Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Revising gunpermits


The most controversial thing that has happened lately here in Finland, has been the sacking of the editor in chief for a newspaper.

The owners of the newspaper deny the editor in question for having been sacked for living in a lesbian relationship and claims instead that the reason instead is her dishonesty, as the editors' partner is involved in local politics and this never came up in their talks previous to hiring her.
And with a journalist being involved in a relationship with a politician, no matter being lesbian, gay or heterosexual, there is always the possibility of being biased towards your spouse. Which is all natural,

Anyway, the Finnish gun laws are now being revised and it seems that Finland is to get the most restrictive laws concerning the possession and licensing of firearms in the whole of EU. All permits granted during the past two years are to be revised and in the future two police officers will have to be present when applicants are interviewed for their permits and also a medical check will be required.

Strangely enough both of the recent school shooting incidents here in Finland, were committed with licensed firearms, and as there always are ways to obtain illegal guns, I really wonder how much impact, if at all, this new gun permit law will have on sad incidents like these as they seem to become more and more common.

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

Mutated perch


Four beautifully orange perches have in a short period of time been caught in one lake here in Finland.


The outlook of the fish differs from the usual perch by being yellow and orange instead of their normal darker colours and black stripes. Fisherman first suspected the outlook of the perch being a result of industrial chemicals getting into the lake, but the scientists lean mote towards it being a form of genetic mutation of the perches, even more so as one of the caught fish weighed over one kilogramme.


And as these extras ordinary fish have survived and lived to be this big, there is a possibility of more of these mutated fish swimming around in the depths of this lake. This makes me think of the so called golden perch for sale occasionally in some supermarkets, as I have always felt they must be some form of a mutation.


So here comes the trick question, are these mutated, intentionally or non-intentionally genetically mutated fish, safe to digest?

Monday, 29 September 2008

Another shooting


My apologies to my dear readers.
So many sad things have been happening here in Finland lately, as well as in my personal life, that I my normal urge to blog has almost completely gone missing. I have missed the routine of blogging but have had lack of ideas, as the main reason for blogging is not to write about my personal life, but to give my own view of the contemporary life in this country instead.

Sad was the latest incident of shootings where over ten young adults were killed, shot with a handgun in their school. This was the second in a year, and for me with offspring in the same age it has been hard to conceive how much it has affected me as well, even though our family has not been involved in the incidents.

A god thing has been the activity these sad happenings have created in other schools for the students to cope giving them ways to work through their feelings of anger, sadness and fear. Sessions have been held to talk through the incidents with the students and time was made available for them who wished to talk about it.

So maybe something good will come out of these two sad incidents, eventually, even though it may not feel like it at this moment.

Monday, 8 September 2008

Just not in time


We have now had digital television in Finland for more than a year with the broadcasting having begun in August last year.
There has been complaints about the subtitling that still at times has difficulties in loading in time and sometimes it is completely missing, and this seems to have no coherence what so ever with the channel you are currently looking at. As many as 10.000 households have given up their TV licences since then, a great deal more than was expected.

One thing I still keep wondering about, is the announced beginning time of programs in the TV guides of the digital-box. The channel announces the program to begin at say 9 PM, well, first there are the usual advertisements then, when the program due is announced with either my just a voice or by an actual person on the screen, followed by some more ads and the program itself doesn't begin until 3-4 minutes after the time it was supposed or rather announced to.
Does this mean they lie on TV? One thing it for sure tells people is, that it does not matter if you are not in time.

Anyway, the actual or real beginning time is in no way to be seen anywhere, not in the TV guide of the digi-box, text TV or elsewhere. Even the beginning times varie a bit from channel to channel, and here I mean the duration of the advertisements.

Another problem is when some program drags overtime resulting in either the following program to be either postponed or beginning later than it should, whihc alters all the following programs of that day.

How hard can it in these times of high-tech culture with computers as aids, to synchronize the guide in the TV, both on the text TV pages and on the digi-box, so you can actually seen when the program begins and the interludes done by the ads, or if the program gets postponed because of a so called "force majeure" . Then you would not have to waste time programming your digi-box to save the program on its' harddrive, making you disappointed as the program never was sent anyway and instead you see something else utterly boring.

Saturday, 6 September 2008

Waste of resources


I prefer to write my blogs in my own time on my own PC instead of having to do it on-line, as I have to right now.

There still is something wrong and I can not find any faulty options on my browser for this to work, neither text can be imported nor any pictures turn out without error messages turning up on my screen. So in the mean time I apologize for my current lack of my usual witty posts.

Anyway, The Finns are quite lazy about recycling, it hardly exists at all and most of the garbage is just disposed of in big heaps to be buried outside the cities. If I recall it correctly only about 10% of the disposed household garbage is recycled.
Now there is this new ad on the TV, "Operatio maa", which in English would be "Operation Earth", which is a fund raising to save earth, globally.

And nothing seems to be done locally in cities or every man's home. This to me seems like a try to avoid the responsibility to do something about the problem we all will be suffering of, or rather already at present are beginning to feel the aftermath of, global warming.

Wasting 90% of sources that could be made use of, well isn't that the utter waste of time, no to mention resources. In a world that still measures everything important in money this seems quite a peculiar.

Friday, 5 September 2008

Problems, problems


I am sorry to tell you that I still haven't worked out the problem. It's either on Blogspot or I have wrong options on my upgraded browser....

Thursday, 4 September 2008

Upgraded into trouble


Just recently my Mozilla was upgraded into a new version, and since then I have had but trouble! For example this Blog of mine, well I have been trying to get this right but it still does not work as it should, and having checked Blogpspot’s FAQ pages there seems to be a glitch they currently are working on, so it should not be me this time. Still it is annoying as my written word turns out completely differently formatted than it was when writing it, and before posting it.

Not to mention when I add my pixs, then it goes bonkers.

Well, I am hoping that they will have fixed the problem and today’s posting will work as it used to, or at least, the way it should with the new version of Mozilla as this is most frustrating, having problem getting things right, as I am finally getting back into routine of blogging again.