Re: Eat her dust Germany and Finland !

In article
<2f785e42-b78d-48c0-91f6-b3d4839b1103@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Vidas
<darsiaubas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Aug 25, 12:21=A0pm, "J. Anderson" <anderso...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Vidas" <darsiau...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:e6ebb75c-656d-44eb-9af2-11d745a29061@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Time Magazine's top 10 female world leaders in order:

=A0 =A0* Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia
=A0 =A0* Johanna Sigurdardottir, Prime Minister of Iceland
=A0 =A0* Cristina Fern=E1ndez de Kirchner, President of Argentina
=A0 =A0* Dalia Grybauskaite, President of Lithuania
=A0 =A0* Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
=A0 =A0* Sheik Hasina Wajed, Prime Minister of Bangladesh
=A0 =A0* Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia
=A0 =A0* Tarja Halonen, President of Finland
=A0 =A0* Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
=A0 =A0* Laura Chinchilla, President of Costa Rica

I gladly acknowledge the defeat of Ms Halonen if you endorse Newsweek's
silly list of the world's best countries:http://www.newsweek.com/feature/=
2010/the-world-s-best-countries.html

Bah ! I endorse nothing ! :)

I don't see how countries that have 9 month long winters can be "the
best"..The pale and pastiest maybe - but best ?

The question was not posed to take climate into account. The countries
were evaluated in terms of determing the answer to the following question:
in which country would a person born today have "the very best opportunity
to live
a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life?".
Although women's rights were not included in the specific criteria, they
can be regarded as a component of social mobility.

In a country like Finland, with its long dark winters, we get partial
climactic compensation in the form of approximately four months of intense
summer with 20-odd hours of daily daylight. Additionally, since we have
exceptionally long paid vacations ­ eight weeks annually for many people ­
as well as high salaries from even a European perspective, people desiring
to
spend more time in the sun need do nothing more than fly off to dirt cheap
Turkey or Bulgaria (where the round-trip flight and a week in a modest but
clean hotel can cost as little as ¤200), or to somewhat more expensive
Thailand, Greece, or Spain, for a few weeks, any time of the year.

Over,
Eugene Holman
.

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