is updated in this post from Ingrid Robeyns.
America’s founding fathers didn’t want the capital to be in New York or Virginia, so they invented Washington, DC. The EU’s founders didn’t their headquarters in France or Germany and chose Brussels. Whether there’s a lesson in there is hard to say.

Dozens and dozens of beautiful libraries from many parts of the world. Go and look.
(Hat tip: Lance Knobel)

Osama bin Laden is still at large. This American thinks that is a damn shame.
If you haven’t read 110 Stories, you should.
That is all.

The application of 600 police, intelligence agents and other operatives has resulted in the arrest of three alleged violent Islamic extremists in Germany, as has been reported around the world. Other shoes are starting to drop. As could be expected from an investigation of this magnitude, three arrests were just the beginning, and one of [...]

In some quarters in the States, it’s thought that in Europe, daycare for kids is plentiful, state-provided and thus inexpensive, one of the positive side effects of high taxes. That may be true somewhere, but it’s certainly not the case in Munich.

Read [...]

That there’s less blogging going on in August. On the other hand, you may already be en vacance and not have noticed.
In any event, a number of AFOE people got together in Paris this weekend just past. Alas, I was not one of them, so I can neither confirm nor deny that new innovations, [...]

Last night I was in the downtown bookstore to pick up some stuff for travel planning, and I glanced over at their bestseller rack. Number one was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In English. The German edition won’t come out until October.
The best-selling book in the store is in a foreign language. That’s some [...]

At least I’m not the only one.
Good discussions here, here, here, here and here.

Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa will need all of his namesake’s wisdom, and none of his taste in last drinks, as he takes over the rotating presidency (careful, the page has an annoying soundtrack) of the European Council this weekend.
Chancellor Merkel’s quiet persuasion has brought the EU much closer to a [...]

Remember when Labour couldn’t win an election and the UK’s Conservatives made much of their reputation as “the natural party of Government”? Remember when all that changed? Eppur si muove.
Daniel Davies got the timing almost exactly right when his model showed that the greatest gap between the incentive for MPs to keep Blair and to [...]