Un an de chocolat - Too Much mais Too Good!

"Ces radines de cloches ne vous ont rien apporté à Pâques ? C'est normal, on les a kidnappées. Et on va vous en faire profiter : on vous offre 1 an de chocolat. "

Yes, vous avez bien entendu, 1 an de chocolat!

from the incomparable My Little Paris

voir Gagnez 1 an de chocolat

Paris: Au Comptoir Général

"Ancienne ambassade ? Grand hôtel abandonné ? Au bout du couloir, un vieux comptoir et son veilleur de nuit finissent d'attiser la curiosité. Sénégal ? Cuba ? Ok, on se rend, où est-ce qu'on a atterri ? Au Comptoir Général, récemment ouvert le week-end aux Parisiens pour boire un verre et ripailler ."

from My Little Paris

voir  Le Comptoir général




Le Comptoir Général,

80 quai de Jemmapes, 75 010 Paris
Du vendredi au dimanche de 11h à 23h
Tél : 01 44 88 20 45

The iPhone Location Tracking Issue.

Image via Wikipedia"No, iPhone location tracking isn't harmless and here's why - Secret Apple database already being tapped by cop"

A thought provoking analysis from The UK's The Register

see No, iPhone location tracking isn't harmless and here's why

Tim Hetherington: A Photo Tribute.

Image by Getty Images via @daylifefrom Vanity Fair

see Tim Hetherington: A Vanity Fair Portfolio

A soldier resting at Restrepo bunker in Afghanistan, named the World Press Photo of the Year for 2007.

City Rankings: Best City in the World by You

"Straight outta Germany, Clash is determined to create 'valid lists of the best cities in the world' by crowdsourcing a consensus rather than considering 'official indicators'”

see  Cityclash

thanks to Thrillist with their original article City Clash Polling the Web to rank the world

Dubai: Spend Until it's All Gone

Have just read what I consider one of the best articles about Dubai and it's culture of spend, keep spending and then spend some more; because you can and because you really don't have any idea what money and work is about.

from Vanity Fair 

see Dubai on Empty

To start: "Dubai is Las Vegas without the showgirls, the gambling, or Elvis. Dubai is a financial Disneyland without the fun. It’s a holiday resort with the worst climate in the world. "

On that building: "...current tallest building in the world—a monument to small-nation penis envy. This pylon erected with the Viagra of credit is now a big, naked exclamation of Dubai’s fiscal embarrassment."

On that in-door ski slope: "...it’s like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—the land of permanent winter. The fat boys push past carrying their snowboards toward the Tyrolean chocolate shop and Swiss fir trees and slide down the hill with a practiced arrogance. The girls slither, splay-legged, hijabs fluttering, in the manufactured snow."

On their locals: "Emiratis are born retired. They waft through this city in their white dishdashas and headscarves and their obsessively tapered humorless faces. They’re out of place in their own country. They have imported and built a city, a fortress of extravagance, that excludes themselves."

On those expats: "...(the) Westerners, mostly British, loud and drunk, dressed in their tarty party gear. The girls, raucous and provocative, have fat thighs that wobble in tiny frocks. Cantilevered bosoms lurch. The boys, spiky and gelled, glassy-eyed and leering."

What can you say?

Brilliant!

Un dimanche matin à Paris

"Dimanche matin, 8h30. Le boulanger régale son premier client, les ronfleurs poussent leur dernier grognement et Paris s'éveille, tout doucement. Vous ? Vous avez rendez-vous avec les premiers rayons du soleil pour une balade secrète à vélo électrique. "

voir My Little Paris (of course!)

from Paris s'éveille

The iPhone Camera Take Over

SAI Business Insider's Chart of the Day

The iPhone Makes Point And Shoot Cameras Obsolete

Let's Not Head for The Stars

Image via WikipediaMichael Lind, writing in Salon.com rejects the logic that man should ultimately head for the stars via a well written article showing that man, or any creature in evolution only really excepted to move out of their comfort zones if they really had to, as he puts it:

"One is the assertion that life has always sought out new environments. Just as plants and animals moved from the seas to the land, it is said, so humanity must transcend the boundaries of the Earth.

This is just silly. Animals never leave a comfortable habitat for a harsh one, unless they are forced to. That is why we don't see buffalo, raccoons and turtles marching off to Death Valley in great numbers to test their mettle, in a spirit of adventure."

It's makes a lot of sense but I really do not think that it will stop people exploring the stars in person. Once they crack the speed of light issue we will be gone.

And we will. It's just the way we are...

see Why we should embrace the end of human spaceflight

One To Watch: Armadillo - The Danes in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

"Janus Metz’s “Armadillo,” which follows a group of Danish soldiers through a tour of duty in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, has a lot in common with “Restrepo.” Each film is named for a Forward Operating Base, and each one focuses on the daily grind of the men who fight there."

"Mr. Metz’s cameras somehow capture — you shudder to think of how — an intense firefight and its bloody aftermath, an event that turns “Armadillo” into a queasy ethical puzzle. What happens is shocking, and yet it also seems, especially to the soldiers, completely logical and acceptable. "

from The New York Times Film Review by A O Scott

see Fortunes and Misfortunes of War, From a Danish Perspective

No One Came or Rather Watched

from the incomparable DOGHOUSEDIARIES

Awkwardlike

Bar Crush Bar Le Béguin

"Pourquoi on rougit ? Parce qu'on a le béguin. On l'a rencontré dans une impasse. Il était petit, cossu, mais sûr de lui. On l'a tout de suite aimé, ce bar : Le Béguin"

from (comme toujours) My Little Paris

voir On a le béguin


Le Béguin, 2 Rue du Cardinal Mercier
75009 Paris, Métro Place de Clichy
Fermé le dimanche, tél : 01 42 81 58 20

Man in Space - A History

Yep. Time for some more updates again.

And yes, time we all headed for the stars again.

from The Economist's blog Daily Chart


see Reaching for the stars

Le Louvre: Musée des fesses

"Mater goulûment, sans risquer la moindre remarque... A Paris, il existe une astuce pour vous livrer sans honte à cette marotte. C'est au Louvre que ça se passe. Pas derrière le jean des touristes américaines, mais sous les reins des statues. Bruno, un guide d'un genre particulier, a soigneusement répertorié les étonnants atouts que cachent ces canons de beauté.'

from Merci Alfred

voir Les plus belles fesses de Paris

Boss Robert and the End Game.

Image via WikipediaChristopher Hitchens, writing in Slate.com reviews my old school mate Peter Godwin's book 'The Fear'.

More about the seemingly endless last days of Robert Mugabe.

Written before the last election that resulted in a so-called 'power sharing' with Morgan Tsvangirai MDC, it updates '...the continuing story of popular resistance.'

Unfortunately all hope of a Zimbabwean 'Jasmine' revolution inspired by the current 'Arab Spring' revolts will not lead to any revolutionary winds of change but, as Hitchen's says:

 'One day, the civic resistance to this, which was often looked-down upon by people considering themselves revolutionary, will earn the esteem and recognition it deserves.'

One day Boss Robert will be blown away...one day.

Movies: "Hanna" - An American Nikita - One to Watch.

"“Hanna,” energetically and at times hyperactively directed by Joe Wright, is about a girl raised not by wolves but the next best thing: a bearded and muscled Eric Bana draped in animal skins. He’s the resident mystery man, Erik, a warrior of some type who for initially unknown reasons lives with his daughter, Hanna, in rugged isolation in northern Finland. She’s the bigger puzzle."

So writes Manohla Dargis in The New York Times review of the movie.

Interesting but where are the comparisons to the original French Nikita directed by Luc Besson  in 1990?

A Googleless World

From Techi.com 

original article title

Imagining a World Without Google

Best Songs of the Sixties

Image by Affendaddy via FlickrRolling Stone Magazine's readers picks.

see Rolling Stone Readers Pick the Top 10 Songs of the Sixties

My favorite?

Jimi Hendrix "All Along the Watchtower"

This is not the best live recorded version of 'Watchtower' but it seems to be the only one available.

Like most live music filming in the sixties the camera pans wildly around, either wide focusing on nothing in particular, or going into almost porno-like close ups for far too long.

It was filmed at the Isle of Wright festival, with the recordings of Jimi Hendrix at that festival having a deep sense of forbidding about them. And that's not hindsight: listen to the album.

Jimi would be dead just 18 days later.

Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire: Bang Bang Nearly Over?

"The end to Côte d'Ivoire's nightmare is in sight. Following an overnight "final assault" on the presidential palace in Abidjan, the commercial capital, Laurent Gbagbo is said to have agreed to step down as president."


From The Economist blog Baobab


see Ready to go

Twitter - Smaller Than the Sum of it's Parts

New Movies: Source Code - One to Watch

"While he knows himself to be Capt. Colter Stevens, an Army helicopter pilot who has recently been running sorties in Afghanistan, Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), the woman with the pretty smile opposite him, knows (and sees) him as Sean (Frédérick De Grandpré). Leaping up, Stevens insists that he isn’t who she believes him to be, even if the man looking back at him in a bathroom mirror (Mr. De Grandpré) suggests otherwise. Before Stevens has time to ask whozat, he and everyone else are blown up."


from The New York Times


see  Don’t Know Who You Are, but Don’t Know Who I Am