I have seen many greetideas come from Portugal, the challange is getting the ideas out of the door.You can read here about the start up scene in Lisbon http://squaxor.posterous.com/lisbon-the-startup-spirit

German manufacturing is where German productivity is high, not in services.

I am an expert coin tosser :) If you have 1000 people tossing coins some of them will become experts at tossing heads every time.

Greetings fellow disciple of Taleb! :-)

I have had malaria twice. When you have it you definitely know you have the disease. Your legs shake from side to side. You can diagnose disease as well becuase your temperature goes in a zig zag patern over a 10 to 20 min cycle. none of these methods will tell you what kind of maleria you have, which is usefull to know what the best treatment is. Sometimes this is not necessary as there is only one kind in the region. It should not be under estimated how hard it is tell one type of maleria from the other. The last time I had it took 4 hours for a major hospital in London to identfy that I had 3 types of parasite in my blood.