Coaxial wrote: 
Just fabulous. So what would you call that glow? Sunset and sunrise at the same time?

 
*edit* Damnit, I need to be on the water.

 Coaxial wrote: 
Very Cool! Thanks Johnray63.

Is that the trip from Monica Bellucci's house to visit Laetitia Casta and Aishwarya Rai?

It truly is the land of the midnight sun...Take a look at the feed now. It is almost 2 am there.

 Johray63 wrote: 
Thanks for posting this, my friend.

 hobiejoe wrote: 
It's all in the spirit !

  Meet Hazzeswede.
 
It's a little-known fact that the Swedes are so embarrassed about the wonderfulness of the egalitarian, nay, utopian society that they live in that they employ an official beer-drinking scuzzball to lear drunkenly at tourists on Djurgården.
 
His pay consists of a barrel of pickled herring and all the Pripps Blå he can drink.
 
True story.

 beamends wrote: 


I could not agree more. I've spent time in. Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, and have found them (and the Netherlands, but I don't really consider that Scandinavia) the most civilized, best-'lived' countries I have seen. Clean, peaceful, low crime...happy.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
There are no ghettos in Scandinavia, and the lowest paid have a high standard of living, not that much less (relative to the rest of the world) than the well-off. That makes them happy. Since the lowest paid form by far the largest part of any economy, if they are happy that makes the country happy. There is a flip side of course, Scandinavians accept that to get their 'right' to happiness they have equal responsibilities to contribute towards it. The responsibilities is the bit the most in the world choose to ignore when demanding their rights, yet the two go hand in hand and are inseparable.

 beamends wrote: 
I suppose it's highly dependent upon a population's conditioned perception of "happy."

 hobiejoe wrote: 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
A, generally, happy population. Scandinavian countries always come top of "happiness" surveys. Their way of doing things may be counter-intuitive in terms of "freedom" (which, as observed in the song, often really does mean 'nothing left to lose'), but it works and works well for everyone, not just the lucky few with money.  

 oldslabsides wrote: 
What price hedonistic anarchy?
 
 
Wait a minute....

 hobiejoe wrote: 
ma or pa, it doesn't matter.  any way you slice it it's manipulation of behavior by taxation.  what price security? 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
I think "paternalistic" would be a better description. And it feels much more expensive for visitors as the Norwegians enjoy a much more balanced economy with a much lower level of income disparity and much higher general standards of living for the whole population than those of us toiling for long hours and poor wages in the anglo-saxon neo-liberal economies and can therefore, frankly, afford it.

 hobiejoe wrote: 
Ah, good old maternalistic behavioral engineering via taxation.

My best friends next door, growing up, had a Norwegian dad. They all took several trips there, and I got to see their pictures and videos when they returned—-that is one spectacular country.