Letters to the Editor
Tona Aspsusa
Published Letters: 49 Editor's Choice: 13
-
Nice article!
[Read the article: Nothing but nog]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a foreigner from parts where eggnog is something you only encounter in American TV-shows and such this was a wonderfully illuminating article.
I had no idea you could buy it ready-made! If I could have wished for something more in this article it would have been a small history of when and how the industrial eggnog came into being.
Not that the concept of drinks with eggs is totally unknown here in greater Scandinavia, every now and then you come across references to "Egg toddy", both warm and cold. When I was a very small child my mother used to make me a version with egg yolks, sugar and orange juice (there might have been a little milk in it as well). No idea where she got the idea, I only remember that 2-yo me dubbed it the "goody-drink".
Oh, and when it comes to festive winter-drinks from all over the world, you could have mentioned the Scandinavian "Glögg", aka "Mulled wine". Which, BTW, under different names almost all translating as "Warm wine" is also quite common in most of Eastern Europe. At least in Scandinavia the phenomenon of non-alcoholic store bought substitutes are as common as your industrial eggnog seems to be. In the Baltic states, Poland and Czech&Slovakia I've also seen cartons of it at around wine-strength (in the latter countries it seems to be available year-round, too, mmmm).
-
Northern Europe vs Scandinavia
[Read the article: The man in the red suit]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Northlight,
I think the black elves as Saint Nick's helpers is a Dutch/German thing - and that their main performance is on Dec. 6th. (Someone please correct me!)
And about the "tiernapojat": I think this is mostly a Finnish tradition, and not that common in the rest of Scandinavia, if even known at all. And only one of them is in blackface (check your card more closely!).
The tradition harks back to the times when students would go around providing entertainment and begging for food and money in return. The characters are the three kings/wise men/magi and the star.
I've heard that the tradition of these small performances is alive and well, with company christmas parties featuring the three magi and the star with updated texts and songs riffing on the year that was and known persons etc...
(BTW, as a Swedophone Finn I'm a bit miffed that the parliament should chose an image of a totally Fennophone tradition as its christmas card. Not cool, they could at least have included Lucia. But now when I think of it I think they actually had a Lucia-card one year, so I'll take back my grumbling)
Nice article. But as a small-country patriot I would of course have liked to see it mentioned that Haddon Sundblom was an immigrant from Åland...
-
(Some of) the letters reveals...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... how far distanced many people are from the origins of the word "Stewardess".
Come on people, if your only associations from that word are "Coffee, tea or me?" (quite an entertaining book, btw) and "subservients asian women", aren't you being just a tad myopic?
How about trying this in addition:
Stewardess => female steward => ocean liners, high standards of service, professionalism, pride in doing a job not only well, but superbly.
I think the problem some people have with Flight Attendant is that the connotations of that word is one of authority, and not personal authority but institutional. A FA is more like a bouncer at a not-so-highclass-night-club - ready to take control of the sheep, the arbiter of what is acceptable, the guardian of The Rulebook.
She or he isn't there to help you feel better, take care of your petty needs or serve you, s/he is Attending to the Flight, not to the passengers.
Bgrasso nailed one aspect of this in hir letter about class - it can be compared to waiters/waitresses in some respects: the absolute worst are usually the ones at restaurants aspiring to a kind of snobbishness who treat customers according to how "worthy" they deem them. Real top-of-the-line waitstaff (the kind that work in restaurants most people rarely have the funds to visit) are never snobbish, and take excellent care of even the most insecure, poorly dressed out-of-their-depth customers.
But I digress; as commercial flying has become a sport for the masses perhaps it would be time to let go of all the "service" aspirations of the profession?
BTW, what do other airlines call their head of cabin crew? I noticed a few weeks ago (coming home to Helsinki on a almost packed flight from Frankfurt) that on Finnair they are "Pursers" (again, the ocean liner connotation!).
(And the flight was illustrative of "rank hath its priviledges": The Purser (40-ish, female) stuck to making announcements and tending to the very small business class at the front, while her two colleagues (20-ish, also female) handled the rest of the plane (very well, very nice and attentive, but overworked and therefore a bit slow).)
-
Practical applications
[Read the article: The light's on, but is anybody home?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Interesting article, looking forward to more in this series.
I can't help but get excited over the possibilities fMRI could mean for rehabilitation - IF we can only get smaller, cheaper and (ok, this borders on scifi) portable versions.
Rehab after brain injuries is long, hard, tedious and with uncertain outcomes. What if fMRI could be used to better target it?
Of course it will take lots of studies, and most probably there is no 100% correlation between fMRI and observable function that would be true for *everyone*. But on an individual level, perhaps? What if you could use fMRI to assess which modalities of therapy are actually working? Especially in the very early stages of recovery perhaps fMRI could help with finding "keys" and "short-cuts" for more effective rehabilitation?
-
I'd like to know...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... the answer to the one about what percentage of fuel is used for take-off. It is probably un-answerable as asked, but if formulated as liters or gallons/min for different parts of a typical flight, maybe?
Fuel-economy in general is an interesting topic. More on that, please. Tell us stuff we didn't even know to ask about!