Peterbe.com

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"n:http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/loth/e/d/edlund/scimitar.jpg.html 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.

Unsurprisingly, most other big contributors are large investment banks (Merril Lynch, Credit Suisse, UBS, Goldman Sachs) because "which favours privatization—and the millions of individual stock market accounts (and brokerage fees to administer them) that would be created"

Here's another interesting article about Dick Cheney.

The site does not only look bad for conservative candidates. There's also one on Senator John Kerry (who also has mugshots of many of his contributors) and some on Howard Dean too.

"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??