WHY THE EURO IS DOOMED TO FALL APART: “it was an incredibly stupid idea in the first place,” Tim Worstall writes in the London Telegraph:

Yes, of course, we all know, the euro is the bright new dawn, the vital step in stopping Germany from invading France. Again. No one seems to have noticed it that they managed it last time and having experienced the place seem to have no desire at all to go back. So this might not be a problem that needs a solution.

However, let’s look behind the political posturing and ask ourselves whether, in economic terms, the euro was a sensible idea. The structure we need to help us decide is Robert Mundell’s concept of an Optimum Currency Area. We should look at things like language barriers, labour mobility, capital, the similarity between economies, their reaction to external shocks – essentially what has been worked out for us in that chart.

And, as you can see, it’s a blitheringly stupid idea to try and push countries into the same currency just because they happen to be next door to each other. People would have been better off if we’d insisted that the c. 1800 Ottoman Empire had the same currency again: Tunisia, Turkey, Israel and Greece. Which is a real indication of how dumb it was to try and get Greece and Germany into the same currency.

So a very silly thing done by those Very Serious People who have decided they’d like to rule us.

And it’s one they’ve kept coming back to, since the days of Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler, and beyond.

THEY SAID IF MCCAIN WAS ELECTED, BROWN-BOOTED THUGS WOULD KILL THE FIRST AMENDMENT: But who would have expected them to go after one of America’s most eminent surgeons and black philanthropists? Or that they would do it at of all places, Emory University where academic freedom and the courage of open inquiry are the rule?

MSM HOUSE ORGAN ASKS ‘Did The Media Drive The Gay Marriage Debate?’

NARRATIVE LOST: WAPO ANTI-ROMNEY HIT PIECE IMPLODES.

TRANSPARENT PODS LET YOU SLEEP IN STYLE UNDER THE STARS: Everything old is new again — isn’t this simply the poor Frenchman’s version of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, which he originally designed in 1945?

RADICAL CHIC AND “THE GAY MAU-MAUING” OF THE BARACK CATCHER: James Taranto on “Why Obama Flipped.”

RELATED: Jonah Goldberg explores how Obama’s fundraising campaign – a sort of presidential primary with only one candidate (if you discount Keith Judd) — pushes him to the left: “Nearly everything we’ve seen from Obama in the last five months has been an attempt to re-create the institutional benefits of a primary season without having an actual opponent.”

More from Jennifer Rubin who adds that Obama’s “mask of moderation is gone. He’s out there waving the bloody shirt in the class and gender wars…If you think about it, just about everything Obama has done over the last year has been designed to corral the left. Now, what’s he going to do to win the voters who matter most?”

Via Passive Guy, Comments on the British book business from FutureBook:

Those who want bold steps from an industry fixated on a 500-year-old format and locked to the fortunes of those businesses that sell it on their behalf, are looking in the wrong direction. Those publishers who attended the a.g.m made it clear that they would continue to fight the old battles, against piracy, tax, and ‘retailer dominance’.     And this is why you keep seeing things like SOPA and other attempts to get government to outlaw modernity.  And also why Amazon is eating their lunch, their dinner and their mid-afternoon snack.

THE MONUMENTAL HAMAS MAP OF DENIAL.

Suddenly all those “pirate romance” books I see on the shelf seem REALLY scary.

The Truth Is Out There, but what we want to know is: is that legal to hunt, whatever it is?

FAMILY OF ROMNEY’S ALLEGED BULLYING “VICTIM” SAYS WAPO STORY INACCURATE.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is quietly airbrushing passages in the story.

Retracto the Correction Alpaca is back from vacation, tanned (as much as any alpaca can be), rested, and is taking up the case. He/her/it is going to be working overtime in the coming months.

UPDATE: A couple of readers complained they were getting Internet Trojan attacks from the link in the headline; story linked to these two tweets. UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Blogger has detected Trojan, says it’s removed, so I’m restoring link.

MORE: At ABC, “Sister of Alleged Romney Target Has ‘No Knowledge’ of Any Bullying Incident.”

AT AMAZON, up to 60% off in DVD and Blu-Ray.

I’m still working on this, but here is what seems like sensible advice on How To Make Money Online.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: The ’80s-era USFL is returning next year, according to Yahoo Sports.

THE GROWING USE OF THE AT HOME TV STUDIO: At the Newcast Studio blog (a blog devoted to TV news studio design — yes, there’s a blog for everything), a link to a Washington Post article last month talking about the growing use of home TV studios by cable pundits:

While these studios may not have multiple cameras, a jib, an interactive touch screen, etc., they provide quick and affordable access to pundits. Many of these studios are powered by Cisco, using its TelePresence technology.

“In the Carville-Matalin house, CNN’s team of techies mounted a smallish camera — called a Cisco link — that gets steered and focused by engineers in D.C. or Atlanta or Hong Kong or whichever CNN nerve center has booked either half of the power couple.”

“Cisco newcomer Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary, recently welcomed a CNN-paid crew to his house in Westchester County, N.Y. ‘Considering they invaded my property to build a studio, it was a smallish invasion with smallish equipment,’ he said. In their wake, they left a little camera that ‘hibernates into one position,’ some glaring lights, and a white X made of tape on the floor — his mark to stay in frame.”

Of course, when you combine the home TV studio with a green screen, anything is possible:

Which reminds me, my newest video (shot in front of the above wall) is now online at YouTube:

[youtube TgXNOMEXVUw]

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Ed I want to say I love your blog and I’m kinda disappointed, now that you have so much else to do behind the curtain, that it isn’t updated as often.

Although, when you guest host at instapundit, I get a lot more of Ed Driscoll so that’s OK  ;-)

Second, about your latest Silicon Graffiti.  You look stiff while standing.  Sorry but it just seemed awkward, the hand gestures and the camera angle changes.

Thirdly about us becoming Germans.  Weren’t we always Germans?  As I recall, from school, the Germans were the single largest emigrant group to the USA so… just a return to our roots?

Hey, when I produce those videos, I’m well aware that the talent is a stiff. So I try to surround him with virtual sets, B-roll, background music, graphics, etc. He needs lots of help. But if that guy can do video, anybody can…

And as someone who’s half-German (on my late mother’s side), I know Germans are a large immigrant group, but most German immigrants, if they were anything like my family, were pious, God-fearing Catholics and protestants. But the introduction of Nietzschian nihilism, the welfare state (via Otto von Bismark) and Frankfurt School-style political correctness are all very much notions that were also imported to the US, as Bloom noted in The Closing of the American Mind. Mainly I was trying to explore that these memes didn’t sprout up from nowhere, they started overseas and were imported here, where they now fight it out, sometimes for the better, often for the worse, with traditional American ideas.

And I’ll be back at Ed Driscoll.com next week, so watch for blogging to resume there once again.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE! But it is about a major national Democratic leader and the consequences he is now enduring as a result of his evolving explanation for how all that presidential campaign money somehow turned up in support of his mistress and love-child. The New York Post’s Tara Palmeri has the tawdry details. BTW, anybody taking odds on how long he spends in the slammer?

NEW RICOCHET PODCAST ONLINE: “The Marriage Thing:” James Lileks, Peter Robinson and Rob Long are joined by Arthur Brooks and Mona Charen.

The Messenger Shooting Begins.  (And, geeks,  if you read Tyranny of Cliches  I can promise you there is a Princess Bride joke thirty some pages in.  In a book — I’m about halfway through — that’s making me think more deeply than I have in years, THAT is pure bonus goodness.)

Of course, note the picture, there clearly is a bicycle involved in these 911 calls.  (This is the last one of these, I SWEAR, and you don’t want to know what got me on this streak.)

Okay.  This is sad.  Also, I wonder if he rode a bicycle to the store.

THE ENDORSEMENT THAT TOPPLED AN EMPIRE.

(H/T: Maggie’s Farm.)

ALL stuff on two wheels is connected to sex, even when motorized.  Remember that!

KAUS:  “Biden Apologizes for Bullying Obama.”

RELATED: President Obama’s Disturbing Pattern of Bullying and Stereotyping.

Okay, clearly there is SOME link between cycling and sex that I’m failing to get.  What I can tell you is that from now on I’ll give anything on less than four wheels a WIDE berth while I’m out walking.

Most ethical adminis–  Oh, never mind!