european community

It’s taken an act of legislation to wipe out the longest word in the German language.

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, beef, Germany, German, language, words
“You vill EAT your
rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
undt you vill LUFF it!!”

“Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz” – a 63-letter long title for a law “for the delegation of monitoring beef labelling” – has been removed from official use in Germany.  The law, passed in 1999, regulated testing cattle for bovine spongiform encephalitis: also known as “mad cow disease”.  The European Community is dropping recommendations for testing healthy cattle for the disease.  And with it goes… that word.

I bet spelling bees are something else over there…

Tip o’ the hat to Scott Bradford for spotting this!...

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This past weekend was spent semi-unplugged.  Heck I didn’t know that Miami had beaten UNC for the ACC Basketball Tournament title until late last night!  Since all that mess was happening in Greensboro I drove a hunnerd miles the opposite direction on 220 to do ballroom dancing and general geek-ery with my girlfriend.

But even so, I have been following the mess in Cyprus, where the government is poisoned to confiscate 10% of everyone’s bank accounts in an attempt to get bailed out of the monetary mess of its own manufacture.  So much commentary could be made of this: the failure of socialism, the complete failure of the Eurozone as anything remotely a feasible concept, the failure of policies that can only lead to hyper-inflation, the failure to rein-in the “banksters” (i.e. those who see banking as not a sacred trust but an exploitable resource), the failure to hold those ...

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I don’t get it: why don’t those Icelanders take on the extra $3.5 billion in debt that would have been incurred by their politicians bailing out the British and Dutch for the failure of Landsbanki, by borrowing more money and creating massive inflation of the currency?

I mean, that’s what we do here in the United States, ain’t it?!

Seriously though: nice to see some fiscal sanity in this world. Maybe our Icelandic friends could consider exporting some of that here.

Mash down here for more of the story. Worth keeping an eye on as no doubt the European Community is going to be looking to retaliate against Iceland for its gumption....

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