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Look at the size of it!

Just to extend our knowledge of weblog dynamics, Kuro5hin helps us with this list of blogger types. Someone suggested we might fall under the "Hippy blogger" type, but I'd disagree, it's been quite a while since I've seen anybody here smoking the peace pipe, wearing hemp hats or hugging a tree. Btw, where's this "tree hugging" thing coming from?
Maybe it's just me, but in Italy anybody hugging a tree would be considered nuts.

With all the stuff going on in Luxembourg my natural instinct is to turn to the web for updates.

First, though, I'm reminded that not everything online, even this blog, should be taken seriously all the time. A bit of perspective is always handy.

I am still amazed by the amount of people participating in the StopE$$o in Luxembourg.

More than 600 volunteers, ordinary people from 31 countries! That's a lot of people! All around the country! At all the E$$o pump stations ...

Woke up this morning and, as usual, as I am a techie, what do I do? Go and turn on the computer to make sure that the website is still there ... Even though it has been rock solid since we launched the new application in June 2002, I am still a geek and want to "see for myself" ;) And when I saw the dimension of this action I was surprised! Wow!

In Italy there's a lot of talks, as everywhere, about wars, possible wars, etc. Every now and then, someone mentions Gino Strada. Gino is one of the founders of Emergency, an NGO of doctors who provide medical support for civilian war victims.
You're thinking: "Plenty of them around, what's the news?". I tell you what's new: it's new that, while everybody, the UN, the embassies, the UNICEF and even the Red Cross were running out of Afghanistan at the beginning of the "Enduring Freedom" (!) war campaign lead by the US, the small team of Emergency, had to climb up with horses on the Hindukush to cross the border and reach their hospital in the Panchir region of Afghanistan, to save lives.

Emergency doesn't work only in Afghanistan obviously, Somalia, Cambodia, Ruanda... are just few of the places where this small group of committed war-surgeons went, against all odds and with little funding.

Of the Afghan experience also a book, "Buskashi" (unfortunately I didn't find a translated version in english) and a movie came out, presented at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, "Jung: In the Land of the Mujaheddin". Both definitely worth reading/watching.

You must be a genuinely good person ("hero" could be more appropriate, but, imho, is often a misused word) if you're trying to save a child's life, while around you bombs and rockets are destroying evertyhing. You could run away, like all the others...

Thanks Gino, thanks Emergency.

The common sight of people crowding at a bus stop, elbowing each other in order to be the first to get on could soon become a thing of the past with the launch of a new text message service for commuters.

Thanks to our ingenious inventors again. But, this time the award goes to -- NOT Japan, surprise, surprise!! Those reaping the great benefits from this invention will be pensioners and students (who else will take the bus) in Leicestershire, the United Kingdom.

Maybe the manufacturer could put this tracking system to even more innovative uses to benefit the wider population!

Who envies the United States? Exactly?

John Passacantando, writes:
"What I don’t know how to explain is why the United States is simultaneously so admired and so hated by people the world over."

What a few of us are wondering is... is the US so admired?
This person thinks not.

I wish to have the possibility, one day, to go to Africa, I feel the need to see it with my own eyes. It often seems so far away, maybe documentaries had also a negative effect, developing a kind of laziness and detachment from this (huge) area of the world. We are all tears and sniffs when we see those "cute" animals in the forest, but then we zap channels with our remote and our attention is grabbed by the multi-colored tv ads. Or maybe we do want to be detached, it's very easy to watch an environmental video, while it seems so complicate to do something to protect those areas.

Well, wake up. Those are not Hollywood movies, those are endangered areas, animals, maybe threatened exactly by you, by your need of cool wooden furniture or leather bags, furs, whatever. And once you're trying to modify your crap lifestyle, make sure you support some good causes.

Yes, again, another great (although quaint) Chinese tradition will soon die out.

Last Monday was the traditional Chinese grave-sweeping day and was also customary for families to go "hang san" – walking the mountain or hiking. It is a time when families pay their respects to their ancestors by burning incense and paper offerings such as gold ingots, and paper effigies of luxury goods such as limousines, jewellery items, and computers to guarantee the loved ones a prosperous afterlife.

To many non-Chinese this is a bit of a strange custom, which unfortunately, also brings in a season when the natural beauty of our countryside faces great risks of being ruined by hill fires. All because of carelessness while burning paper offerings especially in tinder dry condition during this time of year.

But there is another grave concern regarding grave-sweeping. Because of the scarcity of land in Hong Kong and mainland China (yes, even in China), cremation is fast becoming the preferred choice than proper burial.

China’s late paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, set an example even after death by leading the way, choosing not to keep his body intact. He chose to take his final journey to a crematorium rather than to a cemetery.

Drug overdose, yes! But, have you ever heard of web overdose?

A 24-year-old South Korean man has died after playing computer games non-stop for 86 hours.

Attention all webloggers and computer enthusiasts. Your computer maybe harmful to your health!

I always thought: "wouldn't it be great to take advantage of the massive use of computer games and send thoughtful messages through them to their users?". My original thought was to jump on an online session of Quake and shout: "Stop shooting!" but it didn't take long to realise that I would have been a dead unkown avatar before finishing the sentence.

Games become more customisable though and finally we see signs of resistance against military practices in a popular game like "The Sims". This is the effort of a small group called Downloadpeace, and hopefully won't be the last. Great work folks!

I love the New Yorker magazine. Not just because I can get whistful about a town where you can get a Rueben sandwhich at 3am, but it's been running some damn fine editorial and historical pieces of late about the new US role in the world.

Here's Herzberg on the scariest document of all time, the US National Security Strategy:

The main thrust of the document, however, is twofold. First, it stresses preëmption over deterrence as a strategy for dealing with threats. Second, it posits that American military power must be the operating framework for this new strategy—not just as a practical expedient, temporary and unavoidable, but as an inherently valuable and permanent ideal.

And Zakaria on US Hegemony:

America's relative position in the world has no real historical precedent. Imperial Britain, which at its peak reigned over a quarter of the world's population, is the closest analogy to the United States today, but it is still an inadequate one. To take an example, the symbol of Britain's supremacy was its Navy, which—at great cost to the British treasury—was kept larger than the next two largest navies combined. The United States military today is bigger, in dollars spent on it, than the militaries of the next largest fifteen countries combined—and those expenditures amount to only about four per cent of the country's gross domestic product.

In its heyday when the two wheels ruled the roads and were the preferred mode of transportation in China, even the former US President George Bush senior cycled around the city of Beijing when he was working there in the 70s.

The bicycles once enjoyed great honour and glory and, believe it or not, they were considered to be one of the three major items most coveted by newlyweds, along with a watch and sewing machine. There were even movies made about them. And, as far as brands were concerned, Phoenix and Flying Dove were the favourites those days as Bush senior would tell you.

With so much national pride attached to bicycles, the Chinese Government gave the older Bush a Flying Dove bike as a gift in 1992 during his visit to China as US president.

Unfortunately, the popularity of this two-wheeled environmentally friendly transportation tool has ebbed since mid 1990's. As a result, in 1999, only 1 million bicycles were sold throughout the country, compared with 30 million in 1994.

Rapid industrialisation is taking the glam out of the two-wheels and fueling an increase in motor vehicles. In the Bicycle Kingdom, the number of cars has been doubling every five years over the past 30 years. And it certainly doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that an explosion in the number of motor vehicles in China will spell catastrophic disaster for the world’s climate.

But, there is still a gleam of hope at the end of the tunnel which is worth mentioning. A Chinese transport expert once likened an ideal transportation mix to the flow of blood in a human body.

“In the body, public transport is just like the main vessels while bicycles are like the capillary vessels. The two should be complimentary.”

Yeah, Long Live the King of the Road in China!

I love cooking and I do love pasta. What I needed was an online pasta directory. I'll add these data to my culinaire book collection.

Via Giles.

What a surprise, also Nort Korea has a nuclear program. USA and others are concerned for this admission, especially since Bush considers NK as part of the "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.

Obviously we are concerned too.... that the US and their friends have an even more extended nuclear program.

Nick has a weblog and didn't tell us anything, I wonder what kind of friend he is :-) Actually he pointed me to that before but i didn't know it was his site.

Interesting to see that, among the list of its most read pages, the editorial cartoons section is the most popular, which translates into ten more minutes out of my daily schedule.

Thanks Nick.

Inflatable dartboard, glow in the dark sunglasses, transparent ink, and silent alarm clock. They are only a few examples of some of the most useless inventions in the history of mankind. But, there are still innumerable inventors out there who have got too much time on their hands. The hobby of inventing useless objects in an attempt to tackle our mundane domestic chores or simply spice up the daily life seems to have evolved into an art form – at least in Japan anyway.

The Japanese word, Chindogu, means useless (or almost useful) inventions - things that are supposed to make our lives easier, but in fact, don’t!

According to the doctrines that define the “gentle art and philosophy of Chindogu”, - a Chindogu can not be for real use, are without prejudice, and more importantly, inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy. Far out, man!

And nothing beats the Back Scratcher’s T-shirt, Sweetheart’s training arm, and Finger-mounted toothbrush. Check it out!

And, if you can’t find a place to cross the road in busy downtown Tokyo or anywhere else in the world, here is a Chindogu that might come in handy. But don’t forget to read the Health Hazard Warning in small print before application.

I found Desespirado among our referrals, went to the site and regretted for not knowing portuguese. Great imagery on the site, especially unconventional ones.

So, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smelliest of them all?

According to a French mayor, the Brits are by far the champs in this contest even though the French use less soap in their personal hygiene regime.

My hubby wasn’t too impressed when I pointed out this mayor’s comments to him.

His first response was, “Yeah, they (the French) like their natural smell.”
I said: “Yeah sure, one man’s smell is another’s poison.”
And to get myself out of the dog house I added, ”Everybody smells, not just the Brits.”
And, of course, it goes without saying “I still love you baby even though you smell.”

Since the decongestants keep me up and the Internet is always on a head-cold is a slightly dangerous thing.

Random surfing found one highly useful (and free!) design tool and one completely enjoyable waste of time (also free, but you need Flash).

I'm all for saving endangered species, I'd do almost everything for the cause but, no, I don't think alternative commercial ideas will help.

Besides who's the evil parent who hangs his/her baby like this?

Please call both WWF and Amnesty, I'm going to start an internal campaign.

According to statistics, the world’s tenth most common cause of death is related to road traffic accidents. And in China alone, some 106,000 lives were lost as a result of more than 760,000 road accidents last year. And I am sure these figures do not truly reflect the grave situation regarding some of China’s horrendous and treacherous road conditions as well as the equally horrific standard of driving of many.

Apart from the terrible loss of human lives, road accidents are also causing direct economic losses to the country, which totals some 7 million yuan per day as estimated by transport officials.

Speeding, negligence, failure to adjust to unexpected traffic situations, failure to give pedestrians the right-of-way, and driving in the wrong lanes are regarded as the five major causes of traffic accidents in China.

And that’s not the end of the problem. Last year saw a 34-percent rise in the number of drivers who fled the scene after causing accidents, with the total number surpassing 17,000.

In China, if a driver unfortunately knocks down and injures a pedestrian and, as a result, the victim becomes handicapped, the driver will have to assume financial responsibility and take care of the victim as long as he/she lives. So, in order to escape answering for the crime and face life-long punitive measures, a lot of drivers would choose to roll over their victims a few more times to guarantee instant death so that they could get away with only paying a one-off 8000 yuan (US$1000) compensation. This is a sick and unthinkable cold-blooded act of murder in every sense, but , sadly, it is still happening in many parts of China.

The shift from two wheels to four is putting a dent on the population as well as killing our climate. It is forecast that registered motor vehicles in China (excluding scooters) will reach 44 to 50 million by 2010 and that China’s long-term goal is to have every household own a car. If this wish is ever granted, these four-wheeled Grim Reapers will certainly claim more lives than they already do on the road.

Another good reason to turn your mobile phones off. Beside doing that at the cinema obviously. Ssshhhhhhhhh!!!!!

A couple of Harvard students developed a tool to check if a site is being blocked by the "big firewall of China". This weblog appears to be blocked, as well as our mother site.
However greenpeace.com results accessible, so or this tool is not working or the match between "greenpeace" and ".org" sounds like a dodgy one in China.

Can anybody report? (btw I don't know if the firewall is active also in Hong Kong, but i suspect not)

At night I dream of weird CSS layouts, XHTML 2.0 pages, web standards are my nightmare. Being one of their advocates is not easy and often frustrating, especially when, after realising that the popular Wired online is now a table-less, standards-compliant website, I go to the bar and ask my almost-geek friend:

"Did you notice that Wired has gone 100% XHTML/CSS compliant?"

and he:

"Do you want this coffee or not?"

UPDATE: Douglas Bowman, the mastermind behind the Wired redesign, gives details on this DevEdge interview.

John @ Microcontent starts reporting from the Content Management Summit. Interesting to see big media companies attending to it, probably they wonder how to challenge the weblog phenomenon and, at the same time, how to get money out of it.

Inside Greenpeace there's a very secretive sect, many belong to it but few actually expose their belief. It's something that let us mention key sentences in the middle of serious discussions, thus giving hints to others belonging to the sect. It can also drive us to smuggle videos under our desks and, above all, it's the force that lead us to show off all our tech gadgets: it's the "Star Trek" sect.

I could also call it Star Trek syndrome, because maybe some are just unaware victims suddenly finding themselves wondering how cool it would be to train our activists with a holodeck.

Obviously the coolness of the long-eared Spock is fascinating to many, but what will our disciples think knowing that he's trying to challenge Bruno with his photographic skills?

Why, Leonard, why?

Every so often, I will be caught in the middle of a verbal mud-slinging match between my nine-year-old daughter, Myfanwy, and my husband, Martin, when they fire silly-fun kiddy insults at each other. Of course, it is all good humour and I am sure it is their way of showing affection to each other.

The terms of endearment they generously bestow on each other range from silly baboon, smelly bum, hairy Martian, to stupid, fatboy (you can hardly describe Martin as fat), fart face and hairy armpits, just to name a few. Once they sink their teeth into each other they won’t let go and I can promise you it will go on for a while. And, believe it or not, whenever it happens, it always happens while we are in “confinement” – travelling in a car, bus, or public transport. So, there is no escape for me.

But, I have to confess I do enjoy and encourage humourous insults especially those that come from kids. Their verbal assaults are never acidic, serious or nasty but, on the other hand, they are often uproariously funny. So, a healthy dose of it every now and then is certainly not a bad thing.

Talking about long-term planning for the future. Here is a good one. The Beijing city government has recently imposed a ban on spitting in public and littering as part of a campaign to spruce up the capital, which plays host to a Communist Party congress starting November 8 and, needless to say, the 2008 Olympics.

The regulations, issued by city hall on National Day (October 1), are intended "to ensure that the capital city is clean and in good order".

Spitting in public is a common practice in most of China, where it is regarded as a natural and necessary bodily function despite sporadic campaigns to discourage it.

China plans to invest billions of dollars in preparations for the 2008 Olympics, which include a massive construction binge, an environmental clean-up, and now a campaign to eradicate an ancient universal practice that is perceived to be disgusting by many. Come to think of it, everybody spits, if not in public we do it in private. So spitting is only unpleasant when it is done on the street without a care for aim, direction or content.

In order to appreciate the art of spitting one has to study and understand the anatomy, physiology and various methods of this voluntary, done at will and usually with complete control, social behaviour. It is truly enlightening.

Instead of imposing a blanket ban on spitting maybe the Chinese authorities should embrace this universal practice and perfect it into an Olympics sport. That way we could preserve this ancient socio-cultural behaviour, clean up the city (now with well-honed and well-aimed spitters), and undoubtedly scoop up a few more medals for China rather than scooping up the mucal debris from the payment.

Who would have guessed even the China Daily has gone tabloid, at least through the pages of its English language tabloid - the Shanghai Star. But I have to admit, having trawled through the paper’s online pages, I am pretty impressed with articles such as “Boy Cuts Off Sex”, and front-page articles “History of Homosexuality” and “A gay man’s confession”. How refreshing.

The feeling of a dog is translated. Yup, another miracle of Japanese technology. So the Japanese have finally achieved the unachievable – making the dog language intelligible.

Bowlingual - an electronic dog-to-Japanese translation device, which Takara Toys claims recognises and translates dog speech and emotion – became an immediate hit in Tokyo as soon as it came onto the market last month. But, sorry in Japanese only!

Can't read Japanese? If you've just got to know about this product, go to the Babelfish machine translator and paste the URL of any Bowlingual page into the "Translate a Web Page" field. Select Japanese to English translation. It isn't a good translation, but you can at least get an idea.

Encouraged by its success, Takara Toys is already considering applying the technology to other uses and maybe using it for other animals.

There you go Gillo - another milestone in cementing ties with Man’s best friend and also another challenge for you. Maybe there is a market for a Doglog for the canine population as a starter.

I cannot stop it, it's running through my head. Tatu or, more correctly, Taty is a russian duo, seemingly unknown in many countries. However there are many references on the web.

I'm not the type who likes teenage girls music (although Martin thinks I really do like Britney), so I'm still shocked of myself. However "All the things she said" is quite a good song and it actually become the top song on MTV Italia. But, I know, this is not an excuse to keep my mp3 player looping on the song.

Before giving a proper assessment though I have to listen to their pieces in russian.... What am I talking about??? Gotta run and take my Coldplay cd to recover.

Also no $$$, but I'm european, allow me. Almost all the webloggers who spend a lot of time updating their sites have, at least once, asked themselves: "I'm spending 60% of my days reading mailing lists, finding links, often writing something interesting. This must be worth some cash!" Well, not really.

We wanted freedom of speech, now we have it, but this means that words can be picked up for free, if not on your site, somewhere else. Words, print and cash go together and this trio is difficult to separate. Funny thought that those webloggers who actually make money out of it, are those who write books about weblogs!

Personally, I'd give you a better option. Like the weblog? Wanna contribute to it? You know what to do.

Almost week-end, it seems it will be bad weather though, but this is a known pattern: gillo's week-end=horrible weather. Crap. Overall it was a good week, maybe too many meetings (my ears are still burning) but overall good, especially since my son turned two!

Need pasta now, but I cannot leave the weblog without a nice link, here's Google fight, I'll waste some time on it next week.

Chemicals generates all kinds of deseases, we know that, but if you were a frog you would be already aware of the real danger!

Then you must follow Giles' advice.

It seems forums are flooded with complaints about Google's new search algorithms. Mark does the best job in summarizing the situation.

One of the great things about living in New Zealand is that it's nuclear free. Since 1984 we have had a nuclear free policy. We have banned foreign nuclear powered ships from entering our harbours, we have no nuclear power plants or reactors and recently began looking at even banning nuclear shipments from even passing through our EEZ. Being nuclear free is something that many new Zealanders fought long and hard for and something we are now very proud of.

In 1985 the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by the French as it prepared to leave Auckland harbour to lead a protest against French nuclear testing on Moruroa. This further strengthened New Zealander's resolve to remain nuclear free.

Now, in 2002, the French nuclear industry have returned to Auckland harbour in the form of AREVA - (Cogema and Framatome in disguise). In a display of unbelievable arrogance, AREVA are sponsoring the French syndicate in the America's Cup yacht race that is being held in Auckland harbour. So once again we take to the harbour in kayaks and boats to protest against the nuclear industry. You can do your bit too.