Interesting times for the European Union’s Growth and Stability Pact, according to an “Economist”:http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2349980 story that touches on a disagreement between Dan Drezner and I. Over the last couple of years, big member states such as France and Germany have been flouting the terms of the Pact, which is supposedly binding. It’s looked as though they were going to escape any punishment for doing this.
From Chapter 3 of Tacitus’s Annals:
In the same year, there was a religious innovation: a new Brotherhood of Augustus was created, on the analogy of the ancient Titian Brotherhood founded by King Titus Tatius for the maintenance of the Sabine ritual. Twenty-one members were appointed by lot from the leading men of the State; and Tiberius, Drusus, Claudius, and Germanicus were added. The annual Games established in honour of Augustus were also begun. But their inauguration was troubled by disorders due to rivalry between ballet-dancers.
Factotum: Caesar, the ballet dancers are rioting!
Tiberius: Oh, not again.
Heard in passing on some Australian morning TV show, during a report about flooding in New South Wales, where there’s a music festival underway:
[Presenter]: So would you say the Tamworth floods have made much difference to the country music?
[EMT]: No, I wouldn’t say so.
“The BBC reports”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3403775.stm that the French government’s proposed ban on the Islamic headscarf and other symbols of religious adherence in schools has upset the 15,000 Sikhs who live in and around Paris. If they insist on wearing the turban they risk being denied access to education. Even with the law merely a proposal, Sikhs are already being refused admission to institutions of higher education.
Today is the centenary of “Cary Grant’s”:http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cary_Grant birth. Grant was born Archibald Leach in “Bristol”:http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol, the city where I live and work and attended Bishop Road School, the same local primary school where my own children went many year later (and which Nobel-prize-winning physicist “Paul Dirac”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac also attended). There’s a “statue of him”:http://aboutbristol.co.uk/sta-06.asp in the new Millennium Square (near to Bristol boy-poet and forger “Thomas Chatterton”:http://www.bartleby.com/65/ch/Chattert.html ). His best films? I’d vote for “Bringing Up Baby”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029947/ and “North By Northwest”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125/ .