Wow. More flying colours. Really nice pics!

Usual stuff (hails, snow, thunder) here

I believe the "carrying of the color" refers to the carrying of the battle flag or pennant of the fighting force. The Battle of Gettysburg marked a turning point in the American Civil War. There is a continuing controversy in Minnesota about returning a a battle flag captured in the battle.Here
I am a little at loss to understand the references to Draghi and Spartacus in the context of modern Europe.
Cheers

This is the first I have heard about the Soviet fox experiment. I have heard of the Minnesota Starvation experiment. It is something which, although the goals were noble (how to help populations which were on the verge of starvation), was probably unethical in how it treated its subjects. Over the years there have been several articles in the local (Twin Cities) papers detailing the experiment.
Cheers

My guess is the weasel fried itself when it hit a live wire. At least they got the culprit. I got mine too, it just took longer.
Dataman: you have been awful quiet lately. Good to hear from you.
Cheers

Hi Joe.

Hope this opens big picture little a bit more.
It is now official, 500E notes will not be printed after 2018.

Official reason for this was on Feb that it takes only one cubic meter to storage one billion.
Some Great Mastermind did count that move 500E -> 200E notes will allow ECB to put intrest rate -0,4% -> -0,75%

So, if you put yourself to shoes of dudes who manage billions of another peoples money on daily basis, like some dude running pension fund.
You basically need to generate money flow every month, but how you generate it, is most usually tied to national-interfaces before EMU-time.
As thumb rule, those fellows on these seats, are forced (since law) to purchase tools from highest credit layer, like Swizz gov bonds jaadi jaadi jaa.
Just some decade ago, those instrument did yield interest to interest. But today, those are literally equal to paper cutters. You will lost another peoples money for sure.
So instead to pay bank to accept another peoples money, you could just buy truckload after truckload of this funny colored paper and jam it to some hole under mountain (just check it it Jura, not Ural).

Deeper stuff, why it is so important to destroy another peoples money.
Top item on ECB doctrine is two (2) percent inflation, they will authoress it as number that will protect internal piece on every society.
Math behind this is quite easy, 2% per annum, will create 50% on twenty (20) year. So literally half of debt will be forgiven for every chap on that day, when they have first born bundle of joy.

Now this ideology is stalling seriously.
Saving of generation before current one, are simply yielding more that youngster will never/ever receive on their life, so kind of easy to understand their willingness to slow down life.
Generation before, did start from a lot worst square one, but they did have hope from something better. As long as human has vision of something better, (s)he will go through fire and ice. This current generation just does not have any light on end of any tunnel. They are just simply doomed by the generation who expect them to save their standard of living (yup, funny colored paper does not work for granny, they just demand sweat and blood).

Dude running EU before current one, was some way too kind engineer from France.
Seriously, this dude would not never/able to make acts to get nose up one more time.
So it is just so logical to put some son of Italy to try one more time... It just take that something to throw grannies to snow (with their colored paper of course) and push the ante with Teutons...