If I've understood it correctly, this is a mashup made on Guardian's API made by someone not at the Guardian. More photos here

What's interesting about this chart, which I've never seen like this before, is the last one where they show how much money various countries pledged versus how much they actually delivered. It's something I've also wanted to see because it opens up a whole new dimension of truth to the equation. For example, Canada has pledged USD 130m to the Haiti Earthquake but they only delivered 51% of what they pledged to the 2004 Tsunami crisis.

"Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away."

From the brilliantly informed and well articulated article How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

Just so you know, I love China, but there's a lot of things I hate about it too. Admittedly, any country in their position would perhaps do the same as the force of people getting rich is more powerful than almost anything else. Please do take the time to read this article as it helps to give an interesting perspective on the post-Copenhagen-conference talks.

Funniest sad news of the week:

"Muzzammil Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassa"

And what makes this horrible sad news so funny:

"He launched Bridges TV, billed as the first English-language cable channel targeting Muslims inside the United States, in 2004. At the time, Hassan said he hoped the network would balance negative portrayals of Muslims following the attacks of September 11, 2001."

D'oh!

(assuming you do)

Because you like Barack Obama or because you fear John McCain?

And if it's because of the latter, how much of that fear is because of Sarah Palin?

Watch this speech and listen. It's impressive. As long as I can remember I've always thought the US elections being phoney and very much about the guy (until this year I guess) and his charm, looks and presentation. Unlike politics here in Europe (I've only lived in three European countries) it has always seemed that election campaigns over here are more about the issues and the politicians trying to sell their side of the issues. Until now. This Obama guy does make a difference. He talks about concrete issues, how to solve them, how important they are and actually gives evidence of understanding why they are important. And last but not least, he ridicules the press and the whole election itself for not being about the issues. Quite refreshing.

Please take the time and watch the 6 minute speech.

Sadly the McCain supporters are not going to reach my blog post and watch the video. But if there are, against all odds, any McCain supporters here, what do you think about this speech? Please let me know what you think.

This is propaganda against senator John McCain and a lot of the snippets of what he says is out of context making it borderline unfair. I'm not American and I can't vote in this 2008 election but if I could I would certainly not vote for McBush.

There are a lot of Youtube videos making fun of McCains incompetency, lies and gaffs. Some are just plain funny and some are quite refreshing but we have to, bear in mind that this is nothing but propaganda and should we really endorse this kind of stuff? Well, I'm genuinely afraid that if America continues to let corporations rule the world and allow politicians use their might to kill people and the planet then maybe a little propaganda to get the message out might be OK. Or, is the reason we support progressive candidates like Ron Paul and Barak Obama that we reject lies and propaganda.

The question is, with this much at stake should we play by the rules?

I'm not a political editor and I can't confirm the validity of these statistics but if they're at least close to true it's a hell of a scary picture of the injustice in the Israeli/Palestine conflict.

Israel receives $6.8 million per day in aid. I doubt that all of that money goes towards building better schools for Israeli families.

There's a really interesting blog article on Think Moderate worth a read. Clearly some moron commented on it which caused the author to append this update to it:

I am NOT saying that murdering innocent American citizens is justifiable, as some commentors have suggested. I am also fully aware that many of our foreign enemies disagree with our lifestyle as well as our foreign policy, but as one commentor has said: "which one do you think motivated twenty people to come half-way across the world and kill themselves just to strike a blow against America? The fact that you're directly responsible for their countries being shit-holes and the deaths of friends, family-members and groups they identify with, or the fact that our women wear revealing tops?"

Read the whole article for a refreshing yet brute article on american political introspection.

On the subject of bombing civilians as a counter action to the injustice the die hard arabs feel; I think it's the wrong action to take. They should have their revenge in some other way that doesn't cause further death and despair. However, "we" (by that I generalise us as being all europeans) don't hate your freedom either dear US. But we do hate your foreign policy. Europeans are fortunately treated well by the americans and our neighbouring enemies don't get $illions of dollars in montary aid. If you did, perhaps we'd become "freedom haters" too.

"Including the $124.2 billion bill, the total cost of the Iraq war may reach $456 billion in September, according to the National Priorities Project, an organization that tracks public spending.

The amount got us wondering: What would $456 billion buy?"

This is an amazing slideshow article made by boston.com about what the Americans could have done instead of spending $456 billion on the Iraq war. Granted, the republicans objective was to go in an exploit the country for oil which they saw as an investment whereas investing in health and life in Africa would be too far fetched for the shortsighted morons in Washington.

Ok. Suppose George and co. would have been successful in Iraq and with that, move in a few lucrative industrial deals for oil and reconstruction. I wonder how many thousands of years it would take to get return on that investment if the input is $456 billion.

Hmm. Of all the stupid things conservative Christians and other fundamentalists make up, this must be near the top. Apparently, the fact that no new life is created in any jar of peanut butter means that evolution does not happen. WTF? Are you nuts?

If you're still thinking at this point: no, this is not a proof against evolution.

The question why life started in this corner of the universe is still an interesting question, but refuting evolution is naive and plain outright stupid. If you base your morals on arguments and counter arguments for and against things you will pretty sure see an overwhelming dominance of proof for evolution everywhere. The fact that this video was made is quite scary.

Stop the non-sense! Evolution is still here to stay.

This has to be one of the best youtube.com clip of the year. It's funny, scary and just outright amazing.

"What currency do they have in the United Kingdom" the report asks.
"I don know. American money?" answers the Texan man.

Sure, there are a lot of people in USA and not all of them are rednecks but those that are scare me more than insurgents in the middle east.

The scariest part of this clip is towards the end when they ask people if the support president Bush on Kyrgyzstan being a threat and whether the United States should invade it.

Disclaimer: I know a lot of Americans and they're lovely people. I do understand that this clip selects only few exceptional cases but that doesn't make the clip any less fun

"Scientists say the global energy crisis can be solved by using the desert sun"

I've been wondering for a long time why the open deserts in north Africa isn't used for solar energy. There's 3 times as much sun there as there is in Europe. Unlike wind power plants in Europe, there's plenty of space for solar energy mirrors on the vast stretches of the north African desert.

This Guardian article is really interesting for me. Here are some interesting facts:

"[the two German scientists] calculate that covering just 0.5% of the world's hot deserts with a technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) would provide the world's entire electricity needs"

"Together the region could provide all its electricity needs by 2050 with barely any fossil fuels and no nuclear power. This would allow a 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production over the period."

The article also sheds some light on the comparison of fusion reactors compared to solar power.

"The outlook is not promising. More than 30 countries last week agreed to spend £7bn on an experimental fusion reactor in France which critics say will not produce any electricity for 50 years, if at all."

As some of my friends on this website have might have noticed, I was threatened by Carphone Ware because of supposed defamatory comments made on this page

Here's an interesting article on BBC News about a case (in USA I should add) where a blogger could not be sued for the comments other people placed on her blog.

"Overturning a decision by the San Francisco appeal court, the court ruled that people claiming they were defamed online could now only seek damages from the original author of the comments - and not the website which re-posted it."

I need to think a bit more about it before I resurrect the currently removed comments from the page about Carphone Warehouse.

Unless you're a die-hard US republican you probably don't watch Fox News and the Bill O'Reilly show. You might, like me, remember him from a part of Fahrenheit 9/11 when he tells Jeremy Glick to shut up (or was that another film?)

Bill O'Reilly is a nut. A unsympathetic right-wing nut. It's people like him that causes us europeans to disrespect and, dare I, hate the USA. I like and have an open mind about the USA but it's people like Bill O'Reilly being shown on a large national network that just makes me feel sick.

Here's a great videoclip on youtube.com where Phil Donahue has a right go at him. This is the best thing I've seen since George Galloway (my MP by the way) shredded this Sky News reporter to pieces

Dear american friends, if you want my respect back, do something to get these repulicans off the set. It's making me sick!

Today's Dilbert comic is brilliant.

For the uninitiated, Elbonia in the Dilbert comic is a returning made up country. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Elbonia:

"It is an extremely poor, fourth-world Eastern European country that has recently abandoned Communism. Most of the nation is covered with waist-deep mud, which the residents use to build houses. Much of the economy is also mud-based."

What's funny about this strip is that it's so true in our world today.

This article is probably one of the best articles (it's a column rather) written on about Arabs that I've seen in a long time.

"In school in Gaza, I learned hate, vengeance and retaliation. Peace was never an option, as it was considered a sign of defeat and weakness."

There's been a lot of talk recently about the Danish cartoons and my take on it is that you shouldn't make fun of the prophet but burning flags threatening people and raiding embassies is NOT equally bad; it's worse. Calm down arabs! You're just putting weight behind the cartoons and giving right-wing extremists more concrete examples of bad-doing to point at. After having read this article I understand much more:

"As a young woman, I visited a Christian friend in Cairo during Friday prayers, and we both heard the verbal attacks on Christians and Jews from the loudspeakers outside the mosque. They said: "May God destroy the infidels and the Jews, the enemies of God. We are not to befriend them or make treaties with them." We heard worshippers respond "Amen"."

Her statements are bold, strong and right to the point

"It's time for Arabs and Muslims to stand up for their families. We must stop allowing our leaders to use the West and Israel as an excuse to distract from their own failed leadership and their citizens' lack of freedoms. It's time to stop allowing Arab leaders to complain about cartoons while turning a blind eye to people who defame Islam by holding Korans in one hand while murdering innocent people with the other."

A really good article really worth reading.

When I can't remember the URL site I just search for it quickly in Firefox which is quicker than trying to remember the address. Today I needed to go to Google Groups but couldn't remember the address, so I searched for it on Google

Guess which site came up first?! Not Google, but their main competitor Yahoo! I guess this just gives Google more kudos because their indexes aren't tainted in their favour.

Yesterday it was officially announced that the next Palm Treo will be running a Microsoft operating system

I think this is shit! So does Forbes it seems

"When Palm announced today that its new smartphone would run an operating system from Microsoft, it was the equivalent of Coca-Cola agreeing to fill its bottles with Pepsi."

Times Online has at the bottom of its menu three little pics that links to Travel, Cars and Jobs. In case the images have changed since I wrote this, see my screenshot here.

Notice anything special?

If you work in IT or a business that is related to IT, you should be aware that the European Parliament is making a pivotal decision next month on allowing or rejecting software patents. If they go for it, it will hinder all small IT companies and destroy the future of non-profit projects like my IssueTrackerProduct.

If you're not fully clued up on the topic and don't know what to think: read this article

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia despite being a bit slow. There is even a page on it about your's truely that I threw in for fun when I wrote a few paragraphs about the IssueTrackerProduct

Now, there's a site called Explore (which I refuse to link to) that has basically ripped "everything" from Wikipedia and wraps this into their own website with Google Adwords and unblockable pop ups. It does say that it takes the content from Wikipedia in the footer but I that's not good enough for me. In a sense, what they've done is not immoral or illegal but it's just crap. Apart from the footer they make it appear as if it's their content.

Even worse, they refuse to make external links. That means that they are not generating any PageRank for real content and robots won't be able to use the Internet they way it was meant to be used: webbed.

Cheeky fuckers! I hope Google drop their PageRank right down so that when I search for "Peter Bengtsson" I get the Wikipedia one (the original source) rather than the Explore one (legal rip off).

UPDATE: Roy from Explore explains to me that Wikipedia actually encourages mirroring of content which is something I did not know. Sorry Roy. However I still think it's cheeky of them not link to external sites and that they only have server side redirect back to Wikipedia (something Wikipedia says must be corrected)

Because I'm reconfiguring my anti-spam filter at the moment, the protection is a bit forgiving and a spam email slipped through. Here's an extract:

"DURING THE PERIOD OF MY ACTIVE SERVICES, I DISCOVERED ONE STRANGE BIG TRUNK BOX,WHICH WE SUSPECTED TO HAVE BEEN IMPORTED BY SOME BIG BUSINESS MEN.

WHEN I TOOK THE BOX FOR CROSS EXAMINATION I DISCOVERED THAT IT WAS CONTAINING CODED UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN DOLLARS VALUED TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS(USD$20,000000)."

This "Angolian" man or woman also adds: "...IS 100% RISK FREE"

Now the reason why lowlifes keep sending out spam like this is that it must still be profitable. There must be some idiot out there who actually responds to this and thinks he'll get rich. That, should be a crime. Don't you think?

Now, how do you make this a law? And how can we police it? Until that is sorted out formally, I think it should be allowed to beat these kind of people up as much as we like.

This is a very long and interesting report on the energy crisis us humans and especially the americans will suffer. I must admit that I didn't read the whole think, but you should read the introduction and conclusion at least. Towards the end Bill mentions some of the alternatives such as Fusion, Methane Hydrates and Oil Sands. Interesting reading. The conclusion I grasped is that we're fucked if we don't try to do something about this yesterday. USA must also do more than the rest of the world to try to catch up.

"Our industrial world has become dependant on fossil fuels. In particular we, and especially the United States, have become addicted to using large amounts of oil. If an individual becomes addicted to heroin, and if the only way to satisfy this addiction is to kill and steal, then he will kill and steal for a heroin fix. If countries are addicted to oil and the only way to obtain a large but temporary supply is to wage war to steal the other guy's supply, then such countries will attack others in order to obtain one more fix. At first the winning country will obtain its fix, but in turn it will disintegrate internally as factions form to fight over the last scraps. This is the long-term prospect for humanity."

This is so funny that you can't afford to miss it: A special sense of humour. It's a washing label with a hidden political message in French.

First there was this chart where average US state IQ was listed in order. On that chart, states that voted in majority on Al Gore in the 2000 election were coloured blue and those states that voted in majority for George W. Bush were coloured red. See it for yourself! (IQ isn't really a measure of anything useful but it's funny.)

Then there's this study which lists states and their "Percent of People With a Bachelor's Degree or More". Clearly it shows where people are most likely to have a college/university education. Now, on metafilter they conclude that:

"... for those who are politically curious, of the top 15 states with Bachelor degrees 11 went to Gore, while 13 of the bottom 15 went to Bush."

One must of course admit many flaws in this logic but there is undoubtedly a correlation there.

"I challenge you to meet me with scimitar or sword, to be pitted against myself and a holy sword consecrated to our Order-a sword that was forged to destroy evil. Here's the deal: if I win, Al Qaeda is disbanded-forever. If you win, then you can set the head of a Knight Templar on a pike outside your tent,"

A brave Christian challenges Osama bin-Laden to a sword fight. Brave.

"This Knight Templar calls you a craven coward and an infidel. He calls you a murderer of the innocent, and a defiler of holy places. He calls you the favourite son of Satan, for you above all men on the earth have done your best to do Satan's bidding."

What struck me about this is that it's a pretty clever way to convey a simple a message. Using the image of a classical sword fight to justify for calling Osama names. He sure doesn't hold anything back. Read it!

In an article called Who Bankrolls Bush and his Democratic Rivals?The Center For Public Integrity writes about who adds to President Bush's presidential campaign. The winner is Enron. Remember them?

"While he was governor of Texas, Bush relied on Enron and its then-chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay for more than just campaign contributions. When Bush needed help launching his education plan, Lay, through the auspices of a quasi-official advisory group called the Governor's Business Council, pledged his support. When Bush wanted to start an internship program in the governor's office, Lay followed through with the funding. And when Lay wanted changes to tort, tax or environmental law, Bush returned the favours."

Raise your hand if you're an American and are going to vote for a bloke who is in cahoot with fraudsters.

"China vows to increase prosecution cooperation with Sweden [...] on prosecution practice and prosecutors training"

Wow! Talk about Yin-Yang. China, with the highest capital punishment ratio in the world; Sweden, where you get looked up for 5 years (3,5 if good behaviour) for the same crime. And! In Sweden they probably have uncensored broadband access in the cells. (was that a joke?)

Now these two countries are working together. I've never studied law, but I guess "prosecution" is more the process of court-work to prison etc. Not so much crime-law and prison sentence.

All together I think this is good news. China needs to reconsider much of its crime and punishment policies. The flattering news for the Swedes is that it's China who is changing, with Sweden as its mentor. Not the other way around.

"Bodstrom [Thomas Bodström, Sweden's Justice Minister] said that China has undergone tremendous changes in its judicial field since the country's reform started about two decades ago."

BUT! This news site, Xinhuanet is probably government controlled and biased and I haven't seen anything about this on DN.se (liberal, one of Swedens biggest newspapers) yet.

Don't ask why I was browsing GeorgeWBush.com but I did. I'm neither fan nor hater.

To the point, his campaign website is pretty good I must admit. I can find several usability errors (the gravest is that you can't see what links you've already visited and that some JavaScripts simply don't work), but let's see beyond that for now. All information is in your face with well chosen images and good choice of colours. Text is easy to read and articles have matching related content. The tabbed agenda is really nice too (I actually never read any of it but I clicked a lot). And when a page is not found a clear sitemap comes up. Maybe I'll set one similar up for me website.

Compare it to Howard Deans, which has some nice features, but is not nearly as good as George W's.

My guess is that this really matters. It still doesn't matter as much as speeches on national television or scapegoating tv adverts but I'm sure having a informative website will shift the voting results in numbers of millions.

As a professional web developer I'm glade to see that the effort is being made. It must be said that the logo could need some work. In fact, there seems to be two different logos. Is one just for the website?

Looks like USA's next ambassador to Sweden (Teel Bivins) will be a "a rancher and Amarillo Republican" who also contributed $100,000 to the Bush's presidential campaign.

Great! I wonder if he'll bring some guns with him??