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Happy Queen’s Day (Koninginnedag)! I’m off to Amsterdam to celebrate. I’ll be back tonight with photos.

In today’s Washington Post, George Will has an article that chronicles the Dust Bowl. The story is in the context of “warnings of environmental apocalypse” and serves as an illustration of a real one; the problem is, the dust seems to have settle in Will’s head.

There is something of a logical disconnect between the entirety of Will’s article and the very last sentence.

The earth turned out to be more durable, and the people who wrested their livings from it more resilient, than had been thought.

This sentence poses two problems. Firstly, it downplays the true hardships that Will himself purported to chronicle. Secondly, it reaches a conclusion that an “environmental apocalypse” is really more of a mild inconvenience. John Steinbeck’s masterpiece Grapes of Wrath seems to reach the opposite conclusion as Will.

Arguably, the damage from the Dust Bowl can still be seen. While there aren’t clouds of dust reaching towards the stratosphere anymore, the fertile prairie land has not recovered. Many farm communities in the plains are just as impoverished today as they were during the Dust Bowl, and survival exists only through a series of government subsidies and a bit of luck. A new environmental apocalypse, with effects that will reach far beyond those seen in the 1930’s, could not only bring about a new Dust Bowl, but could have a more permanent impact on the American landscape.

Mr. Will, this is not something that will just “blow over”.

Senator McCain gives a speech calling for emmissions caps. I’m not sure how this will fly with the “Jesus says you have to drive a Ford Leviathan” vote.

After a heated four-way campaign for the French presidency that was on its way to up-ending the political landscape, the French seem to have gone back to what they know - the socialists and the UMP.

This is certainly a shift in the stance the election was tending towards. For the first time, the French looked to putting a centrist candidate, Bayrou, on the ballot. The xenophobic canidade, Le Pen, has never really been a contender (the previous election, where he made the second round, aside). But whatever happens now, the French will have to choose between the status-quo (Sarkozy) and the perpetual alternative to the status quo (Royal).

C’est la vie.

The BBC is reporting that the EC Competition Authority has fined a cartel of Dutch brewers (Heineken, Grolsch, and Bavaria) over €273 million. A fourth brewer, InBev, was granted leiniency in exchange for providing information regarding the cartel. The firms were all found to have violated [EC Treaty] Article 81’s prhobitions on restrictive business practice.

According to the BBC, the fine levied against Heineken is the seventh-largest ever; the largest fine to day was imposed against Microsoft. Heineken plans to appeal the fine as “excessive”.

Link to the DG Competition Notice, IP/07/509, Released 18 April 2007.