Things you didn't know until very recently...

Regis Philbin and Donald Trump released a version of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer".

BestOf, today I learned that Finland has mandatory religion classes in primary education. I had no idea, I think that's super cool and should be a thing in the US!

I was raised without religion, and my grasp of it is basic at best.

And, on another subject, I learned that there is a brilliant Senegalese photographer named Omar Victor Diop. He is self-taught. His projects focus on African heritage and identity, history, refugees, black protest, and modern Africa.

IT'S ALL SO COOL!

edited 29th May '17 12:25:44 PM by RaspyMink

The idea is that you get education primarily in the religion of your family (so mostly Lutheran, but with significant Russian Orthodox and (these days) Muslim minorities, as well as some Evangelical groups). That education includes courses that cover the other world religions, as well.

If you're not part of any religious group, or your group is too small in your area for the school to feasibly have the resources to get a qualified teacher in that religion, you get a sort of philosophy class instead, which teaches world religions and basically basic philosophy instead of emphasising one or two religions.

Philosophy, itself, doesn't become a mandatory subject unless you go to secondary education, and even then only if you pick the branch that is directed at more general/academic education, rather than vocational education. (Even if you do go to secondary school in the academic branch, only one course - or maybe two, I'm not sure - of philosophy is mandatory, with the rest being electives.) Religion (or equivalent) is also mandatory through secondary education, but not many courses of it. One or two every year, or so.

Incidentally, in case you're wondering why a municipality wouldn't have the resources to arrange for religious education for one or two (eg) Jewish or Buddhist students, the law in Finland is that in order to qualify as a teacher in any subject, you have to have a Master's degree (or higher) in it, or a Master's in pedagogy and a Bachelor's (or higher) in the subject you'd like to teach. Even if you have Jewish or Buddhist of Confucian parents in a given municipality, that doesn't mean they can teach classes on their religion. They've got to get a degree first.

(Also, if you're wondering what I mean when I talk of academic or vocational secondary education, that's how our system is organised. After 9 years of primary education, almost everyone goes on to secondary education, which is either a vocational school - typically 3 years, specialising on one field or specific job and including some basics of most subjects - or to lukio, which does not aim at giving the students a vocation, but instead prepares them for higher education by giving them a more in-depth education in various academic disciplines. Then you go to what we call a polytechnic, equivalent to a 3-to-4-year college degree on one field or profession, or to a university, where you typically stay for longer and get something more than a Bachelor's. (You can also go to a university with just a vocational education, but you'd have to do very well in the entrance exams.) )

In case someone still wants to know more - which I find extremely unlikely, as I've rambled on for ages already - I'll just point out that all of this education is (mostly) free for the student. In lukio - the more academically inclined branch of secondary education - the students have to buy their own books, which can cost up to a couple of hundred € per year, and that's considered very unfair to lower-income families.

Meals are free until the end of secondary education; in tertiary education (polytechnics or universities), the meals for students get government subsidies, and the price for one meal at the cafeteria is typically something like €2-3 - still unfair to lower-income students, but there you go.

In university, you also have to sign up in the student organisation that represents the students in the university's board and various other organs, and that's the main place where people actually have to spend a lot of money on education. For instance, at my university, it's something like €150 per year. (The bright side is that it includes private health care, which means a slightly higher standard of care and shorter waiting times than the public healthcare system.)

Students get a student benefit (which gets supplemented with a subsidy for living expenses if you don't live with your parents and a government-guaranteed low-interest loan) for a given number of years, with some students receiving it already during secondary education and continuing through university, assuming they graduate before they run out of time.

If your parents can't support you, the student benefit is barely enough to live on, so most poor students end up taking the government-backed loan, which they'll start paying back a couple of years after they graduate. Some students get a job - usually not full-time - to avoid having to take the loan, but of course you need a bit of luck to find such a job, since places where there are lots of students tend to have a lot of people applying for entry-level jobs.

edited 29th May '17 2:22:22 PM by BestOf

The Massachusetts/New Hampshire state line runs through the parking lot of a mall. As a result, the mall's J. C. Penney store had to have a small chunk cut out, because having even a small portion of the store jut over into Massachusetts made it eligible for state sales tax.

1 cubic meter gets exposed to 1000 joules every second which means in a 8 hour day of sunlight it gets About 28800000 joules!

ABBA was Swedish. I had mistakenly thought it was from the US. On a second thought, I'm not really surprised, as various really good groups have come from there (Roxette, man....)

Their songs (well, international versions, anyway) are in English and it's kind of an American/British style of music, so it's no wonder.

I sort of wish I could make that mistake, but since Sweden is our hated and loved neighbour and we have to compete with them about everything (and lose every time), we know about the most successful things from Sweden, and ABBA is definitely their biggest music export. If you look up where the band gets its name, you'll see that it's just the first letters of the four members' names, and when you see those names you'll know for sure they're Swedish. (Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anni-Frid.)

I actually quite like ABBA, despite my ancestral obligation to hate anything Swedish. They totally deserved to win the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo - it's one of the best songs that ever won the contest. (The original version was in Swedish, which they used in their national qualifiers, but in the actual Eurovision Song Contest they switched to English.)

edited 29th May '17 6:38:28 PM by BestOf

The hell did Sweden do your ancestors, Best Of?

Jesus, no wonder GPA's are going down in Finland. No one should have to pay for a good education

edited 29th May '17 7:02:22 PM by Xopher001

And the best Denmark could give us was Lukas friggin' Graham.

You're forgetting about LEGO.

I meant musically. LEGO are awesome.

As is the Danish exchange student we had when I was 10.

But Lukas Graham can eat a bag of dicks.

why is it that nobody remembers King Diamond is from Denmark

Before Finland was a country, Sweden started conquering it and annexing it into their kingdom, bit by bit. To be fair, they probably weren't horrible rulers for the most part, and they did bring stuff like literacy and various institutions to Finland; but still, they did rule over Finland without anyone in Finland asking them to. This went on for centuries, until Russia invaded Sweden (ie, Finland) in 1808, annexing Finland and becoming much less popular rulers of it until Finland decided it was time to be a country and eventually became independent in 1917.

So basically, Sweden conquered Finland and held it for about 500 years before meekly giving it up when defending it would've taken a lot of troops from the "main" Swedish population.

Sweden has, at times, been a big deal among the great powers of Europe (and always as a regional power in Northern Europe), and our other main neighbour is Russia. Our population is half that of Sweden. Obviously, when you have neighbours, you have to compete with them about everything; and when they're twice as big as you (Sweden) or have individual cities with twice the population of your country (Russia) you're obviously going to lose just about every time. So basically it's a sort of rivalry/inferiority thing. (We - well, most of us - don't actually hate them, but we do want them to lose in every sport and so on.)

TL;DR: Sweden ruled Finland for centuries and probably mostly didn't suck a lot (but still sucked at times), wouldn't commit to defending Finland when Russia invaded (including twice when we were independent), and beats us at everything because they're twice as big as us. And it's a rivalry thing.

edited 30th May '17 12:59:11 AM by BestOf

I'm curious if you been following the commentary about Finland and Sweden in Axis Powers Hetalia.

Or Scandinavia and the World.

Back on topic: Velvet ants aren't actually ants - they're wasps.

Tanukis are invading Sweden.

Clarification: Raccoon dogs are a destructive invasive species in Sweden, Finland, Russia, and many other parts of Eastern Europe, all because the Soviet Union wanted to improve fur qualities.

edited 30th May '17 9:23:38 AM by WillDeRegio

Speaking of wildlife, now scientists are back to saying there's only one species of giraffe with multiple subspecies, reversing the previous announcement that some of those subspecies were species in their own right. :S

edited 30th May '17 9:39:37 AM by Demetrios

The plan is to get rid of them by 2018.

Nope.

Yes.

I didn't know until very recently that H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos draws heavily on ideas from esoteric, Hermetic mysticism about alleged secret writings containing the lost wisdom of ancient Egyptians. Apparently, the idea of such texts existing (and being known to those with access to the treasures of certain religious movements) was in the zeitgeist, at least in literary circles, around the time Lovecraft started writing his stuff, and the Necronomicon and its author, Abdul Al-Hazred, were based on that concept. (Speaking of good old crazy Abdul, I'll just mention, in case there's someone who hasn't noticed it before, that Abdul has read it all - all of the secret mysteries. You could say he's Abdul all-has-read.)

Red Green appeared on an episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.

I can log in to Tumblr again. Yay?

Kiwi fruits have 174 chromosomes.

That is too many chromosomes.

I wonder how it doesn't mutate like crazy.