Economist, Oct 13, 2018 (II)

choi

Charlemagne | Waiting for Goodot. Europe's history explains why it will never produce a Google.
https://www.economist.com/europe ... er-produce-a-google

Note:
(a) The title (Waiting for Goodot) is a wordplay on Google.

Waiting for Godot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot

(b) "in Brussels, young Eurocrats mingle on the bar terraces of the Place du Luxembourg outside the European Parliament. The continent's future leaders pay little heed to the bronze-green statue of John Cockerill [1790 – 1840 (died of typhus after traveling to Russia)] at its centre. The Englishman commemorated at the heart of today's EU moved to Belgium from near Manchester in 1802 [age 12, with his parents], importing the latest steam technologies. He founded a machine factory in a chateau near Liège which grew into an industrial empire pa company bearing his name, lasting from 182501955]and helped make Belgium second only to Britain in industrial sophistication. [Europe has world-class companies in biotechnology, luxury cars and nuclear energy -- together with London's deepMind, Stockholm's Spotify and Cambridge-based Arm] Yet still Europe lacks large firms in areas like social media, e-commerce and cloud computing".
(i) Eurocrat (n): "a staff member of the administrative commission of the European Union"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Eurocrat
(ii) terrace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace
(may refer to (Terrace (agriculture) 梯田; Terrace (building) [always more expansive than a patio]; Terrace, the roof of a building, especially one accessible to the residents for various purposes; Terrace, a sidewalk cafe)
(iii) Liège
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liège
(c) "Most European companies are still run by marmoreal Christian or social democrats * * * European investors expect to be able to claim physical assets against their losses if a firm goes bust -- bedeviling software startups than ten [I believe it is a typo that should be 'that tend'] to lack them. * * * The burden of early industrialisation is also something of a geographic tale. Europe's traditional industrial heartlands are struggling to adapt to the new digital era, but those once on the periphery -- Bavaria and Swabia in Germany, and cities like Helsinki, Tallinn [capital and largest city of Estonia], Cambridge and Montpellier are leading the way, without the institutional fetters of old factory towns like Liège. * * * Of the 98 hogh-tech firms inthe Fortune 500, 45 (including Apple and Google) were founded by immigrants or their children."
(i)
(A) Montpellier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montpellier
("The name of the city * * * is said to have stood for mont pelé (the naked hill, because the vegetation was poor)"
(B) French-English dictionary:
* pelé (adjective masculine): "bare"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pelé
(C) Montpellier
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Montpellier
(pronunciation)
(ii) Steve Jobs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
("Steven Paul Jobs was born to Abdulfattah Jandali [a Syrian immigrant] and Joanne Schieble, and was adopted by Paul Jobs and Clara Hagopian")