According to this article on guardian.co.uk it seems like Germany has come to it senses and are starting to ban pesticides.
In the German region Baden-Württemberg 50-60% of the bees have died this year. 8 seed treatment pesticides that contain a chemical called clothianidin (made by Bayer CropScience) has been banned because the chemical has been found in 99% of all the dead bees.
This is not the first time Bayer CropScience are being accused of killing honey bees. Both in France and USA beekeepers have accused the company for being behind the deaths of large number of bee hives.

Pesticides has been linked to the term Colony Collapse Disorder that describes a phenomenon where bee colonies suddenly disappear. This phenomenon have dramatically increased the last few years and is worrying for farmers across the world.
Read more about Colony Collapse Disorder on Wikipedia.

In my opinion it is pretty insane to use highly toxic chemicals to fight against the nature. It is high time that the farming industry looks to alternative organic ways of farming instead of killing the nature.
Please buy products from organic farms the next time you go shopping 🙂

When I travel abroad I always make sure to have some good travel insurance to protect myself from various situations that may occur. You never know when your luggage might be stolen, you get sick or if you get yourself into an accident. In situations like these travel insurance is a must for everyone.

When you get over a certain age regular travel insurance will not cover you or cost much more. Then you can look into getting a more specialized travel insurance that is more suitable for you.
A company that offer exactly this is Cover My Travels. They have a policy called Over 65 Travel Insurance that suits older people that want to travel. This insurance is for people between 65 and 79 years old for single trips, and if you are going on multiple trips it covers people between 65 and 69 years old.
Getting an insurance like this seems like a good idea if you are a traveler over 65.

Hurray! I finally sold a pair of ragg socks in my Etsy store 🙂
I have been a bit disappointed in Etsy since it took 3 months to sell something, but I haven’t been promoting the store much. My selection in the store wasn’t big with only 3 pairs (2 now) so that might also be a problem.
But I got some inspiration from selling something again so hopefully I will soon have knitted more socks.
Head over to my Etsy store if you want to see the ragg socks I have for sale.

Hope the woman in USA who bought the socks will be happy with them.

Here is a picture of the socks that I sold:

When I started blogging, a bit over a year ago, I soon stumbled across the SEO (search engine optimization) term and among the SEO advices were adding your site to web directories. Since I wanted to get my blog listed in search engines like Google and Yahoo as fast as possible I started to add the blog to web directories. The reasons to add your blog or regular website to web directories are many and here are my personal two main reasons to use web directories:

1. Link back
When you add your site to a web directory you get a back link and this will make your site more visible on world wide web. Back links are also important for Google Pagerank as the amount and quality of back links to your site determine the Pagerank you will get. Thus adding your site to web directories will get you more back links.

2. Traffic from web directories
I actually get quite a deal of traffic from various web directories. This traffic both comes from people using search engines (finding my site via the web directories) and people browsing the web directories directly.

I would definitely advise all blog owners to add their site to a free website directory or two. Who doesn’t want more traffic and back links?

A couple a days ago I wrote about some depressing news that many shark species are facing extinction.

Today I found some good news from Ireland about our oceans. According to an article on Yahoo the Irish Sea Fisheries Board will start to clean up “ghost nets” in northeast Atlantic Ocean.
Ghost nets are abandoned and dumped fishing nets that are catching big amounts of fish and other marine life. The amount of deepwater sharks has declined rapidly because of these ghost nets (I would think because of overfishing too).

A study made by Irish, Norwegian and British scientists estimates that 1,254 kilometers (620 miles) of 600 by 50 meter (1,970 by 164 feet) sheets of nets are lost each year. That is a mind numbing amount!

I hope the Irish Sea Fisheries Board are successful in cleaning up the northeast Atlantic Ocean and that other governments will do the same time. The fishing industry should also look into their practices and stop dumping fishing nets.

When I walk along the coastline here in Northern Norway it is very sad to see the enormous amounts of trash that has been washed ashore. A good deal of this trash seems to be coming from fishing boats, like parts of fishing nets and rope. Trash like this can entangle and kill marine life. Smaller plastic parts are also known to be eaten by fish and sea birds thus bringing toxins into the ecologic system.
It is time to clean our oceans and stop treating them like massive waste bins!

Nouveau Riche University were featured in the January 2008 edition of Your Business at Home Magazine. This magazine features only one company per month so this is quite an achievement for Nouveau Riche University. The magazine can be bought from bookstores in United States including Borders, Hastings, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, and Staples.

Nouveau Riche is a school that specials in real estate investments with classes such as Short Sales, Wholesaling, Foreclosures, Buying and Holding, Lease Options, Tax Strategies and other classes. The classes has been attended by thousands of students at various locations around the United States.

You can read articles from authors like Suze Orman, Tom Hopkins, Irvin Wilson, Stephen R. Covey and others in the January 2008 edition of Your Business at Home Magazine, but excerpts of the articles can also be found on the website.

On this site, from Nouveau Riche, you can read a blog post with an excerpt of an article written by Robert Lucas Savage. The article explains how Nouveau Riche University can make your dreams come true by making big money from attending their classes on real estate investments.
I would not mind making some more money to make my main dream come true: Buying a small organic farm in the Norwegian countryside.

Since this blog is called “Musings from a male knitter” I will to write about other issues than knitting that I care about. One issue that I care about is the environment as most of my life I’ve lived in the countryside very close to the nature. Anyways, enough about me and on to the issue that worries me today.

I just read an article on BBC News (best news site on the net BTW) about some shark species that are close to extinction.
According to specialists at ICUN (formerly the World Conservation Union) more than half of the world’s sharks are in danger of extinction with 11 species on the high-risk list and 5 more showing strong signs of decline.
Shockingly there are no international catching limits for sharks so the fisheries on sharks are pretty much free for all. There has also been more pressure on sharks since stock of other fish likes tuna and swordfish are on the decline, making fishermen looking for other species to catch.

So what can done about this? Obviously some kind of international regulation needs to be come into force as soon as possible! Stronger regulations are also needed for most fisheries as the fishing we are doing today are far from being sustainable.
But this up to the different governments to decide so it is hard for you and me to make a difference. One thing we can do is to join environment friendly organizations like WWF and Greenpeace that put pressure on our governments. The more members they get the more power they are able to yield.
We should also check if the fish we eat are caught from sustainable fisheries.