Category Archives: Europe

The Success of the Finnish Education System

“It’s very expensive to educate all of our teachers in five-year programs, but it helps make our teachers highly respected and appreciated,” says Jari Lavonen, head of the department of teacher education at the University of Helsinki. Outsiders spot this quickly. “Their teachers are much better prepared to teach physics than we are, and then the Finns get out of the way. You don’t buy a dog and bark for it,” says Dan MacIsaac, a specialist in physics-teacher education at the State University of New York at Buffalo who visited Finland for two months. “In the U.S., they treat teachers like pizza delivery boys and then do efficiency studies on how well they deliver the pizza.”

The two parts I bolded from this section from the article make an interesting social commentary on how we run our education system here in the U.S. It is hard to say whether the system fully detailed in the article would work in the US or not, as this last quote shows a bit:

Some of Finland’s educational policies could probably be exported, but it’s questionable whether the all-for-one-and-one-for-all-ness that underlies them would travel easily. Thailand, for instance, is trying to adapt the Finnish model to its own school system. But as soon as a kid falls behind, parents send for a private tutor — something that would be unthinkable in Finland. Is Thailand’s Finnish experiment working? “Not really,” says Lavonen. Would that it could, in Thailand and elsewhere.

Whether or not the Finnish school system would work completely over here in the United States or not is certainly debatable. However it is interesting to study and see what possible parts of their system and their way of doing things might be suitable for use here in America.

Both quotes come from page 2 of the article.

Nazi Germany afraid of a dog

Amused at what the history archives can sometimes produce.  Weird story’s like this make history fun to learn about and research. 

Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to the history of the Second World War: a Finnish mutt whose imitation of the Hitler salute enraged the Nazis so deeply that they started an obsessive campaign against the dog’s owner.

Absurdly, a totalitarian state that dominated most of Europe was unable to do much about Jackie and his paw-raising parody of Germany’s Fuehrer.

The dog, Jackie, was a mutt owned by Tor Borg, a businessman from the Finnish city of Tampere. Borg’s wife Josefine, a German citizen known for her anti-Nazi sentiments, dubbed the dog Hitler because of the strange way it raised its paw high in the air like Germans greeting the Fuehrer with a cry of “Heil Hitler!”

Link: New documents: Hitler-mocking dog enraged Nazis. Via: The Finnish Dog That Mocked Hitler.

Radioactive Boars on the rise in Germany

This is an interesting legacy from the Chernobyl disaster where the wild boars in Germany are eating food that has high levels of radioactivity.

As Germany’s wild boar population has skyrocketed in recent years, so too has the number of animals contaminated by radioactivity left over from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.

via A Quarter Century after Chernobyl: Radioactive Boar on the Rise in Germany – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

Apparently, mushrooms and truffles, which the hogs like to eat, are “particularly efficient at absorbing radioactivity.”

via Nearly 25 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, Germany Beset By Radioactive Boars : The Two-Way : NPR.

From the first article link it appears that the wild boars in general are a problem with the article noting some of the recent headlines.

Stories of marauding pigs hit the headlines with startling regularity: Ten days ago, a wild boar attacked a wheelchair-bound man in a park in Berlin; in early July, a pack of almost two dozen of the animals repeatedly marched into the eastern German town of Eisenach, frightening residents and keeping police busy; and on Friday morning, a German highway was closed for hours after 10 wild boar broke through a fence and waltzed onto the road.

Ah the fun of wild animals, boars are at least a little more interesting, here in Minnesota the most common road nuisance is Deer. I was most amused and hope the man is alright by the headline from the Berlin park.

Image from NPR piece, Timm Schamberger/AFP/Getty Images

Eggs by the dozen to be banned by European Union?

For all the good that government does, stories like this can make it seem like they really don’t do any good at all.

In the article it mentions the possibly that the rule will not go into effect for a year  or so.  Hopefully they can turn this around and reverse this purposed rule.

With this sort of rule I am just perplexed on what they where thinking when writing this rule.  In the article they have a quote saying important to “provided [information] in a way that is meaningful and beneficial to consumers” like saying 12 eggs or 6 rolls is not.. Odd is all I can say..

For the first time, eggs and other products such as oranges and bread rolls will be sold by weight instead of by the number contained in a packet. Until now, Britain has been exempt from EU regulations that forbid the selling of goods by number. But last week MEPs voted to end Britain’s deal despite objections from UK members….Or that a bag of white rolls has 322g inside instead of half a dozen. The rules will not allow both the weight and the quantity to be displayed.

One major food supplier said: ‘This is hindering rather than helping the consumer, taking away one of the key bits of information. If this goes through it would demonstrate how far removed the legislators are from the real world. It’s bonkers.’

via EU to ban selling eggs by the dozen: Shopkeepers’ fury as they are told all food must be weighed and sold by the kilo | Mail Online.

Hat tip (H/T) to No More Buying Eggs By The Dozen in the UK. neatorama.com

Iceland’s version of Jessie Ventura?

Comedian Jon Gnarr from Iceland sounds similar to the type of candidate pro wrestler Jessie Ventura was here in Minnesota when running for Governor in 1998.  Some one very different, outside the norm, and who allowed a way for the voters to vent their frustrations about the parties that are in office regularly.  That description seems like it matches Ventura and Gnarr well.

A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A “drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it?

via The Saturday Profile – Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He’s Elected – Biography – NYTimes.com.

Gnarr’s party the Best Party ended up gaining 34.7% which was the highest in the Reykjavik city election and his party ended up with 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats.

Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of “The Wire.”….The Best Party, whose members include a who’s who of Iceland’s punk rock scene, formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (despite Mr. Gnarr’s suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch “The Wire” and take notes).

Via: NYTimes.com.

I will have to try to remember to follow up on this story and see how Mr. Gnarr is doing in his new job as Mayor of Reykjavik.

I leave you with an amusing video that the Best Party put together showcasing their ideas.