I have not had a lot of blogging time lately, as a check of the archives will reveal. Since taking the King’s coin to do translation research, I’ve been waist-deep in the ugly, practical, code-in-the-compiler end of algorithmic information theory. What I had taken to be a very clean and simple application of [...]

So far, no one has convinced me that the “outsourcing” discussion that has suddenly gained steam on both sides of the Atlantinc is not mainly a consequence of two agenda-dominating events: The looming EU enlargement over here, and the Presidential elections over there.
In my experience, this discussion is largely a cyclical phenomenon much less determined [...]

Following revelations by Le Monde that the French budget deficit in 2005 would likely be higher than 4 per cent of GDP with the overall debt rising to 67 per cent, the FT reports that the Commission with reveal additional fiscal sore spots tomorrow by adding Britain, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy to their watchlist [...]

So, I was going to write something about how a referendum in Slovenia yesterday went against restoring residency and other rights to non-Slovenes when I discovered that The Glory of Carniola, a new English-language Slovenian blog had already written about it.
(Found via Randy McDonald, who also has a post on Slovenia and Laibach)

One police officer and three suspected terrorists are dead after an explosion in Madrid. Reports are that the suspects set off an explosion as police closed on the building, as part of an operation in connection with the ongoing investigations into the March 11th bombs in Madrid.

Baden-W?rttemberg has become the first German state to ban headscarves in state schools. Unlike the controversial French ban, this one affects only teachers, not schoolgirls. Also unlike the French ban, this one is targeted solely at Muslim symbols; Christian and Jewish religious accessories remain permissible. (From the tageszeitung; link in German)

Ageing populations ‘will create crippling debt’: at least this is how one of today’s Financial Times headlines reporting on the latest Standard & Poor’s assesment of OECD sovereign debt dynamics has it.
In fact the article says S&P argue that:
“industrialised countries face crushing debt burdens - greater even than those during the second world war [...]

Update: The ECB has now announced that it will leave rates unchanged for another month. This in my view is a mistake, essentially putting off the inevitable for another month - unless, that is, Trichet has info that tomorrow’s US employment numbers will be much better than expected. If not this is only [...]

Ireland’s smoking ban claims a prominent victim, reports the BBC: Fine Gael TD (that’s like an MP, only in Irish) and justice spokesman John Deasy has been thrown off the front bench for lighting up outside the parliamentary bar. (The place has since been designated a smoking area; another Irish solution for an Irish problem.)

Andy Young over at Siberian Light has an interesting post about the Khodorkovsky open letter.

I can?t quite decide what to make of his critique of liberalism. It is obviously an attempt to destroy the last vestiges of liberalism in Russia (although, lets face it, that wouldn?t take much at this stage). But is he going [...]