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In the late Palezoic and Mesozoic times, a supercontinent is said to have existed, which was comprised of all the continental crust of the earth. It’s name is a composition of the Greek words for all and earth – Pangea.

Pangea Day – tomorrow – is a joined effort to turn this supercontinent into reality again. It will bring together an audience of 500 million or more people in a worldwide filmfest, which you can follow in thousands of venues around the globe, or simply on your PC screen. The festival features two dozen outstanding short films, the crème de la crème of more than 2,500 entries worldwide.

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In the weeks since the outbreak of demonstrations in Tibet, much debate has evolved around the Olympic Games in China. Should there be a boycott? How can the athletes express their opinion? Now athletes have found a way to show their disapproval of China’s politics without violating the Olympic Charter.

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Call him the Black Kennedy, the Tiger Woods of politics, or the Second Coming. The epithets used to describe presidential hopeful Barack Obama (D-Ill) are a testimony to an election that is so much more than politics.

There is something close to biblical about rain, when the skies give way to an almost cathartic downpour, draining off the drudge, sins and conversation-residuals clogging the streets. In any Hollywood movie (especially considering the writers’ strike) it could have been a Second Coming scenario, yet it was an unassuming Monday with weather more befitting of an unassuming British city pronounced Gloomster (but probably spelled Gleucmcester) in the midst of Berlin. The prophesized savior of American politics, Barack Obama, drew close to a 100 people, who sought shelter in the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung on this rainy, borderline-suicidal Monday evening, to learn about the self-professed harbinger of a new era – in a country so far from theirs.

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Yesterday, the much anticipated search engine of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been released into the online world. The idea behind Wikia Search is to create a search engine that ranks the results according to user ratings.

But surprisingly, this core function hasn’t been enabled yet. All users can do so far is write so called “mini articles” that give a brief definition of a search term. This leads to rather limited search results, since the basic principle of this “social” search isn’t implemented yet. At least the founders know that, too.

It will be interesting to see whether Wikia Search really has the potential to turn around the way we search the internet- which by now is dominated so much by Google’s search engine that the term “to google” has come to mean any kind of internet searching. With this unseen- before power Google has come to dominate our perception of the outside world- what you can’t google isn’t really there, is it?

So far, Wikia Search has the inherent problem of any community- based project. As long as only few people use it, it doesn’t have much to offer to other potential users. But only if many people start using it, it will become better, so for right now, it’s a toss-up.

Stay tuned.

By Jessica Binsch

Is that even possible? According to their web address, www.onevoiceforeurope.eu, the newly founded European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) intends to provide that voice. Is it yet another attempt to save Europe from irrelevancy? And what exactly will that voice be?

With prominent members such as Marti Ahtisaari, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Joschka Fischer (and a bunch of other people that you’ve probably never heard of), the ECFR is based quite apparently, and not just in name, on the American Council on Foreign Relations. And since it is funded primarily by the liberal American billionaire George Soros, you can bet that transatlantic relations will be on the top of its agenda. [Read more]

It’s election time in the Danish Kingdom, and what better way to churn out those votes, than to let the Prophet Muhammad work his magic?

The Danish People’s Party (DPP, Dansk Folkeparti) has published election posters (here) featuring a drawing by Alexander Ross from 1683 of the Prophet. The poster reads in bold, capital letters: “Freedom of Speech is Danish, Censorship Isn’t – We Hang on to the Danish Values,” and continues, “Danish People’s Party – Your Country, Your Choice.” According to Danish People’s Party’s party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, “We [Danish People's Party] are not doing this to provoke, but are doing it exactly because a drawing – a 400 year old drawing of Muhammad – is a symbol of the freedom of speech in Denmark, because we hung on to that freedom of speech.” [Read more]