I’ve moved it to pedantry.fistfulofeuros.net. I’m putting this note here because, unfortunately, you can’t get to that URL because DNS to it has been cut off for a few hours. This is the third time our ISP has done this in a week - propagate DNS for a subdomain and then cancel it [...]

And to all a good night!
See you again around the 28th…

Did you know that in Bavaria, it is illegal to run a service station’s car wash on Sunday?
Apparently, this falls under the category of disturbing the peace. Equally apparently, the coin-operated industrial-strength vacuum cleaners do not disturb the peace.
I learned this where the six-lane A9 autobahn deposits its traffic onto the eight-lane Mittlerer Ring, [...]

As Christmas approaches, consider this open thread a gift from all of us at AFOE to all of our readers for you to play with as you will. Hopefully, unlike traditional Christmas presents, this one will not break within a few hours of opening it.

…but I think you’d enjoy reading them anyway. While we get all exercised about one small corner of Eurasia, they’re eyeballing exciting things from around the whole world.
The inimitable Bruce Sterling:
Beyond the Beyond
The slightly wacked Cory Doctorow and the definitely out there Mark Frauenfelder:
A Directory of Wonderful Things
Getting more or less serious about building a [...]

Over on Crooked Timber, Maria Farrell has some thoughts on the coming Irish EU Presidency and why the presidencies of small countries seem to get more achieved than those of the large countries. (She’s following on from this FT article)
The whole post is well-worth reading and I heartily recommend it, but she ends with an [...]

Hi folks. I’ve been off-line a bit fighting with my landlord and trying to get my new apartment straightened out. I’ve moved as of the first of December. My new Internet connection is up and running, but my workstation hasn’t been able to talk to my monitor since the move. I [...]

Writing in The Guardian under the headline ‘Why I am no longer a European’ Max Hastings explains why, though he remains committed to the idea of Europe, he can no longer support the Constituion. His feelings, I think, represent a growing tendency of people throughout current and future members of the EU to support the [...]

One of the things that I do in addition to ruminating about ‘Europe’ is to report on the biotechnology industry in Germany and Austria. One of the tools that I use to make the job easier is Google’s News Alert service. And sometimes the service turns up surprising articles.

European summit ends in failure
EU constitution talks set to fail
Es ist vorbei
Echec des n?gociations sur la Constitution europ?enne
Wlosi oglaszaja fiasko negocjacji
Update:
Liberum veto, an old Polish custom with unfortunate precedents and consequences.