Eideard

In America “storm-chasers” are the intrepid types who pursue tornadoes, and sometimes hurricanes. But the Arctic Circle has its aurora chasers – people who speed around in search of the best views of the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.

“Last week we saw one that had everything – spiralling, curtains, ribbons, greens and reds, and the whole sky lit up. We were amazed at what was unfolding before us,” says Andy Keen.

Five years ago he left his job running a charity in the UK to move to Ivalo, a remote village in northern Lapland, Finland, latitude 68 degrees – two degrees above the Arctic Circle. “I saw a TV documentary about the Northern Lights. So I went there to have a look. Now I’m absolutely addicted,” he says.

Mr Keen’s company, Aurorahunters, now takes seven tourists a week on hunting trips in the Arctic wilderness to search for the Northern Lights…There are similar companies operating elsewhere in Finland and in neighbouring Norway where the official tourism website describes the aurora as “a tricky lady”. It adds: “You never know when she bothers to turn up. This diva keeps you waiting…”

When a location has been selected, Mr Keen and his group jump into minibuses and head into the wilderness, sometimes taking to sledges pulled by huskies to reach the most remote areas. They often see moose and bear tracks and have ventured as far north as the Arctic Ocean.

All to get the best vantage point to see the aurora borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn (Aurora) and the Greek name for the north wind (Boreas)…

RTFA. Details about the causes, predictions. Suggestions about chasing and photographing the elusive beauty of the aurora. All useful.

Click on the photo for the series

Actually, I like this moose from Finland

Pasi Sahlberg speaking to students in Manhattan

Ever since Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million that does not start formal education until age 7 and scorns homework and testing until well into the teenage years, scored at the top of a well-respected international test in 2001 in math, science and reading, it has been an object of fascination among American educators and policy makers.

Finlandophilia only picked up when the nation placed close to the top again in 2009, while the United States ranked 15th in reading, 19th in math and 27th in science…

Critics say that Finland is an irrelevant laboratory for the United States. It has a tiny economy, a low poverty rate, a homogenous population — 5 percent are foreign-born — and socialist underpinnings (speeding tickets are calculated according to income).

One more reflection of America’s insular, ignorant, conservative politics.

Its school system has roughly the same number of teachers as New York City’s but far fewer students, 600,000 compared with New York’s 1.1 million. Finnish students speak Finnish and Swedish and usually English…the average resident checks out 17 books a year from the library…

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Who says Angry Birds and black tie can’t mix?

Teija Vesterbacka, wife of Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka, showed up at the Finnish Presidential Palace for an event on Dec. 6 draped head to toe in Angry Birds. Rovio, a Finnish computer game developer, brought the addictive cell phone game to life back in Dec. 2009.

To anyone unfamiliar with the mobile fad, Teija’s red one-shouldered gown could pass for an artistic, geometrical design. For those who have not been living under a rock for the past two years, the bust features the unmistakable glare of the game’s Red Bird…

The Castle Ball, held each year in honor of the country’s Independence Day, is broadcast on national TV with approximately 2,000 guests in attendance.

Rock on, Teija!

Otto would make the perfect chicken, except for a few hiccups. Hatching eggs, scratching around the coop and roosting on a beam with the rest of the hens are great habits for chickens, but rather unusual for an eight month old male rabbit.

The confused bunny came as a free gift to Ville Kuusinen’s home, when he bought nine Silkie hens and a rooster from a farm.

The Kuusinens and their three children live on a small island in Velkua some 210 km (130 miles) northwest of Helsinki.

“When I went to the hen house, I noticed he was sitting on the eggs. Later I watched through the window how he jumped on the beam, failed, tried again and with a lot of practice eventually he stayed up there,” Kuusinen told Reuters.

Otto does not like to sit on laps or eat carrots like most pet rabbits. The rabbit, who has lived with chickens all his life prefers chicken feed and runs with the chickens outdoors and sometimes plays with them by jumping over them.

“For the chickens he is one of them. He often sits on the beam between the hens and under their wings’,” Kuusinen said.

But he said Otto’s rabbity instincts still take over when a visitor steps into the hen house. He runs away and hides, but can be lured out with raisin buns.

Actually, I respond pretty well to raisin buns, too.

Many readers in the Northern Hemisphere are likely already starting to experience seasonal affective disorder, appropriately enough known as SAD. For those people fortunate enough not to be familiar with it, SAD is a mood disorder that is brought on by the shorter day-length experienced in winter – less sunlight results in gloomier people.

One of the most common treatments involves regular exposure to bright artificial lights, that appear to psychologically serve the same purpose as sunlight. Now, one might assume that such light therapy would require that people see the light. According to the Finnish designers of the Valkee device, however, light also does the trick if you shine it up your ears.

The invention is based around the assertion that not only are our visual systems photosensitive, but so are our brains themselves. More specifically, there are apparently 18 sites in our brains, where OPN3 photoreceptor proteins are located. These regions will supposedly react favorably to exposure to light, even when that light is filtered through tissue and bone.

The Valkee itself looks a lot like a personal music player, complete with earbuds. Instead of emitting music, however, these buds contain fiber optic lights. By turning the device on and sticking the glowing fibers in your ears for about ten minutes a day, it is claimed that your brain will receive enough light to send the SAD packing.

Does it sound like quackery? A great deal of people would certainly say so. Not among those people, however, would be a group of scientists from Finland’s University of Oulu. In two clinical trials, they had people with severe SAD use the device daily, for 8 to 12 minutes a day. Afterward, when those people completed a BDI-21 questionnaire (a standard for assessing depression), it was found that 92 percent of the subjects in the first trial had completely recovered.

I wonder if it works on hemorrhoids?

What happens if you can’t find an actual scandal? Make one up. The Fisker “scandal” that started at ABC News has jumped to Fox and right wing blogs, where the idea that the U.S. bumbled into paying for cars built overseas is gaining steam.

ABC’s report incorrectly stated that Fisker had made off with U.S. taxpayer funds in a kind of bait and switch, promising jobs in America then outsourcing to Finland. Since that report rolled out last week, Fox has jumped on the issue with a story headlined “Federal Loan… for Finland?” Fox’s Neil Cavuto jumped in to add that, two years after the payments to Fisker, “those jobs still are not here, they’re in Finland.” Attempts to turn the Fisker loan (not a grant) into a scandal have become entangled in Republican primary politics, with candidate Mitt Romney calling for an investigation and claiming that loans to both Fisker and Tesla were payback for political donations.

All of which conveniently ignores some important facts. Yes, Fisker’s first model, the Karma plug-in hybrid sports car, is currently being assembled in Finland. However, the first $169 million in loans provided to Fisker were not for the assembly of the Karma. The loans went toward the design and engineering of the car, activities that took place at Fisker’s Pontiac, MI headquarters.

The bulk of the loan for Fisker was provided not for the Karma, but to support the upcoming Nina model, which will be built at the company’s new factory in Delaware starting in 2013. There are already 100 plant workers in Delaware employed by Fisker in preparation for the Nina and millions have been invested in preparing the Delaware assembly lines.

…Fisker has stated that “not a single dollar” of the money it received from the government has been spent overseas…[The federal funds were] used soley in the U.S. to fund design, engineering and integration work.”

Even real journalists hate to admit they screwed up. Retractions and corrections would appear in a follow-on edition – usually a tiny paragraph buried next to city council notes or something equally boring. Not anymore.

Poisonally, I think it’s time for ABC News to act like grown-ups and own up to their lousy reporting – and quit worrying about where that leaves Rupert’s army of toy noisemakers.

France and Germany may effectively run the European Union, but Finland has been demonstrating how even a small country can disrupt their grand designs.

By insisting that it receive collateral from Greece in return for aid, Finland is threatening to upend an agreement that euro zone countries, led by France and Germany, made in July to expand the E.U. bailout fund.

Finland would contribute less than 2 percent of the guarantees provided to the fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. But the country’s demands, the subject of intense negotiations in recent days, threaten to derail the fragile consensus that is preventing Greece from defaulting on its debt.

Finland is the most vivid example of the way domestic politics can become Continental problems, threatening the unity of the 17 euro zone members as they face their deepest crisis ever. But Germany, the Netherlands and Austria — all wealthy countries with strong economies — also harbor deep opposition to bailing out Greece, Portugal, Ireland or any other country that may become overwhelmed by debt…

In Finland, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen faces discontent within his governing coalition as well as pressure from a nationalist opposition group, the True Finns, which rode euro-skepticism to big gains in April parliamentary elections…

Finnish officials say they want to resolve the collateral issue and contribute to the bailout fund. But they are also adamant that the country must receive guarantees.

“We have to listen to the people of Finland,” said a government official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Collateral is an absolute condition for Finland to be involved.”

It is unclear what the collateral might consist of — jokes making the rounds suggest that Greece could pawn the Acropolis or the island of Corfu. And any concessions made to Finland would probably then be demanded by other countries like Austria, where citizens are also grumpy about having to provide tax dollars to support Greece…

They may be jokes to NYTimes writers; but, that was exactly the same response from my favorite banker when we got into a discussion of exactly these fiscal issues — the European Union not being a fiscal union.

Confederacies still haven’t anymore viable economic solutions than they have political solutions. A simple agreement for commerce and currency doesn’t guarantee sound monetary policy for seventeen different economies.

A Finnish ferry has run aground while its captain was stuck in the bathroom.

One member of staff managed to slow the island-hopping tourist ferry down, but the vessel, carrying 54 passengers, slammed onto a rock near the shore of Helsinki, the Finnish coastguard said…

The captain got stuck in the bathroom because of a jammed lock and yelled for help, the coastguard said.

…The coastguard is investigating whether the captain’s actions amounted to criminal endangerment.

What was he supposed to do? Steer the ship by flushing the toilet?

Ladyzhensky and Kaukonen

The annual World Sauna Championships in Finland have ended in tragedy with the death of one of the finalists.

Russian finalist Vladimir Ladyzhensky and Finnish rival Timo Kaukonen were both taken to hospital after collapsing and Mr Ladyzhensky later died…

Its chief organiser, Ossi Arvela, said all the rules of the event had been followed… Well, it’s OK, then.

He said: “All the rules were followed and there was enough first aid personnel. All the competitors needed to sign in to the competition with a doctor’s certificate.”

Mr Kaukonen, who was last year’s champion, is being treated in hospital at the city of Lahti.

The event, which has been running since 1999, requires participants to withstand 110ºC for as long as possible.

Dry-roasted contestant.