An ice cube's chance in HEL

« Selling 60,000 euro of ice in the summertime to Finns must be good business. It lasted one day. It was called Kesämonumentti (Summer monument) and was designed by the Finnish born American academic architect, Stuart Wrede. »

As improbable as selling snow to Eskimos, someone sold Helsinki 60,000 euro worth of ice in the summertime as 'art' that would last 2-4 weeks. Now, I'm a chemist, not a physicist, but the math ain't so different; that sucker is gonna melt at a far faster rate than advertised unless it is sheltered from the sun and rain or contained in a climate-controlled environment. It's straight out of Chem101. Surely, an architect should be familiar with such natural phenomenon. Given that Finland is frequently cited as the most and best educated country around, one has to wonder how it happened that folks spending 60k euro of public money on a giant ice cube in the summer didn't do the math or find someone who could. While I am sure that all governments waste money, my own being a prime example, I'd think there would be an angry mob demanding the head of the bureaucrat who blew 60k on ice promised to last up to a month in the summertime as there'd likely be a family or personal connection for the expenditure. In spite of the reports that Finland has little government corruption, the reports do not say that it does not exist. What bothers me most is the quote from the Helsingin Sanomat article:

The opening audience was impressed by the beauty of the ice sculpture, and if the residents of Helsinki like the artwork, it is likely that a similar ice carving will be seen in the park also in coming summers.

I love the arts and admire the fact that the city spends a good deal of money on culture and the works of freaky starving artists who likely wouldn't get paid otherwise as it's important to have a wide variety of arts, but ice in the summertime that doesn't last more than a day or two and becomes a public hazard? Fuck that. People should be angry since 60k could foster a lot of struggling artists or surely something that has more artistic and lasting value than an ice cube. How about next august, everyone saunter over to the annex park with a cooler filled with ice cubes and we can make a mountain of cubes for free.

After reading the depressing climate tipping point article in the Guardian yesterday, I thought about the Finnish weather over the past two years and figured that in 50 years this may just be a sunny vacation spot. Perhaps I'm being a bit overly optimistic when the report mentions the thawing of western Siberia, which is what I call Helsinki in -30C weather. I wish reporters of this important issue would stop with the dramatic language and the dire picture of destruction since it's an important issue, and those of us who get it and who don't need the news to tell us dramatic global climate change is upon us aren't the ones who need to read the articles and understand. I was drinking tea and eating soup, something I reserve for cold weather, for two days this week. That ain't right, even if every Finn chirps, 'that's Finnish summer!' Bollocks, it's fucking early AUGUST. Unless this is the new ice age, November has no business in August.