“The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.  Beheadings, electrocutions, hangings, lethal injections, shootings and stonings have no place in the 21st century” – Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Akmal Shaikh, the first EU national killed in China in over half a century

You’re probably not aware of it, but this morning, whilst you slept, some time around 02:30UTC; China executed a mentally ill man, Akmal Shaikh, a 53 year old British citizen; the first EU national to be executed in China since 1951. Akmal, who dreamed of being a pop star, and had written a song he hoped would bring about world peace, was killed after being exploited into trafficking 4kg of drugs into the country; carrying just 50g is enough for China to execute a person.

But Akmal is not alone in his extreme treatment by the Chinese legal system – in 2008, China executed at least 1,718 people, accounting for some 72% of recorded executions worldwide. In the country, you can face the death penalty for some 68 offences, ranging from murder, to drug trafficking, to financial offences. Until recently, execution was carried out solely by firing squad, although China has now started to utilise lethal injection. Appeals against the death penalty are almost always unsuccessful, and cries for mercy ignored.

In my mind there is never justification for man to kill fellow man (excluding DR/provocation/justified self-defence), and most certainly not for governments to kill citizens, their own or otherwise. China asks us to respect that Akmal was guilty under their law, and was executed under their law; to that I say that I can not, and will not accept, nor respect, any law or country that will allow the state to get away with what amounts to murder. China, as an emerging superpower, and with one of the largest populations in the world, needs to be leading the way on human rights, not executing fellow man; and the world; government and public, should be condemning them for their actions.

We can only hope that as we move forward into a new decade, the world takes a step towards abolishing such inhumane acts.

"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.  Beheadings, electrocutions, hangings, lethal injections, shootings and stonings have no place in the 21st century" - Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International. You're probably not aware of it, but this morning, whilst you slept, some time around 02:30UTC; China executed a mentally ill ...

Greetings to all of you, most of whom will be arriving via Twitter (praise be the tweet).

Today, I have a most wonderful infographic for you, produced by yours truly. it’s 119540×700 pixels of distance-y goodness! I made it because I felt people didn’t quite appreciate the scale of the distances involved when it comes the Earth, the International Space Station, and the Moon. For added comparison I threw in Hubble, and Hawaii to America.

Anyway; enjoy!

Cropped Image Showing only ISS, Hubble, and Hawaii. Click for full size (cropped).

CLICK HERE for the full image, including distance to Moon.

(warning: picture is EXTREMELY long, although filesize is only 801kb. )

Note: you’ll probably have to download the image to view it, as most browsers do not render .tif in page.

Greetings to all of you, most of whom will be arriving via Twitter (praise be the tweet). Today, I have a most wonderful infographic for you, produced by yours truly. it's 119540x700 pixels of distance-y goodness! I made it because I felt people didn't quite appreciate the scale of the distances involved when it comes ...

Just a short message for you. Christmas isn’t an excuse to be more wasteful. Keep recycling (or start if you don’t!), don’t waste materials or food, and don’t use more than you have to!

Our carbon footprint is big enough the rest of the year as it is, so why not try to actually cut it over Christmas, rather than inflate it? After all, if our governments can’t agree on ways to tackle climate change, we just have to take it into our own hands: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Re-think.

As an added incentive to spread the message, the first person to retweet this entry by clicking the little button up near the top will be gifted a nice, green, digitally distributed Steam copy of Braid. To be eligible you must have a Steam account. I’ll contact the winner on twitter to ask for your steam ID.

Here’s some America-centric statistics for all of you:

Presented by Online Education

Have a merry, green, Christmas!

Just a short message for you. Christmas isn't an excuse to be more wasteful. Keep recycling (or start if you don't!), don't waste materials or food, and don't use more than you have to! Our carbon footprint is big enough the rest of the year as it is, so why not try to actually cut ...

Finally got around to making the blog look a little more unique. Naturally this is achieved by adding Batman to every page. Anyway, I was actually lazy with this, it’s built upon the Retromania theme, hence in terms of layout it’s identical to before, just with new, blue and white colours.

Finally got around to making the blog look a little more unique. Naturally this is achieved by adding Batman to every page. Anyway, I was actually lazy with this, it's built upon the Retromania theme, hence in terms of layout it's identical to before, just with new, blue and white colours.

It’s December 2009. A few weeks from now the year comes to an end, and with it, we usher in 2010, and the start of the second decade of the 21st Century. I could talk about all the things expected in this coming decade, and what it means for you and me, society, and humanity as a whole, but that can be done later anyway. No, instead I’m going to bore you by giving you a list of what were, to me personally, the most important moments, events, or things of ‘the noughties’.

(Originally this was going to be a top 10, but I couldn’t think of enough major stuff, so I had to drop it down to 5…)

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It's December 2009. A few weeks from now the year comes to an end, and with it, we usher in 2010, and the start of the second decade of the 21st Century. I could talk about all the things expected in this coming decade, and what it means for you and me, society, and ...