2001-03-09

4:43:05 PM

• Earthquake art. A shop in Port Townsend, Washington had a sand pendulum going when last week's earthquake struck. One usually thinks of earthquakes as resulting in a net increase in entropy, but in this instance the outcome was something akin to fine art.

  The site linked above seems to be subject to a flash-crowd syndrome at the moment: performance drags, image loads time out, etc. Don't know if it's been Slashdotted, but it sure as heck is flashdotted. Here's a local mirror of one of four images from the site.

  Thanks to TBTF Irregular Dan Kalikow for the pointer.

2001-03-07

11:42:36 AM

• European Court of Justice outlaws criticism of EU. In 1995 the EU fired British economist Bernard Connolly because he had written a book critical of European monetary integration. Connolly opined that Economic and Monetary Union was a threat to democracy, freedom, and ultimately to peace. Yesterday's court ruling that the EU was justified in sacking Connolly does nothing to dispel this view.

  The European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties...

  The ruling stated that the commission could restrict dissent in order to "protect the rights of others" and punish individuals who "damaged the institution's image and reputation."

  Thanks to TBTF Irregular Alan Wexelblat, who speculates on the roots of the decision: "BSE, perhaps? Or snorting too much wig powder?"

  Updated 2001-03-20, 6:07 pm: Andrew Brown cautions:

  I wouldn't trust anything the Daily Telegraph prints about the EU. The paper's stance is radically, sometimes rabidly, opposed to the EU, and it has as its Brussels correspondent at the moment Ambrose Evans Pritchard, who was one of the major conduits for crazed anti-Clinton stories during the Whitewater years. It will always twist and spin any story to prove that "Brussels" is the spiritual inheritor of the Third Reich or "A German ramp to dominate Europe" in the words of one of Mrs Thatcher's ministers.