Are you crazy? The whole EU system of bureaucratic civil servants is derived from the French public service system, with an obscene focus on French language over the other two main languages (EN, DE), much disdain for non-francophones and a general "Pfffff!"-attitude towards everyone. You ought to love it.

Sorry, they're taken. They want to be a Nordic country.

If you by "state of the art" mean "the first fab is being built, right now" then you're right.

If I actually had a sense of humour, I'd be driving one of the General Motors-derivatives (Vauxhall, Opel, Saab,...). That's enough to extinguish any sort of optimism.

[citation needed]

Which makes me glad I just made it to acquire a new Swedish Volvo, before the build quality goes Chinese in the coming years. I have a bad feeling Volvo's swan song is fast approaching. :(

This will undoubtedly help them time the drogue/parachute release next time. Unfortunately this failed last time in an otherwise successful guidance experiment due to the accumulated error in the intertial navigation.

Your iPad will charge, connected via USB, even though it says it isn't. It just takes forever.

...in exchange for turning the blind eye on US gov't sponsored industrial espionage against EADS, Airbus, Astrium and the likes, why, thank you very much. We're not worthy...

Sooo....that makes it ok for smaller countries to have to fork over twice the percentage of GDP per capita than larger countries....because they're small.... and therefore somehow...richer?

Now that would make perfect sense.

You make it sound as if the UK is one of the most significant contributors to the EU budget. You get a whopping rebate on your net EU contribution, seen per capita. In 2009 every UK citizen contributed 62.7 EUR to the budget, whereas the Danes had to pay 211 EUR each, which was also the reason Denmark was threatening to veto the budget earlier this year in case they wouldn't get a similar rebate to the UK, Austria and Sweden.

Oh shit.

Hi theVarangian, I own a Mac, I use Avast for Mac, and I'm very careful what websites I visit. I realize no OS is virus immune. Does that qualify for a first? A decade of windows usage taught me. Now please stop spewing crap about what mac users know and don't know. Thanks.

Summary: Some people have what it takes to be parents. Some people have what it takes not to become parents. Please don't mock each others' choices.

This.