By all accounts, Scandinavia is one of the most prosperous, peaceful and income-equal places to live in the world. Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark hold four of the top five spots in the World Democracy Index (the U.S. ranks 15th). The Scandinavian countries are all the way at the top of OECD’s ranking of the happiest countries in the world (the U.S. is 19th), and they’re all the way at the bottom of the CIA’s ranking of countries by income inequality (the U.S. is 40th out of 140).

But when, on October 15, rallies inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement were held around the [...]

Come on, flamingos! If a tiny little vole can fight off a big coyote, and four chickens (chickens!) can kill a canine invader, surely fifteen of you should be able to defend your own turf. But apparently not. "The paw marks are very clear-it was a wild fox," said Jukka Salo, director of Finland's Helsinki Zoo, where an entire flock of fifteen pink flamingos were slaughtered after the hungry animal climbed over the fence earlier this week. "When it got in, it acted just as if it were in a hen house, killing and creating mayhem."

The video above explains something, I guess: These gawky birds [...]

The Times and a host of other publications heralded last week's new study extolling the lifelong money-earning benefits of having a good primary/middle-school teacher. Oh, yay! Let's do what these economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest, right?

Actually, ugh, no. What economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah Rockoff of Columbia want to do, apparently, is to identify and fire "weaker" teachers, for the sake of a barely perceptible increase in students' "lifetime income." Nobody has actually tried this yet; the report doesn't describe an experiment. It's just the conclusion they draw from their analysis of massive amounts [...]

This video of a storm approaching Hietaniemi Beach near Helsinki, is an intense remind of the Awesome Power of Nature. Between the severe weather and the smoke from the fires in Russia, they've had a rough go of it over there in Finland.