Estonian teens are science geeks

The OECD study shows that Estonian 15-year-olds are better at understanding science than those from most other countries. The best are the Finnish.

I think the result is so good despite our education system, not because of it. It is interesting to see that neighbour countries Latvia, Lithuania and Russia are below average in the rankings.

Knowledge-based society, here we come?

Thoughts on Eesti 90

Today is the first day of the 90th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia. My personal relationship with my country is a little complicated: I like to think about myself as a citizen of the world or Europe, Estonia seems way too small for me. Even more important than that is my dislike of authority, especially state authority. I dislike nationalists and people who say that they are ready to die for their country. I cannot sincerely argue that Estonia is in some way much better than some other country is because I believe it is sheer coincidence that I was born here and at this time. If I was born in Latvia, I would be expected to be a proud Latvian, etc. This is my reasoning for being a pacifict as well, war is an enormous waste of resources, money and people, as it is silly to fight over a piece of land or other nationalist notions (the same applies for religion, my other big “enemy”).

That being said, I love Estonia. It is irrational kind of love, but it is the environment where I have lived most of my life, it is where I have experienced so much, it is a part of me. While in Estonia, it is easy to crumble and complain, but in truth whenever I go abroad I do start missing the things that were good here. I cannot define them, but Estonia is Home. The beautiful nature, the people, the way things are handled: it makes me really happy to live here. It is a great country to live in and it will become even better.

P.S. The “Eesti 90″ logo is beautiful and cool. The freedom cross monument is not. The logo symbolises what I feel for Estonia, whereas the freedom cross does not.

Unreal

Finland has always had the reputation as a safe country. The shocking news of the shooting at Jokela school in Tuusula seem unreal. People are already asking all sorts of questions: Was it easy access to guns? Was it teenage angst gone bad? Was it an attempt to immortality and recognition? etc

I do not think we will ever know the answers to these questions as human beings are complicated beings with complicated motives. Could this have been prevented? I do not think so. But I think people should pay more attention to people around them, try to understand them and promote tolerance and peaceful resolution of any issues. We should also think about what kind of society we are building by consuming things that are ultimately harmful (and I am not talking so much about bodily harm, but mental). Like it or not, the shooter was also our creation, in the same way we are products of the genes and the environment that shapes us, which in turn is created by us.

I believe more peace, understanding and tolerance is the best weapon against hatred, violence and war.

Hooked to my bookmarks

I spend too much time online, consuming all kinds of information. In the last year or so I have started to rely on bookmarks for my browsing needs. These bookmarks are mostly to RSS feeds of interesting blogs and news sites. They are divided into my areas of interest such as the technology (Mac), Estonian politics, MJ, etc. So whenever something happens in these areas I know about them almost immediately, because I am checking these sources multiple times a day.

While I do not need most of this information, I still have it out of habit. And it stops me from learning other things, spontaneously wandering around the net to find new and exciting things, not to speak of the huge waste of time. So why is it so? It seems I have just too many bookmarks, I add them too easily and do not bother to remove them once they are no longer relevant for me. The other things is, I am not a very patient and quite obsessive person so whenever I see there are new items is some of the feeds I just need to check them out (the same goes for mail, I cannot tolerate the little red circle with the number of unread mail messages in my dock).

So what I have done, is to clean up the bookmarks and removed those I did not use. It feels much nicer now…

There are so many great quotes in this book…

I am still reading Richard Dawkins’s the God Delusion and there are some lovely quotes there, some of which I would like to share:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

“To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.”

“I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented”

“A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape.”

I am an atheist

I am back from Berlin, laptopless (my iBook G4 was stolen). It will take a while apparently for the new laptop to get here so until then I am forced to use a PC at the office.

In Berlin I managed to buy a book I have wanted to read for some time. It is called The God Delusion and it is written by Richard Dawkins, a University of Oxford professor. I have not yet finished it but the first chapters got me also to watch the brilliant two-part documentary The Root of All Evil?. The book and the TV series complement each other and they voice an important point, which is something that everyone needs to know. If you can, please read the book.

The author essentially argues that the world would be better off without organised religion as it is today. Think about it: most of the conflicts that exist today are faith-based. Israel/Palestine, US/Iraq, Northern Ireland, the terrorist attacks, etc. Those conflicts cannot be won or successfully resolved, because they are based on false realities. How is it possible that grown-up individuals need an ancient fairy-tale to tell them what to do? Why is it so strange when someone believes he is Peter Pan, but when a person believes in a sky-god that somehow (micro)manages the lives of billions of people and who has created the Earth in six days it is OK?

There is a reason for this: the God delusion is believed by very many people. They get a sense of unity, belonging and meaning out of it. But is that worth living a lie? A lie that is extremely dangerous as it causes harm and deaths of many people. The more people are religious, the worse it is to live in this world as each people in each religion try to overcome the others and fight over holy lands or some other nonsensical concepts.

Therefore I agree with Richard Dawkins completely and when I first was sitting on the fence on religion (I did not care much about it), I now think that religion is evil. And if religion is evil, there should be no freedom of religion, there should be freedom from religion.

But would a world would be a bleak, meaningless and hopeless place without Christianity, Judaism or Islam? No. Albert Einstein said: “What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

The Earth, the nature and its people are so complex, beautiful and inspirational that it seems almost disrespectful of them to state that these were created by some magical higher being. Instead, we can believe in the evolution of life, as proven by scientific theories, which are based on scientific facts. Sure, there is a lot we do not know about our world, but that makes it interesting to live here rather than wait for the afterlife.

It still ensues

This is crazy. I hope that the authorities move swiftly and quell the looters. There is a difference between looting and pillaging and having a demonstration in support of your cause (even if this is caused by misinformation). Estonia is so small and our police is quite inexperienced (and underpaid for what they do) so I am amazed at their ability to provide order in this situation. The Centre Party and Russia of course are not helping the situation by essentially siding with the rioters (or by blaming the government).

Listen: THE STATUE OF THE BRONZE SOLDIER IS NOT BEING DESTROYED, it is being REMOVED TO A CEMETERY WHERE IT BELONGS. This is being done in accordance with international laws and best practices. Dead bodies belong to a cemetery and not in the centre of the city, where people are walking and gathering in front of it. It is the right of the Estonian people to decide to do this, and people have decided this by electing the Riigikogu which put Mr Ansip to power. If something, then this has shown that the statute was and is a significant public order problem.

Estonians are not fascists for making decisions on how their cities should be planned and where war graves should be located.

Some thoughts on the Bronze Soldier issue

It has happened. After a massive demonstration by many ethnic Russian and looting and pillaging by some ethnic Russian young people, the Bronze Soldier has been removed from Tõnismägi. The price has been one life lost, several dozen injured and lots of monetary damage.

The issue of the ethnic Russians not being really a part of the Estonia has been regarded as a ticking time bomb for a long time. Steps of integration have obviously not worked very well (but this is mostly due to Russian government’s activity, than Estonia’s inactivity). It seems to be that although the events last night were unfortunate and unbecoming of Estonian way of life, the issue was handled pretty well by the government and the police. The inevitability of such clashes might even be helpful in integrating the Russian minority (as most of them will understand that they do not have to be antogonistic and most Estonians do not really mind them being here).

I am following the events unfolding through internet/radio/TV, having conveniently retreated to the suburbs of Tallinn from my city centre flat. Hopefully yesterday’s events were one of a time occurrence and that public order will not be breached this night.

Lifelong and lifewide education

I work in education. One of the more interesting concepts being touted at the moment is the idea of lifelong (and lifewide) education. I like those ideas quite a lot. Essentially they mean that education is no longer divided among age lines, but also that education is no longer confined to educational institutions or formal settings. Education takes place at the workplace, during free time etc.

Sure, young people still go to school, but after that it is no longer that simple: people learn and should learn throughout their lives. This means that the concept of education has to change as well. There is a shift in paradigm coming (or has it already arrived). Those educational institutions who accept and embrace this will be much better equipped for future than those who do not. I hope my institution is among the latter.

On the Bronze Soldier

I found this site, while browsing the internet. The glaring factual errors and profound misunderstanding of the nature of the problem makes one think that the creator of the site is either simply ignorant and misinformed or then it could also be an attempt of astroturfing in foreign policy shpere. It guess it shows that small Estonia, even as a member of EU and NATO is no match for the Russian propaganda machine. But we should not try to be.

As president Ilves mentioned in his speech today marking the 89th birthday of the Republic of Estonia, citing Marcus Aurelius “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury”. Estonia is a democratic state, if there are issues that threaten democracy, then these are connected to greed and corruption, not glorification of fascism.

The thing is we have this statute of a bronze soldier in the Red Army uniform, standing next to the eternal fire. It is possible that there are also Soviet army soldiers buried under it, but no one knows. There have been discussions from re-independence regarding what to do with it and other similar monuments, which glorify Stalin, Lenin, the Soviet Union and the communist occupation in general. Some statutes were removed in early 90s and replaced with others, while some remained in their places. I am in general not for removing pieces of history, but this case should be looked at somewhat differently.

The Bronze Soldier statute was not an issue at all until few years ago when there were potential skirmishes there between nationalists and certain Russian Estonian groups, who had been using the place to celebrate the Red Army defeat over the Nazi army on 9 May. This made the issue a political one and brought it up in the agenda. Estonian politicians rehashed plans to remove the statute to a cemetary whereas the Russian groups, no doubt aided by the Russian government always on the lookout for foreign enemies to distract from problems within, started a campaign to protect it. This has brought us to this day.

As an Estonian I really do not care whether the Bronze statute is there or not. It is somewhat weird to see people in Societ army uniforms there few times a year, but I guess those people also need something to hold on to. I do not, however, see why this memorial site should be in central Tallinn, near a trolleybus stop and busy roads. Especially when it could cause trouble for what it symbolises to many Estonians. I am too young to remember this clearly, but I do remember at some point in the late 80s when I was still very little of words one should not speak and I did also witness the Soviet tanks etc, but I digress. Whatever mental angish against this totalitarian regime I felt is dwarfed by feelings of people who suffered under it. People who were deported to Siberia, people who were arrested or tried for political crimes not only in the 1940s or 50s, but throughout the Soviet occupation era. And I do understand that this monument and its use as a political device is quite hurtful to those people, especially considering that while it was built, Estonian resistance movement tried to unsuccessfully blow it up (Guy Fawkes, anyone?).

Therefore I do see that there exists legitimate public interest in removing the statute and possible graves from this very public place and take it to a cemetary, where it can be used for its intended purpose and not for political attacks.

Useful links: Estonian International Commission for
Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, Estonian Museum of Occupations.