The Swedish blogosphere offers a great laugh today as communist blogger Ali Esbati implies that conservative columnist Marie Söderqvist is a fascist who opposes democracy.

Well, Mr Esbati should know.

I honestly don't know why I care about the American elections. I guess it's my interest in politics that makes the whole process so exiting even though it does not involve me personally. However, after the Republican debate on CNN I begin to wonder if this political drama is not turning into a shallow farce. John McCain and Mitt Romney's argument about whether or not Romney used the word "timetable" in an interview in 2004 was simply too silly.

More interesting than the debate itself is the fact that both ex-candidate Rudy Giuliani and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger now endorse McCain.

Anyhow, tomorrow will see the one-to-one debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Rabbi Shafran of the Agudath Israel of America has published a letter from a father to his teenage son in the Jerusalem Post. In my opinion, this letter proves a good example of how a religiously superstitious parent abuses his child by inflicting shame and limiting freedom.

Sean, the right thing for a Jewish person is to marry another Jew.

Not only because our religion requires it. But because when Jews marry out, they disrespect who they are, they are disloyal to the Jewish past and they chip away at the Jewish future.

Whether or not our family kept strictly kosher or celebrated Shabbat or attended services often enough is all one thing. But the thought of bringing about the end of a proud Jewish line stretching back in time for centuries is something else. It's more than some religious transgression.

You never asked to be a Jew, I know. You were born one. But being Jewish isn't a burden. It's a gift. It means you are part of something bigger, much bigger, than yourself.

Each of us Jews represents the hopes of so many Jewish ancestors.

Libertarianism—unlike conservatism—holds that no human is responsible to history and collectivist traditions. Each and every one of us is capable to form his or her life independently from family and the society. All collectivist claims are false. We always have a choice between conformity and rebelliousness.

The religious parent rejects libertarianism on conservative grounds. The child is told that it has responsibilities towards earlier generations; and if the child does not conform to timeworn ideals, he or she will be punished with guilt and condemnation.

This is nothing short of child abuse.

Eric Schwartz of Arizona Daily Star:

The scientific community has long believed that as global warming continues and large amounts of freshwater ice melt into the ocean, the ocean's circulation will slow.

This would have a catastrophic impact on the environment as vividly, if somewhat overdramatically, portrayed in the film "The Day After Tomorrow."

But a paper published last week in Nature magazine, the result of several studies of past and possible future weather, says that in fact the very opposite is true and ocean circulation will become stronger as the icecaps melt.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," said Joellen Russell, an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona and co-author of the paper.

And:

Evidence from the most recent ice age, which reached its coldest 21,000 years ago, shows that the ocean had very little movement and exchange of deep water and surface water until the warming of the Earth about 18,000 years ago. "The evidence is piling up," that those models predicting a weakened ocean circulation in the coming decades are wrong, Russell said.

The increasing speed of the westerlies and their movement toward the poles "should stir the ocean's salty and fresh waters around and minimize the effect of the polar freshening," [co-author] Toggweiler said.

Still, the idea that the ocean's circulation will increase as the Earth warms is not fully accepted by scientists.

"It's controversial, but it explains what happened in the past and what is happening now," Toggweiler said.

The mounting evidence has won the new theory a lot of converts, Toggweiler said.

"We were lucky to publish first," Russell said.

"This is what science is all about," Toggweiler said. "Looking for where the common wisdom is wrong."

Here's the actual paper, published in Nature on 17 January 2008.

I have noticed a trend in science magazines recently. It seems to me that more and more researchers suggest that human-made global warming is not as big a threat as many (leftist) environmentalists would like us to believe.

(Seen in picture is a schematic outline of the world's ocean currents.)

John Edwards is expected to make the announcement in about an hour.

More here and here.

With sixty-four per cent of the votes counted, all major news networks and professional commentators agree in their prediction of a John McCain win in Florida. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary in Florida. However, that will not benefit her, as the state has no delegates.

Heath Ledger's last movie:

I like John McCain and had hoped he would not sink so low as to use bigoted misconceptions. But I was wrong. In his latest telemarketing campaign, a woman voice attacks Mitt Romney's flip-flopping on social issues. The phone voice says,

"Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-funding for abortion. He says he changed his mind, but he still hasn't changed the law. He told gay organizers in Massachusetts he would be a stronger advocate for special rights than even Ted Kennedy. Now, it's something different."

Special rights is evangelical newspeak for equal rights, i.e. if citizen A wants his government to treat him as an equal to citizen B, the evangelical thinks citizen A wants special rights.

A tense moment at Capitol Hill:

Rival Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama came within a foot of each other just before President Bush's State of the Union speech Monday night and managed not to acknowledge each other, and certainly not touch.

Clinton, clad in scarlet, crossed the aisle between their seats on the House floor and reached out a hand to greet Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Democratic icon whose endorsement she had courted only to lose it to Obama.

Kennedy shook her hand while Obama, wearing a dark suit and standing between the two, turned away.

The rivals then retreated to their seats, only the aisle and four senators between them.

I don't know why Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses springs to mind. Maybe it's only a witticism of my vivid and somewhat perverted imagination?

This is quite remarkable. A recent survey conducted by the national Church of Sweden shows that only one in ten of its confirmands believe in God.

More in Swedish here.

This is so funny I just had to copy the entire blog entry. If I breach some international copyright law, I apologize beforehand. Anyhow, here's Dave Barry:

On Tuesday, millions of Florida voters will head for the polls. Being Floridians, many of them will become confused and drive into buildings, canals, cemeteries, other Floridians, etc. But some will actually make it to the polls, where they will cast ballots that will play a crucial role in the presidential election. Or, in the case of Democrats, not.

It turns out that the 2008 Florida Democratic primary doesn't count. Florida will be sending the same number of delegates to the 2008 Democratic convention as Uzbekistan.

This may seem unfair, but there's a simple, logical explanation: The whole primary system is insane. Consider the process so far...

First Iowa held "caucuses," in which Iowans gathered in small groups at night and engaged in some mysterious Iowan ritual that for all we know involves having intimate relations with corn. Right after that, Wyoming had a primary, but it was only for Republicans, because Wyoming Democrats (apparently there are at least two) will hold their primary on March 8.

Most of the candidates ignored Wyoming and focused on the New Hampshire primary, except Rudy Giuliani, who's following a shrewd strategy, originally developed by the Miami Dolphins, of not entering the race until he has been mathematically eliminated. After New Hampshire came Michigan, where the ballot listed all the Republicans, but only certain Democrats, including Chris Dodd, who had already dropped out of the race, but NOT including Barack Obama or John Edwards.

After Michigan came the Nevada caucuses, in which Hillary Clinton got more votes, but Barack Obama got more delegates. (If you don't understand how that could happen, then you have never been to a casino.)

Then came the South Carolina Republican primary, which of course was not held on the same day as the South Carolina Democratic primary, which will be Monday. Then comes Florida, in which Republican voters will elect some delegates, although the total will only be half the number Florida was originally supposed to get.

Meanwhile Florida Democrats, as I mentioned, will have the same impact on their party's nomination as if they fed their ballots to ducks.

I am not making any of this up: This is our actual primary system, except (I hope) the part about the corn. We're selecting candidates for the most important job in the world via a process that's less rational than the one used to choose Miss Kumquat of Pasco County.

How did we end up with this ridiculous system? We got it through endless petty squabbling, in both parties, over the issue of which states get to go first. That's right:

When confronted with what should be a minor procedural problem, the leaders of our major political parties can't even work intelligently with their own allies, let alone their opponents. This is why, no matter who wins in November, I am optimistic about the future of the nation. (I'm referring to Uzbekistan.)

Anyway, for those of you who plan to vote Tuesday, here's a quick overview of the political situation:

The Republican race – It's still wide open. Mitt "Mitt" Romney holds a slight edge in delegates, plus a heifer he got for winning Wyoming. Right behind him are John McCain, Chuck Norris and the late Ronald Reagan. Bringing up the rear is Rudy, who needs a win and has been frantically courting Florida voters. He's mowing your lawn right now.

The Democratic race – It's down to Obama vs. Clinton, and it's getting nasty. They hate each other, with the kind of passionate hatred that you see only between two people who hold essentially the same positions on everything. Edwards is still running, but at this point they don't even bother to put a microphone on him for the debates. He just waves his arms to indicate how he's going to take on the big corporations.

So that's the situation, Floridians. On Tuesday, it's your turn to stand up and be counted, unless of course you're a Democrat. But whatever you are, you should get out there and vote, even if you have no earthly idea what or whom you're voting for, or why, because that's what democracy is all about.

Also, Rudy, if you're reading this: My hedge needs trimming.

This makes no sense to people unfamiliar with television channel BBC Three, but to me and other fans the blobs will be sadly missed.

(Via Arga Lappen.)

(Warning: this entry may contain irony.)

Yes, the dinosaurs died because Adam ate a forbidden fruit. How could anyone be stupid enough not to believe a convincing line of evidence like that?

Hm... This is a trick question, right? I'm not sure, but I pick God. The correct answer has to be God, right?

The religious hatemongers failed to disturb Heath Ledger's memorial service in Los Angeles:

Heath Ledger's family and loved ones have held a private memorial service at a chapel in Los Angeles.

The service took place under heavy security last night at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in a bid to thwart paparazzi and US religious extremists.

Religious groups vowed to picket the memorial because of Ledger's performance as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

The memorial took place after hours at the chapel. Security guards manned the front gates and Los Angeles police checked the grounds to ensure Ledger's parents, Kim and Sally, his sister Kate, ex-fiancee Michelle Williams, his two-year-old daughter Matilda, former girlfriend Naomi Watts and 10 other close family and friends could mourn the loss of the 28-year-old in private.

Ledger's coffin was transported from Manhattan to the chapel for last night's service.

After the 30-minute service, the group moved on to the Beverly Hills Hotel for an intimate dinner in a private room.

I would not be surprised if Fred Phelps showed up at the funeral in Australia.

The mind-blowing salaries of successful footballers are my father's favourite topic of conversation. Next time I see him I will be able to tell him that British novelist Martin Amis now earns more per hour lecturing at the University of Manchester than England's top footballers.

David Bernstein offers a solution to the ongoing Gaza crisis:

Sixty years ago, when Egypt occupied Gaza, it refused to grant the local Arab residents, native Gazans and refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-48, citizenship. Instead, the Egyptian government intentionally cut them off from Egypt and kept them impoverished, so they could be used as a propaganda and military weapon against Israel. When Israel took over Gaza in 1967, it opened the border with Israel, providing tens of thousands of jobs for Gazans, and increasing the standard of living there dramatically, albeit from very low levels. After a wave of suicide attacks from Gaza, Israel gradually closed off the border with Israel, and finally closed it off entirely when Hamas took over last year. Meanwhile, Israel no longer occupies Gaza, and the population has sunken back into abject poverty.

With the Gazan's breach of the border with Egypt, and Egypt's refusal to use force to seal the border, things have come full circle. It's time to ask why Egypt, with 80 million people, can't grant Gaza's one million full Egyptian citizenship, and allow them to live in Sinai or even Cairo instead of being stuck in Gaza.

No matter what happens in the near future between the Palestinians and Israel, I doubt Israel will ever allow the reasonably free movement between Gaza and Israel that existed through the early 1990s. Giving the Gazans Egyptian citizenship, and making Egypt responsible for security in the area, would benefit Israel, the Gazans, and even Egypt itself, by destroying Hamas's base (Hamas being affiliated with Egypt's anti-government Muslim Brotherhood). It would also benefit the Palestinians in the West Bank, by allowing the more moderate residents there to reach an accommodation with Israel, perhaps in concert with Jordan.

The most surprising thing about the Democratic primary election in South Carolina is the crushing defeat Hillary Clinton suffered. Few thought she would win, but to see the main rival gain more than twice the number of votes must be humiliating.

"You can say many things about Mao, but he did rehabilitate thousands of drug addicts," said Per Johansson, head of the Swedish National Association for a Drug-Free Society, at a recent European conference. Johansson should know. Devout communist Nils Bejerot founded this proscriptive-beyond-reason organization on Maoist ideology.

(Chinese poster reads: "We will destroy the old world and build a new." It shows a worker crushing crucifixes, Buddha statues, and classical Chinese texts. This poster from 1966 is an example of Maoist propaganda during the Cultural Revolution. We can assume the drug addicts faced the same destiny as those religious symbols. A good thing according to Swedish drug warriors.)

European mainstream media is bias in favour of the Palestinians. That is why we are fed with sob stories about people being trapped in the Gaza Strip but rarely hear or read anything about the hundreds of rockets fired against Israel every month. It's no wonder people unfamiliar with the conflict get the impression that Israelis are the bad guys.

Biased journalists are too eager to report anything the Palestinian authorities and terrorist groups tells them. What many of them seem unwilling to recognize is that the information given to the media by the Palestinians often is bogus. On 19 January, I wrote that the story about Yasser Arafat donating blood after 9/11 was untrue. Now I have learned about fake pictures of a parliament session during an alleged power cut in Gaza on 22 January. Reuters, one of the world's top news agencies, was one of many that fell for the Palestinian media stunt and published the pictures.

(Via Michael J. Totten.)

On 30 December 2007, I wrote enthusiastically about Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and the plans for commercial space travel. This is a truly fascinating subject for a man who grew up with Star Wars movies and dreams of intergalactic journeys. This week, it was revealed how exactly this new space tourism will work. Here's an explanatory picture from the Virgin Galactic press release (click on image to enlarge):

Bill Clinton is damaging his wife's claim that she will be an effective chief executive. In short, that is what The Economist's anonymous Lexington columnist and most other commentators say about the former president's frenetic involvement in Hillary Clinton's campaign. I think they are right.

This one is not mine. It's a poster made by London-based artist Daryl Waller. I think it's brilliant.

The most deranged church in America intends to humiliate the Ledger family at the funeral because it hates homosexuals. Flier copied from the Westboro Baptist Church website (which I refuse to link to):

I wonder what Jesus would say about this.

According to the latest opinion poll, Sweden's centre-right government has support from less than 38 per cent of the electorate. The Social Democrats, which is the main opposition party, has support from nearly 47 per cent. With the Greens and the Communists, the opposition bloc has support from 58.5 per cent of the voters. The graph shows the result of the 2006 general election (left) and the latest opinions poll (right).

I repeat what I wrote in November 2007: It's time to put an end to triangulation. Give the electorate a real choice. It's not too late to turn things around, but the Government have no time to lose.

Read more in Swedish here.

Conservative Christians have little support in Sweden. According to a new poll, only 20 per cent of voters want a society based on traditional Christian values.

Read more in Swedish here.

New research from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, suggests the Gaydar exists.

Yesterday, I met a very friendly Canadian man at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University. He was visiting the centre on his way to another Scandinavian university where he will spend the semester as a guest professor. When I talked to him, he seemed familiar. Now I know who he resembles—he's Ned Flanders.

Seneca the Younger: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

(Via Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, British paperback edition, page 313.)

Regan Suzuki of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says ethanol and other biofuels could lead to food shortages in developing countries. Furthermore, it could pose a threat to the environment.

It's no wonder people are getting confused.

It's a bit silly to mourn someone you never met, but it happens sometimes. I was deeply saddened by the news of Heath Ledger's passing. After I have spent an hour reading obituaries, I realize I'm not alone feeling this way. Joey DiGuglielmo of Washington Blade expresses it well when he writes about the special affection many gay men have for Ledger after his outstanding performance in "Brokeback Mountain". To many of us, the film meant something more. Even though there are quite a few of us around, no films are made with main characters in same-sex relationships. This is, of course, a result of religious hatred towards homosexuals and the Hollywood producers' fear of scaring off the wider audience. If there is a gay guy in a mainstream film, he's most often an odd and effeminate man lacking all heroic qualities.

However, not only gay men remember Ledger for "Brokeback Mountain". From the New York Times:

The defining performance of Heath Ledger's tragically foreshortened career—more or less equivalent to what Jim Stark in "Rebel Without a Cause" was for James Dean—will surely be the role of Ennis Del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain."

A portrait of inarticulate love and thwarted desire, Ennis is a rich, complicated character succinctly sketched in Annie Proulx's original short story and brought to heartbreaking life by the film's screenwriters, Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, by its director, Ang Lee, and above all by Mr. Ledger himself.

Outwardly, Ennis presents a familiar image of rough-hewn western masculinity, and the longing that surges under his taciturn demeanor does not so much contradict this image as help to explain it. Ennis's love for Jack Twist, whom he meets tending sheep on a Wyoming mountaintop in the early 1960s, takes Ennis by surprise and throws him permanently off balance. His lifelong silence, the film suggests, is less a sign of strength than of cowardice, a crippling inability to acknowledge or communicate the truth of his own feelings.

What made the performance so remarkable was that Mr. Ledger, without betraying Ennis's dignity or his reserve, was nonetheless able to convey that truth to the audience. This kind of sensitivity—the ability to signal an inner emotional state without overtly showing it—is what distinguishes great screen acting from movie-star posing. And while Mr. Ledger was handsome enough, and famous enough, to be called a movie star, he was serious enough, and smart enough, to be suspicious of deploying his charisma too easily or cheaply.

I second every word.

If you are in the mood for it, British newspapers The Times and the Telegraph has moving obituaries.

If you're able to read Swedish, you should read Expressen's article about Susanne Eriksson, a woman who was sentenced to prison for battling her multiple sclerosis with cannabis.

Sad news from the BBC:

Hollywood actor Heath Ledger has been found dead at a downtown Manhattan residence, a New York Police Department spokesman has said.

"He was found unconscious at the apartment and pronounced dead," a police spokeswoman said.

It is not yet clear how the 28-year-old Australian actor, who earned an Oscar nomination as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain, died.

The latest reports suggest Ledger's death was drug related.

Read more in the New York Times's City Room blog.

A Dutch merchant of T-shirts is now selling an image of Anne Frank wearing a keffiyeh, the symbol of Palestinian terrorism. According to a member of a newsgroup I subscribe to, the T-shirt is called "Jihad Anne".

Mocking Jews and other victims of National Socialism seems to be the latest fashion statement in some "progressive" circles. I suppose the bad taste is excused by Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. I mean, Anne Frank had it coming, right?

Mike Huckabee says he wants a federal anti-abortion amendment to the US Constitution. Needless to say, he will never suffer the consequences of his proposed law.

To sacrifice the lives of women for a religious principle is truly immoral. That's what the Taliban do.

A new poll of the European Union shows that only 17 per cent of Bulgarians would be able to carry on a conversation with someone who is openly gay.

More here.

Here's the list. More here.

I have always been a big fan of the Oscars. Not that glamour, red carpets and overpriced designer dressers interest me, but because the winning movies rarely disappoint me. The Hollywood elite may have bad taste in style, but they surely know good movies.

This is really interesting. The International Herald Tribune reports that scientists now think volcanoes might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers.

Anti-Semitism plays an integrated part of contemporary socialism. It springs from the collectivist idea that people share a common responsibility for the actions of individuals.

In a disturbing article, Forward reports that Venezuela's Jewish community now numbers about 12,000 compared to 16,000 when Hugo Chávez was first elected president in 1998. Jews flee the country due to state-sponsored harassment.

Judehatet lever och frodas i Sverige och Europa. Precis som under 1900-talet är det främst socialister som står bakom propagandan. Det ursinniga hatet mot judarna döljer man bakom en ibland helt legitim kritik mot staten Israel. Henrik Bachner har skrivit om detta i en utmärkt analys:

Den samtida antisemitismen i Europa och Sverige är, bortsett från nazistisk och radikal islamistisk propaganda, mycket sällan öppen och direkt. Som ett resultat av den stigmatisering av judefientlighet som följde på Förintelsen används i regel omskrivningar, kodord och argumentationsstrategier som syftar till att skydda budbäraren från negativa sanktioner.

Denna förvandlingsprocess liksom det antijudiska tänkandets nya uttrycksformer har noggrant analyserats och beskrivits i forskningen. Vad som kännetecknar vår tids antisemitiska diskurs är bland annat ersättningen av termen judar med ord och uttryck som till exempel "sionister", "lobbygrupper" och "mäktiga krafter". Utmärkande är också försöken att förfalska och invertera begrepp som antisemitism, nazism och Förintelsen. I syfte att ånyo legitimera en judefientlig hållning har dessa begrepp transformerats till beteckningar på judiska förbrytelser.

Läs hela artikeln här. Läs också Jonathan Lemans avslöjande blogginlägg om hur vänsterns rättshaverister försvarar judehatet.

My online friends, Swedish bloggers Blogge Bloggelito and Isabella Lund, have challenged me and a number of other people to reveal seven truths about ourselves. Here we go:

1. I'm an anglophile. I never read books or movie subtitles in Swedish unless I have to. I hardly know anything about what novels are popular in Sweden, but I do know the British top-ten list by heart. And until recently, my thoughts were almost exclusively in English. Furthermore, I spend more time on British and American chat rooms than I do on Swedish websites.
2. I'm a perfectionist. I can spend hours getting a single sentence right in an essay or article. It gets ridiculous sometimes. A whole day can pass by without any real work being done just because I'm dissatisfied with that one punctuation mark. It's ruining my life, which is why I decided not to pay that much attention to the language quality of the blog. I let minor spelling and punctuation mistakes stand to save me from insanity.
3. I'm manipulative. It's not really something I'm proud of, but if I really want something from someone, I try to boost their ego and imply that I'm one their side only to make them feel they owe me something. Their guilt and kindness is my triumph.
4. I'm short-tempered. Sometimes I get angry for the tiniest thing. I'm rarely wrathful for long though. Five minutes later I can't remember why I was so furious.
5. I'm cynical. I always expect the worse in people. It saves me from disappointments.
6. I enjoy irony. Perhaps it's a generation-thing, but I can't stand humourless people. If I say stealing newspapers from homeless people is OK because most of them can't read, I don't want to be lectured by some boring I-am-so-serious-all-the-time commie wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.
7. I'm an arse man. My eyes are always on the hunt for those perfect male buttocks to daydream about.

That's my seven truths.

A new poll shows a large majority of Swedes are in favour of allowing gays to marry. Seven out of ten respondents told research agency Sifo they would back moves to change the current legislation.

More in Swedish here and here.

Flera kristdemokratiska riksdagsledamöter har krävt en folkomröstning om könsneutrala äktenskap. Med viss tvekan välkomnar jag en sådan folkomröstning.

Det är de kristna organisationerna som leder motståndet mot en könsneutral äktenskapslagstiftning, vilket i sig öppnar för en intressant samhällsdebatt om religionens roll i demokratin. Detta diskuteras för lite i Sverige trots att religiösa trosuppfattningar påverkar vårt samhälle. En folkomröstning skulle även erbjuda ett utmärkt tillfälle för samtal om de teologiska argumenten mot jämlikhet och likabehandling. En parallell kan göras till kvinnoprästfrågan, som trots hårda diskussioner ändå ledde fram till en ny syn på jämlikhet. Kanske kan äktenskapsfrågan resultera i en ny syn på sexualitet.

I frågan om homosexuellas möjlighet att gifta sig framförs ofta biologiska argument som går ut på att det krävs en man och en kvinna för att skapa nytt liv. Att ifrågasätta påståendet vore som att förneka gravitationen. Men att det krävs en man och en kvinna för att ett barn ska bli till är i sig inget bra argument mot att homosexuella ska få gifta sig. Att skaffa barn kan även homosexuella göra. Det krävs visserligen medveten planering, med det borde vara något positivt. Barn till homosexuella är alltid önskade och välkomna. För de många kristna som studerar abortsiffrorna med obehag borde detta vara ett starkt argument för homosexuellas lämplighet som föräldrar.

I en folkomröstning skulle väljarna få ta ställning till om det är rimligt att en modern demokrati ger vissa barn sämre skydd än andra med motiveringen att barn behöver sina biologiska föräldrar. En verklighet där många familjer inte bygger på blodsband skulle ställas mot en utopi där alla barn växer upp med sina biologiska föräldrar. Jag tror att en sådan debatt skulle ge en vinst för oss som ser äktenskapet som en bekräftelse på kärlek och stabilitet snarare än plikt och biologi.

Men det är ändå med viss tvekan jag stödjer kravet på en folkomröstning. En samhällsdebatt om en folkgrupp riskerar att urarta i vulgära påhopp som den svagare parten har svårt att värja sig mot. Till skillnad från tidigare folkomröstningar så skulle denna handla om människor av kött och blod. En folkomröstningsdebatt kan komma att generera hatiska uttalanden som enskilda homosexuella måste hantera. Liknande har hänt förut. Ett exempel såg vi 1994 i samband med att partnerskapslagen antogs av riksdagen. På svensk TV kunde man samma kväll höra en kristen man säga att homosexuella förtjänade döden. Jag har länge undrat hur homosexuella föräldrar förklarade för sina barn att farbrorn på TV tycker att pappa ska dödas. Vad säger man?

Det är möjligt att media denna gång håller sig för god för sådant och att debatten blir mer sansad än 1994. Dock finns det skäl att frukta det värsta om man studerar hur dagens religiösa debattörer behandlar frågor om homosexualitet i sina egna medier. Åke Greens numera världsberömda predikan ger en föraning. Det brukar tyvärr låta ungefär så när konservativa kristna diskuterar homosexualitet. Det är inte en slump.

Kyrkan har sedan medeltiden bedrivit en systematisk hets mot homosexuella. Idag har denna hets utvecklats till ett nätverk av internationellt verksamma kampanjorganisationer som specialiserat sig på att förolämpa och förtala homosexuella. En folkomröstning riskerar att locka fram en sådan vulgärdebatt.

Trots riskerna ställer jag mig bakom kravet på en folkomröstning om äktenskapet. Jag tror att det skulle stärka Sveriges homosexuella på ungefär samma sätt som partnerskapsdebatten gjorde i början av 1990-talet. Vidare tror jag att Sveriges alla religiösa organisationer skulle må bra av att på allvar diskutera sitt förhållande till homosexuella. Det finns trots allt stort utrymme för nytolkning av de bibeltexter som berör ämnet. Kristenheten har tidigare visat en enastående förmåga att anpassa sig till nya omständigheter och kommer säkert att kunna göra det även i fråga om homosexuellas familjer.

Denna artikel publiceras idag på Sydsvenska Dagbladets debattsida.

After a big defeat in Nevada, John McCain won the South Carolina Republican primary.

Well, one thing's for sure—God is not listening to my prayers. Mitt Romney won Nevada.

The picture is fake—a mere PR stunt.

On 17 January, French journalist Charles Enderlin told a small audience at Harvard's Centre for European Studies that the images of Arafat donating blood was staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York.

More here.

In a few hours, we know the result of the caucuses in Nevada. An ABC News entrance poll suggests Mitt Romney will win the Republican race.

I'm no man of faith, but if there is a God, I pray for a divine intervention. Let John McCain win! He's the only decent candidate with a chance to win Nevada. Please God, send Flip-Flopper Mitt back to Massachusetts.

Missa inte Mattias Svenssons självbiografiska artikel om Frihetsfronten, moderaterna och de unga nyliberalerna. Det är en utmärkt artikel, men jag måste erkänna att jag blir lite sorgsen efter att ha läst den. Jag bodde i Stockholm nästan hela 1990-talet, men jag var så upptagen med allt spännande som hände i min egen subkultur att jag helt missade den nyliberala rörelsen.

Mattias Svensson skriver för övrigt en utmärkt blogg som bör läsas regelbundet.

From The Local:

A Swedish research institute reports that more Swedes support the country's participation in EU defence forces than are against the idea.

It is the first time since the study began that public opinion has been more positive than negative toward EU defence participation by historically non-aligned Sweden.

The study, conducted by FSI (Forskningsgruppen för samhälls- och informationsstudier), shows that 39 percent of those polled are positive toward Swedish participation in a common EU defence.

Twenty-four percent are against the idea, while the remaining respondents are neutral or have no opinion.

I'm in favour of a common defence strategy for the EU. I have always considered Sweden's policy of non-alignment immoral. I understand the pragmatic argument used in favour of the policy during the Cold War, but the very idea that we should not side with fellow democracies in any future war against fascism is simply sickening. A common European defence system is the way forwards, and I'm happily surprised to see that so many of my countrymen seem to agree with me.

Inspired by the American GDP map I published yesterday, Swedish blogger Martin Strömberg made a similar map of Sweden's twenty-one counties. Each county is named after a nation that has similar GDP. (Click on map to enlarge.)

It's a bit ironic to see those global-warming alarmists shivering with cold. From the Baltimore Sun:

Many of the protesters who endured the cold to chant "Stop Global Warming!" said they didn't think the snowfall conflicted with their message. Davey Rogner, a 22-year-old student at the University of Maryland College Park, beat on an African Djembe drum to rev up the crowd. He said the snow was a "gift" to remind eveyone about how rarely Maryland has been blanketed with beautiful white in recent years as temperatures have increased.

"It's only the second snow of the year, which is very sad," said Rogner.

Personally, I hate snow and would love never to see it again.

(Photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor.)

This may be filed under Useless Information, but I just found a map that renames US states after countries that have similar GDPs to the state in question. Sweden is North Carolina.

I have two excuses for my somewhat slow blogging:
1. I have one article and one essay to finish before Monday.
2. I have relapsed into my old play-Pac-Man-online addiction.

Svend Dahl:

Ett liberalt samhälle är inte samma sak som ett samhälle där företagens alla krav tillgodoses.

Egentligen borde det vara självklart. När storföretagen och övervakningsstaten slår sig ihop, som i fildelningsfrågan, bör man vara oroad över konsekvenserna för den personliga friheten och integriteten. Och det oavsett hur man ställer sig i den faktiska sakfrågan om upphovsrätten.

För upphovsrättsfrågan är långtifrån enkel ur ett liberalt perspektiv. Å ena sidan bör upphovsmännen få ekonomisk ersättning för sitt arbete. Å andra sidan är det absurt att som musikindustrins lobbyister jämställa upphovsrätten med äganderätten.

Äganderätt innebär att jag får göra vad jag vill med det jag äger – göra om det eller sälja det vidare. Upphovsrätten handlar om en inskränkning av just dessa rättigheter.

Till viss del är det motiverat. Ett läkemedelsföretag som investerat miljarder i att ta fram ett nytt läkemedel måste självklart ha chansen att tjäna pengar på sin forskning. Men samtidigt blir det lite märkligt när skivindustrin menar att den senaste poplåten förtjänar att skyddas under längre tid än ett nytt läkemedel.

Det vettigaste inlägget i fildelningsdebatten på länge.

This is something no generation of humans has seen before. It's a close-up picture of the planet Mercury taken by NASA's spacecraft Messenger on 15 January 2008.

(Photo by NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.)

From Andrew Sullivan:

There was a strange fellow named Romney,
A shamelessly pandering zombie.
He once told some bikers
That one song he liked was
Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

Witty.

Mike Huckabee:

"Well, I don't think that's a radical view to say we're going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we're going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what's been historic."

Bigots said similar things about interracial marriage only a few decades ago.

From Tim Harford's new book, The Logic of Life, via Slate:

The logic of evolutionary psychology says that women should be choosy about who they have sex with, because pregnancy in the wrong circumstances is extremely costly—but the logic of a woman who has control of reliable contraception is quite different. The preferences that evolution has shaped still exert powerful influence on our instincts, and many women remain extremely choosy and refuse to have sex outside marriage. But others, once armed with the pill, decided they could afford to have a little more fun.

Girls just wanna have fun, right?

British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith outlined the Government's "counter-radicalization strategy" in a speech today:

"We are already working closely with the communications industry to take action against paedophiles. I believe we should also take action against those who groom vulnerable people for the purposes of violent extremism... An effective response to terrorism depends on us—on the active commitment of individuals and communities to certain rights and responsibilities, to shared values which apply irrespective of religion or culture."

Interesting approach.

Jöns Filsgatan in Malmö early this morning. It's a quiet street in the oldest part of the city, where the mediaeval meets the present.

If you have five minutes so kill, why not take a test.

David Aaronovitch: "Ignore the Swedes. I can see nothing wrong with paid sex between consenting adults."

A common argument against hate-crime legislation reads that gay people shouldn't have special privileges. That's true, in principle. However, the problem is that gay people are targeted because they are gay. While heterosexuals can be victims of equally horrific brutality, they are never targeted for their sexual orientation—unless the offender thinks they are homosexuals, that is.

The Irish Independent reports about a case where a homophobe attacked a straight couple he had mistaken for two gay men.

Outlining the allegations, Store Street Garda Jamie Jordan had said the teen approached the man and woman.

"He asked 'are you two gay guys?'. He then hit the man on his face and knocked him to the ground. He attacked the woman, threw her to the ground and kicked her in the back and stomach. He then jumped on the man's back."

When the woman, who had been repeatedly kicked, got to her feet, her face was punched. She suffered bruising but both she and her boyfriend made a full recovery.

Earlier, the court had also heard that the comments made about them being gay men arose from the woman's hairstyle, and during the attack he still thought she was a man.

"Throughout the attack, he made similar derogatory comments, something like 'f***ing gay bastards'," the court had been told previously.

Unfortunately, this scenario is typical of hate crimes. Far too many victims have the exact same story to tell.

"Tonight is a win for optimist over Washington-style pessimism," Mitt Romney said in his victory speech.

Really? Personally I think Romney personalizes the negative and dishonest cynicism of elite politics.

Apple has introduced MacBook Air, the world's thinnest notebook.

(Now you know what to get me for my birthday.)

CNN predicts Romney will win the Republican primary election in Michigan. Well, it would have been more of a surprise if he didn't win his home state.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary election in Michigan. Not that it will do her any good as the state has lost all 156 of its Democratic delegates for allocating delegates outside of the Democratic National Committee-approved timeframe.

The New York Times has more.

I know, it can't get more gay than this...

I remember when I first watched this live performance on MTV in 1990. I was eighteen and had just recently come out. In those days, the RFSL centre in Stockholm arranged informal get-togethers for young gays and lesbians on Monday evenings. Socially, I would say that was the best time of my life.

To many gay men of my generation, Madonna represents something very special. Not that she was ever the best singer or dancer, but her open flirtation with gay culture gave us strength in a world dominated by homophobia and the grim reality of a life-threatening virus. I don't think my straight friends ever realized how tough if was to be a gay teenager in those days. My straight friends' biggest fear was to get a woman pregnant my mistake; mine was to get killed by neo-Nazis or HIV.

Anyhow, I remember this Madonna performance and how we watched every Monday for weeks. And although effeminacy never appealed to me, I was caught up in the drama of Madonna and her semi-drag-queen dancers. The in-your-face gayness of it all was simply irresistible to a teenage queer in 1990.

A new study by Professor Martin Paldam of Århus University states that the total annual Danish contribution of 1.8 billion euros (2.8 billion US dollars) to developing nations has no effect on economic growth nor helps to promote democracy. My guess is that this goes for most of Europe's lavish development assistance policies. What developing nations need more than financial aid is a global free-trade agreement that eliminates harmful tariffs and force the United States and the European Union to open their markets to outside competitors.

Lenny Bruce:

"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses."

Every fan of Harry Potter knows Dumbledore is gay. It's old news. I still think this fake cover of People I just found on the Perez Hilton blog is funny though.

I'm thinking, Sock?

My life has become so much better since I coincidentally found Niclas Berggren's blog. Where else would I find articles on conservative gay icons? From a Brian Coleman article in the New Statesman:

Since Lady Thatcher was stabbed in the back by a cabal of straight men in 1990 she has gone through her "Norma Desmond" phase "it was Politics that got small" and has emerged as a worthy successor to the late Queen Mother as the Nation's favourite relic of a bygone era. In that pantheon of gay icons, abused by straight men, that includes Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, Margaret Thatcher has it all, beauty and brains.

There are many gay Tory men who would like to sleep with David Cameron but it is Lady Thatcher whose portrait hangs over their bed!

Something for queer toffs, I'm sure.

"Sex workers try to avoid discovery because they are oppressed here. And since it's very easy to have steady clients, prostitutes have no real need to advertise their services," says sex worker Isabella Lund in an article about prostitution in Sweden published by The Local.

Anyone who honestly believes criminalization works?

He makes a very convincing argument. I mean, if sad old Hillary can win votes by crying, why not a cute Ron Paul fan?

It's not polite to copy another blogger's entry in full, but I make an exception for this short observation from Megan McArdle:

Did you ever go on a date with one of those guys who thinks that if one splash of cologne is sexy, eight will be positively irresistible? After you've crawled, gasping, onto the street and the blue tone has faded from your lips and fingernails, you kind of want to go back and explain to him, gently, that many things in this world are really best in moderation. Not enough to actually swim back into that overpowering miasma of Polo, mind you. But as you walk home, you are sort of wrapped in a wistful longing that someone would set him straight.

I'm getting that feeling about Hillary. Cry once, you're human. Cry all the time, and it's a schtick. A schtick, moreover, that suggests you're a cynical, manipulative woman who uses tears to get what you want.

Yes, I have dated men like that. And yes, I have the exact same feeling when it comes to Hillary.

Halmstad University's student union has angered a number of bigoted feminists after arranging a theme night entitled "Red Light District". From The Local:

The union hoped to shake students out of their winter torpor and onto the dancefloor in November when it advertised a party bearing "the mark of sin".

But Gina Kling, who recently completed a course in gender studies at the university in western Sweden, was among a group of students appalled by the union's sex district theme.

"It's upsetting that they don't care about trafficking and the debasement of women," she told [local newspaper] Hallandsposten.

Gina Kling joined forces with political science student Malin Nordblom to write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper expressing their disgust.

"I took up the issue in my class and everybody thought it was a good idea for us to protest against the union in a letter to the newspaper," said Kling.

The irate student said she would have expected the students' representatives to know better than to associate one of its parties with the sex trade.

"As soon as I saw the posters I thought they displayed a lack of respect. I actually ripped some of them down," said Kling.

Once again, I am ashamed of being a Swedish citizen. Sweden's radical feminist movement, with its attacks on sex workers and intolerant attitude towards sexual minorities, has that effect on me.

More in Swedish here.

(Picture of street in Amsterdam's Red Light District.)

Do you want an MA in Creationism? If the Institute for Creation Research in Texas gets what it wants, you will soon be able to obtain one. However, the programme is not open to everyone:

The program is open only to students who believe that God created the universe in six days and that those who deny Jesus Christ face eternal damnation...

Well, that ought to disqualify most people—including most Christians.

More here.

From Pinknews:

The Socialist mayor of Paris has been given increased police protection after US security services informed their French counterparts that he might be attacked by terrorists.

While monitoring internet traffic related to Al-Qaeda the CIA discovered that Bertrand Delanoe was listed as a target.

As mayor of France's biggest city, he is the most prominent gay politician in the country.

"I am calm. I have the information I need and I have complete confidence in the work of police headquarters vis-a-vis security problems in general, terrorism in particular and finally the protection of the mayor of Paris," Mr Delanoe said on TV station iTele.

(Via QX.)

On a visit to Israel, George W Bush said that the United States should have bombed the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. The Times reports:

The comment, which Mr Bush reportedly made to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a visit to Israel's Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, appeared to be the first acknowledgement by an American president of failure to strike Nazi death camps.

According Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, Mr Bush had tears in his eyes at two moments during an hour-long tour of the museum. 

Upon viewing an aerial shot of Auschwitz, Mr Bush said the ruling not to bomb it was "complex."

He then spoke to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's decision, clearly pondering the options before rendering an opinion of his own, Mr Shalev said.

"We should have bombed it," Mr Bush said.

I think so to. To use force to halt ongoing terrorism and genocide is always morally justified.

An anonymous Clinton adviser to Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian:

"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

Eh?

From the New York Times:

The puzzling site in Syria that Israeli jets bombed in September grew more curious on Friday with the release of a satellite photograph showing new construction there that resembles the site's former main building.

Israel's air attack was directed against what Israeli and American intelligence analysts had judged to be a partly constructed nuclear reactor. The Syrians vigorously denied the atomic claim.

Before the attack, satellite imagery showed a tall, square building there measuring about 150 feet long per side.

After the attack, the Syrians wiped the area clean, with some analysis calling the speed of the cleanup a tacit admission of guilt. The barren site is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

The image released Friday came from a private company, DigitalGlobe, in Longmont, Colo. It shows a tall, square building under construction that appears to closely resemble the original structure, with the exception that the roof is vaulted instead of flat. The photo was taken from space on Wednesday.

The very thought of Syrian nuclear weapons should make any friend of peace and democracy in the Middle East anxious.

I took a political test so that I could compare my result to those of the candidates in the US primary elections. I realize I would have no one to vote for. Luckily, I don't have to worry about that. I'm not an American citizen, so I have no vote to cast. Anyhow, here's what I found (my result to the right):

(Inspired by Johan Folin.)

From the Guardian:

Twins separated at birth and adopted by separate parents later married each other without realising they were brother and sister. The siblings were recently granted an annulment in the high court's family division.

The judge ruled that the marriage had never validly existed. Marriages can be annulled if one of the parties was under 16 at the time, if it is a bigamous union, or if the couple are closely related.

The identities of the British pair and the details of the relationship have been kept secret, but it is known that they were separated soon after birth and were never told they were twins. They did not discover they were blood relatives until after the wedding.

Fascinating. What are the odds? Makes me think about all fiction on the subject of separated twins longing for each other without knowing.

While visiting Israel, President George W. Bush said the occupation of land must end to enable the creation of a Palestinian state. Don Surber of Daily Mail comments:

For 60 years, the United States has stood tall for Israel, which is now the sole democracy in the Arabian desert. George W. Bush wants us to abandon that.

He is wrong.

Trading land for peace does not work.

Ask the American Indian.

I think Mr Surber is right. Not that I endorse the occupation of Palestinian land, but to think that leaving the West Bank and Gaza would bring peace and solve Israel's problem with Islamist terrorism is naïve. There can be no Palestinian state until the terrorists have surrendered their weapons.

For once, I can post some good news concerning Hugo Chávez:

Venezuelan Red Cross helicopters plucked two high-profile Colombian hostages from the jungle yesterday, ending their six-year kidnap ordeal and raising hopes for other hostages. A day of drama ended in breakthrough after Clara Rojas, a former Colombian vice-presidential candidate, and Consuelo González, a former member of the country's congress, were retrieved from a remote region in eastern Colombia, in a deal brokered by Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez.

The numbers from a new opinion poll by Fox News:

John McCain 25%
Mike Huckabee 18%
Mitt Romney 17%
Fred Thompson 9%
Rudy Giuliani 5%
Ron Paul 5%

Download all poll results here.

Some time ago, a reader wrote an email asking me what "heteronormativity" means. This is it. (Well, sort of.) Uptight legislators who think their monogamous lifestyle is a God-given norm queers must conform to.

By the way, here's an international gay sauna guide that might come in handy when travelling. Here's some information about the phenomenon.

Roseanne Barr:

Oprah has given us Swartzenegger and Dr. Phil. If that was not offensive enough to decent thinking people, now she brings us Obama. He has no ideas, no plan and nothing to add other than the cynical pacification of the masses with bedtime stories about hope, while calling Unions "special interest groups" that need to be done away with.

Obama votes with Bush constantly funding this terrible endless war.

Oprah, you play the race card and the gender card too.

You are a closeted republican and chose Barak Obama because you do not like other women who actually stand for something to working American Women besides glamour, angels, hollywood and dieting!

When Americans find out that Obama backs right wing corporate racist anti worker bullshit, they will not vote for him, and the victory will go to the most racist right wing republican ever... Mccain, who is a fascist!

Roseanne was never funny, not even when that was "her thing". Her shows in the 1990s were amusing time-killers at best. But now she's just a sad, old lunatic trying to get some attention.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I had some major problems with Network Solutions a few years ago. Back in April 2000, I registered my domain name with them, and for the first five years, their servers hosted my website. But one day in 2005, when I logged in to my Network Solutions account, everything I had saved was gone. A message explained that they had some failed server, but that everything would be restored shortly. A couple of days later, I contacted the customer support. They promised to restore everything. Nothing happened in days, so I sent new emails to customer support, and got nothing but irrelevant standard phrases in return.

In August 2005, I had had enough and said, "Fuck this!"—and bought server space at Scorpion Data. Then, when I emailed Network Solutions to order a transfer of my domain hosting, they suddenly decided I was a "valued customer" who they wanted to keep. To Network Solutions, keeping customers is all about making things very complicated for customers. For months I had to redirect traffic because Network Solutions refused to accept the transfer.

I'm reminded of all this when I read that Network Solutions has decided to register every domain name people search for on their website. In other words, when someone tries to find out if a domain name is available, it immediately becomes taken by Network Solutions. If it's a domain name the searcher really wants, he or she has no option but to become a Network Solutions customer. Clever strategy. Unknowingly, people are trapped in the Network Solutions net.

Network Solutions sucks in every way possible. From Techcrunch:

As of Tuesday, if a user does a search on the site for a domain name, Network Solution immediately registers the domain in their own name. If the user then goes to a discount registrar to register the domain, it shows as unavailable. The user must then either not buy the domain, or go back to Network Solutions and pay their $35/year fee.

So far they've registered over 72,000 domain names based on user searches.

More here.

This is most likely an endorsement that Barack Obama could easily do without. From MSNBC:

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the White House Thursday in a timely slap at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as his own vice presidential running mate.

Quoting a black American hero in endorsing the man who hopes to be the first black president, Kerry told a cheering crowd, "Martin Luther King said the time is always right to do what is right." Now is the time, Kerry said, to declare "that Barack Obama can be, will be and should be the next president of the United States."

In an interview with CNN, Ron Paul says, "People who know me, nobody is going to believe this. That's just not my language. It's not my life." Later he adds, "Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism is a collectivist idea."

Background here and here.

"In 2007 it became clear that the recorded-music industry is contracting and that it will be a very different beast from what it was in the 20th century." It's the words of analyst Mark Mulligan, who has studied the recording industry and its battle with online downloading and file sharing. From an article in this week's The Economist:

In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there.

In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing.

It seems obvious to me that CDs are losing the battle to computer hard drives and open-access servers. No matter what we think about it, this is a reality.

It will be interesting to follow the recoding industry's response to the new situation. Right now it's fighting a hopeless two-front battle. While new consumer trends are hurting sales figures, established artists like Madonna are turning their backs on the traditional music industry in favour of a new music industry based on performance rather than recording. Perhaps the music industry of tomorrow will consider recorded music mere promotion for concerts and events?

From Stephen Colbert's book I Am America (And So Can You!):

No matter how many kids you have, you need to pick a favorite. It's going to happen on its own, but it'll happen faster if you and your spouse have at least debated the issue. The important thing is to not tell any of your kids who the favorite is—just let them know you have picked one. That's a guessing game that will keep them occupied and quiet on many a road trip.

A great tip. Thanks!

Now, I would like to add that kids could use a similar method. Pick a favourite parent and begin to butter him or her up. That will make the other parent(s) jealous, which—if you play your cards right—could result in more gifts and benefits for you. If your biological parents are separated and live with new spouses, that's even better for you. Believe me, there is nothing your dad hates more than your mother's new husband. (He will never admit it, but the very thought of the new husband in bed with your mother is killing him.) So if you fancy a new computer or iPod, just hint to your dad that mom's new fella has promised you one for your birthday.

(Warning! This entry may contain traces of humour.)

At a recent seminar, someone asked for a really simple definition of religion. I couldn't come up with a good enough answer at the time. But just now I found one in Beverley Clack and Brian R. Clack's The Philosophy of Religion: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 73:

[Religion is] a system of beliefs about supernatural realities.

Tehran shuts down due to heavy snow. Could it be global warming?

(Photo by Mohammad Akhlaghi.)

Lisa Keen of the New England newspaper Bay Windows reports:

The Concord Monitor reported Tuesday that the Romney campaign said many of its supporters received phone calls on primary day telling them that Romney supports same-sex marriage and gays being allowed in the Boy Scouts. According to the campaign, the callers claimed to be from the Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay Republican organization, and claimed that the group was endorsing Romney.

A Romney spokesperson called the calls "completely false."

Log Cabin has not endorsed Romney and, in fact, has aired radio and television ads opposing only him among the Republican candidates. Its ad in New Hampshire focused on his positions concerning taxes. And Log Cabin national President Patrick Sammon said the group "had nothing to do" with the phone calls.

Romney is a well-known opponent of same-sex marriage, as are all the Republican candidates.

The World Net Daily compares John McCain's New Hampshire win to Lazarus's resurrection. Suitable simile for that particular publication, perhaps, but still a tiny bit exaggerated, in my opinion. McCain wasn't dead, only behind in the polls.

John Harwood:

Recall that in 2000, John McCain smashed Mr. Bush in New Hampshire by dominating the votes of independents. But Mr. Bush wore down Mr. McCain in subsequent contests with a two-pronged strategy. He co-opted the Arizona senator's "reform" mantra by calling himself the reformer who would actually produce results, and sharply criticized Mr. McCain in ways that deepened the doubts of Republican regulars. It worked, especially well in contests limited to GOP voters.

After her Iowa defeat, Mrs. Clinton adopted precisely the same approach against Barack Obama in New Hampshire. She co-opted Mr. Obama's "change" theme but argued that she could act to produce it, while her less-experienced rival could only talk. She and her husband, former President Clinton, bluntly attacked Mr. Obama for having waffled on issues.

The strategy succeeded.

Why turn down a successful concept?

Everyone who comments on the New Hampshire primary election seems to focus on the mistakes made by the pollsters. How could their predictions be so wrong, people ask. Well, that is a reasonable question, but the truth of the matter is that the predicted support for Obama and Edwards was accurate. Only Clinton surged ahead in the last twenty-four hours.

More here.

Dan Savage:

Edwards needs to get the fuck out of this race. He hoped to make it a two man race by knocking Hillary out in New Hampshire. Didn't happen, game over. It's time for him to go.

I second that.

The Little Green Footballs blog has scrutinized the Ron Paul newsletters and found they contain personal details making him the likely author.

Background here.

2:05: Liveblogging begins.

2:06: Suddenly, things are looking better for the Clintons. At least according to the first predictions from CNN.

2:14: CNN: John McCain wins the Republican vote.

2:31: Latest predictions give Hillary Clinton 40%, Barack Obama 36%, and John Edwards 16%.

2:44: Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani have officially congratulated McCain on his New Hampshire win.

2:52: Mitt Romney speaks. He says something about America being great because people believe in God and family. Well, I disagree. The United States is the most successful nation in history because its constitution limits the government, which guarantees the American people liberty.

3:01: Huckabee speaks. (But says nothing.)

3:06: Latest prediction gives McCain 38%.

3:17: McCain's victory speech. Says he will win by being honest. He wants to make certain the government serves the people.

3:25: Latest predictions give Hillary Clinton 39%, Barack Obama 36%, and John Edwards 17%.

3:39: About half of the Democrat votes have been counted. The race between Clinton and Obama is still too close to call.

3:46: Ron Paul speaks. He praises his young supporters and expresses his deep concern for the threat to civil liberties.

3:55: Bill Richardson's concession speech. He's predicted to get about 5% of the Democratic votes.

4:17: John Edward's concession speech. (He comes in third in the race. He's predicted to get about 17% of the Democratic votes.)

As a Swede, I recognize what Edwards is saying as classic Social Democratic mumbo-jumbo. Yes, there are many homeless Americans. And yes, that is terrible. But higher taxes and bigger government will not solve that problem. Sweden has tried Edwards's politics for fifty years. We pay the world's highest taxes to the largest government administration in history. But who benefits from it? Not the homeless that still has to sleep under bridges in urban Sweden. Edwards as president will only benefit those middleclass Americans who already live comfortable lives.

4:34: The Associated Press predicts Clinton will win.

4:47: CNN predicts Clinton will win the New Hampshire primary.

4:48: Barack Obama's concession speech. He begins by asking his supporters to applaud Hillary Clinton. To my surprise, he talks about tax cuts. Less surprising is his talk about ending the Iraq war and bring the troops home.

5:06: Hillary Clinton's victory speech. For the past seven years, we've had a president that stands up for big business, now it's time for a president that stands up for you, Clinton says. The government should not just be for the already privileged.

5:25: Clinton won. My hunch was right and I didn't have to change the picture I uploaded when I began tonight's liveblogging.

5:26: Liveblogging ends.

In a devastating article, James Kirchick of The New Republic reveals the bigoted past of presumably libertarian Republican Ron Paul:

In 1990, one newsletter mentioned a reporter from a gay magazine "who certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist." In an item titled, "The Pink House?" the author of a newsletter—again, presumably Paul—complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." When Marvin Liebman, a founder of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom and a longtime political activist, announced that he was gay in the pages of National Review, a Paul newsletter implored, "Bring Back the Closet!" Surprisingly, one item expressed ambivalence about the contentious issue of gays in the military, but ultimately concluded, "Homosexuals, if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals."

Read the article in full here.

In a press release published on his website, Ron Paul defends himself. He writes, "The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts."

More about Ron Paul and the New Republic article here, here, here, here, here, and here.

"The Barack Obama fund-raisers in New York have to turn away contributors," the New York Observer reports.

"We really hate to turn money away—especially this much—but we don't have a choice," says an Obama fund-raiser.

American president Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in a letter to his friend and predecessor John Adams (1797–1801):

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being of his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupitor.

In my opinion, Thomas Jefferson is one of the greatest presidents the United States has ever had. A true intellectual. I read a brilliant biography about him a few years ago. When reading it, I realized what twisted perception many of America’s contemporary conservatives have on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. The United States of America was not founded on Christian values per se, but rather on the secular ideas if the Enlightenment.

More excellent Jefferson quotes here.

This is so stupid. I can't believe anyone seriously think this man can turn gay men heterosexual.

(Via Niclas Berggren.)

I have made a few changes to the website. If it looks or acts strange, try to reload. If it still doesn't work, let me know.

By the way, Barack Obama's talk about change seems to pay off in New Hampshire. Personally, I liked the message of change until I saw the picture on his campaign website. Arranged family pictures in politics makes me sick. Can't stand it.

You have to be either very drunk or extremely stupid to do a thing like this. I don't know who the men in the picture are, but I hope for their sake they never put an extension cord in water again.

A snapshot of the latest New Hampshire primary polls:

• CNN/WMUR: Obama +10, McCain +6
• USA Today/Gallup: Obama +13, McCain  +4
  
• Strategic Vision: Obama +9, McCain +8
  
• Rasmussen: Obama +12, McCain +2
• 7NEWS/Suffolk: Obama +2, Romney +3
• McClatchy/MSNBC: Obama +2, McCain +8
• Reuters/Zogby: Obama +1, Romney +1
• Concord Monitor/Research 2000: Obama +1, McCain +6
• American Research Group: Obama +12, McCain +14

(Poll compilation from Political Wire, via Mathias Sundin. Picture by Swedish cartoonist Olle Johansson.)

Den kristna tidningen Dagen har frågat sina läsare vilka åtgärder de tycker att man ska vidta mot hatbrott riktade mot homosexuella. Tidningen ställer frågan i samband med en artikel om en 35-årig man som aktivt letat efter homosexuella män som han senare knivskurit. Trots detta anser var tredje att våld mot homosexuella inte behöver motarbetas. Och i kommentarerna som följer på frågan framgår tydligt att stora delar av svensk kristenhet tycker att det är offrens fel.

Vad hände med det kristna kärleksbudskapet?

Tor Billgren har skrivit mer här och här.

I once worked with a woman who claimed she could tell just about anything about a person only by studying his or her handwriting. I wonder what she would be able to say from these signatures:

The New York Times has an article about the problems many people with HIV have to face due to longevity.

"The virus is under control, and I should be in a state of ecstasy," says a 56-year-old who was found to have AIDS in 1987, "but I can't even tie my own shoe laces and get up and down the subway stairs."

People with HIV live longer thanks to antiretroviral medication, but that has in itself caused new health problems. Cardiovascular disease, rare forms of cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and depression make some wonder if the AIDS treatment is worth the price.

Meanwhile, the false perception of HIV as a semi-curable infection has taken root in the gay community. This has resulted in more men engaging in unsafe sex. The number of newly diagnosed Swedish gay men with HIV doubled in 2007. To far too many young men, sex with condom is a no-go. Considering the growing number of HIV-positive people who are healthy but infectious, promoting condom use is vital if we are to be successful in our fight against AIDS.

It's not new, but this 1995 documentary by XENUTV is still valid.

At least according to Andrew Morton's new Cruise biography.

James Tapper of Daily Mail has more.

I felt a sudden drop in temperature when I worked in my office late last night. As I walked over to check the radiator, I noticed the snow falling. I snapped this picture of the car park outside my office window.

If you're a Swede into American politics, Mathias Sundin's new blog is something for you. He's following the ongoing primaries on location.

Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published sixty years ago today. Groundbreaking and controversial as it was in a genuinely homophobic society, Kinsey's book was the first step towards a greater acceptance of homosexual men. But it was more than that. Kinsey's study of male sexuality revealed not only that homosexual encounters are common, but also that men in general are not made for monogamy.

Kinsey's findings have been fiercely criticized over the years. And rightfully so. The men Kinsey interviewed were not representative of the American male. But despite its flaws, the book—with its open-minded approach to human sexuality—is perhaps the most important milestone in sexology.

Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. (A. C. Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.)

Kinsey became famous for his scale, which he used to determine whether a man was gay, straight, or just a little bent. Where are you on the Kinsey scale? From the Kinsey Institute website:

0. Exclusively heterosexual with no homosexual
1. Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2. Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3. Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4. Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5. Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6. Exclusively homosexual

Read more at Box Turtle Bulletin.

(Via Niclas Berggren.)

Earlier today, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly got into a confrontation with an Obama aide after O'Reilly started screaming as he tried to get Barack Obama's attention following a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire.

This outburst comes as no surprise to those of us familiar with O'Reilly's temper. Books and articles have been written about it. Here's an extract from a Jack Shafer article, published by Slate Magazine in 2003:

Fox News channel talk show host Bill O'Reilly says "shut up" the way other people say "um."

On his daily show, The O'Reilly Factor, he uses it as a place-holder for an idea still formulating in his brain. As a way to begin a sentence, end it, or punctuate it. Sometimes he says "shut up" with fury, eyes bulging. When he's being dismissive, he delivers it offhandedly and without real malice. Other times he says it gently, with a minxlike twinkle in his eye, signaling to all the world that he's just being frisky.

O'Reilly wants specific individuals to shut up, and he names them. He would like all gays and lesbians to zip it—even though he's invited them on his show to talk about … homosexuality. He's even heaved this impolite language at entire nations, demanding they recuse themselves from the international conversation.

In the half-decade his top-rated show has been on the air, he's called for the muzzling of practically everybody. At the rate O'Reilly is going, he'll be the only person allowed to speak in a couple of years. Which, I suppose, is his master plan.

Brandon Keim of Wired Science writes about sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson and asks if homosexuality could be an evolutionary manifestation of emergent eusociality:

Wilson thinks eusociality evolved as a group-level adaptation for out-competing other insect colonies for food: with some colony members devoted to protecting eggs and larva, others could forage farther abroad. All that's needed to take this evolutionary step is the rise of a gene—or system of genes—that makes workers want to stay home and help rather than leave the colony and reproduce elsewhere.

The theory is far from settled. No such allele has been identified, and theoretical biologists haven't been able to model it. Bert Hoelldobler, an Arizona State University entomologist and co-author with Wilson of a recent book on ants, said in an email that his friend "is mistaken when he uses low degree of relatedness in highly advanced eusocial systems as evidence for the insignificance of relatedness for the evolution of eusociality."

All this debate might seem like an academic diversion, but for the incredible success of eusocial species. "While only 2% of known insect species are eusocial," writes Wilson, "these species comprise most of the insect biomass." While one has to be careful in drawing early conclusions and then applying them to people, it's clear that in some ways this cooperative system, so much more subtle than the classically self-centered Darwinian ideal, is extraordinarily successful.

So with all necessary caveats against reductionism and misappropriation, we can ask: should human societies conceive of themselves in terms of  group-level selection? Have we already developed aspects of eusociality? And—just to make matters really interesting—could non-reproducing humans, such as (most) gays and lesbians, as well as heterosexuals who choose not to have kids, actually be a manifestation of this emergent eusociality?

Army Major Andrew Olmsted, a blogger and soldier, died fighting for liberty in Iraq on 3 January. I must admit that I had not read his blog until I read this moving text written by Major Olmsted to be published in the event of his own death:

What I don't want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I've enjoyed in my life. So if you're up for that, put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984), grab a Coke and have a drink with me. If you have it, throw 'Freedom Isn't Free' from the Team America soundtrack in; if you can't laugh at that song, I think you need to lighten up a little. I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact.

When posting this entry I also think of my friends in Amsterdam who only days ago suffered a great loss when their friend died unexpectedly. Perhaps Mr Olmsted's words somehow can capture what your friend was about and give you strength at the funeral on Monday. Your friend is dead, but you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that fact.

Personally, I don't like bars that allow smoking. I try to avoid them. However, I defend the bar owner's right to decide what rules apply to his or her establishment. What kind of libertarian would I be if I didn't?

AFP reports from a Europe that's fighting itself:

Europe started 2008 with a raft of new laws against smoking, air pollution and even junk food adverts, but some grumbled that the New Year's resolutions from the "nanny state" cramped their style.

Germany, France and Portugal joined many of their neighbours with anti-smoking bans in bars, restaurants and cafes from January 1, lifting the grey haze that was part of their romantic atmosphere for more than a century.

In car-crazy Germany, drivers in major cities including the capital Berlin faced restrictions barring smog-producing vehicles from their centres while the northern Italian city of Milan imposed tolls on the heaviest polluters.

And Britain cracked down on television commercials for food and drink products heavy in fat, salt and sugar that target children under the age of 16 in a bid to curb obesity.

While many accepted the new rules as reasonable measures in the name of public health, some bristled at what they called the state's overreach and the creeping end of the European way of life.

On 6 January 2007, I wrote my first blog entry for that year after taking a photo from one of the windows at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. I wrote that there is something melancholic about airports. I still think so. Don't know why exactly.

Now I'm back at Schiphol, on my way back to Sweden. The flight to Copenhagen has been delayed with two hours, and I have nothing to do. So I thought I do what I did last year while waiting in the airport. Here's this year's post-"New Year" picture from an airport window.

And we have two winners. From the New York Times:

Mr. Huckabee won with 34.4 percent of the delegate support, after 86 percent of precincts had reported. Mr. Romney had 25.4 percent, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee had 13.4 percent and Senator John McCain of Arizona had 13.2 percent.

On the Democratic side, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Obama had 37.6 percent of the delegate support, Mr. Edwards 29.8 percent and Mrs. Clinton had 29.5 percent. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was fourth, at 2.11 percent.

Rooftops in Kalverstraat, Amsterdam, on Wednesday.

I apologize for the slow blogging. I'm on holiday until tomorrow.

Omröstningen är avslutad och bloggosfären har valt Isabella Lunds "Att arbeta som eskort" till årets bästa politiska blogg. Ett stort grattis till Isabella som bättre än någon annan verkligen använt sin blogg för att uppnå konkreta politika förändringar. Debatten om den moralistiska sexköpslagen vore död i Sverige om inte Isabella ihärdigt höll den levande genom att föra fram sexarbetarnas egna erfarenheter av köpförbudet.

Amstel River as it ran through central Amsterdam yesterday afternoon.

I apologize for the slow blogging. I'm on holiday until 5 January.

Even failed pictures can have some qualities. I like the colour. I'll call it "Amsterdam Red".

I survived New Year's Eve in Amsterdam. Here's a picture I took at midnight. Fireworks were everywhere and children in the streets tried their hardest to triumph over one another.

At midnight, Malta and Cyprus scrapped their national currencies for the euro. In Cyprus, the changeover was marked with special events. Among other things, the media reports that the Cypriot President made a ceremonial first euro cash withdrawal from a cash machine at the Ministry of Finance. In Malta, too, the changeover was celebrated with officials making first cash-withdrawals. From Malta Independent:

Maltese revellers last night bid farewell to 2007 and the Maltese lira while they ushered in 2008 and a new currency—before a backdrop of fireworks and entertainment organised from Valletta to Paola to Victoria.

Years of fiscal diligence and austerity measures paid off last night as Malta officially adopted the euro as its official currency, bringing, with the tandem euro adoption in Cyprus, the number of countries claiming the euro as their national currency to 15.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who as finance minister along with parliamentary secretary Tonio Fenech, has been hard at work ensuring Malta met the demandingly stringent Maastricht Criteria for eurozone membership, and marked the occasion in a symbolic way last night.

A few minutes past midnight Dr Gonzi made the ceremonial first euro withdrawal from an ATM at the Valletta Waterfront. He was followed by Central Bank of Malta Governor Michael C. Bonello, Mr Fenech and the National Euro Changeover Committee’s Joseph F.X. Zahra and Alan Camilleri.