kiiski

I assume it's the same in all militaries (in Finnish Defence Forces, when talking to superiors you're always supposed to begin with "sir/ma'am <his/her rank>, <my rank> <my last name>" (in reality people are rarely that formal after basic training)). I always assumed it was mainly to ensure that the other person knows who you are. It's certainly helpfull when you go as an NCO to a new unit and need to learn everyones names.

I think you're missing the point that in other parts of the world people (kids, adults, men, women) do read comic books. In those other parts of the world, where comic books are read by all sorts of people, they are not so overtly sexualized as those in the USA.

Maybe you're right that non-young-male-Americans are genetically incapable of liking comic books as a medium, but it seems more likely that Americans are no different from Europeans, and would like comics if they just made comics for them.

So I suppose in Finland these would be driving on ice x2, and the night driving simulator (at least in my case). Are you sure that tunnels are a part of the standard? I didn't need to do that ~5 years ago.

Is the education split into three seperate parts in all EU countries (first gives a temporary license, and there must be a few months before the others (to get real world driving experience), but all must be done withing 2 years)? When I got my license, the education cost about 2500 euros (I think it's higher now). Is that about the same as elsewhere in the EU?

What makes you think them being American matters? Has there been a trend of Spain banning American companies?

And what makes you think the Spanish goverment is trying to promote minimal goverments, etc.? I don't really follow politics, but I always thought that in most of the European democracies, socialism tends to be favored over capitalism.

UK (and Canada, Australia, etc.) did declare war on Finland, and attacked a Finnish harbour[1]. While USA didn't declare war, I doubt anything would have changed if they did, since Finland was out of their reach anyway.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Kirkenes_and_Petsamo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War#Finland_and_th...

I'm not sure what discussion you mean, but the Winter War was, as the title says, in the winter 39-40. Finland and Germany only started fighting together against Soviets in 41 (Continuation War). There wasn't really anything strange about that de facto alliance; Germany wanted to attack the Soviets, and Finland wanted back the land lost in the Winter War. Naturally they would cooperate.

Do you live in western Finland? I live in the east, and I don't remember ever seeing that.

I don't know what American news say, but from what I've gathered from Finnish news, the Russian troubles are mostly due to oil prices, and the sanctions have had very little effect.

Perhaps they are not using the word "agent" as a CIA job title, but rather in the actual meaning of the word:

  An agent is one who acts for, or in the 
  place of, another, by authority from him; 
  one entrusted with the business of another.

Don't left handed people usually keep the mouse on the left side of the keyboard? I've seen some people do that at least.

I didn't mean to comment on whether the war was justified or not, but simply that it was USA that attacked (and so the war doesn't quite qualify as an attack against America).

I was under the impression that in the War of 1812, USA was the agressor. Wikipedia seems to also support this view. Is that not correct, or do americans just have their own differing viewpoint?

If you go to the downloads page[1], all the files have last modified date of 21-nov-2013. I don't know if that's due to actual changes, or something else. I tried sending him a message through the contact form.

[1]: http://www.nablaman.com/relay/software/

> you should be training like you are gonna have to fight

Maybe I misunderstood what you mean, but that sounds like a pretty stupid thing to do. When you practice advancing under direct/indirect fire, do you actually have machine guns/mortars firing towards you? I would guess that you don't (we certainly never did in the Finnish Defence Forces).

What kind of students did Harvard have back then? Was it mainly rich upper class people, or people from "the people" too?

Where I'm at, today the sunrise was at 09:10, and sunset at 14:30. Peak energy usage is in the evening.

Finland also has a secret blocklist maintained by the police. It is currently voluntary for ISPs to implement the blocks, but there has been some talk of making it mandatory "if necessary". The list is supposed to only contain foreign sites with child porn. There was a small, and pretty quickly forgotten, scandal in 2008 when they added to the list a Finnish site that was criticizing it (and published a copy of the list to show that it also contains other things besides child porn).

The Pirate Bay is also blocked here.

As someone who lives there, I'm also curious about that. Should number 5 be read as "tell everyone about Finland", or "tell no one about Finland"? Why?

I think YKK is a bad example here, considering they were fined for beign part of a cartel in Europe (2007). That doesn't seem like something that benefits customers or gets them a great deal.

I think Norwegians make it from cod, while Swedes (and we Finns) use ling.

Not on a touchscreen device.

It's not just the USA. Here in Finland I was pretty much only taught how the war started and how it affected Finland (which gained independence from Russia in 1917, and then fought a civil war in 1918 with some involvement from Russia and Germany). My teacher openly told us that we don't need to know any details about ww1, since ww2 is much more important (although the teaching about that one also emphasized the Finnish wars (winter war, continuation war and Lapland war) more than the ww2 itself).

I doubt ease of learning really has anything to do with the current popularity of English. As soon as the USA stops being the dominant power in the world, English will start losing ground as well.

edit: Looking at the EF English Proficiency Index[1], English doesn't seem quite as universal as it feels like in the Anglosphere anyway.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index

But if you're going to use an IDE to generate all the ASCII, why not just use regular graphics instead?

I don't think it really matters if people describe the place in too much detail; the ambulance/whatever is already heading for the central park and the extra directions are just relayed to them on the way.

What rights do US expats have to go along with the obligations? The article doesn't seem to mention any.

From the article:

  Rudenko therefore resorted to including rebars in the bottom and top walls. 'They
  are needed during the pouring of a variety of cementitious filling materials inside
  the printed walls.' The cement used, however, is just a regular cement mix with a
  few additives. 'It is possible to use a special quick-setting concrete to speed
  up the process, but it will affect the cost, and I don't see much reason to build
  a house extremely fast at the expense of higher cost and lower quality.'

Seems like quite many companies have actually survived for centuries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

When counting something, I (in North Karelia) would say

  yy kaa koo nee vii kuu see kasi ysi 
  kymppi yytoo kaatoo ... kaksyy kakskaa kakskoo...

And when just saying a single number, I would say

  yksi kaksi kolme neljä viisi kuusi seittämän 
  kaheksan yheksän kymmenen ykstoista 
  kakstoista ... kakskytyks kakskytkaks kakskytkolme

One might argue that by paying more they could attract better employees and became more efficient at helping the people in need.