Finland

Getting Down Finnish Style

August 27, 2010

Hope you all had a chance to tune into Radio Helsinki at 4:30 pm and boogie down. For some virtual fun, click play on all three links below at the same time. It’s all part of Happy Helsinki and the Helsinki Festival.

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Finnish Town Rivalries

July 2, 2010

Despite their quiet nature, the Finns have a fierce sense of loyalty to their hometown. You would think that a country of 5 million that is a linguistic island unto itself would pull together and present a unified front to the rest of the world but this Wikipedia article shows you that there is quite [...]

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Onkalo, long term planning

May 30, 2010

How would you like to be the Project Manager on a construction project that is due to run through 2100? That’s what they’re doing 300 kms Northwest of Helsinki at Onkalo, a long term storage facility for highly radioactive nuclear waste. It’s a timely topic of discussion. While the uncontrollable spewage from the bottom of [...]

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Finland Suggest

May 10, 2010

In homage to Laura Lippay’s Google Suggest experiment, I decided to do a few of my own. No, I didn’t know what the Finnish Men’s Shouting Choir was either.  They some audio clips on their homepage if you want to have a listen. Any Search Suggestions of your own?

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Heating by Bytes

March 16, 2010

File this one under Green. Sometime in the near future, district heating in Helsinki will be supplemented by heat thrown off by local data centers. This will enable them to cut back on greenhouse gases produced by more traditional methods to heat the water that is pumping through radiators across town. In a first of its kind [...]

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USPO should copy Finnish NetPosti

March 11, 2010

A recent editorial in the New York Times spoke of how internet commerce is eating into the US Postal Services’ bottom line. The Postal Service made a profit until 2006. Since then, declining mail volumes — as more Americans use e-mail and pay their bills online — and the demands of its retiree health benefit [...]

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Nordics Bathed in Broadband

February 3, 2010

More pretty infographics via Focus.com’s 2009 State of the Internet report. What is it about the internets up here in the Nordics. Norway, Sweden, Finland are the top three for internet penetration (I believe that’s number of households). In terms of speed Finland is quite a bit shy of Japan and Korea but still pulls [...]

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Finnish Independence Day

December 17, 2009

The Finns had a rough go of it winning their independence from the USSR. It was just 70 years ago so the wounds are still fresh. The commemoration is more of a memorial in honor of those that served in the bitter civil war than the Norman Rockwell-like celebration that I am so used to [...]

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Santa Lucia

December 16, 2009

It’s cold and dark in Helsinki.  Minus 10 Celsius with a bitter wind blowing off the Baltic. Snowing too. Coming down sideways, blinding at times and so cold the snow doesn’t really collect on the ground but just blows around like sawdust that squeaks when you walk on it. The sun doesn’t make an appearance until 9 am [...]

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Berlusconi Pizza with Reindeer

December 7, 2009

Finnish humor at its best. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was famously quoted as saying he had to “endure” Finnish food during a visit several years ago. So it certainly amused me when I found out that the a Finnish pizza chain has named one of their pizzas in his honor. Thumbing their noses squarely at [...]

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