Rachel Lucas offers a rather amazing photo of Kirsten Dunst; she’s quite grown up from her Interview with the Vampire days. Wow.

Professor Bainbridge has a lengthy post where he dissects the EU triumphalists. I went into this at some length the other day and won’t do so again.

What I will do is note that I agree with Professor Bainbridge—we referenced the same Economist article for Europe’s median age problem—though I don’t find the EU quite as bothersome as he seems to. The EU is a declining power for the time being and will continue that way just due to demographics. Even if they were economically ascendant, I wouldn’t find it all that troublesome since economics isn’t zero-sum (they would have to undo their labor market rigidities and limit their fiscal burdensand would still have a hard time growing as fast as the U.S. in the coming decades). On foreign policy, they won’t spend what’s necessary to build a military so there’s no threat there. The only problem I’m aware of is their recent decision to start selling weapons to China. More than a little troubling ($).

You know that the EU ascendancy meme has jumped the shark—along with that phrase—though when Jeremy Rifkin and others start getting worked up over it ($):

Eurocrats are understandably flattered by this unusual American praise for the grand European project; Mr Rifkin’s book has gone down well in Brussels. But the mood of real “builders of Europe” is often decidedly more pessimistic. This week European leaders are likely to take a big step towards admitting Turkey to the EU, a decision about which many of them have deep misgivings. Mr Reid’s argument that there is an inexorable historical logic driving forward European unity is often made by Brussels federalists too. But these same people are also well aware of the fragility of a process of political integration that has very shallow popular support.

Then there is the economy. Europe’s economic growth continues to lag that of the United States, let alone China and India. And Europe’s population is ageing and shrinking. Two-thirds of the way into his book, Mr Rifkin interrupts his dream to note that “the sad truth is that without a massive increase in non-EU immigration in the next several decades, Europe is likely to wither and die.” This looks like a fairly big qualification to the book’s general mood of sunny optimism. But no matter: within a few pages we are back to the “politics of empathy”.

Awareness of the depth of the political and economic challenges that lie ahead accounts for the fact that many European officials are more inclined to troubled pessimism than to Rifkinesque optimism. This European willingness to be self-critical is, as it happens, a genuine strength. Unfortunately, there is a lot to be self-critical about.

(þ: The Professor)

Brad DeLong has a great entry on Adam Smith. One of the many interesting points is when he mentions “market fundamentalism”. It reminded me of this Cannan edition of Wealth that is annotated, just like a Bible. You can quote it chapter and verse.

What still strikes me about Smith is how broadly he saw things: he didn’t just write a book on economics, he drew a very broad picture that encompassed both the morality and the funtionality of the marketplace. Contrary to one of the commenters, I think Smith would be quite pleased with what he would see today. Is it perfect? No, but it’s a far shout from where he was in his day and much of the progress since then is due to him (and Cantillon).

(þ: Marginal Revolution)

The blogosphere’s own LaShawn Barber has a column in NRO about the smaller corners of the blogosphere that haven’t gotten the attention of Power Line and LGF. They deserve the attention and she talks about a couple of my favorites: The Shape of Days, run by a fellow Macophile Jeff Harrell, and Cassandra, now of Villainous Company. Jeff has a good post on why he prefers Macs and it has to do with the concept of “kerning” (big issue in Ra^therGate). LaShawn apparently missed Cass’s departure from Jet Noise, but be sure to check out her new digs.

(þ: The Professor)

Raise your hand if you didn’t see this one coming:

Iran has drawn up secret plans to make large quantities of a gas that can be used to produce highly enriched uranium, despite promises to suspend enrichment activities.

Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, Iran’s atomic energy chief, has authorised construction of a plant to make Anhydrous Hydrogen Fluoride (AHF), a gas that has many uses, from petrochemical processing to uranium enrichment.

Cash money says the latter use is far more likely than the former. Ugh. (þ: memorandum).

Fellow Jacksonian Shawn Lea is compiling a directory of Mississippi bloggers and blogs about Mississippi.