Monthly Archives: July 2007

Blogging/IT

Watch those comments

July 7, 2007 – 8:55 am

Sydney’s Telegraph newspaper has lost out in court, to the tune of $480,000, to a group of people who wrote references for a guy being prosecuted for possessing child porn. They were a high-powered lot, including a former Supreme Court judge, but the fact that the comments left by readers on the story were taken as a significant part of the libel should send a collective shiver across the internet.

I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding is that as soon as a single person opens your web page in Australia you are “publishing” there, and could get sued there.

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Travel

Paris: a comment and a question

July 6, 2007 – 10:29 pm

The comment: there’s a major cultural difference in how French women and English women buy shoes. French women are concerned with how they look – rolling up trousers to check it out, turning several ways in the mirror, but don’t seem to even bother to walk in them to check for comfort. (At least this was what I observed in a Paris shoe shop today. I caused consternation by wanting to walking up and down to see how they felt…)

The question: why are french meringues so big? I mean ginormous. Since I can’t eat gluten any more, they are the only excuse I have to go into a patisserie – but I suspect they must be meant for three, since they don’t in any way match other French portions. Answers in the comments please…

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Feminism

Women gossip, and men gossip too… just as much

July 5, 2007 – 10:43 pm

One more sexual stereotype shot down by a study in Science:

…both men and women use around 16,000 words a day, according to the study by Dr Matthias Mehl from The University of Arizona and reported today…
However, there are still huge differences between individuals.
Among the three most talkative males in the study, one used 47,000 words a day while the least talkative spoke only 500.
The idea that women use more words a day arose in the book The Female Brain, which was published last year.
“These findings have been reported widely by national media and have entered the cultural mainstream,” said Prof James Pennebaker from the University of Texas, Austin, another of those who worked on the study.
“Although many people believe the stereotypes of females as talkative and males as reticent, there is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended period of time.” “

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Travel

The glorious life of Paris

July 5, 2007 – 10:26 pm

So many simple things are just done so well:

* I sit down at a cafe near the Place des Vosges and the waitress brings out an English-language menu (all the people sitting outside seem to be Americans speaking entirely English to her), but when she notices that I have a Le Monde on the table she apologises and asks if I would like a French menu. (I would, even though no one is ever going to mistake me for a native French-speaker.)

* I have a banana split in a cafe overlooking Notre Dame (okay – not what I’d normally eat, but it’s been a long month). The chocolate sauce is proper, biting – lots of real chocolate – a sauce – not sugar syrup with cocoa for colouring, and the fraise ice-cream is bursting with real strawberry flavour.

* I buy some Provence-flavour tissane in my favourite shop for this purpose (Cafe Amazonian on Boulevarde Francis Bourgeois) and the smell of summer fills the shop, overwhelming even the freshly ground coffee.

* French bookshops are wonderful – I was wandering around one today which had a shelf each for Portugese literature, Spanish literature, Brazilian literature etc… all in translation. Can’t think of a single English-language bookshop like that – you’d struggle to find enough books in total. (But I was good – only bought one book, “Promenades Sur Les Lieux De L’histoire: D’Henry IV A Mai ’89”, of which you’ll probably hear more…)

Mind you, the fact that a Subway has been installed beside my favourite cafe in the area (Cafe Panis, also overlooking Notre Dame, and that after a refurb last year it is looking rather more touristy, with prices to match) is slightly disheartening.

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Carnival of Feminists

Carnival of Feminists No 40

July 5, 2007 – 12:05 am

There was a bit of waiting for it, since we lost a host along the way, but it proved well worth it: the Carnival of Feminists No 40 is now up on the hidden side of the leaf.

And it is something a bit different – a carnival on the theme of women and books – there is a book about breasts (pretty “womanly” that); a book translated Tamizh, the language of the Tamils of South India; and, a book about biblical businesswomen, plus much, much more.

But don’t waste time here – do go over there and check it out.

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Cycling

Preparing for the Tour?

July 4, 2007 – 2:23 am

A handy guide to French cycling vocabulary before the Tour de France arrives in London this weekend. Sadly (no, I don’t mean that), I’ll be in Paris at the time.

My favourite words: “une voiture balai” – the “broom wagon”, to pick you up when you just aren’t going to make it to the end of the course, and “chasse patate riding between two groups (literally, “potato hunt”)”.

If anyone can explain the last one, please do in the comments!

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