Bavaria also had elections this weekend. (I posted about the campaign last week.)
Surprise: the Christian Social Union, which has ruled Bavaria without a break since forever, lost big. For the first time since 1962, they won’t have enough seats in Parliament to rule alone; they’ll have to take on a partner, most likely [...]

So we have state elections here in Bavaria this week.
Yeah, I know. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this.
There are political signs here and there around our small town, but not as many as you’d expect. A surprisingly high number are for the nationalist, anti-immigration Republican Party. I say “surprisingly” because [...]

Middle-long, middle-brow article on European demographics in this weeks NY Times Magazine. (If it asks you for a login, try bugmenot.)
If you’re already interested in this topic, 80% of it will be familiar stuff. There were a couple of interesting new points, though:

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This fascinating post, part of a series on Chinese manufacturing that’s been picked up by BoingBoing, seems to be missing one very significant point. Yes, it’s all very cool; precision-machining billets of cold steel into incredibly perfect moulds that will be used to injection-mould the Chumby, blasting off the rough edges with an electron gun, [...]

Adam Tooze, who (it says here) is a senior lecturer at Jesus College, Cambridge, has a book out; The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. It is getting some very good reviews, and this one will be no different. Tooze’s thesis is that the Nazi German economy was a more [...]

My daughter’s school broke the law yesterday. I don’t mind too much, though, as the law in question is stupid and ought to be abolished.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

Under German law, religious [...]

The nazis marched today in Frankfurt. But it must have been rather frustrating for them. Their numbers were disappointing, they were relegated to the periphery of the city, and a thick wall of police ensured that they would not offend decent people’s eyes or ears.

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Hessia’s education minister Karin Wolff has recently drawn attention for proposing that school biology lessons include the biblical creation story. Now she has drawn attention by outing herself as gay. All too many politicians pander to creationists; and some out themselves. But it’s pretty rare, I’d think, that the same politician does both.
Wolff will have [...]

Eurozone Watch has two articles about Germany and Italy that offer support for an optimistic view of the European economy. For a start, Sebastian Dullein argues that a comparison of Germany today and the US after the early 90s recession shows that Germany might be on the brink of a productivity surge. Dullein argues that [...]

Though creationism does rear its ugly head from time to time in Europe, it is largely a fringe phenomenon. Unlike in America, even most religious Europeans accept evolution as an obvious fact, viewing the biblical creation stories (yes, there’s more than one) as, at most, poetic metaphor. So it’s easy for us over here to [...]