

Because I’m a little crazy, I uploaded the entire list of censored domains (JE’s list version 2.14) to del.icio.us. If del.icio.us is not a browser, then Finland has to now blacklist that site as well

Image by b.franchina

The Finnish Bureau of Censorship has decided to censor the website of a Japanese musical instruments store. No kidding, see this screenshot. Pretty insane. It does raise the question – who the fuck maintains the secret list of censored domains? There’s no one to complain to, nobody is responsible. It’s a secret list you know, made by secret people. Secret people who like wear dark sunglasses and dress in black. If they find a website they don’t like they add it to their little black book. You should not be scared though – they just want to help the children.

To just help the children – you get it? It seems that the only thing that matters to the people in power is that there now exists a mechanism for censoring childporn – whether that mechanism works or not is irrelevant – it’s there and the monkeys who invented it can now smile and say they’ve done everything they can to save the children. Really, they’re just trying to save the children. Did I mention that their cause is good – to help the children? Now who cares if one or two decent websites get censored by accident – there are plenty of other websites on the net!

Oh, also thaimisc.com is now censored. A website dedicated to the Princess of Thailand. No childporn on that site, but it’s censored. Oooops. Everybody makes mistakes, even the secret people. No biggie – there are so many other websites out there that it doesn’t matter!

Way to go Finland – I feel so much closer to North Korea now! Ready, Kafka?

In any case, I was really happy to win a one evening coffee course at Robert Paulig’s Coffee Institute in Helsinki. The course was simply awesome – great tips for brewing coffee, a lot of free coffee, different coffee varieties, really good time, some more coffee, a little bit of espresso, a few cappuccinos, some Irish coffee, Frezza Mocha, French coffee, hotshots, and oh – just when you thought they’d run out of coffee – a few more cups of the world’s most addictive beverage! If you ever get a chance to participate, I highly recommend this course. First part of the course – which coffee goes with which pastry:

Guatemala, Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia – all really good, but you need to watch out what kind of pastry you serve with each. They recommend you should always serve darker roast with spicier foods, for example cheese cake with French roast, and mild roast with mildly flavored foods. Sounds pretty logical, doesn’t it? If you serve a very strong roast with subtly flavored cake, you will not taste any of the finer aromas of the cake, and on the other hand, mildly roasted coffee will not taste much like coffee when served with very spicy foods.

Now on to the main thing: How to brew great coffee. 10 easy steps should do it:

1. Buy a real coffeemaker. The water needs to heat to 92-96°C. A cheap machine will not heat the water enough and will result in a disappointment. A Moccamaster should do (no, they didn’t bribe me, honest!).
2. Clean your coffeemaker daily. Wash the coffee pot, funnel and other necessary parts of the machine with sodium bicarbonate (cooking soda), use a solution of 3 table spoons per 1 liter of water in order to wash off any coffee grease accumulated in the coffeemaker.
3. Store the coffee grounds in your fridge, always seal the package properly and never pour the grounds to another container – oxygen is the coffee bean’s worst enemy!
4. Use clean, fresh water. Move to Finland if the water in your area sucks.
5. Always use the right size filter, never buy cheap filters.
6. Don’t pour water in to the coffeemaker with your coffee pot, otherwise coffee grease will start to collect inside the coffeemaker, resulting in a rancid taste at worst.
7. When pouring grounds in to the filter, even the grounds gently – but don’t shake the filter to do so. If you do, fine coffee dust will fill the pores of the filter resulting in an uneven brew.
8. Use 7g of grounds per 1.25dl of fresh water.
9. When ready, stir the coffee gently with a spoon, otherwise the strongest coffee will be left at the bottom.
10. The coffee will stay good for max half an hour. Enjoy!

[humongous size pic]

Somebody (or something – which is a much more frightening thought) had stepped on this poor little Viviparous lizard at our kesämökki and left it dying on the porch. The viviparous lizard, which we call sisilisko, is the world’s most northern lizard and the only lizard native to Finland. It isn’t poisonous and it doesn’t bite. Don’t try to capture one though, because it is a protected species in Finland. If you harass one, it might drop it’s tail, altough I never saw that happen when I used to catch these as a child. These guys are über-cute and are crawling all over our kesämökki

Men convicted in British terror plot planned to use Finnish fertiliser for bomb

OMG, they planned to use Kemira GrowHow’s Finnish fertilizer? Why is that information relevant? Who the hell cares? I bet Finnish Nokia mobile phones have been used as detonators in more than a dozen terrorist attacks. I think it would be real big news if the Al-Qaida NOC hidden in a cave in Afghanistan ran Linux, a Finnish innovation! Perhaps next week we’ll hear that Evil Terrorists are now buying meters of Marimekko fabric, stockpiling vast amounts of Iittala glassware and getting horribly drunk off Finlandia Vodka. Who knows, maybe the next big terrorist attack against the US will be inspired by a Renny Harlin movie. Now that would be big news.