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Lunar eclipse may shed light on climate change

Last month’s lunar eclipse not only treated skygazers to a ruddy view of the Moon – it revealed that Earth’s atmosphere contains little light-blocking volcanic dust.

Some researchers say the low volcanic dust levels in the atmosphere over the last dozen years could be contributing to global warming, but others dispute the claim.

During a lunar eclipse, Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon directly. But some sunlight still gets through, refracted through Earth’s atmosphere. The amount varies, depending mainly on how much dust from volcanic eruptions is floating around at high altitudes.

Because dust can block sunlight from passing through the atmosphere, more dust makes for a darker Moon during lunar eclipses. “All the big dimmings of the Moon during eclipses can be attributed to specific volcanoes,” says Richard Keen of the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.

Keen and his collaborators have charted the brightness of eclipses back to 1960 and for a few years around the time of the 1883 eruption of Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano.

They are using the eclipse data to track changes in the opacity of Earth’s atmosphere. While most of the light deflected by particles in the atmosphere is just temporarily diverted and eventually reaches the Earth’s surface, the effects of atmospheric dust can have a significant, if temporary, impact on the climate, Keen says.

Global average

Earth-orbiting satellites can measure atmospheric opacity, but only for a small part of the atmosphere at any given time. A lunar eclipse, on the other hand, conveniently gives an average over all latitudes, Keen says. Eclipse measurements are also easily compared with old eclipse records, which extend back much further in time than the satellite measurements, he says.

The most recent lunar eclipse, on 20-21 February, was a bright one, measuring a 3 – the second-brightest level – on an eclipse-rating scale that ranges from 0 to 4.

That is in line with eclipse data taken since 1995. In that time, the stratosphere has been especially clear, with very little haze-producing volcanic activity compared to the previous three decades, from 1965 to 1995, Keen says.

Because more sunlight is reaching the surface, Earth should be 0.1 to 0.2° Celsius warmer in recent years than it was back in the late 1960s, Keen and his colleagues calculate. Over the same period, the average surface temperature of the Earth has risen by about 0.6° C.

Many factors

According to the scientists that make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reports to the United Nations, most of the warming since the mid-20th century is due to the greenhouse gases released by human activity. Other factors, including fluctuating patterns in ocean circulation and slight changes in the Sun’s brightness, also influence the climate.

“All of these have been contributing to a warming, adding on top of each other,” Keen told New Scientist. “The difficulty is, of course, what are the relative magnitudes [of these effects],” he says.

Susan Solomon of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, a member of the Nobel-prize-winning team that put together the 2007 IPCC report, says atmospheric haze, including haze from volcanoes, was included in computer models used for the report.

But she disputes Keen’s conclusions. “There’s no evidence for a significant warming trend over the last several decades [due to a decline in volcanic haze],” she told New Scientist. “In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.”

Ocean heating

The amount of haze in the stratosphere has been higher – blocking more sunlight – in the past 40 years compared to the 20 years before that, she says. So over the past 60 years, there would have been a slight cooling trend if volcanic haze were the only influence on climate, she says.

Keen acknowledges that depending on the period chosen, volcanic haze can give a cooling rather than a warming trend. But he argues that the relatively long period with a clear atmosphere since 1995 could be having a big impact on climate, especially if the extra sunshine reaching the Earth’s surface could create subtle, longer-term warming effects through the heating of ocean water, as some scientists propose.

He is now compiling more precise estimates of the brightness of the most recent eclipse by comparing the Moon’s brightness to that of reference stars during the eclipse. This will allow the amount of haze in the stratosphere during the eclipse to be calculated more precisely.

The Awful Truth Behind 5 Items Probably On Your Grocery List

digg_url = ‘http://www.cracked.com/article_15967_awful-truth-behind-5-items-probably-on-your-grocery-list.html’; digg_title = ‘The Awful Truth Behind 5 Items Probably On Your Grocery List’; digg_bodytext = ‘See that banana you’re eating? It probably killed somebody! Just kidding, sort of. Bananas don’t kill people, people kill people … over bananas. And soda. And a bunch of other stuff you buy every day.’; digg_media = ‘news’; digg_topic = ‘odd_stuff’; Hey, that banana you’re eating, it probably killed somebody! Enjoy it you heartless bastard! Sorry, we’re just kidding, sort of. Bananas don’t kill people, people kill people…over bananas. And soda. And a bunch of other shit. For example… Chiquita Bananas Fresh Fruit, Bloody WarsHere we have a company whose president was quoted as saying “it’s important that I don’t get too knowledgable about the past” upon taking control of the company in 1975. The previous president, Eli Black, had just left the company by way of leaping out the window of his 44th floor office in the Pan Am Building in New York rather than face prosecution for giving a bribe to the president of Honduras. The dude didn’t even give two weeks notice. What’s this “past” he didn’t want to think about? Well, there’s the massacre of striking workers in Colombia in 1928, at the hands of the Colombian army and allegedly under the orders of the company. Seriously, how could they top that? Well, bringing down the democratically elected leader of a South American country by way of a violent coup is one way. Back in 1951 when they were still called the United Fruit Company, a president by the name of Jacabo Arbenz took office in Guatemala. Among the things that got him elected, the biggest was an ambitious plan that would distribute uncultivated land to over 100,000 peasants in Guatemala. The main obstacle to this plan was the United Fruit Company, who just happened to own the land. According to their estimates, the land was valued at right around $525,000. When the Guatemalan government made a low ball offer of exactly that fucking amount, United Fruit responded with a completely logical counter offer of $16,000,000. When Arbenz balked, United Fruit reportedly took the term “breakdown in negotiations” to dizzying new heights by asking the CIA to intervene. And boy did they intervene. God-DAMN did they intervene! Along with other connections in the Eisenhower administration, then CIA head Allen Dulles had previously served on United Fruit’s board of trustees. With that kind of direct access to the highest levels of the government and with McCarthyism in full swing, we imagine the telephone conversation that resulted in the CIA intervening on behalf of United Fruit went something like this: CIA: “Hello?” United Fruit: “BANANAS blah blah blah OUR LAND blah blah PEASANTS blah blah COMMUNISTS!” CIA: **click** United Fruit: “Hello? Hello?” **Hears explosions in background, takes cover** With the CIA on board to help with their cause, United Fruit launched a massive and highly successful propaganda campaign to paint Arbenz as a communist threat to the United States. Included in the campaign was a film that linked the taking of United Fruit’s land to the Communist Empire, awesomely titled Why The Kremlin Hates Bananas. Some shit just writes itself. With the general public sufficiently convinced that Guatemala was a threat (good thing we don’t fall for shit like that anymore), the CIA was free to pounce and promptly launched “Operation PBSuccess.” They didn’t call it that because it failed. In short order, the US replaced the freely elected Arbenz with a right wing dictator more willing to answer to the demands of United Fruit and Guatemala’s brief flirtation with democracy and prosperity was over. But this story does have a happy ending. The civil war that resulted from the CIA initiated coup did finally come to an end. In 1996. Iams Pet Food Nutritious Dog Food, Cruelty Boy do we Americans love us some misguided outrage. If the majority had their way, Michael Vick would have been bludgeoned to death by one of the Heartbreakers during the Super Bowl halftime show. Because, if there is one thing we don’t tolerate, it’s animal cruelty. At least not from NFL quarterbacks. Animal cruelty from major corporations though? Apparently not a problem. People for the Ethical Treatmpent of Animals (PETA), known partly for saying batshit crazy things and for having the only public awareness campaign that people have ever masturbated to. But, in between they sometimes actually do some good. One recent example happened in 2002 when, for nearly ten months, a PETA official went undercover at an Iams testing facility to expose harsh conditions inside the plant. What they found makes Michael Vick’s shenanigans look like some Arena League shit in comparison. And, in case you suspected (as we did) that the stories were the product of PETA’s vegetable-induced imagination, they brought back a video of the facility that will ruin your day. Most of the details, about mutilation and such, you really don’t want to hear about. Among the less nightmare-inducing tidbits were cats and dogs gone stir-crazy from constant confinement and an employee overheard talking about a live kitten that was accidentally washed down a drain. For fuck’s sake Iams! For you statistics geeks out there, one procedure performed at the Iams facility that involved (seriously, we’re not saying) resulted in 27 dogs being killed. Just one more record Michael Vick will never break. When confronted with the findings from PETA, Iams attempted to turn the tables and blamed the undercover PETA official as the one responsible for the various atrocities, including a claim that the PETA official oversaw an incident in which several dogs were surgically debarked to keep them from crying out for attention. Because that’s exactly how PETA gets down. But a review of phone transcripts revealed the exact opposite. The PETA official actually tried to prevent the debarking. Iams officials acknowledged this to be the case also. And then probably beat their dogs out of frustration. Coca-Cola Refreshing Soft Drinks, Murder Corporations don’t get much warmer and fuzzier than Coca-Cola. You think of fearsome NFL linemen tossing bright eyed kids their jerseys, playful polar bears frolicking in the snow, the world learning to sing in perfect harmony. Hell, some internet rumors even claim Coke invented Santa Claus. The sweet bubbly deliciousness that is Coca Cola has been a beacon of happiness for generations of kids and adults alike, even those who weren’t lucky enough to have their Coke spiked with nose candy. With all of this universal joy spreading, some people may be surprised to find that Coke II isn’t the only atrocity lurking in the Big Red Machine’s closet. If you work at one of the various Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America … fucking WHY? After all, there is probably less violence to be found working for a cocaine cartel in Colombia, South America. According to some descriptions, Colombia is “a country where union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back.” If you spend too much time thinking about it, you’ll realize that saying makes no damn sense, but just trust that it means working for a union in Colombia is a death sentence. This is especially true at the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia. At the Carepa plant, five union leaders were murdered between 1994 – 1996 alone. In case after case, plant managers at bottlers throughout Colombia, afraid that being forced to give their workers that bump from $200 per month to $205 per month would bring their business to its knees, contracted with paramilitary groups to force unions at their plants to disband. In the most publicized case (meaning not really publicized at all, unless you count on the internet, which you shouldn’t), union executive board member Isidro Segundo Gil was shot ten times near the Carepa plant gates by paramilitary thugs purported to have been hired by the plant management. The details of Gil’s assassination were outlined in a lawsuit filed against Coca-Cola by the International Labor Rights Fund. Of course, that the thugs were acting on the direction of plant management is just an allegation, but the fact that the thugs returned the next day demanding that workers quit the union is at least a little suspicious. There is also the issue of them having resignation forms prepared in advance by plant managers in hand when they made these demands. But still, these are just allegations. You shouldn’t assume anything. Like the old saying goes, “when you assume, you just make an ass out of u and me and evil corporations that condone the slaughtering of their own employees.” Dole Bananas Nutritious Fruit, Sterility-Causing PesticidesMaking their second appearance on the list, bananas are the standard bearer when it comes to corporate atrocity. Following in the heinous footsteps of Chiquita, Dole has a long track record of bringing the pain to South American countries unlucky enough to grow their shit. And unlike most other companies on this list, Dole didn’t even try to hide their hell raising ways. Kudos! When several chemical workers became sterile, tests determined the cause to be a pesticide made at the plant where they worked called DBCP. When tests revealed it caused liver, kidney and lung damage, the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in the United States. Proving themselves to be a paragon of classiness, Dole made note of the “in the United States” part of the ban and continued to use DBCP overseas. When Dow Chemicals informed Dole of their concerns over the safety of DBCP, Dole did what any company concerned with the well being of its fellow man would do. They advised Dow they would be in breach of their contract if they refused to provide them with DBCP for overseas use and agreed to take any liability for the resulting damage it may cause. A brave move, agreeing to take the liability. Or at least it would be if they thought for a second that they would ever have to act on it. When Nicaraguan banana workers suffering the ill effects of DBCP exposure sought legal advice on how best to proceed with a lawsuit against Dole, they were told about the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens, a latin term meaning “fuck a third world farm worker.” Ok, it really means “inconvenient forum” and states a case can be dismissed on the grounds that it would be more appropriate to hear it in another locale, like the impossibly corrupt courts of the plaintiff’s home country, for instance. Rather than taking their case to the Nicaraguan courts, which would be about as effective as taking the case to Judge Judy, the workers pressured the Nicaraguan government to find a different way to see to it that justice was served. The Nicaraguan National Assembly passed Law 364 in January 2001, to help banana workers gain compensation from companies that used DBCP. The law, which establishes a rapid procedure for workers who bring judgments before the courts, was immediately challenged by Dole along with several chemical companies. So far, despite court ordered judgments favoring Nicaraguan banana workers totaling more than $400 million, the workers have yet to see a dime. One banana worker was quoted as saying “I ask the companies…to have a little bit of conscience with us.” We’d like to thank that worker for providing us with the funniest line of this article so far. Nestle Quik Delicious Chocolate Milk, Child SlavesFor any youngster that cringes at the thought of having to choke down a glass of plain milk with their dinner, Nestle Quik is a little box of magic. One tablespoon of the powdery goodness that is Nestle Quik can transform that glass of white nasty into a delectable cup of chocolately awesome. Add to this the fact that every box is emblazoned with an adorable cartoon rabbit, and what you have is a certified childhood dream maker. At least this much is true for most kids; lazy, shiftless bastards that they are. Some kids, on the other hand, have to work for their Nestle Quik. Without going into the grizzly details that we’re sure you aren’t coming to a comedy website looking for, we’ll just say this. The majority of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Africa’s Ivory Coast. There are probably a lot of things that are illegal in the Ivory Coast, child labor, trafficking or (oh dear) slavery are not any of them. But hey, if it’s alright with the bunny, how bad can it be? After years of flying under the atrocity radar, word of the unspeakably harsh conditions on Ivory Coast cocoa plantations finally came out in 2001. In the face of an influx of negative publicity, Nestle valiantly leapt into inaction. After issuing a few public statements claiming they had no way of knowing who did what where and when, it took a rider attached to an agricultural bill to get Nestle to even acknowledge the problem. The new legislation, passed in July, 2001, would have created a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as “slave free,” a label Nestle would qualify for if it weren’t for all the enslaved children making their shit. Even if they did qualify, on the list of words you don’t want printed on the label of your product, “slave” comes in at a solid #3, right behind “Hitler” and “shit.” To avoid having to abide by the new legislation, Nestle agreed to a voluntary protocol to end forced labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Being that the major chocolate companies would be overseeing this new program, it wasn’t too surprising that nothing ever came of it. When 2005 came and went with little to no change, Nestle was ready with one of the stupidest excuses imaginable. According to them, an escalating civil war in the Ivory Coast prevented them from sending anyone in to monitor the situation. Amazingly though, their team of buyers, who must consist of nothing but crack military commandos, have yet to have a problem getting in and out completely unscathed. To add even less credibility to their claim that making delicious treats without at least some slave help wasn’t possible, several chocolate companies are now selling “Fair Trade” chocolate which is monitored to insure no slave labor is used in its production, though some sophisticated consumers say that chocolate isn’t as good, since it does not contain the unique flavor of the bitter tears of children. We don’t want to pile on Nestle, though. If we wanted to do that, we would bring up the third-world babies that died from Nestle formula, or the company demanding millions from famine-stricken Ethiopia over a 1975 business transaction or … fuck it, we’re getting depressed.

Two Tombstones in Norfolk, UK

A bit of a secret weapon: send this photo to anyone you know who is deciding upon divorce, but perhaps shouldn’t be so hasty. Look, Decovo is made up of blasphemous skeptics (especially Tristan) of the South-Park-meets-James-Randi variety, and even we cannot deny the regretful perspective we still might have as we near the game’s end, you know? Somehow, this pic reminds us of that forthcoming regret, and perhaps we shall be just a little less of a bastard during those certain irretrievable moments of relationshipping. Perhaps.

5 Incredible Works of Insane Architectural Genius: Wooden Skyscrapers to Recycled Wonderlands

How many people does it take to envision, design and build a typical building? Architects, builders, carpenters, laborers are often just the beginning of a long list of co-creators. Well, these bizarre exceptions were each primarily the work of a single eccentric individual and in many cases took decades (or even lifetimes) to construct. Despite having this essential factor in common the ultimate built outcomes range significantly in style, execution, materiality and purpose.

: Facteur Cheval was a mild-mannered mailman by day and a wildly inspired pseudo-architect and builder by night. His strange architectural masterpiece, the so-called Perfect Palace (Palais Ideal) took him decades to construct and was finished in the early 1900s. He had no formal design or construction training and learned as he went, day by day, for over 10,000 days with few people aware of his creation until it was completed.

Archangelsk, Russia: Nikolai Sutyagin started this amazing wooden skyscraper as a simple two-story structure, then just kept building. The building now stands 13 stories (144 feet) tall and is under threat of demolition out of safety concerns by authorities. Taking what he learned (and earned) as the owner of a small construction company he built this masterpiece. While in jail for supposedly imprisoning a worker in part of the building his business went to pieces. Now the strange wooden skyscraper is all they have left.

Los Angeles, California: Simon Rodia was an Italian immigrant who moved all around the United States before settling in LA. What started out as a few random art projects became a vast and semi-abstract architectural masterpiece known as the Watts Towers, complete with a gazebo, fountain, bird baths and other assorted structures reaching up to 100 feet in height. These were comprised of shells, scrap metal, pottery shards, rocks, glass and pretty much any other random material he could find. For the main structural elements he employed steel, cement, mortar and wire mesh and assembled all of his creations without the assistance of scaffolding.

Mejorada del Campo, Spain: Justo Gallego Martinez was a Spanish monk who was forced to leave his order after taking ill. His radically individualistic cathedral was built without sanction from the local government, let alone the Catholic Church. At over 100 feet high he has managed this remarkable accomplishment with some assistance from nephews and with revenues from his farmland as well as private donations. He also accepts donated and recycled building materials.

Baraboo, Wisconsin: Tom Avery (aka Dr. Evermore) is responsible for the world’s largest scrap-metal architectural sculpture known as Foreverton. Weighing in at over 300 tons this amazing structure climbs 50 feet in the air and reaches 60 to 120 feet in either direction. Once the owner of a salvage business, Avery began turning his talents to this bizarre architectural pursuit over two decades ago and (supposedly) believes a spaceship contained within will launch him eventually into supernatural world beyond our own and bring him into contact with the Divine. For more unbelievable home-made architecture check out this article from Curious Expeditions and for more insanely built structures check out these 5 kinds of bizarre recycled architecture.

Pigs’ feet: the new superfood

As Britain’s spending on cosmetic surgery soars, Fiona MacDonald Smith suggests it’s time that we chopped and changed our diet instead

The latest anti-ageing food? Pigs’ trotters. That’s right, you heard it here first. In New York, the most talked-about new opening of the past couple of months has been a Japanese restaurant called Hakata Tonton, where 33 out of the 39 dishes contain pigs’ feet.

	Isn’t there a cheaper solution to cosmetic surgery?

The reason for this, according to its owner, Himi Okajima, is that they are rich in collagen, the protein responsible for skin and muscle tone, more recognisable to beauty addicts in the form of face creams and fillers.

“Collagen helps your body retain moisture,” says Okajima, who has introduced a chain of restaurants specialising in collagen cuisine in Japan. “Your hair and skin will look better, but it’s not just for looking beautiful now. If you begin eating collagen in your thirties, you will look younger in your forties.”

Maybe this sounds a little improbable (“It’s news to me,” sniffs Lisa Miles of the British Nutrition Foundation. “I’ve certainly never heard of eating collagen”) but Okajima believes he is on to something. Figures published last month show that British spending on cosmetic surgery is the highest in Europe, hitting nearly £500 million in 2006, four times more than in 2001.

Isn’t there a cheaper solution? Couldn’t eating the right foods, in the right way, be a simpler, and ultimately more long-term way to stay looking and feeling younger? “You are what you eat,” says nutritional therapist Ian Marber, aka The Food Doctor.

You can’t turn the clock back but you can slow things down. Every cell replicates from RNA and DNA. In order to keep the DNA in good condition, you want to protect cells from harmful free radicals. And for this you need to eat fruit and vegetables, which contain vital anti-oxidants like vitamins A, C, E and zinc.

“It doesn’t have to be expensive,” he adds. “I know people go on about so-called ’superfoods’ which have a greater concentration of anti-oxidants, but two apples a day will give you plenty of vitamins and fibre. You just need to ensure a varied diet.”

“The key is to remember we’re omnivorous,” agrees nutritionist Christian Lee, who is the national trainer for the Dr Nicholas Perricone cosmetics and nutrition empire. “Have you ever noticed how women age more rapidly than men?

That’s because they don’t eat enough protein. The days you don’t eat protein are the days you age. The body can’t store protein, but it needs it for cellular production and function.

“At each meal you should be able to hold up three fingers and say ‘I’ve got a good source of protein (lean fish or poultry, nuts, seeds or tofu); an essential fatty acid (Omega 3 or 6, so that’s coldwater oily fish, flaxseeds, linseeds) and a low glycaemic carbohydrate (fruit, vegetables, and wholegrains like quinoa, buckwheat and oatmeal)’. If you can say that, you’re on the right road.”

Perricone, a dermatologist, became America’s most famous anti-ageing specialist with his “Three-Day Nutritional Face Lift”, which extolled the virtues of eating wild Alaskan salmon twice a day, claiming its essential fatty acids would banish puffiness and tighten the skin. Uma Thurman, Heidi Klum and J-Lo are all fans.

In his new book Ageless Face, Ageless Mind, which has yet to reach the UK, Dr Perricone’s team assert that up to 40 per cent of wrinkles are caused by dietary sugar.

“When you eat high glycaemic carbohydrates like bread, cakes and pasta, they turn into sugar in the blood so fast that the pancreas can’t respond with enough insulin and the blood becomes saturated with sugar,” argues Christian Lee. “The sugar needs to go somewhere so it attaches itself to the cell membranes.

When it does this to collagen molecules in the skin, it causes the collagen to become stiff and immobile and that’s the birth of the wrinkle. The bad news is that it doesn’t end there – the sugar then pumps out free radicals, causing a double whammy of damage.

The good news is you can prevent it – either by cutting out sugar or by taking a supplement of alpha lipoic acid, which is 400 times stronger than vitamin C and E combined.”

So ditch the sugar, but don’t forget the pigs’ trotters.

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FOODSTUFFS THAT KEEP YOU YOUNG

Spinach contains the pigment lutein, present in the retina, which helps maintain the health of the eye.

Tomatoes contain the anti-oxidant lycopene, which can protect the skin from UV damage from the sun.

Purple or red berries – such as blueberries, raspberries and strawberries – are full of anthocyanins which can help protect against diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and help maintain strong arteries.

Oily fish, such as fresh water salmon, herring, mackerel and sardines, and also flax seeds and linseeds, are the main source of omega-3 fatty acids, which can delay the ageing process of the skin.

Water: drinking more aids digestion and elimination; drinking too little can harm the complexion.

…AND SOME THAT AGE YOU

Carbonated drinks – along with tea, coffee, sugar, red meat and alcohol – can push the body’s balance towards the acidic, meaning that alkaline minerals (such as calcium) are removed from bone stores to balance it, weakening the bones. Restricting them may help you keep stronger bones.

Nightshade vegetables – potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, aubergine and peppers – while often healthy in other respects, contain a chemical that studies suggest can activate pain and inflammation associated with arthritis. Avoiding these foods may help reduce it.

Refined carbohydrates – such as white bread, white rice, sugary cereals, pasta and noodles – contribute to the development of type II diabetes, which accelerates the ageing process and, if not controlled, can lead to a wide range of other health problems.

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world’s C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they’re way ahead in math, science and reading — on track to keeping Finns among the world’s most productive workers.

The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland’s students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland’s combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD’s test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.

The academic prowess of Finland’s students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country’s secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. “We don’t have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have,” says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.

Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it’s done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.

Fanny Salo in class

Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Fanny is a bubbly ninth-grader who loves “Gossip Girl” books, the TV show “Desperate Housewives” and digging through the clothing racks at H&M stores with her friends.

Fanny earns straight A’s, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. “It’s fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class,” Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.

At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for physics, where class starts when everyone quiets down. Teachers and students address each other by first names. About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.

TESTING AROUND THE GLOBE

Every three years, 15-year-olds in 57 countries around the world take a test called the Pisa exam, which measures proficiency in math, science and reading.

• The test: Two sections from the Pisa science test

• Chart: Recent scores for participating countries

DISCUSS

Do you think any of these Finnish methods would work in U.S. schools? What would you change — if anything — about the U.S. school system, and the responsibilities that teachers, parents and students are given? Share your thoughts.

Fanny’s more rebellious classmates dye their blond hair black or sport pink dreadlocks. Others wear tank tops and stilettos to look tough in the chilly climate. Tanning lotions are popular in one clique. Teens sift by style, including “fruittari,” or preppies; “hoppari,” or hip-hop, or the confounding “fruittari-hoppari,” which fuses both. Ask an obvious question and you may hear “KVG,” short for “Check it on Google, you idiot.” Heavy-metal fans listen to Nightwish, a Finnish band, and teens socialize online at irc-galleria.net.

The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

One explanation for the Finns’ success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.

Ymmersta school principal Hannele Frantsi

Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published. Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

In November, a U.S. delegation visited, hoping to learn how Scandinavian educators used technology. Officials from the Education Department, the National Education Association and the American Association of School Librarians saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint. Keith Krueger was less impressed by the technology than by the good teaching he saw. “You kind of wonder how could our country get to that?” says Mr. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of school technology officers that organized the trip.

Finnish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn’t translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: “ ’Nah. So what’d you do last night?’” she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely “glue this to the poster for an hour,” she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.

At the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, school principal Helena Muilu

Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.

Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don’t speak Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are learning English, according to the Education Department. There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns. Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% — or 10% at vocational schools — compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.

Another difference is financial. Each school year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland’s high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts. The gap between Finland’s best- and worst-performing schools was the smallest of any country in the PISA testing. The U.S. ranks about average.

Finnish students have little angstata — or teen angst — about getting into the best university, and no worries about paying for it. College is free. There is competition for college based on academic specialties — medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don’t have the elite status of a Harvard.

Students at the Ymmersta School near Helsinki

Taking away the competition of getting into the “right schools” allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S. parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in academically oriented preschools, the Finns don’t begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.

Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.

The Finns enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, but they, too, worry about falling behind in the shifting global economy. They rely on electronics and telecommunications companies, such as Finnish cellphone giant Nokia, along with forest-products and mining industries for jobs. Some educators say Finland needs to fast-track its brightest students the way the U.S. does, with gifted programs aimed at producing more go-getters. Parents also are getting pushier about special attention for their children, says Tapio Erma, principal of the suburban Olari School. “We are more and more aware of American-style parents,” he says.

Mr. Erma’s school is a showcase campus. Last summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about adopting Finnish teaching methods. During a recent afternoon in one of his school’s advanced math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep at his desk. The teacher didn’t disturb him, instead calling on others. While napping in class isn’t condoned, Mr. Erma says, “We just have to accept the fact that they’re kids and they’re learning how to live.”

Microsoft’s Google killer strategy: Finally on the way?

With Google beefing up its app business, we’ve been wondering when Microsoft would respond. We’ve been reporting on Microsoft’s intention to support a mix of Web-based services and on-premise software. Now Nick Carr has word that the news may come down quite soon.

“The new strategy will, I’m told, lay out a roadmap of moves across three major areas: the transformation of the company’s portfolio of enterprise applications to a web-services architecture, the launch of web versions of its major PC applications, and the continued expansion of its data center network. I expect that all these announcements will reflect Microsoft’s focus on what it calls “software plus services” – the tying of web apps to traditional installed apps – but they nevertheless promise to mark the start of a new era for the company that has dominated the PC age.”

It’s about time. In the last couple of years, Microsoft has moved in fits and starts toward embracing cloud computing. That’s been a pet project of Ray Ozzie, who has increasingly imposed his vision for corporate computing on Microsoft since taking over the role from Bill Gates as chief tech visionary. It’s been a slog. Ozzie has had to fight one turf battle after another to convince the apparatchiks that this is the way to ensure the company’s survival in an increasingly Web-centric world. But however slowly, he has been making progress.

The snickering in the peanut gallery has already begun. The argument is that Microsoft is too weighted down by its legacy history to effectively pull off this sort of ambitious transformation. Well, little surprise there. The burden of proof is on Microsoft, especially when you consider the so-so success of its software-as-a-service strategy. But let’s keep a sense of perspective. Microsoft is keenly aware of the technology transformation taking place outside its corporate doors. Now it’s a question of execution.

Here’s what Ballmer recent said in an interview with News.com:

“We can have service-based offerings that essentially line up with our information worker infrastructure products–Exchange and SharePoint, Office Communications Server–if we have instances that sort of line up to what people do, development and deployment applications, database applications, etc. That is more value. We can help people reduce management costs, deployment costs, operations costs, data center costs…Somehow, if we can help our customers avoid cost and complexity that they have and give them all the value we give them today, there ought to be a trade in there where we get to make a little bit more money and our customers get a lot more value….”

“Well, in the enterprise, I think the stuff that we might expect to see actually move most quickly is probably some aspects of the desktop infrastructure, for lack of a better term. We’ve announced some customers–I don’t know who’s public and who’s not public, though. But we’ve announced some customers for our Microsoft online offerings for Exchange, for Office Communications Server, for SharePoint, and I certainly show a lot of demand there. That’s probably where the offer is clearest and the demand is highest.

Somebody might say, well, what about CRM? You see some (CRM), but you see it more in pockets. You see it more departmentally. It’s not quite the same, enterprise-driven demand that we’re seeing for some of the information worker productivity infrastructure.”