Announcer: Ladies and gentleman, the twitter opera is about to start, please turn of all cell phones and other mobile devices. *audience storms out of the opera, tweeting: OMG you never believe what they just asked*

A monopoly does not necessarily mean that you have no competitors.

And yet a large majority of Europeans complain that the EU never does anything for them.

Something sad can still be understandable

Every country is a "historic aberration." Every country was formed through a series of historic events that could easily have happened in another way. Sure there is no "Belgian" nation, but I kind of like it that way. There is very little patriotism and maybe that's a good thing. I don't see why Belgium has failed, it is still a rich, free and democratic country, where people have the luxury to endlessly argue about languages instead of, you know, actual problems.

is not that Belgium wants this information, it would help in the fraud investigation that is ongoing. The fraud was commited in Belgium by people using yahoo email adresses, how are they supposed to find these people? The problem is: 1. That Belgium takes Yahoo to court instead of relying on the mutual legal assistance treaty which already exists between the US and Belgium 2. That the court actually followed Belgium's reasoning, which creates a dangerous precedent.

Here in Belgium, where cycling is a lot more popular than in the US, nearly every bike has a generator on it, it makes it a little harder to bike but it really isn't a big difference, nobody has any trouble biking with a generator on, and they deliver a very bright and even light all the time. And you never need to worry about running out of batteries.

I don't see what the big deal is about ID cards, I don't mind having one. There are other things that I consider more important aspects of freedom, and Belgium is quite free I think. Have a look at the Press Freedom Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders#Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index for example, where Belgium always scores amongst the top ranked countries. It also scored #1 place of all countries in the world for "children's educational well being" where the UK and US usually score the lowest of the OESO countries. These things matter to me more than whether or not I have an ID card. Of course no country is perfect, Belgium has its share of problems in crime fighting and the eternal rivalries between the language groups, but as far as development and personal freedom goes, you could do a lot worse than Belgium.

There are countries in the EU where people speak less English than France or Germany. Italy is an obvious example here. As a general rule, people in countries with "small" languages will speak better English (Scandinavia, Finland, Benelux) than the ones who speak one of Europe's major languages. Which is logical because if you only speak a small language the incentive to learn another one is big. That being said, if you seriously consider moving to another country, you should always learn the language, otherwise you remain an expat and will never integrate.

Exactly, I heard many people say that they would never adjust to the euro (for example here in Belgium you have to multiply the price in euros by 40.3399 in order to know the price in Belgian Franc, it wasn't a very intuitive conversion. However after a couple of years, almost everyone "thinks" in euros, with the exception of very old people or in cases where you deal with unusually high amounts of money, for example when buying a house. If the US switched to metric they would be used to it after a couple of years. Not saying they should switch, they can do whatever they like, but saying that it's "impossible to adjust to" is not a good reason.

The episode is called "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot" and it's episode 9 of season 15

Exactly, all the manufacturers will have the "choice" continue to sell windows 7 with IE. They have connections with microsoft or worry that not shipping would increase the user complaints and after sales problems.

Maybe you could start by skipping the unnecessary detour via Paris and take the London-Brussels eurostar instead :)

Seems pretty normal to me, you don't need to eat on a plane, you can do that before or after the flight, but wifi will keep you entertained during the flight. If they had asked "what is more important in life: wifi or food?" I'm sure the answers would have been different.

LaTeX is used in social sciences, I just finished writing my political science thesis in TeX on OSX, the advantages of separating content and style are just as useful in humanities and social sciences.