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Saturday, September 06, 2003
posted by gbarto at 11:50 PM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Abbas Resignation Heightens Tensions In Israel.
Also in Le Monde: Rumsfeld Asks Iraqis For Cooperation. This on his third day in Iraq.
Other major sites not updated as it's Saturday night/Sunday morning over there.
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Friday, September 05, 2003
posted by gbarto at 1:58 PM:
Now in the Blogger system:Blogger seems to be on holiday again, so this update's going straight to the server and will show up with archiving, etc., later.
French news headlines
Le Figaro: Corsica: "Le Figaro" Targeted. Specifically, the car of Le Figaro's lead reporter in Corsica was machine-gunned. She's ok.
Le Monde: UN-Iraq: Between Hope and Mutual Distrust. That's the US and other Security Council nations, of course; a few of the countries involved have nothing but love for Iraq.
Libération: The Five Plagues that are Striking the Music Industry. Nothing you don't already know except that even in France, where culture ministers bankroll these people, they're feeling the same pinch as everywhere else.
Ouest-France: Europe: Our Deficits Set Off Political Battle - with the EU ministers.
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posted by gbarto at 6:08 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Collapse of social plans, threats to 35 hour [work week]. With factories laying off, service sector businesses cutting back and scared consumers refraining from spending their cash to keep either of the two going, France is having problems and the government can't keep up. It may even end up revisiting the 35 hour work week as it searches for solutions. Which would make sense since even the French government cannot render false what what common sense economics tells us is true.
Le Figaro: Iraq: Chirac and Schroder again say No to Bush. I'm sure the chance to be firm on the world stage gave a real boost to Chirac as the Raffarin government flounders about on other matters.
Libé: On the other hand, the government's one good idea gets this review: Lower Taxes A Risky Gamble. So however much Chirac and Bush part company, Bush and Raffarin both like - as their opponents would label them - risky tax-cut schemes.
Ouest-France: A Holiday Suppressed? A Natural Gas Plant... Ouest-France looks at just one place where one of the government's weirder run-ins with alternative realities runs amok.
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posted by gbarto at 5:49 AM:
UN. Reacts to U.S. Iraq ProposalFrance, Germany and Syria critical
Gee, and that crew is normally so supportive.
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posted by gbarto at 5:48 AM:
Judge Throws Out Refiled Obesity Suit Against McDonald'sGood. Now the judge just needs to saddle the offending lawyer with court costs for McD's to go through the first part of the process again so that he'll be discouraged from making this a lifetime gig.
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posted by gbarto at 5:44 AM:
Cute Cavuto bit on tears and grown men.* * *
Thursday, September 04, 2003
posted by gbarto at 5:05 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: The Economic Gambles of Jean-Pierre Raffarin. For Le Monde, a "gamble" is, of course, any plan with a tax cut. Particularly if it's unveiled in an interview with Le Figaro.
Le Figaro: Jean-Pierre Raffarin: "Rehabilitating work rather than taxes" - is how the PM sees it in the afformentioned interview.
Libé: Bush Rediscovers the United Nations. Okay, we all saw that one coming.
Ouest-France: Taxes will fall nearly 3%. Ouest-France also has its eye on the economic plan.
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Wednesday, September 03, 2003
posted by gbarto at 5:14 AM:
Found at Natalie Solent's: a "fascist quiz" where you can measure yourself on the Adorno F authoritarian personality scale. I scored a 2.0, which ranking makes me a liberal airhead according to the site's calculations. Interesting. Guess my anti-authoritarian streak runs deeper than I thought, though I've always considered it libertarian or classically liberal. Most of the liberal airheads I know probably would score higher because of their desire for some sort of enforced social order.* * *
posted by gbarto at 4:54 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Chirac Confronted With Forgotten Dead from Heat Wave. He will join the Mayor of Paris, among others, in attending cremation and funeral services for fifty-seven heat wave victims whose bodies were not claimed.
Le Figaro: Must One Believe in the American Upsurge? As the second biggest seller to the US market, the Eurozone would love to know whether to get their hopes up.
Libé: At the Heart of the Ashy Maures. About the travails of the firefighters who have tried to control blazes in that mountain region and what's left as their efforts continue, which is not much.
Ouest-France: Fires leave three firefighters dead in the Var. Same story, different leading angle.
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Tuesday, September 02, 2003
posted by gbarto at 3:15 AM:
Indonesian Court Acquits Muslim ClericFar be it from me to suggest the manipulation of courts or the rearranging of government institutions in other countries. Nonetheless, the evidence in this case seemed pretty clear. Which leaves the question: given the cultural fabric, how prepared is Indonesia to be a partner in the War on Terror?
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posted by gbarto at 2:29 AM:
Joanne Jacobs flags an excellent William Raspberry column on language exposure and child development.The news: Children in middle class homes get exposed to more and richer language than those in working class or welfare homes and, unsurprisingly, are thus better able to learn and manipulate language.
What we're talking about is serious stuff: Language enables us to systematize abstract concepts; the more linguistic associations and verbal capabilities we have, the greater the number of permutations of thoughts we can have, ideas we can conceive, in ways that we can communicate to our fellow human beings. And without the ability to convey abstract but fundamental concepts efficiently - as with language - one must literally reinvent the wheel every time. Bottom line, by teaching children the language to manipulate the world in their heads in complex and innovative ways, we prepare them to do so in reality. Failing to do so leaves them having to figure out on their own what the educated can grasp with a few words. Advanced communication skills don't just add up to hoity-toity speech; they add both breadth and detail to the landscape of human thought, enabling the dreaming of bigger, clearer dreams with better chances for those dreams to be realized.
An interesting point Raspberry doesn't explore (but that the book off of which he is springboarding surely does) is that middle class speech was dominated by nouns and adjectives; welfare home speech was dominated by verbs but the overall amount of communication was much lower. I'm not a linguist and I don't specialize in child development, but I am a language learner and I can tell you this: Spanish For Your Housekeeper is dominated by verbs: clean, polish, press, dust, etc. But the books for wealthy tourists are dominated by nouns - the things you'll see, the things you'll taste, the things you'll buy. In my experience, you can get by with a relatively small number of verbs if you've got the nouns and if your goal is to look at, experience and enjoy stuff. Middle class parents are, in effect, putting their children in the position to grasp mentally what they'll later grasp literally - physically. In the lower economic strata, that ownership of what life has to offer just isn't there.
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posted by gbarto at 1:38 AM:
Meant to mention this the other night: Here's Joanne Jacobs with a good piece about life in Silicon Valley in the Mercury News. Good to see her get some paying work. (Maybe she could convince her former employers to do the same for other South Bay Bloggers!) You can visit her regular site at left.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:29 AM:
Eating endangered fish at $500/lb? Cicero has it exactly right: this is a sport for the super-rich for whom there's nothing left to buy but proof that they're above the law. The Aussies have taken in a vessel that may have $2 million (!) worth of contraband fish. Let's hope for a successful prosecution based on what percentage of the catch turn out to be illicit.Granted, species are going to die out and some will die out because of our actions. But deliberately and directly? That's just crass. It moves man from taking part in the rough and tumble of nature to playing God for the sake of playing God. - And over fish. How embarrassing.
The ending we'd like to see: the revelation that the catch was ordinary cod but that it was going to be sold as illicit - and that previous, identical catches had been sold as illicit. Thus setting up the vessel's owners as fraudsters and their clients as fools.
Will it happen? I fear not.
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posted by gbarto at 12:58 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Mattei Launches Health Insurance Reform - and could anything be less enviable than having to make the case the country's spending too much on health care while they count up the bodies from the heat wave? Well, there's always being one of the bodies...
Le Figaro: Lower Taxes: What's In Store. ... okay, referring to the above, there's also finding yourself in left-leaning, government can do all believing France and having to make the case the government is spending more than it can afford on health care while the Prime Minister of your government pushes for lower taxes.
Libération: Libé presents a translation problem so I'm going to throw out a few possibilities, then explain. The headline reads, "Chômage: Matignon sans mode d'emplois." That means, "Unemployment: The Prime Minister's office has no owner's manual." An owner's manual, incidentally, is a mode d'emploi or "manner of employing." Translating word by word, instead of idiomatically, this gives us, "Unemployment: Matignon without manner of employments" or "manner of jobs." It's a great pun in French that goes nowhere in English. For a final possibility, less witty but addressing the pun problem, we suggest the following: Unemployment: Matignon can't get the jobs done.
Ouest-France: The Student's Return, Luc Ferry's Worksite. He's the Education Minister and faces one hell of a mess taking care of the bad blood between teachers and the government.
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Monday, September 01, 2003
posted by gbarto at 4:20 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: DC-10: Tripoli Announces Accord with Paris. Libya had been trying to get the UN to lift sanctions once it had settled the Lockerbie matter. But Lockerbie was not alone among Tripoli's evil deeds and the French wanted matters with of one of their planes settled too. It looks like it's been worked out.
Le Figaro: Back to School on the Razor's Edge. Because when you spent the end of the preceding year striking and trading barbs with education ministers, it's hard to figure out how to get back to plain old everyday teaching and convince the kids it's going to be normal from now on.
Libération: Saddam Denies Being Implicated in Najaf Bombing. Or at least a voice claimed to be his and broadcast on Al-Jazeera does.
Ouest-France: Bitter Back to School time for public school teachers.
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Sunday, August 31, 2003
posted by gbarto at 1:21 AM:
A Dog's Life has a very nice dissection of Nicky Kristof's columns from the Ukraine. It is striking how wrongheaded one can be and still get a column with the paper with all the news that's fit to print. It's no wonder Sullivan's gone; the only question is how people with the talent of Postrel and (Chris Buckley pal) John Tierney can stay around.Kristof's problem is he can't quite get over the idea that Communism wasn't just a stinker of an idea but drifted into the sort of evil that Times people prefer to associate with right wing regimes, so much so that they even transmogrify the Nazis into right-wingers, forgetting that the second half of the name of Hitler's party was "socialist." But in fact it is the almost religious nature of regimes in which the state becomes God, the end of history, the Way, that leads to total social devastation and these usually come with Big Ideas like socialism and communism, not with petty corruption. Sure, lots of Pinochet's enemies disappeared. But it takes a Hitler or a Stalin for the political omelets to start requiring eggs in the millions. Until Kristof gets the difference, his columns may be nice for local color, but those seeking insight will have to look elsewhere.
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posted by gbarto at 1:04 AM:
French news:Le Monde posits A Tense Back-to-School Season, as memories of last years numerous strikes and protests still linger.
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