ssyreeni - Slashdot User

Internet Dismantling the State Church In Finland 547

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 16, 2010 @05:00AM from the way-way-up-for-fsm dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Finnish secular web site that facilitates electronic resignation from the Finnish state church gained wide attention in the media this week. A gay rights TV panel discussion was followed by thousands resigning from the church. On Wednesday, 2633 people resigned through the web site, which is more than all the resignations in July. The Internet is secularizing the Finnish with increasing speed; over 90% of resignations in Finland go through the site administered and marketed by hobbyists driving Finland towards a secular, non-religious state."

Submission + - Internet dismantling the state church in Finland (www.hs.fi)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 15, 2010 @06:17PM

An anonymous reader writes: A Finnish secular web site that facilitates electronic resignation from the Finnish state church gained wide attention in media. A gay rights TV panel discussion followed thousands resigning from the church. On wednesday 2633 people resigned through the web site, which is more than all the resignations in July. Internet is secularizing the Finland with increasing speed. Resigning from the church has doubled in speed since it has become possible in the net. Over 90% of resignations in Finland go through the site administered and marketed by hobbyists driving Finland towards a secular non-religious state.

Submission + - Shooting your church at the foot (www.hs.fi)

Submitted by ssyreeni on Friday October 15, 2010 @06:02PM

ssyreeni writes: In Finland, it's been possible to resign online from the Evangelical Lutheran state chuch ( http://www.evl.fi/ ) since 2007. Ever since they helped bring that change about, a small group of free-thinking individuals ( http://www.eroakirkosta.fi/ ; lit. "Resign from the Church dot fi") from the Tampere region have offered a free website which makes denouncing your formal religious affiliation point-and-click. The change has lead to an accelerated decline in church membership in the recent years, but never to anything like what has happened in the past few days.

On Tuesday evening, the Finnish national TV aired its second ever panel discussion on gay rights ( http://areena.yle.fi/video/1354542 ), featuring one of its first-pass interviewees. On it also appeared the first Evangelical Lutheran priest to have blessed a gay marriage in the country, one of the church's current bishops, and the leader of the Finnish Christian Democractic Party, Päivi Räsänen ( http://www.paivirasanen.fi/ ).

Mostly because of the hardline conservative stance of the latter, there was an immediate, minute to minute rise in resignation rates throughout the program, which advanced in the following days. By Friday, fuelled by further publicity and a weak response from the religious minded authorities in play, the resignation rates had climbed to an all time high of almost 3500 per day. By way of reference, more than a third of Finnish parishes have a total membership toll below that number, by the state church's own 2009 numbers.

It seems that such secular issues as gay rights or religious freedom do trump sectarian ones, here. Even by the minute.

Background Noise Affects Taste of Foods 79

Posted by samzenpus on Friday October 15, 2010 @04:06PM from the that-sounds-delicious dept.

gollum123 writes "The level of background noise affects both the intensity of flavour and the perceived crunchiness of foods, researchers have found. Blindfolded diners assessed the sweetness, saltiness, and crunchiness, as well as overall flavour, of foods as they were played white noise. While louder noise reduced the reported sweetness or saltiness, it increased the measure of crunch. It may go some way to explaining why airline food is notoriously bland — a phenomenon that drives airline catering companies to season their foods heavily. In a comparatively small study, 48 participants were fed sweet foods such as biscuits or salty ones such as crisps, while listening to silence or noise through headphones. Also in the group's findings there is the suggestion that the overall satisfaction with the food aligned with the degree to which diners liked what they were hearing — a finding the researchers are pursuing in further experiments."

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