Difference between Sweden and UK: renewable energy

June 13, 2008
1 comment Sweden

I'm a big fan of solar power. Whenever I see news about interesting industry projects or science news about better technology I get my hopes up. Soon the western world community will come to accept that oil is actually not such a good idea. It's both very expensive and very bad for the environment. Renewable energy sources of any kind is a good thing and today I learnt something that both made me happy and made me a bit sad.

Sweden (where I'm from) is the top European country of using renewable energy at 39.8% and the UK (where I live) is the bottom at the list at a mere 1.5%.

It's quite sickening what a dangerous game the UK plays and I'm disgusted that we are the worst renewable energy user in Europe. I'm not sure what to do but hopefully by keeping the issue of solar power high I add some progress to it. And raising this will perhaps get people to think a bit more about it and with time we can make our government aware that this is important to us here in the UK.

Read the article and scroll down for the list of "EU renewable league"

Piteå, as experienced by Sam Dunstan

October 25, 2007
0 comments Sweden

Piteå, as experienced by Sam Dunstan A friend of mine, Sam Dunstan has written a hilarious blog entry about his visit to Sweden that I find so amusing that people who are interested in Sweden and the swedes really should read. It's hilarious as a swede since there are so many embarrassing truths, especially if you live in Piteå.

"Piteå is about 50kms from nowhere. Despite the university (reputable) and paper mill (smelly), there is very little going on here. Granted, there are few towns that have a snowmobile drive-through McDonalds"

The blog entry isn't just about Piteå but also has lots of thing in general about Sweden that we should be proud of. Reading it from Sam's perspective is quite interesting because he sees it in a way only a non-swede could but still we recognize so much of it.

"I could hear my wallet creak in agony everytime I opened it to pay for something. I had to stop mentally converting prices to the old AUD when I bought things because it kept making me dizzy. To be fair, herrings were cheap and good. But how many herrings can you eat? I'm not a seal."

Proud to be a Swedish atheist

August 29, 2007
0 comments Sweden

I have nothing against religious people and have both friends and family that are religious and I have absolutely no intention of converting them.

Although I've lived most of my adult like in Britain I'm still Swedish at heart and when I see stats like these I feel proud to be Swedish. Not only because of the liberal and modern thought but also the fact that "non-religiousness" is apparently a measure of social wealth.

"[authors of report] who argue that in societies characterized by plentiful food distribution, excellent public healthcare, and widely accessible housing, religiosity wanes."

UPDATE 2018

I am not an atheist. At least not any more. Not religious either.

Swedish holidays explained

March 10, 2005
2 comments Sweden

First of all; I don't know much about the special holidays we have in Sweden which is pretty poor. I've got a vague idea about most of them but not much more.

This website attempts well in listing all of them and provides one text in Swedish and one in English. Now, having this website I can not only fill up my own knowledge but hopefully I will now also be able to explain some of our weird traditions to English speaking people.

This also led me to find Kalender.se which is what you can guess: a calendar in Swedish style. Interestingly it has the Swedish name days on it. Great work!

Debian popular in Sweden

February 18, 2005
0 comments Sweden

This might to some be old news but at least it's news to me. Sweden has the most Debian developers in the world. ...per capita. In the US they have 283 developers compared to Sweden's 26 only, but Sweden is a much smaller country.

What does this tell us? Nothing much probably, but as a big Debian fan I take great pride in that my fellow countrymen- and women have chosen to work on such a great operating system.

And by the way, have a look at the United States picture. Cool diagram!

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