oanja | Entries tagged with politics

There is snow again. I think we got our first snow almost two weeks ago, but I forgot to take a photo

then some One Directions stuff:
( cut cut )

And I guess there were elections in the States? *blinks innocently* and now we can sigh in relief that we dodged that bullet.

Last Saturday we were at my cousins wedding and I was just looking through the photos and remembered that I wanted to write about this one detail here. In American movies and tv shows they always make a big deal about the engagement ring on the woman and I was wondering if they guy gets a ring then? Because don't couples exchange rings at the wedding?

But here both of the people get engagement rings and they are mostly plain ones with no diamond or anything. Then the wedding ring is only for the bride and has/can have a diamond. I wonder if that's because of something in our culture or if it has something to do with the Lutheran Church? (it also made me think about what same sex couples do? Who gets the ring when they get 'married' or if they just use the engagement rings or what?)

Oh and the priest managed to piss me off by talking about how marriage is between a man and a woman and God and Grrrrr! She kept repeating it and I think she was making some kind of a personal point with this.

After all our parliament is finally talking about gay marriage and hopefully that will be sorted by next year.

---

I'm kind of disappointed that there isn't any fic about Ed Sheeran and Rupert Grint on AO3. What's up with that?

My mom asked me if I want to go watch the new Spider Man movie with her. =D So we're going tomorrow.

Current Mood: curious

We might get a gay president. I guess we'll know in two weeks when the second round of voting takes place. (First there were like seven candidates and today it was cut down to two) I know it's stupid to reduce the candidate to their sexual preference but still, I like what it says about my country, that a gay candidate can get this far.

On a completely different note, I'm so addicted to Skyrim it's not even funny... I'm really glad I'm not supposed to be doing anything else right now so this gaming spree isn't destroying my life or anything.

( two screencaps )

Current Mood: amused

The more serious matters first. I was browsing CNN for some reason and stumbled on this article When does spanking become abuse
Because I read a lot of fic, my mind went into a kink place first... So wrong. It's actually about disciplining you kids. I was really quite scocked to realise it's totally legal in the States to beat your kid as long as you say it's for discipline. It's actually pretty rare in the world to have laws against this. Here is the sadly short list.

I looked at the profile for USA and some of the numbers are gruesome, for example: "Sixty-five per cent of three year olds in a sample of nearly 2,000 families had been “spanked” by one or both parents in the previous month."
"in 2002, 79% of preschool-aged children were spanked, and nearly half of children aged eight and nine were hit with an object such as a paddle or switch."

I'm not saying Finland is perfect or anything but at least it's not legal to hit your child anymore. And it's worked too: "In 1988, around a quarter of the children had been smacked before age 14, and around a third had been whipped. In 2008, around 10% had experienced these types of punishment."

I think I need brain-bleach after reading all that. So I'm going to complain about fandon things instead. I'd take fandom problems over real life ones any day.

Pet Peeves:

( cut for to save you from my rants )

And then today's wordcount:

Current Mood: annoyed

I'm really fascinated with this whole, "omg Finland has awesome schools!" thing. I'm not sure if they actually are that good, although they don't suck either. I just don't know if they are any better than Swedish or Danish schools for example. That doesn't stop me from swelling with pride from time to time though, when people make documentaries like this one... >_>

I counted the people who have visited my Big bang fic, according to the stats option on LJ and people who actually went to the last part of the fic (so I'm supposing they read it all) is 506! Seems like an insanely big number to me. \0/ Whee~ I dunno if this makes me sound very annoying or something, but it was really nice to see so many people read my story. =D (I dunno though how accurate the LJ stats thing is, but still)

I also posted the fic on Archive of our own and that was a bitch to do, for some reason I don't really get how the html thing works on it... buuut, it's archived now and that was the whole point.

About NaNoWriMo... I skipped three days and now I'm pretty screwed. I managed to write about 2500 words today to bring me up to:

There is a chance I might be able to catch up during the weekend, but I dunno. *fingers crossed*

Current Mood: curious

I read this article on Time magazine today and thought it was kind of interesting.
Finland's Educational Success? The Anti-Tiger Mother Approach

and saw this BBC vid
Finland's education success

I never had any real complaints about the standard of my education while I was in primary school, but it's still pretty surprising and cool to see how it is viewed elsewhere. (I'm not saying our school system is perfect though, far from it, but then again it could be a lot worse...)

(I have bits and pieces for my presentation tomorrow... Urgh, this means I have to get up early tomorrow and finish doing it then)

Current Mood: interested

( PotC trailer )

More about the elections. I filled out one of those quizzes that compares you to all the candidates in your district and it told me that I had most answers in common with a candidate from the socialist party. xDDDD Actually out of the nine best matching candidates for me, three were from the communist party, two from the Green party, four from the Left Alliance (vasemmistoliitto) and one was from the social democratic party... I guess I do lean quite far left. ^_^/ I did other quizzes after that and didn't get quite so drastic results, mostly it recommended candidates from the Social Democratic Party to me, which is normal for me.

Oh and the socialist candidate who I had the most in common with was at the feminist election panel and seemed pretty okay to me... Should I actually vote for him? I think it would really count as a protest vote against the current administration =D

Hoo~ I found out that one of my lecturers from the university is running too, maybe I should vote for him... Hmm and why is it that I keep getting male candidates? not that it really matters to me, if they agree with me on important topics. I don't really agree with the whole, 'you have to vote for a woman if you are one!' Like a woman would automatically have the same values as me. Phaw~

And a Big Bang update

Current Mood: impressed

I got my baggage from J!NX yesterday! They make the official WoW merch and I ordered two t-shirts because they were on sale for 10€ a pop. And the shipping was super fast! Only took four days. \0/
( my new shirts )

And they posted a photo of what should be in the deluxe Panic! thing I ordered. I really hope mine will get here in one piece.
( Panic! album photo )

I went to listen to a feminist election panel discussion (or what ever it should be called) because we are having parliamentary elections next month and I have no idea who I should vote for. Well anyway, it was pretty interesting and I was happy to see two male candidates had shown as well, even if one of them was an idiot. The problem is that the two candidates I liked and agreed with the most have like no chance of actually being elected. They were both young women from smaller parties so fat chance, especially because we only get 6 representatives from my area and most if not all of them will be taken by the same old faces that have been elected for the last three elections, at least.

Then the stupid thing that happened yesterday. I forgot to turn off the headlights on my car when I went to the panel and the battery got drained. Luckily this girl I know agreed to come help me with it today. I just hope the car wasn't stolen during the night. (not that it's worth much of anything but you never know)

Current Mood: okay

Yay~ How awesome is this? US Senate repeals DADT

In other news: I'm home, which is also worth a yay. =D Except I have three weeks long Holiday so I might change my mind after a while. Especially because this computer is OLD and slow and annoying. Well maybe that means I will spend less time on it? Somehow that doesn't seem likely though.

Current Mood: hopeful

Yay California!! (I hope it will stick this time)

“… Proposition 8 was premised on the belief that same-sex couples simply are not as good as opposite-sex couples. Whether that belief is based on moral disapproval of homosexuality, animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate. The arguments surrounding Proposition 8 raise a question similar to that addressed in Lawrence v. Texas, when the Court asked whether a majority of citizens could use the power of the state to enforce profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles through the criminal code. The question here is whether California voters can enforce those same principles through regulation of marriage licenses. They cannot. California’s obligation is to treat its citizens equally, not to mandate its own moral code. Moral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest, has never been a rational basis for legislation. Tradition alone cannot support legislation.”
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