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"

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."

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."

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!

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!

I'm a frequent reader of SimpleBits by Dan Cederholm (from Massachusetts, USA) and here he blogs about his trip to Sweden. Some of his thoughts are new to me. I didn't know swedes eat so much ice-cream or that only Sweden has orange before green at traffic lights.

Be sure to check out the 38 photos

"It is warmer in this country than you might think
Sweden is a strange country"

Food from Sweden is a site about Sweden and Swedish cooking. The list of recipes is still small, but the few they have are all genuine typical Swedish dishes. I must say that the pictures are really good. Much much better than mine.

An interesting fact from the Swedeness page : The distance between Malmö in the south and Kiruna in the far north is about a thousand miles. Travel this far in the other direction and you land up in Rome! Sweden is so long that it encompasses six climate zones.

On the same day 32 people bought the same car in the little Swedish town of Dalarö. The advert is about the new S40 Saloon but they've made a documentary only about the "fact" that 32 people bought the same car on the same day.

The film is embedded as Flash and takes a while to load, but you can download it as Quicktime or Windows Media if you like.

Worth watching if you as an unswede, want to get some insight into how normal Swedish people look and live and how they speak English. I think this also has large portion of Swedish irony in it, because even though it's all a joke, nobody smiles or laughs; you're on your own to understand it.

Water from Sweden and California was voted: best water in a recent international test.

"Each sample is weighed on six points: appearance, odor, flavor, mouth feel, aftertaste and overall impression." How can a water have appearance, considering that all water good enough to even test must be crystal clear?

But here's the odd thing: "Five countries, 25 states and the District of Columbia were represented in the contest." Not very representative, is it?

Another odd thing, The Star Online says: "Ice Mist bottled water from Morarp, Sweden and tap water from Desert Hot Springs, California, were ruled the best in the world"; but USATODAY.com says: "Tap water from Desert Hot Springs, Calif., was ruled the best in the world"

"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.

Today I am leaving for Sweden to celebrate Christmas and the new year with family and friends. I come back on the 4th of Jan and sadly when I come back I have two exams to take on the 6th of Jan.

I will check my email but only very sporadically so don't send me anything urgent. Hopefully my UK mobile will work there too, but if not my parents number is +46 39010186.

Here's a webcam facing the centre of town

"A Swedish tourist who tried to smuggle eight baby snakes, four of which were venomous king cobras, into Australia in his trousers has been jailed for two months."

Some nutter tried to smuggle venomous king cobra. Not in a lunchbox or anything but in his trousers! Amuzing