anaroundtheworld

Today is Sunday and as it sometimes happens I treated myself with magazines. I say it's a treat because I have the loveliest newspaper shop near my place.
Check it out

I bought ELLE, ELLE Déco, AD and other foolishness and then The Economist. For me it is a bit like porn you know. It doesn't happen so often, the paper is very thin and yet I make it last forever. Also reading about politics and economics makes my cheeks all rosy... what can I say.

Anyway.

My 1st remark is : only in The Economist do I hear so much about the Chinese one child policy. Why do you care so much? I mean no... I see why you care, it being borderline a human rights violation and shaping and molding the next superpower. Maybe later causing wars based on "give me your women!". But still I feel there is 1 or 2 big articles EVERYtime! But maybe it's just our nation's news silence on the matter that makes it so loud in your pages.

That was just a sidenote. So I was reading and my eyes got caught by this title : Bail-outs? Bof... by .... Never noticed I couldn't find any author name in The Economist before.
Why the French are relaxed about contributing to the Euro Zone rescue.

I'll spare you the details, after all you can just click on the link. I read this very good piece about how we (French that is) wanted to save our more engaged banks and Germany was more eager and alert about protecting its competitiveness gains.
Then I wondered how many French actually knew what Competitiveness Gains means (even if heard a lot about it during and after the 35-hour week debate). And then a more general wonder :

What exact pourcentage of the population have had economics classes?
What I mean by that is what pourcentage of the population understands what's going on? I am not starting a debate on elites ruling the masses. Don't care really. But at some point you have to wonder if our nice rulers for the last 50 years haven't colluded to make us dumber in matters of... what matters.

Philosophy is mandatory in France. Every single one of us had to go through it last year of HS. I remember a smelly professor, who might have been passionate about philosophy one day but lost all interest after years of talking about Socrate's, Plato's & Aristoto's thinking to a bunch of students who were mostly uninterested and certainly all frightned because they knew and everyone had told them so, that philosophy is hard and useless.

Don't get me wrong! During my real philosophy classes in the following years, I understood how important Philosophy is, liking it so much I wanted to double-graduate in it, and certainly at that time I was very proud that we, in France, make it mandatory.
Still proud! But as I was also following my first economics classes (and that was an intense 8 hours / week) I realised that only then was I starting to understand what people were saying in the news. After 2 years at this regiment I was screaming at the TV and cursing at whoever was professing unsustainable bullshit.

So! Really... 20% of high school students choose economics as their specialy. Some other will take it as a 1-hour/week option. So I'll say roughly 65% of the students who leave high school have never had an economics class (I'd love some real numbers on that if you have them).

At that point I am thinking major inter-generations government conspiracy.
I feel I'll be willing to give up philosophy-for-all if we could gain Economics in every classroom. I say their hasn't been an uprise in France about paying for another in-debt country , not because we are weighing pro or cons, but just because this debate flew right over the nations head.

Would loooove some numbers on that because I am both feeling like an elitist prick and yet still can't be sure I am wrong.

Today on the Place de la Bastille was the concert to celebrate François Mitterand's election 10 years ago.
The organisators said this event was not supposed to be political.

Am I the only one laughing?

I vote we make it "Concert for USS Triton" if that's what they really want.

I realise my last post was somehow heated, I might have been rather p*** off and therefore maybe even angry.
So today we'll keep a neutral to happy tone:
AREN'T YOU HAPPY FOR KATE? WHAT DO YOU THINK SHE'LL WEAR?

NO that's just too much. But I WILL talk about Scream 4 and our new packs of cigarettes. For a few weeks now I've been visually assaulted by the new pictures on my Malboro's packs. My reactions have been contrasted.
There's the one with a needle which I had to ask my friends about to be sure it meant that this was an addictive product, almost like a drug. Which I do not find effective on long-time smokers like me because I feel it is too late now for me to start trying coke! (almost wrote cock there... no little red underline from the spellchecker! Useless!)
There's the one with a child breathing into a mask... you kinda wanna say... "Well why don't you pack a mask with the pack if you care so much about my kids!" (nota : I do not have kids please do not send DCFS to my home...)
There's the one with the 2 lungs... you know which one I am talking about... a classic but oh so effective!

There was a big debate in France about this "shock" pictures. Was it too much?
To anybody who's wondering if this is too much, you should go see scream 4 currently in a theater near you!

As you certainly know Scream was one of the 1st (if not the 1st) scary funny movie. The killer... (...s because YES! there were 2 of them!) got kicked in the balls, always a good one! At some point in Scream 4, which is actually a little more gore thant the previous ones (I can tell, we did a trilogy re-run the night before), poor Anthony Anderson (Deputy Perkins) get stabbed in the face. And I mean a foot-long blade between the eyes. NOT a pretty one!!! And I swear the audience (and I, I have to admit) laughed so hard as he just cried, got stabbed, and actually walked a bit with a giant knife planted in his skull, it almost turned into a collective nervous laugh of shame.

So I wonder, we just saw a pretty girl eviscerated, and laughed as a Police offcier getting stadbed in the forehead. How much can a picture of a needle scare us into giving up a year-long addiction?
You pass me the lighter and tell me.

Sunday February the 27th 2011, I am in the TGV, reading newpapers from the internet, on my iPhone. I live in a world where growing a beard is suspiscious and everybody knows that the longest part of the trans-atlantic flights are the security checks.

From what i just wrote, our great liberator Charles de Gaulle would only be able to understand "February".
The technologies, companies and social paradigm of today weren't even there when he passed away.
Tante Yvonne would never understand that at my age it's very normal to be single, have a carrier, and think that you could just as easily raise a child with a man or a woman.
I have absolutly nothing to do with De Gaulle, I know little about him as he was always in the end of the history books (and therefore often fallen victim of program cuts). I suspect he wouldn't really understand me either. I am grateful for what he did for our country just as much as I am to Louis XIV and Joan of Arc.

So why on earth do politicians keep calling themselves "gaulliste"... And fighting over who deserve it more!!! Nobody cares!!! The only people who actually know what being "gaulliste" means are about to not remember even their children's names!!!!

Might be a little harsh but it drives me crazy that the finest and most powerful politicians are so out of our world they didn't notice De Gaulle didn't mean anything to many voters, that they didn't see that when they claim to be "Gaullist" we only hear "I am elitist".
And it makes me sad that we haven't had any new leader since that new generations would claim to be sons of, that our last historical leader was run out of office by riots 40 years ago and that no man or woman has shaken our political landscape since.

Please kind sirs from the government or the opposition, stop saying "gaulliste" it just makes ME sad and YOU look sad.