Now they are basing immigration on whether the applicant approves of homosexuality or not.

Meanwhile, the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg has courted controversy through a new naturalization test, which seeks to ensure that the attitudes of new citizens are consistent with mainstream society. One question asks how applicants would respond on learning that their son is a homosexual. "This is clear discrimination, aimed only at Muslims," says Cem Ozdemir, a Turkish-German member of the European Parliament.

This is funny for the gay test, and the fact that somehow this discriminates against muslims (and rednecks, and the KKK, and....) Whatever!

Actually the above article was all about euro economics, the gist being that while the opening of the EU to East European countries has helped the economy of West Euros (by filling jobs undesired by West Euros, ie construction), a problematic attitutide in West Europe is that they don't like globalization, they don't like free markets, and they don't particularly like capitalism. Also discussed here and here.

The later article talks about the decline of science in Europe. We just had an international science meeting here at MD Anderson, and maybe half of the participants were from Europe. Looked pretty international to me. So this stuff about the decline of European science may or may not be true, but there is still alot of relevant research going on in Europe.