What makes Finnish kids so smart?

Many say it's the diet of fish and berries. Wall Street Journal disagrees, offering another PISA-inspired look at the Finnish school system. There are some funny bits:

Teens sift by style, including "fruittari," or preppies; "hoppari," or hip-hop, or the confounding "fruittari-hoppari," which fuses both. Ask an obvious question and you may hear "KVG," short for "Check it on Google, you idiot."

(If you don't know the lingo, fucking google it, fruitcake.)

The reporter also notes that young school children tend to travel to school on their own, classes still have overhead projectors, and, shockingly, there are no marching bands. It's a strange, strange world out there.

US presidential candidates' environmentalism

The two aspects of the US presidential campaign I find most interesting from the point of view of a condescending European are the candidates' foreign policy views and their environmental views. If you've been following the campaign at all, you've probably gotten a pretty good idea of where the front-runners stand on foreign policy, but environmental policy doesn't get as much attention in the media. To that end, here's a handy charty from Grist magazine.

While I'm at it, the Green League party organ Vihreä lanka published an article on the topic (fi). Their conclusion was that John Edwards was the best of the Democrats, although they got there mainly by noting that he opposes nuclear power whereas Barack Obama supports it and Hillary Clinton won't say. If you disagree with the assumption that nuclear power is bad for the environment, your ranking may differ with theirs. On the Republican side, they named John McCain as the first Republican candidate who takes climate change seriously and supports cap-and-trade.

Vanhanen in America

As I've written before, certain sections of the media have been wringing their hands over the dearth of top level meetings between Finland and the United States. Now, however, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen is scheduled to meet with the guy in charge:

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen starts a visit to the United States on Sunday. Vanhanen will have official discussions with the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington D.C.

I'm glad that we can now drop this silly topic.

Huckacraze!

I propose that henceforth all headlines for stories about Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee should be huckawords - that is, combinations of the prefix "hucka-" and the actual word. Preferably the headlines should end in an exclamation point, but this is not strictly mandatory.

I'll give a few example, so you'll see how this works.

Story: Huckabee wins a primary.
Headline: Huckaboom!

Story: Huckabee loses a primary.
Headline: Huckabust!

While single syllable end words work well, you shouldn't be afraid to use longer ones.

Story: Huckabee is criticized by conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg.
Headline: Huckafascist!

Story: Huckabee polls poorly head-to-head against Democratic candidates.
Headline: Huckainelectability!

Now all we need is a Huckabee story that also involves a duck...

In third grade, he wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President'

This statement from the Hillary Clinton campaign, concerning Barack Obama's presidential aspirations, is gotcha politics at its very funniest.

"It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics," says a law school classmate.

How can any candidate recover from such a revelation?

This house is a transparent house

Amanda Hess from the Washington City Paper learned a lot from the Ambassador of Finland. Sample dialog:

"We do have one reality television program that I enjoy," the man from Finland continued. "It is based on survival."

"Is it like Survivor?" I asked him.

"No," replied the man from Finland.

Next US president and NATO

Last month Risto E J Penttilä, head of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), wrote (fi) in Taloussanomat about the meaning of a Hillary Clinton presidency to Finnish foreign policy (my translation):

When Hillary Clinton tells Finns that NATO is an alternative to American autocracy, Finnish 'intellectuals' will begin to examine the military alliance in a new way. When Clinton tells Finns that Europe's influence in NATO will rise, presidential candidate Niinistö smiles. When Clinton says to Halonen that Finland's conciliatory abilities, peacekeeping knowhow, and good relations with Russia would be needed in NATO, intensive deliberation will begin also at the highest level. Is it truly the case that NATO has become an ordinary international organization which we too should join?

The suggestion that joining NATO would somehow limit American power is rather bizarre. Presently it's difficult to discertain any such mechanism at work, and surely nothing would change on that front should Finland join the club. If the United States really, really wanted to invade a random Middle Eastern country, then that's what would happen.

Still, the main point, if exaggerated here, is sound enough: a new US president, one less belligerent than the current officeholder, would probably boost NATO's popularity. I've written as much before.

The problem is that even if the bad US presidents eventually leave office, so do the good ones. Thus, it's not a sound approach to base one's NATO position on just how belligerent the current office holder happens to be - or who you expect to win the next election. You might get a Clinton or, better yet, an Obama. You might also get a Giuliani, after which the Bush years might seem like the good old days.

Among the whitest people in Europe

Apropos of James Watson's imitation of Tatu Vanhanen, Alterdestiny and Lawyers, Guns and Money cite the case of John Svan, a Finnish immigrant to the United States, whose petition for citizenship was opposed by the US government on the account that he was "a Mongolian" and thus ineligible due to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

A spot of googling reveals that the judge was one William A Cant from the fair state of Minnesota. Luckily for Mr Svan and a sixteen other Finnish immigrants who had been denied citizenship, Judge Cant determined that "[i]f the Finns were originally Mongols, modifying influences have continued until they are now among the whitest people in Europe."

In 1911 the congressional Dillingham Commission produced a Dictionary of Races and Peoples, which addressed the Mongolian question thusly:

Finnish immigration has been larger in recent years than that of most other races having so small a population. It is practically confined to the Western Finns or Finns proper. These are Caucasian rather than Mongolian in appearance, while the Eastern or Volga Finns, who are not known to come as yet to America, show distinctly their Asiatic origin. They are divided from the Finns proper by a broad band of Great Russians which extends through Central Russia from north to south. The Lapps and Samoyeds, another very different stock, may be called the "Northern Finns".

[...] Until 1809 Finland was a part of Sweden, and before the dawn of history the Finns and Swedes were no doubt intermingling. This will account in part for the prevailing blondness and European cast of countenance amongst the Finns, which has led the Bureau of Immigration to put them into the "Teutonic division" of races. But the entire Ugro-Finnic stock seems to have been, in origin, lighter in color than most other Mongolians, perhaps as a result of their northern residence. Formerly they were taken out of the Mongolian grand division by certain ethnologists and put into a separate division of "ailophylian whites". Whatever their original stock, the Finns of Finland are today the most truly European of any race possessing a Mongolic speech, and in some respects their institutions are abreast of any in Europe.

"The most truly European of any race possessing a Mongolic speech" - take that, Hungarians!

This excerpt (PDF) from History of the Finns in Michigan by Armas K E Holmio provides a lengthy look at the origins of the idea of Finns as Mongolians and theorizes on why the notion persisted in the United States even after it had been discarded in Finland.

CIA, friend of Finnish social democracy

Mikko Majander has the goods:

The US Central Intelligence Agency began to fund Finland's Social Democratic party in the latter half of the 1940s, according to a book launched Tuesday by Mikko Majander, a Finnish historian. [...]

According to Dr Majander, 1949 was a key important watershed in the official US approach to Finnish politics as it marked the time when the Americans became convinced, thanks to the suppression of a Communist-led strike movement, that Finland had not turned into a Soviet satellite. The US viewed the SDP as the only significant force capable of keeping communism in check in Finland.

That the KGB funded the Communist Party is well-known and it stands to reason that the other side didn't stand pat. Still, it's good to have proper research on the subject.

The choice of parties is interesting. I'm fairly certain that the National Coalition Party also received funding, but the Social Democrats seem to have been the CIA's favorites, perhaps due to their battle with the Communists for the control of the labor unions.

I wonder, does this mean we can credit the CIA for the welfare state?

Cronberg opposes joining NRF

Green League chair, Labor Minister Tarja Cronberg said (fi) at a party council meeting that it would be beneficial for Finland to stay out of the NATO Response Forces. She thinks joining the forces would probably increase the pressure to take part in operations that Finland hasn't chosen itself. It's a reasonable point and, I suspect, one that we'll be hearing more often once the NRF decision becomes timely. President Tarja Halonen has also pointed out (fi) that Finland wouldn't be involved in making the decision to start an operation. This makes the NRF different from e.g. the EU Rapid Reaction Forces.

Cronberg also pretty much accused of Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva and Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies of being on their hands and knees in front of Washington. Her comparison to the old days of Finlandization is a bit off-base. The United States just plain doesn't care about Finland enough to try to influence the country's foreign policy debate to the extent the Soviet Union used to do. Further, the domestic point scoring has gone both ways: against pro-NATO folks for having a bit too warm relations with the US and against anti-NATO folks for not being in Washington's good graces.

It will be interesting to see how the Greens react, should the government come down on the side of joining the NRF.

Russia, Russia, Russia

Defense Minister Jyri Häkämies (National Coalition Party) caused some controversy with his speech (video) at the Centre for Strategic International Studies in Washington.

Mr Häkämies had said in the speech that while Finland was privileged to be located in one of the safest regions in the world, the country's three main security challenges were "Russia, Russia and Russia".

"It is clear that Russia is, supported by the huge revenues it is reaping from oil and gas, on its way of becoming a world player again. According to the Russian worldview, military force is a key element in how it conducts its international relations," Mr Häkämies had added.

Reactions came swiftly. Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre Party) has "different points of emphasis". Former Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja (Social Democratic Party) thinks Häkämies's evaluation was one-sided and presented in the wrong forum, i.e. in the United States. President Tarja Halonen (Social Democratic Party) expressed her mild disapproval and said that she hadn't seen the speech. It had been given to her office for vetting, but apparently it never got to her.

There are two points here between which we should distinguish: First, what Häkämies said is true. Second, it wasn't a very smart thing to say. There was no reason not to talk softly, with regard to both diplomatic and domestic political considerations. In the case of the latter, Häkämies will now stand accused of turning up his rhetoric to impress the American audience, which will be tied to his party's pro-NATO leanings.

US presidential election test

Here's an election test on US presidential candidates (link spotted at Lawyers, Guns and Money). It's not quite as sophisticated as some of its Finnish equivalents and the approach of picking quotes from the candidates isn't the best way of going about things. I naturally took it anyway.

Not being an American, I steered clear of the purely domestic topics. Based on the topics "Environment and Energy", "Foreign Policy (General)", "Iran", "Iraq War", "Israel and Palestine", "Trade and Globalization", and "War on Terror and Homeland Security", the candidates scored as follows:

14 Bill Richardson (D)
13 John Edwards (D)
= Barack Obama (D)
12 Joe Biden (D)
= Christopher Dodd (D)
= Mike Gravel (D)
= Ron Paul (R)
10 John McCain (R)
9 Hillary Clinton (D)
8 Dennis Kucinich (D)
5 Sam Brownback (R)
= Mike Huckabee (R)
4 Mitt Romney (R)
3 Rudy Giuliani (R)
= Fred Thompson (R)
2 Duncan Hunter (R)
1 Tom Tancredo (R)

That's fairly close to what I had in mind prior to taking the test, although I could certainly quibble about some of the rankings. For example, if one could express particularly strong disapproval, McCain's stock would plummet due to his position on Iraq.

Statistics in baseball and pesäpallo

One thing I like about baseball is that so many aspects of the game are discrete and thus precisely quantifiable. In baseball a player's statistics tell you a lot more about his performance than in just about any other team sport. The amount of data available is awe-inspiring.

Pesäpallo, alas, isn't nearly as well suited for statistical analysis. Creating runs is more of a team effort. What a player tries to do in his plate appearance is much more specific to the situation. Avoiding outs is simple, if that's all one wants to do, but it doesn't put runs on the board. The plan, then, is to at first advance runners safely only take the risk involved in trying to score runs in opportune situations. Subsequently the batting lines of players hitting second look very different from slugging jokers (designated hitters who can be inserted anywhere in the lineup).

Superpesis, the top league, collates statistics, but they're not very sophisticated. For hitters they offer runs batted in, runs scored, and the sum of runs batted in and scored. The statistics on advancing lead runners are more sophisticated as percentages are recorded in addition to raw numbers. (All pages in Finnish.)

All of these statistics are context-specific. A player who bats behind teammates who are good at getting on-base and moving runners along will get many more opportunities to bat in runs than a player whose teammates stink. A player will score many more runs if the hitters batting after him know what they're doing. The percentages on advancing lead runners are closest to a statistical measurement of the hitter's skill, although even there the speed of the teammates on base matters.

Some improvements would be easy to make. For example, one could measure playing time for hitters in terms of at-bats instead of games, as the official statistics website currently does. The number of outs and wounds (balls caught in flight) on third strike could be recorded. Then we could say, for example, how many runs, bases taken by the lead runner, and outs result from a certain batter's average plate appearance. Some sort of a linear weights system would be neat, if quite difficult to calculate. The record-keeping would become considerably more tiresome, because in pesäpallo you'd have to include runners advanced to get any idea of the value of a plate appearance.

While I'm on the topic, the current scoring system in pesäpallo with its two periods of four innings each is an atrocity that puts artificial excitement over finding out which team is better. Just play nine innings and see who has scored more runs, for goodness' sake.

Presidential popularity

Inspired by this poll on the popularity of US Presidents, I thought about what the results of such a poll in Finland would be. Since I was able to guess the top six in the US poll (see how many you get right), it stands to reason that I should be able to predict what the Finnish ranking would look like. I can guess, and will proceed to do so shortly, but curiously I'm a lot less sure about Finnish Presidents than US ones. It seems to me that opinions on Finnish Presidents haven't coalesced into an easily identifiable orthodox ranking.

I would imagine that the group of broadly popular presidents would consist of Kyösti Kallio (Agrarian League), Gustaf Mannerheim (independent), K.J. Ståhlberg (National Progressive Party), J.K. Paasikivi (National Coalition Party), Mauno Koivisto (Social Democratic Party), and, based on her actual poll ratings, Tarja Halonen (Social Democrat). Obviously Mannerheim would win, simply because he's Mannerheim, but the order of the rest of the top six is difficult to guess. Ståhlberg should be near the top; he was on the right side of history on most questions of his day, played a central role in drafting the constitution, and generally acted as President with modesty and restraint. Paasikivi kept the Communists at bay during a difficult time and was an entertainingly grouchy figure besides.

Then we have the controversial Presidents, who are mostly viewed positively, but engender some disapproval too. I'm thinking of P.E. Svinhufvud (Coalition), Urho Kekkonen (Agrarian/Centre Party), and Risto Ryti (Progressive). These guys would probably beat the likes of Koivisto and Halonen in a poll asking about greatness, as opposed to one measuring popularity, but they've also come under heated criticism from at least some political quarters. It's entirely possible that Ryti and Kekkonen would break into the top six, possibly even the top three. Both are noted for doing what (they thought) had to be done, but Ryti would perhaps win due to being a lot less selfish about it. Svinhufvud was a courageous and ideologically consistent figure, but his greatest accomplishments came before his presidency and he has his detractors on the left.

The third group consists of Presidents who are very difficult to rank: Lauri Relander (Agrarian) and Martti Ahtisaari (Social Democrat). Relander is probably the least known President and gets lackluster reviews from historians. It's not that he didn't anything bad; it's just that he didn't do much. About Ahtisaari's ranking I have no idea. People don't seem to have strong opinions about him one way or the other. EU membership is the cornerstone of his legacy, but it seems to me Esko Aho gets far more credit and blame for that.

A fun game is to find the US equivalents for Finnish Presidents. For example, Ståhlberg is obviously a Thomas Jefferson/James Madison type of figure, a constitution-drafting statesman ahead of his time. Svinhufvud is somewhere between John Adams and Andrew Jackson, a founding father and a tough son of a bitch. Ryti is vaguely reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy, although without a hint of putting ideological considerations above national interests. Mannerheim's presidency is difficult to compare to any US President, but as a national figure he's George Washington with a touch of Abraham Lincoln thrown in for good measure. Kekkonen compares to Franklin D. Roosevelt on longevity and Richard Nixon on trickiness.

Halonen? Chester A. Arthur with a touch of Bill Clinton, of course.

Iceland's problematic US relations

I've written before about Helsingin Sanomat's interest in the frequency of top level meetings between Finland and the United States, but as criticizing the media makes me feel like a real blogger, I'll revisit the topic. Last weekend the paper topped itself (fi) when it published a list compiled by the US embassy detailing which European leaders have visited George W Bush in the US. The list conclusively proves that... well, see for yourself. Here are the European countries that have had the least meetings with President George W Bush:

1. Iceland 1
= Malta 1
= Yugoslavia 1
4. Albania 2
= Austria 2
= Belgium 2
= Estonia 2
= Finland 2
= Netherlands 2
= Portugal 2

(In addition a handful of countries, which the paper doesn't name, haven't gotten even that one meeting, but we'll forget about those.)

Having dug up incontrovertible proof that there's nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever about the number of Finno-American meetings, Helsingin Sanomat naturally picked the only possible headline for their story: "Finnish leadership has waited for a meeting with Bush the longest in Europe". If nothing else, you got to admire their persistence.

Update: Ye gawds.

Economic mobility

A bunch of US policy institutes put their heads together and came up with a report (PDF) on economic mobility in the United States. Page seven shows an international comparison based on the relationship between parents' and children's incomes. The Nordic countries and Canada do well by this measure, Britain and the US poorly. Finland is third after Denmark and Norway, with 2.6 times more mobility than the US. I'd guess that the results are mostly down to income equality and the level and cost of education.

(Via Kevin Drum.)

It's tough to meet new people

The reporting on President Tarja Halonen's trip to the United States took a turn from ridiculous to sublime when it was revealed that she had inquired about the possibility of meeting two leading Democrats, Senator Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom were too busy doing other things. Since Pelosi and Clinton presumably aren't offended by Halonen's outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, there's now a tiny chance that Finnish media figures who criticized her for not securing a meeting with President George W Bush will admit that the reason these get-togethers ain't happening is that Finland is really frigging insignificant.

On the bright side, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger invited Halonen over for a visit, but apparently a trip to the West Coast would have taken too much time. (Arnie's reaction: "NOOOOOOOH!") Also, one person who did meet our fearless leader was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Apparently Finland wants a seat in the UN Security Council starting in 2013. Then they'll have to talk to us!

Update: Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva said on Lauantaiseura, a topical talk show on YLE, that Halonen and Clinton had agreed on a meeting, but the time clashed with the Ban Ki-moon meeting so it had to be canceled. Considering that "[s]cheduling problems are routinely invoked in international diplomacy to turn down a proposed meeting," this clearly shows that Clinton's relationship with Finland is problematic.

Worst argument for parliamentarism ever

I'm definitely picking low-hanging fruit here, but what the heck.

Iltalehti, the sleazier of Finland's two major tabloids, yesterday argued in its editorial (fi) that since President Bush declined to meet President Halonen, the Cabinet should start running Finnish foreign policy No, seriously. The editorial really argues that a) the US President declining to meet with the Finnish President is a big problem, which b) should be solved by changing Finland's foreign policy leader.

For giggles, I translated parts of the editorial, with certain marked substitutions for effect:

If the President never meets the [leader of the Soviet Union] and negotiates with him, it's difficult to imagine how she could lead Finland's foreign policy in relation to the [Soviet Union].

...

Everyone knows that the [Soviet Union] is particularly important from a Finnish point of view regardless of what sort of politics it practices globally or in certain vulnerable areas of the world. We must continuously maintain a high level connection to it. The most important thing is that the state leadership's confidential relationship with the [Kreml] works if crises occur near Finland.

...

Now would be a time for conclusions. Finland's and the [Soviet Union's] relations at the highest level are not in order. The problem is probably mutual.

For Finland the solution is found in that the Cabinet starts to lead traditional foreign policy too, as the new constitution requires, because it alone is also responsible for it in front of the Parliament.

NB: The new constitution requires no such thing.

Aside from what a horrible idea it is to let a foreign head of state decide who leads Finnish foreign policy, the lack of logic on display is staggering. If there's some reason why Finnish prime ministers are bound to get along better with US presidents than Finnish presidents do, Iltalehti sure doesn't mention it. Presumably if a Prime Minister fails to secure a meeting, Iltalehti will advocate for putting the Speaker of the Parliament in charge of foreign policy, then the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and so on.

Helsingin Sanomat on Halonen's trip to New York

President Tarja Halonen is traveling to New York this Wednesday. The five day trip is built around annual gala dinner of the American Scandinavian Foundation which she will attend on Friday, but it will also include, among other things, a meeting with United Nations secretary Ban Ki-Moon. Apparently the foundation always invites one Scandinavian head of state to attend the gala dinner, but since this year no proper Scandinavians were available, they had to make do with a Finn.

It seems like a perfectly boring little trip, but today leading broadsheet Helsingin Sanomat breathlessly reports that US President George W Bush has turned down our dear leader's offer to meet with him for - get this - scheduling reasons. Do you feel your pulse quickening? You should. "Scheduling problems are routinely invoked in international diplomacy to turn down a proposed meeting," the article hints at darker reasons that lurk beneath the surface. It is also sure to include the fact that Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt managed to schedule some face time with Bush.

Helsingin Sanomat has deep and abiding interest in the frequency of meetings between Finnish and American presidents and assorted ministers. My theory is that it's tied to the paper's open support for NATO membership. It painstakingly highlights every little snub - real or imagined - because it wants to demonstrate a need to improve relations. Its preferred way to improve relations, to get a seat at the table, is of course to apply for NATO membership. I hope I'm wrong, because having your news section serve your editorial line in that manner is a bit shabby, but the paper's behavior is quite difficult to explain otherwise.

Speaking of NATO, according to a poll released today (fi), 63 percent of Finns oppose membership and 27 percent support it. Of the major parties, Centre Party supporters are opposed 69-23 and Social Democratic Party supporters 73-20. Left Alliance and Green League supporters oppose it in even greater numbers. National Coalition Party supporters are a clear outlier; they're 55-39 in favor of membership. 78 percent think that membership should require a referendum. The previous poll, from last November, indicated a 59-24 split so the parliamentary election and the Estonian statue controversy have not caused any major changes in the figures.