Scrapheap challenge

You know plans, right? Those things we like to make when we are trying to avoid doing real work. The stuff that when done well, makes the whole project half-way ready, or things that are made so they can be changed later.

Or occasionally, those things that you can just scrap and forget about. There are two ways to look at this. One is that a "project" starts with an idea, then a plan is made (at which point the idea is often lost, at least if planning takes place in a committee), it's then changed a couple of times and it all ends when the plans are scrapped.

There's another angle, however. Everything starts with some old plans being scrapped. Everything starts with learning from old mistakes, and you start your new project with more knowledge than you'd have if you'd managed to convince yourself that you got this brand new idea that needs to be materialised. An old plan crashing and burning often brings down with it old ideas and unrealistic or misguided expectations, and so the collateral damage of the old plan helps to make the new plan more feasible and more likely to succeed.

Ok, enough of this cryptic nonsense. I had to cancel my registration at the Paris Marathon. There was no way I could get in shape in time - I've not been able to do the training I thought I needed, but most importantly it didn't look likely that I'd be able to pick it up the coming month. Moreover, what was supposed to be a healthy balance for work has become an additional stress.

So, the plan is dead, long live the new plan! Marathon is still on, but I'll have to find another date, possibly Finlandia Marathon in the end of the summer, possibly something sooner. This also helps me to diversify training - I've signed up for a gym membership, first time ever. In Cambridge I didn't need to, there were good facilities for Uni members, more so for the boatclub, and even some organised by the college. The university gym was crowded, hot, but at least it was open from early till late. Here things are different. It's amazing to think that we have the only sports science faculty in the country, and for all 14 000 students and 3000 staff there is one gym, not very big, and it's open only from 8 AM to 8 pm. They've opened a "gym" just for staff, which is open 8 AM - 4 pm. And they even specify, that using the gym isn't part of your working hours. So, you have to do extra time in the evening so you can use the staff gym (which is basically a closet in the bomb-proof basement of the admin building, and has about 2 machines) during the day. Smart. Really good thinking - I'm sure the investment will prove to be a good one.

So, I'm going to see what SATS has to offer on Monday. If I like it, I'll sign up and start making new plans based on being a paying member. At least their opening hours are based on what their customers need and not on janitors' working hours or something random.

On other news, plenty of scrapped plans and changes on the way in life in general. My three-year relationship recently ended and now there's the fun of packing things, trying to remember who owns the kettle and who bought the chair and of course the sadness of saying goodbye - to the person, and also everything that goes with a person, being a couple and living together. Sad, but I feel that this plan had to be scrapped so that something new can be given birth at some point in the future.

(Pic: NASA)

See you later, elevator

The elevator at our building broke down today. I was going up and called the elevator. Oddly, it overshot by about six inches, and refused to move again. The doors won't lock, the buttons light up as you press them but nothing happens. The lift's gone on strike.

As it was me who in a way broke the elevator, I thought I should be the one to call maintenance about it. I called the 24h on-call number, but got no answer. Then I tried to call the caretaker's office with even worse results.

It seems that the receptionist there is new and not familiar with the phone system, or the phone system is broken. Anyway, it only rings once or twice, after which the call gets forwarded to emptiness. It's not that they hang up, you just get silence. Except for once, when I actually ended up talking to someone else trying to call the company. It felt like being in the middle of some stupid prank call, where you answer the phone as if you're the one who called. As things were getting weirder at their phone center, I decided to email them instead. And then the 24h on-call lift maintenance guy called me back.

Left-handed skiing

I hate today's weather. It's warm (+3), grey and wet. It's sloshy as snow is melting down and although we already had a good cover of snow and perfect winter weather since Christmas, there are already spots of brown appearing from under the quickly vanishing snow.

I used to say that during the winter, my mood can be reliably predicted from the weather report - I'm happy when it's snowing, and depressed when it's like this, when snow is melting. I've always been a fan of winter sports, or winter activities in general. There's so much fun to be had during winter: skiing, both downhill and cross-country, skating, ice-hockey (or whatever variants of it that you can play safely without needing all that protective gear) building snowcastles and skijumps etc.

I had somewhat lost touch with winter, having spent a number of "winters" in Cambridge, where winter is the time when you need an extra layer of lycra to go rowing, and people play football instead of cricket, which is a summer sport. They close schools and the whole country goes to panic mode when the annual "cold snap" arrives, with temperatures below 0 for two days. The traffic grinds to a screeching halt when the centimetre of snow falls. Not much wintry outdoor fun to be had there.

I've been more into downhill skiing before, but now with the marathon looming in under 3 months time, I tried to do a lot of cross-country skiing during the new year holiday we spent in Lapland. And it felt great, and so I bought a pair of skis as soon as I got home. I got them on Thursday, and went skiing every day after that.

I know I have my work cut out in terms of learning proper technique, although I have some experience, so that it can't be said I have two left feet. The salesperson seemed to think I had two left hands, however, because I noticed that the reason why the ski poles didn't seem to fit that well - I had two left-handed ones (the straps are slightly different). So I went to change them for a new pair, but now unfortunately the snow is escaping.

New year resolution and testing mobile blogging

Happy new year!

New year always brings with it new resolutions and new things. I made
a resolution, as well. I've decided to "write and run" every day, at
least a little bit. This probably means more blogging activity,
although most of the writing effort will be channelled to academic
writing and basically finishing the damn book.

The other new thing is related to this writing resolution. I'm writing
this note on the Nokia 9300i communicator I got from work as one of
the professors upgraded to iPhone. This is my first "smartphone" and
so I've got a lot of catching up to do in terms of finding out what
can be done with these things.
I've now managed to configure this to work in the WLAN at home and at
the office and got the Bluetooth link to work between this and my
laptop. I've found some cool applications, such as gmail, and am now
trying to post by email to my blog.

I'll be reporting how my new mobile life is working out, and whether
this will become a productivity tool. So far it has been a time-eater
and a toy for procrastination. :) But it has only been a day...

Korean drummer takes the show

My favourite bit comes at around the 3 minute mark... :)

Synchronized Debating - both candidates seem to be pro-recycling

So, they have their stump speeches and favourite verses that they keep recycling... Very funny. I have to say, I'm a bit mixed up with these elections, I'm watching the 7th season of West Wing at the same time as these real election news, and not sure whether it's Obama vs. Vinick or Santos vs. McCain or what? :)

Marathon de Paris

I'm not sure if this was a good idea. However, sometimes the act first, ask questions later -strategy is the best one. So I signed up for the Paris marathon. It's in April, so there's plenty of time to get in shape - weather permitting. I think that (in addition to time limitations due to work etc.) the biggest obstacle is that the winter can be a difficult time for running practice. If the winter is good, there's skiing which is as good if not better than running, but if it is just wet and cold (like last year) it will be hard to get all the necessary training done.

Anyway, the idea of running through the centre of Paris, from Champs-Élysées through Jardin des Tuileries, La Louvre, a loop in Bois de Vincennes, then back on the bank of the Seine, by the Eiffel tower, to a final loop in the Bois de Boulogne captured my imagination. With Paris being one of my favourite cities, a city where I've always felt at home, seems like a good place to start running marathons.

Pace

First of all, congratulations to president Ahtisaari for the well-deserved Nobel peace prize. The list of his successes is long and impressive, ranging from Namibia to Kosovo and Aceh. The one aspect of his work that epitomises his qualities as a statesman is the work he has done in building the international infrastructure for crisis management and resolution. In this work he has provided many young people the chance to learn international cooperation at a top level.

Then, from the Italian to the English pace. I'm slow. Way too slow. Lately, everything has taken me ages. To write an email, to decide which article to use as course reading, to formulate the essay question... It's all process writing for me, even a simple note. Writing involves pauses, drafts, redrafts and leaving the work for a while, then coming back with fresh thoughts (ha!). And anything, even when done in a focused fashion takes a lot of time, just like the poster I just finished which took literally all night to put together. Looking at the finished product, I really can't say where all that time went. It's not that special, au contraire.

Every book has its own pace. I think I've written about that before. Thrillers, the Grisham or Clancy -type of affair needs to be read quickly, you get physically pumped up not just from the unrelenting pace of events, but also the speed at which you race through the plot, your mind's eye rushed along on a dolly from fight scene to the car chase. Then others slow down time, and slow down your reading speed as well. Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a good example of this genre of books.

At the moment, something slows down my writing all the time. It's like wading in a pool of jelly and is very annoying because I have a lot to do and so work keeps accumulating faster than I clear it from my desk. Hmm. Maybe it's the long distance running, my resting heart rate is now slower than it was a few months ago? Not enough/too much caffeine/sleep/chocolate? Or perhaps it's the autumn, cold weather and growing darkness? Perhaps it's just laziness or lack of focus. I don't know, but it's annoying, as it's not even good and proper procrastination, just everything happening in slow motion.

I need to wake up.

Mesmerising...

Here's how to make a valve or a vacuum tube. Very hypnotic. These valves can be used as electronic amplifiers and do the same thing as transistors nowadays. But way, way cooler.

Fabrication d'une lampe triode
Uploaded by F2FO

Running as social activity

Long distance running is a solitary pursuit. It suits people who are solemn and serious and like to spend a lot of time alone.

I suppose that's the usual view of it, or at any rate the view I used to have about it. It didn't stop me from taking up long distance running, as I pretty much see those as positive things, but I've discovered it's only a part of the picture.

The most obvious manifestations of the social nature of running are the mass marathons. The biggest ones draw tens of thousands of runners, and even the small, local event I took part in the weekend had 2500 participants. Add to this the friends and family members that show up to cheer for the runners and you have a big crowd, and a big event. And in the events, there are the locker room chats and mass warm-ups, the nervous jokes on the starting line and of course the comparisons of experiences afterwards.

Of course, there are now many online forums (fora?) and services for runners that create communities of runners. People share training tips, experiences, race information and just hang out. The proliferation of GPS-trackers and other performance monitors has created a new family of services, where you can keep track of your training online. All the data gathered during your run, your heart rates, speed, course, cadence etc. are logged to an online journal that you can then share with others. And people find others to run with, which is convenient for keeping your motivation up between races.

The feeling of community stretches beyond all boundaries. Running is hugely popular and there are runners everywhere. And when you meet, your shared identity transcends all the differences. This became very clear when I was running in Sapporo, where I otherwise felt very alien, and then came across this other dude who was jogging. There was this quick "hi there" when we passed each other, but there was also this moment of connection that I hadn't felt in days. We both knew what we were going through and was we were about at that moment.

So most importantly, there's the experience of running together, and that's of course amplified when running together with a horde of people. As you push through the kilometres you are inadvertently syncing your pace and even your steps with those running around you. And syncing steps has pretty much the same function as dancing or playing music together. Pushing the boundaries of your endurance together with others is a strongly meaningful experience.

The field of social psychology was in a way started by observations that cyclists would go faster when there was an audience - record times were seldom broken in practice, but often in races. This social facilitation (and it's opposite, social inhibition) was later studied in experimental manner, and the tradition still lives on in much of social psychology (study of social anxiety, groupthink, team dynamics etc.) .

I do enjoy the quiet me-time I get on a long run, though.

Brilliant!

Just a quick note, finished the half marathon in just over 2 hours (haven't checked the exact time but was probably 2:03 - 2:04 or thereabouts. I'm very happy about the time. My initial aim was to go under 2 hours, but considering the last three weeks, this was very good.

The event was very well organised and there was a great atmosphere among the runners and also lots of people cheering along the route. This was my first mass run, but definitely not the last one.

Pizza has never tasted this good! :)

Underprepared

Whenever possible (and unfortunately in the teaching job I do, that's not often the case), I like to follow the modified version of the scouts' motto: Be overprepared.

The half marathon is today, in the afternoon, and I'm feeling very underprepared. My training programme was shattered to pieces about three weeks ago, and so I will start today without any other targets but to complete the distance.

Having to travel to conferences, cross six time zones twice was already a bit difficult, as a jet lag tends to make all activities feel unappealing, except for sleeping. And of course all the hassle that goes with starting a new academic year has taken quite a lot of my energy, and as I've felt a bit ill as well, I've decided to just try to get better rather than force myself to run.

So, although you're supposed to lighten the training before the race, my training has been seriously underweight. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to the race.

It's going to be a great social event, and as half marry isn't an extreme distance, I think I'll just go with the flow, enjoy the early autumn by the lake (trees are starting to get their yellow and red colours) and get that first big race under my belt.

Konbanwa

OK, I think it's about time to end the blogging break...

The summer didn't really leave a mark in any way, and now it seems to be gone. A new academic year is just around the corner and an unimpressive summer weather seems to have turned to autumn, at least judging by the amounts of rain.

But enough of the weather, greetings from Sapporo, where I'm on a one week conference trip. It's been great, the standard of the talks and posters is very high. There have been very few disappointments in terms of the content, and in a true Japanese style, the organisation has left nothing to be desired.

Of course the flight over here plus the jetlag that ensued were taking their toll for the first three days or so, but somehow the social and scientific buzz have helped to get through the days. It's always great to meet friends and colleagues, meet new people and hear about their research.

And since we are in Japan, food is of course great. I'm a fan of sushi, to use the generic term, and like other Japanese food as well. And of course, the food not only tastes divine, but looks good as well, is often served in nice surroundings. The way the food is served one mouthful at a time slows down your pace of eating, which is also a good thing.

However, in a conference with 400 guests, dinners are also always a bit of a hassle. You decide to have dinner with someone, and so they ask if person 3 can come as well, as they've already agreed. Ok. So, person 3 then brings their colleagues 4, 5 and 6, as they happened to be there. Once you try to decide where to go and when, 7 comes by and says he knows a place, and that he's going with "someone" and they wouldn't mind us tagging along. Then it turns out, that "someone" was actually diners 8-16.

There are other issues with eating out, though. I only speak about three words of Japanese, or four if you count "thank you" and "thank you very much" as two different words. And since I can't read their writing either, I'm feeling more lost than in a long time. Dictionary doesn't help, as it is impossible to find the word that you don't know. A phrase book is handy, because then you can actually ask the right questions. Not understanding the answer is of course another problem. Also, my phrase book is a pocket version and doesn't come with useful questions such as "although there are 16 of us, we can of course sit in three or four separate tables" or "what is the difference between the 1000 yen and 1500 yen drinks packs that you can include in the menu", or even "excuse me, can you help me find the correct box where I've left my shoes".

But, with sign language, pointing to pictures in menus, making various animal sounds, and with a generous helping of patience from behalf of the waiters we've managed to have great food almost every evening.

But at some point it gets tiring. The conference runs from 8.30 in the morning to 7 in the evening, and after that three hours of light dinner is quite a lot. So, today I decided to switch to antisocial mode. When the program ended (a bit early today, so that people could go and visit sake factories and tearooms and go shopping) I went for a long run. After coming back to the hotel (hoteru in pseudo-Japanese, my 4.5th word), I decided to have a Japanese evening in my room.

That consisted of getting a burger from the Mos Burger next door (they say in the sign that they are Japanese burgers), a Sapporo beer and Häagen Dasz green tea ice cream from the convenience store and watching Japanese major league baseball on TV. Thoroughly Japanese experience, then. Very relaxing, setting me up well for the remaining two days of intensive networking and then the three flights home on Sunday.

One month to go

I just realised that the half marathon is now exactly one month away. Or, in a month's time, I'll be recovering and healing sore feet, hopefully after completing the first running race I take part since the third grade.

Training is going OK. There have been weeks when I haven't been able to do the 4-5 runs I've planned, but as I don't really have any other goals than to finish, that's not too bad.

Well, in a week I'll take off to the training camp in Japan (otherwise known as a conference), while our professors are conspiring to wreck the penultimate training week by planning a trip to Belgium for me.

What this month-or-so of training has shown, running with a specific goal in mind makes it more interesting and increases motivation. Having a training program with different kinds of training sessions (intervals, speed endurance, fartlek, basic endurance) provides the required variability that will keep monotony at bay.

One month to go, so far so good. The route was published today, one and a half laps around the lake, using the new and still partly in-progress scenic route for pedestrians and bikes. The route is very popular, and every evening there's a good number of runners, walkers, nordic walkers, inline skaters, skikkers, cyclists and dog walkers, enjoying the lake and the exercise.

Nerdy but funny

Summer in the office - time to finally do things. And as we know, procrastination expands to fill in most of the empty space.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Half marathon in September

Last year has been horrible in terms of physical activity. Back in Cambridge I at least had the 2*20 minutes cycling to work and back to keep me going, even though I had already stopped training actively with the boat club. Here, I live practically next door to work, and so I get virtually no exercise as a part of the day-to-day routines.

There are many excuses and real reasons why I've been a couch potato, mainly the horrible winter (just sleet and slosh, making both running and skiing unpleasant if not impossible) and the workload, but in the end it is always simply about motivation (or lack thereof).

And this is where I start to feel stupid. I know for a fact that I feel better and have more energy when I exercise regularly. It is also very important for my health, as it helps control my blood sugar (and keep my diabetes in check). I also like it. So, the motivation should be there, but this time I didn't want to leave it to that, but wanted to have a clear goal towards which I could work.

And so I signed up for a half marathon in September. I feel that marathon would have been too much, but that this 21 kilometre race would be survivable. Back in the day when I was properly fit, I actually tried to sign up for one already, but the Bristol half marry was fully booked and so I had to give it a miss. This would be the longest continuous run I've done, but it's not that much of a stretch. I've done runs that are well over 10 kilometres and feel confident that I could run for the 2 hours this would take. The only question is my current poor shape.

But, according to the numerous running websites and automatic training program generators, the goal is realistic. To get started, I used this generator to give me a training program that would take me from where I think I am at the moment (it's difficult to estimate how fast I could run now or for how long) to sub-2 hour half marathon in 10 weeks.

A quick tour to web forums and running sites will tell you that the key to running marathons or other long distance races (half marathons are often classified as "short distances") is to practice "long runs". The definition of "long" depends on your condition and training phase. The key point of this is that speed or distance travelled is secondary, you just have to keep going for a given time. This could be hours, for a beginner like me it starts with 70 minutes.

So I did my first long run this Saturday. I had done a few shorter runs earlier in the week, but was a bit nervous about this one. Armed with an iPod, heart rate monitor and energy gel I headed off. I was trying to keep my heart rate relatively low, as you should, basically so that you prevent lactic acid from building up in your muscles (the science of endurance sports and the scientific approach to training is a big part of this scene, and probably the reason why it attracts so many geeks, such as myself).

I could feel my legs getting tired, just because I'm not used to such sustained activity, but in the end it went well and of course the endorfine rush afterwards was a great reward. I plotted the path on Google Earth (yes, this is a part of the geekiness of it) and it showed that I had covered almost exactly 11 km. A good start. Next week's long run will be 10 minutes longer, the next one 10 minutes longer than that, etc. Watch this space...

Cops and Idiots

So, I made my first ever call to emergency services yesterday.

I was watching TV in the evening (quite late), when I heard someone yell "Help, police" from the park outside. The park is a venue for teenager get-togethers and there's quite a lot of noise there especially in weekend evenings. Yesterday as well, it was a warm night and there was a group of people drumming etc. (damn hippies, Cartman would say). When the guy yelled "Help, police" again, this time at the top of his voice, I went to the window and tried to figure out what's going on. There were about half a dozen kids, clearly drunk, and it was very hard to tell what they were doing, they were sort of circling each other as if they were about to start a fight or something, I couldn't tell if they were 5 against 1 or what. Anyway, I decided to call the police, although I thought it might have been just something yelled at a bout of drunken idiocy.

I tried to explain what was going on in the park to the dispatcher, admitted it was really difficult to see what exactly was happening but it didn't seem anyone was injured or in immediate danger. She said she'd ask a patrol to swing by. They came just under 10 minutes from the call, and the kids had already left the park. There was absolutely nobody there, I saw the police looking at the windows of our building, as if to see who had sent them there for nothing. They backed out of the park and left, for donuts or other dispatches, I don't know, but at that point I was really angry with the idiots in the park. Wasting everyone's time, worrying me and everyone else who heard their screams... Plus, of course we all know Aesop's story of the boy who cried wolf. I hate to admit it, but I'm afraid I might think twice next time someone screams for help and maybe waste valuable time trying to figure out if they really need help or if it is just horseplay.

Blue wings, white lies...

I flew to Edinburgh and back via Amsterdam, and on both occasions the departures from Schiphol were slightly delayed. This didn't really matter, as the delays weren't that long, but the reasons for the delays and what was told to the passengers were funny.

The Amsterdam-Edinburgh flight was flown with a small "City Hopper" jet, and so we all took a bus from the gate to the field where the youngling planes were herded together. We boarded (amazingly slowly given the small size of the plane) the Fokker that had been prepared for us, and then nothing happened. Fok.

Eventually the captain announced that we are waiting for some external equipment to help us start our engines, and we'll be off when it arrives, shouldn't be more than 5-10 minutes. He apologised for the delay and possible inconvenience, in that official tone that indicates it's not his fault and that he is making this apology for other people who also think these things just happen and are not that big a deal, while I dug in the New Yorker I had bought from the airport. In it, Haruki Murakami, one of my favourite authors writes how he started to run daily, without fail, when he was in my age. He had just sold his successful jazz club, moved to countryside and decided to become a writer. I had packed my running shoes, and while I was contemplating whether Jyväskylä counts as countryside and if running a jazz club could be a metaphor for a PhD, a van approached the plane and screeched to a halt next to it.

The insignia on the sides said "KLM Catering" and "Last Minute Deliveries". The driver opened the fridge door on the side of the van, took out a blue cardboard box that looked like a business class meal and rushed it up the steps. The air hostess received the box, paid for it with her smile, the driver gave her some change in the same currency, jumped into his car and sped away to make another delivery of external equipment to help start other airplanes' engines. The hostess knocked on the cockpit door to tell we're good to go, the engines were started and we taxied towards the runway.

On the way back, we flew grown-up planes, and so instead of the bus trip around the unisightly sights at the bowels of Schiphol airport, we got to do the usual anxious queuing inside a metal tube. The crew had problems in starting engines, and needed external equipment to get them going. This time, though, this involved being pulled back to the gate, lots of engineers and ground staff buzzing around the plane and various hisses and wails from the hydraulics of the plane. After 4 days in Edinburgh, one morning run and a jazz club later, I was reading reports of the latest cricket matches and eager to get home and back to writing.

(Pic: KLM MP3 player by Shanghai Shininess Industrial Co. Ltd)

Back in Edinburgh

I'm in a student bar in Edinburgh, watching a football match and having a beer. It's all good.

I'm very excited to be back here. There are two (maybe three) cities that I somehow always feel at home in. Paris, Edinburgh and Helsinki. I really loved living in Cambridge, I really like it in Jyväskylä, growing up in Kuopio wasn't bad, and London is somehow at the same time terrifying, awful, and enchanting and absolutely wonderful. I like the wibes in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Don't like Rome or Brussels at all.

But, Edinburgh I like. And here I am again. And will keep coming back with every tiny excuse I get. This time I'm here for a good reason, there's a fascinating conference. Scientists, therapists, b-girls and b-boys... Really. What else could you need? :)

I'm also excited at the moment, because my college has done amazingly well in Bumps today. May Bumps are the main event of Cambridge college rowing, and my old club has shattered all previous club records today and really done everyone proud.

Corruption, correlation and causation

Transparency International has repeatedly ranked Finland as one of the least corrupt country in the world. The CPI ranking, or Corruption Perception Index, is based on interviews, and as it says in the name, perceptions, and so it is a somewhat subjective measure. At least the perception so far has been that Finns, and the Finnish political system in general, would be honest and fair. This perception is changing, as now, as The Dude would put it, new shit has come to light.

MP's have failed to report who has funded their campaigns, funders themselves have been hiding behind dodgy societies, neither seems to remember anything about the transactions that therefore had no effect, but still there seem to be very uncomfortable connections between the funders, the politicians, and some political decisions they are currently trying to make.

This reminds me of the cash for honours -scandal in the UK. Big party funders were given peerages and other privileges, in some cases as a direct compensation for substantive donations to party war chests. There was of course public outrage, heads rolled and rules were reformed. However, public perception was that there was nothing new here (see Yes, Minister & Yes, Prime Minister, any episode), it had just grown to be so ugly, unashamed and disgusting that it was therefore time to put an end to it. But, as the British are extremely cynical about their politicians, these "breaking news" were just confirming what they knew already - the system is rotten, everyone is there for their personal benefit, all politicians are corrupt and the country is run by tycoons.

I don't think the conclusions would go quite as far in the Finnish case, if not for anything else, because the sums are considerably smaller. In the UK, the sums donated were millions of pounds, in Finland the largest individual donation was 20 000 euros, although the totals for some of these groups are in the hundreds of thousands.

The discussion is now taking a rather unfortunate non-analytical turn. As is often the case, things get confusing, and some people confuse things deliberately. Is the political system in crisis, as the prime minister has said? No, the system isn't, but his government is. Several MP's, both government and opposition are. Mr. Vanhanen deliberately muddles things up and tries to hide behind his office, but the fact is that the rules have been there, the legislation has been at place already, and these individuals (en masse, unfortunately) just have failed to respect the spirit of the law, and in many cases even broke the letter of the law. It's all fine for them to now blame the unclear rules and try save faces by proposing changes, while amending their dodgy declarations, but they shouldn't get away with just that.

Any trust-issues the Finnish people might have about politics as a result of this, are not generally about the Finnish constitution or the offices it describes, but about these idiots who claim they don't have a clue who paid for 1/4 of their campaign and expect people to believe them. Similarly, nobody lost their belief in Finnish business because this bunch of "fundamentalist entrepreneurs" now claim they don't know who got the hundreds of thousands of euros they donated and to which they expect no return.

That's one thing, the other of course is, whether funding political campaigns is corrupt in every case. The issue here is pretty much the same as in the question of correlation vs. causation. It's understandable that businesses or labour unions want to see that the candidates that share their views do well in elections. In the "ideal" scenario, politicians have their opinions first, and funding follows, because someone with money likes those opinions. In the cynical scenario, receiving funding changes the politician's opinions to those of his/her funders. In both cases, there's a correlation between receiving funding from an interest group and having opinions that they like. The direction of causation is the key element that separates democratic fair play from rotten corruption.

Whether either extreme exists in the real world, I'm not sure. There is probably a continuum there, and many politicians today seem to dwell in that gray area in between. But, something close to the ideal scenario exists and it can even be seen as an important part of democracy (as a guard of marginal, and why not even mainstream interests). Therefore rules (and enforcement of them) are needed, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to set a limit to how much money a candidate can get from a single donor, and a total limit should be considered as well. And, as a precautionary measure to tackle future ignorance and amnesia, politicians and donors should be forced to keep better minutes of their campaign funding and spending.

The Finnish political system with strong corporations and interconnections between politicians and special interests isn't necessarily corrupt in the sense that, say, Somalia (179th, or last in the TI CPI), Albania (105th) or even Italy (41st) are, but it isn't spotless clean, and definitely it doesn't seem to be all that transparent, either. That's something that should be reflected in the next CPI. If Finland falls from its joined first spot, it doesn't mean we've suddenly changed to be more corrupt, it's because we're finally starting to take a good look into how the decision-making here actually works.