Finland talks about immigrants as if we were not in the room. We have become bystanders in a discussion concerning us.

WE are a nation of more than 200 million people. We are young and old, children and adults. We are held by no borders. We go to the furthest places on earth, taking risks and leaving loved ones behind, to reach for our dreams. We are strong, but amongst the weakest. We are discriminated against and some of us have no rights. Most of us feel unwelcomed, maltreated, abused. When things go wrong, we are among the first to be blamed for it.

Aiming to turn a monologue into a dialogue, the ipf can revolutionise how immigrants participate in their new homelands.

Discussions about immigration are running hot in Finland, and it will be a major topic in the upcoming parliamentary elections in 2011. Finnish political parties have had some immigrant candidates, but none has been elected to parliament so far. Now a new initiative aims to build immigrants their own parliament. A long period of planning has turned into action and a group of influential immigrants have joined forces to make it happen. Alexis Kouros, Umayya Abu-Hanna, Ahmed Akar, Jeremy Gould, Mustafa Gürler, Eilina Gusatinsky and Mulki Mölsä ...

ALTHOUGH we might be used to Anglo-American domination in most aspects of popular culture, in terms of game development and coding the playing field is a tad more level. This spring’s bestseller Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has been developed by Sweden’s leading gaming company Digital Illusions CE. Danish IO Interactive is known as the developer of the popular Hitman series.

The video game industry in Finland has a long history and a trusted reputation. Humble beginnings in the mid-90s have led to a games industry that has the highest amount of public funding relative to population in the EU and is a major contributor to Finland’s export sector. The numbers of people working in the Finnish games industry grew from 400 in 2002 to 1,147 in 2008.

Video game development has gone from a solo effort into a billion dollar business, where armies of coders, production designers and other staff work to produce blockbusting virtual experiences.

A VISITOR from another planet who came to earth in the mid-1980s, played some computer games, returned to their galaxy, and then returned for a quick go on today’s modern consoles, would surely be amazed at the progress made in game development. While hits from 25 years ago such as the ZX Spectrum’s Manic Miner were programmed by one man, today’s mega titles like Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) have budgets in the millions of dollars and can require teams of dozens if not hundreds of coders, programmers, actors and artists.

Forensic science has been in vogue in crime fiction since the turn of the century and continues to fascinate the public. Inside Finland’s largest crime lab, the real-life forensics experts match fingerprints and identify DNA samples in service of the justice system.

IT WAS not the most typical Finnish crime, although the setting was all too familiar: an alcoholic, found badly burnt outside a dormitory, died months later of his injuries. His drinking buddy professed an account of the events: the victim, having enjoyed ethanol solvent with his fellows, passed out. His partner then flicked a lit cigarette stub on him as a joke, inadvertently setting his ethanol-soaked clothes ablaze.

Modern circus is blurring the lines between performance and participation – and you’d be surprised at who’s rolling up to join in the fun.

THE ART of circus is becoming something which is accessible to everyone – in a very hands-on sense. Though not all of us are aiming to become the girl on the flying trapeze or a lycra-clad human cannonball, the circus is allowing people of all walks of life, from all around the world, to find skills and develop talents they may never have known they had. It has been discovered by many to be not only a vehicle for self-expression, but an addictive means of social networking, learning and improving impressive skills, and keeping fit.

From the ancient Romans via the Big Top to the modern stage, circus has kept us enthralled for thousands of years. Its remarkable ability to adapt and evolve to maintain the fascination of audiences over time is what makes it unique.

WHILE the children of the 30s were wowed by the emergence of the “talkies” – cinematic films with both images and synchronised sound – the modern day teenager thinks nothing of playing tennis on their Wii, setting people on fire in real time and examining the computer generated world of Pandora in three dimensions.

The inner world of man has interested philosophers since ancient times. Plato thought the soul to be the organ of experience, Aristotle studied it in De Anima, and Descartes proclaimed “I think, therefore I am” in the 1600s – a realisation that has been distorted ever since. For a long time, philosophy was the authority on mental matters.

Up until the 1850s the human mind was conceived to be something beyond scientific observation. The idea of a Cartesian soul was first shaken by the phrenologists in the early 1800s, who believed that the human mind was a biological phenomenon to be studied by...

“IT started half by accident some 15 years ago,” says Janne Laine of his collecting hobby. “I was on a trip during winter break and I bought a water gun as a souvenir — a nice dinosaur-shaped piece. After that I started buying water guns on every trip, and pretty soon my friends started buying them for me on birthdays, housewarming parties and so on.”

Having amassed more than 800 individual items, Laine now holds Finland’s largest collection of squirt guns. In 2005, an exhibition of his collection was held in his hometown of Turku. It was touted as the most extensive water gun exhibit in the Nordic countries.

Are all collectors people with strange passions, cluttered homes and long-suffering spouses?
Often appearing to be merely grown-ups with too much money to waste on childish pursuits, they seem somewhat kooky compared to us reasonable, non-collecting, normal people. Right?

Well, you might say that you don’t collect anything – except, for those less inclined to regularly pick up a vacuum cleaner, maybe dust bunnies. But how about those interesting euro coins you like to put aside? Or that not-so great album you reluctantly bought to complete the discography of your favourite band? Why exactly do you have more cute mugs than you can possibly find use for?