Today is Amnesty's "Freedom of speech day": A movement to illuminate the lack of freedom of speech around the world. They encourage everybody to do something related to freedom of speech on this day, and this is my contribution.

I hope you've been to the beach and reflected upon the grains of sand as I suggested in one of my previous blog posts. Even if you didn't, here's something else to think about.
Go back to that previous post and look at that Hubble photo once more. How many galaxies can you count in that photo? If you do end up with a number, let me know, because there are too many for me to count. Even if you don't count them you can clearly see there's a lot of them. And bear in mind that this is just a very, very small piece of the skies above us. Also remember that every galaxy consists of a whole lot of stars (roughly 3 x 10^11, or 300 billion stars in our galaxy alone). Before we go any further let's digress into something different, yet still related.

Summer have arrived in Norway (although it's taken a short break now). It has been hot and the beaches have been crowded. This reminded me of a little thought experiment you can try on your own the next time you're on the beach.
While you're there, grab a handful of sand. How many grains of sand would you guess you had in your hand? One hundred thousand? A million? Even more? Now try to think how many grains of sand there are in total on that beach. A number you can hardly imagine, right? This number would actually be close to the number of stars in our galaxy (roughly 3 x 10^11, or 300 billion).
Now look at this latest photo from the Hubble Space Telescope. What you are seeing here are galaxies. And lots of them. And this is just a very tiny bit of our skies. Try to imagine (even how hard it is) how many stars are in only this photo. Then try to imagine that the sky is actually filled with galaxies like in this photo. How many stars would you be up to now? I don't know about you but I can't really imagine the number we're up to now. But one fact remains: There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the Earth. Not only grains of sand on the beach you're on, but on all the beaches in all the world. That's a lot of sand, and that sand doesn't even cover the number of stars in the universe. We truly live in a very big universe.

Sources:

Google Answers
Larger photo (6000 x 4260 @ 33MB)
Even larger photo (10816 x 7679 @ 125MB)
Bad Astronomy Blog

There's a new documentary out now called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" (do they fail to see the self deprecating irony in the title?) hosted by '80s Cool Guy Ben Stein, nonetheless. It deals with how creationist "scientists" aren't being taken seriously by the scientific community.
Any real scientist knows that creationism has no valid scientific marks since the "theory" can't be falsified (which is a major point in any real scientific theory), and they always claim, in the end, that "god did it". Besides, "creationism" is just "Intelligent Design" disguised as another word.
This is all a bit too much for me to delve into, but thankfully there are other people out there to make my life so much easier: http://www.expelledexposed.com/
I strongly recommend reading everything on that site, and please also link to that site as much as you can, since it will make it get higher on the result list when people Google the movie.

Geert Wilders, who is the leader of the Dutch Freedomparty, has made a short film named "Fitna" that is very critical about Islam, and he released it to the world during a recent press conference. The film has been published on the party's website (an English version can be seen here).
The Dutch authorities fear riots both in the Netherlands and internationally (with good reason when you look at all the trouble the Muhammed caricatures made) and I bet there will be loud protests from the Muslim communities around the world.
I have just seen the film myself and felt like I had to comment about it, and what better way to do it than through my new blog :)