Is this for real?

1€ = 1.57545$

[thanks Dr.Xos]

We are all criminals, aren’t we?

I read on the news (in Greek; “Τρομοκράτες” ετών 6…) that Greece will start recording the finger prints of all children from the age of six.

Hellooooo, that’s old news already, as I recall reading about it some time ago for the UK (MIllions of children to be fingerprinted). It was only a matter of time to spread over Europe. The rationale, as pointed out, is that everyone could be considered as a potential criminal. However, such centralized gathering of information, as it will take place under EU legislation, it will most likely result into the largest database of personal information for all EU citizens. This will most likely will be against the local constitutional rights of the country members like Greece (that’s my estimation, I need to look it up ), and it also raises several concerns regarding several issues(who will be managing such sensitive information, what will be the level of access to the local governments, and for which reasons, etc.).

If we also consider the fact that long time ago, in 2003, the EU Commission has given the permission to the US authorities to have access on personal information of all EU citizens traveling to the US by airlines (Commission agrees US access to EU citizen personal data), the handling of such personal information database becomes extremely important and critical.

Definitely the issue is not so simple as there are benefits as well, like a unified identification system within the E (after all we are trying to become a real union, right?) and many more aspects. I will definitely have a closer look and post again in the near future I hope.

Europe upside down

Once upon a time Athens was known to be in southern Europe, and Stockholm in northern Europe. Nowadays the weather over the past few days indicates the opposite. Take a look below, from Stockholm (via webbkameror) and Athens (via cosmo.gr) respectively, photos taken on Sunday February 17th 2008:

While it is not so rare for snow to cover the Greek capital (it happens once every 2-3 years), for the Swedish capital it seems that this year’s winter will be the mildest in the past 250 years. At the moment (2008.02.18 at 08:17 AM), according to weather.com temperatures are -5 for Athens and +3 for Stockholm . It’s an interesting contrast between two very distant regions of Europe and maybe an indication of climatic change?