French television is digging deep into its archives looking for all things football (soccer to us Yanks), gearing up for the Coupe du Monde (World Cup), so there’s been a lot of soccer-related programs and movies lately. A few days ago, they showed a fascinating documentary about the trials and tribulations of the Palestinian team, actually made up of players from all over the world; there was a guy from New York and several footballers from as far away as Chile, all representing the Palestinian National team. Though living in other countries, all had roots planted firmly in Palestine. The Palestinian players living in the West Bank and Gaza strip had problems of their own and were delayed a few weeks from getting to their training in Egypt because Israeli forces only randomly opens the border allowing people to leave as well as enter. After several attempts, they finally got through but only 10 days before their qualifying match in Qatar against Uzbekistan. Anyway, they suffered several problems due to language issues, place of residency (and difficult governments and regulations) and general logistics mishaps. Most teams never have to deal with half of these problems because they are not from countries under occupation. [See a trailer here]

On a lighter note, they showed Shaolin Soccer on Arte TV, which is a must-see, hilariously clever feel-good football movie. I can’t help but wonder how much I missed because I had to watch it in dubbed French. I don’t understand much Mandarin but I’m sure it was even better in its original language. Still, I loved it.

Speaking of Arte TV and Football, there’s a 5-part documentary that started yesterday (and continues over the next 4 days) called, L’Académie du Foot (Football Academy) that follows the lives of 4 young players (Pacho, Vincent, Fréjus and Dimitri) in their last year of training at the largest football school in France, FC Nantes, where less than 10 percent of the players will actually get to sign professional contracts at the end of their training. The doc includes commentary from four of the French World Cup champions ‘98: Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram, Didier Deschamps and Marcel Desailly.

Well. I’d originally planned to make this post about these new soccer stamps but I guess I got distracted along the way. These stamps from the French Post Office have just been released. [Read more about them and/or buy them online] (in French).

Related: Computer Football Game

Today’s Memorial Day, a day to remember the sacrifices of American veterans. Btw, the French Memorial/Veterans/Armistice Days are May 8 (for WWII), and November 11 (for WWI).

Tags: france, french, cemetary, memorial+day, veterans, war

Every year, the village of Rocamadour hosts the largest cheese festival in the south of France. Rocamadour is located in the southwest, just north of the city of Toulouse.

The festival will feature cheeses made by 40 producers from 15 regions in the south (15 producers of goat cheese, 15 producers of cheese made with sheep milk and 10 producers that make cheese from cow milk) and you’ll be able to sample and purchase pungent (ok, smelly, gooey, runny) cheeses from the open market (Saturday from 3pm to 7pm and Sunday from 10am to7pm). Just kidding, not all French cheeses stink – or run. The festival is a step back in time to more basic French traditions, and a perfect getaway from city chaos and polllution. In addition to the cheese market, there’ll be a cheese competition, bbq, music and a dinner and dance with a “band” called Les Milandes. They say dinner is a, Menu Querçynois, which means regional fare from Le Quercy, and that smells like beans, probably in the form of cassoulet. (I’m not sure about this, however.) Actually, the dinner thing sounds like it’s for the older (much older) local crowd but if you’re adventurous, knock yourself out. It could be fun. Dinner begins at 8:30pm and costs 23 € (8 € for under 12 years); local wine (vin de Cahors) and coffee is included in the price. Between 4pm and 5pm on Saturday, a herd of goats will be moved from the valley to Causse, so that might be Little House on the Prairie moment with lots of photo ops. This particular area’s regional specialities include goat cheeses, fois gras, pâtés truffés (truffle pâté), confits et magrets of duck and goose, roquefort cheese and lamb. Visit the local farms to grab some regional food while exploring the surrounding countryside because most of the farms sell directly to the public. While you’re in Rocamadour, you might want to check out their famous grottes (caves). [Click here for more information on the caves of Rocamadour] XVIIème Fête des Fromages / 17th Festival of the Cheeses 46500 Rocamadour, France June 3 & 4, 2006 Pentecôte (Pentecost weekend) Admission: Free Telephone: 05 65 33 67 81 ou 06 83 42 38 46 (for dinner reservations) For more information: Rocamadour (in French)

In the U.S. there’s the Tooth Fairy, the magical elfin philanthropist that comes late at night to give some ka-ching to little kids in exchange for a tooth left under a pillow. In France: same principle, different character. The French version is “La petite souris” (the little mouse), which comes to take your dents de lait (baby teeth) and slips you a euro or so. This 3-minute video is a beautiful 3D-animated short called, “Opération Quenotte” (Operation Tooth) featuring the French Tooth Fairy, an adorable mouse on a tooth mission. En route, he runs into some inconveniences… (click on the photo to watch the video) Dir: P.G. Stehr; Story Writer: E.Pisler; 3D Artists: D.Arnould, P.Billion, J.Bonnard, J.Delchiappo, D.Gautron, Y.Giaume, P.L.Hamon, A.Heboyan, M.Leffad, E.Letourneur, N.Lorvo, Y.Pelladeaud; Music: Barth; Editor: R.Hyder [via bibi's box]

Tags: france, french, Opération+Quenotte, tooth+fairy, la+petite+souris, 3D+animation

Or should I ask if Ana-Lucia from Lost (aka Michelle Rodriguez) can handle France. Why am I even talking about this as if I care? Maybe I care? Nah, I just got Lost on the mind.

I’ve seen nearly all of Season 2 of Lost and am just waiting for the finale from my bud in the U.S. No, s2 of Lost hasn’t even begun in France. The second season started off slowly and almost lost me with some snorers and filler/recycled episodes but then, the writers woke up at some point (or did they get fired and hire new ones? or did they just get kicked in the butt?) and things got more interesting. Now, I’m just waiting for the finale to arrive. DON’T tell me what happens!!!! I know it already aired in the U.S. Back to Michelle Rodriguez. Anyway, she is sick of the U.S. and is thinking about moving to France because she thinks people will leave her alone. I’m NOT sure that is really true. Just ask Bras de Pitt. (Why do you think they’re in Namibia right now?) Paparazzi are here too, you know. She should just move to New York where no one cares who you are. That’s so cool. I LOVE New YoOOOooo ooor oor or oooork. (but I don’t think Los Angeles is for people who sleep.) That’s from a song, btw. I think I drank too much coffee today or something. [via defamer]

This is a feisty, brindle French bulldog I caught a photo of walking down the street looking for trouble. Isn’t he sooo adorable? Look at his foot and imagine the cartoon sound (swoosh! swish-swish!) Probably a very distant relative of Lulu, most French people think Lulu is actually a (sickly, way too skinny and tall) French Bulldog since Boston Terriers are not as common in France.

Better late than never, right??

That just goes to show you that some things take 20+ years to get adopted in France (from the U.S.), while other things are instantaneous (via the internet, I guess). Though I love salads, I’m way too grossed out by salad bars (for various neurotic reasons), but I wanted to at least take a look at the salad bar à la française here. Sadly, they were closed. I just got a kick out the sign that said, “New Concept: Salad Bar.” It made me laugh out loud, disturbing this man reading a book.

Having said that, I’m not knocking it, really. In France when you go to most restaurants, the salads are boring and there aren’t lots and lots of choices, in fact, you’d be lucky to even HAVE a choice of different salads. It’s usually lettuce, tomatoes, possibly an olive with seed and ALWAYS the same dressing of Dijon mustard viniagrette (and usually too much of it – at least in my experiences.) So, if you can handle community salad bars, this is a great alternative. Good for you, salad bar near La Defense!

The recent opening of Apple’s very brilliantly designed glass store in New York made me think about why there aren’t ANY Apple stores in France. YET. I’d thought for sure there should be one in Paris after all these years, but no way José. I know now that it really isn’t easy to be a business owner in France, particularly if you’re a foreign company. In fact, its a real pain.

There is, however, an iTunes store online for France. No physical store location but at least we can still buy online and download music from Apple iTunes France. Sadly, even that little iTunes store was being threatened to be pulled from France if a law was passed mandating Apple to remove their DRM (digital rights management)* from the songs downloaded. Wasn’t that quite a big stink?

This issue suddenly (almost) vanished and France (has almost) decided that Apple could keep its nasty DRM and stay in France and everyone lives on happily ever after (except the consumer). How did that happen? Answer: some sort of DEAL between Apple and France. Now, rumors have it that Apple plans to open its first store in Paris near the Champs-Élysées possibly as early as this year for the grand opening. Not only that, but future stores are envisioned for Lyon and Lille.

So. How coincidental is it that we hear about the news of Apple store openings just after France quashing the iTunes DRM law? France is sort of notorious for making deals with companies to get them to either stay in France or set up shop or something in between. (Remember when Jean Lasalle (center-right politician) went on a hunger strike because he didn’t want a Japanese company to leave his jurisdiction? The company, Toyal (Toyo Aluminium), wasn’t even leaving France, but was just going to move and build a factory 65 kilometers away. He lost a LOT of weight until the government cut a deal with the company to get them to stay and to get Lasalle to eat. Imagine what he’d do if they were to leave France entirely! What was the deal? How fair is that to other companies? Not much was divulged but now you know that you can better your business terms in France by several means and a sliding business regulations “book.” However, wouldn’t it be scary to set up business in France, then decide to leave but you can’t because some politician has gone on a hunger strike because of you? Back to Apple.

As a Mac person, I am happy and sad about all this. Yes, I want an Apple store in France. On the other hand, I honestly HATE the DRM, and find that fairly evil on Apple’s part.

* This DRM installs a restrictive element with the song so that you can only play it on iPods and not any other mp3 player (unless you rip it which isn’t against the law.) and on only one of your Macs or PC (unless you hack it, which also isn’t against the law.)

World Cup is just around the corner (June 9) and World Cup fever is not a negligible event in France, Europe…well, practically in the whole world except the U.S. Where the U.S. has its NFL, all the “bowls” and of course the biggy McSuper Bowl Sunday (insert James Earl Jones’ echo here), Europe has what they call FOOTBALL; it’s soccer to others.

Admittedly, I’m usually not into sports even though as a kid I played all the sports including soccer in little league and loved it. But I can’t help but get into it a little here; I dunno why. Probably because I think Ronaldhino is cute is a great player and I love Brazil (vai Brasil!). I guess I’m not very loyal to France because I’m not really into France’s star, Zinedine Zidane, especially because Thierry Henry is way cuter way better than he is, and should be in more commercials. Can you tell, I don’t really fit into the sort of sports fanaticism as the people around me, but I’m getting there! (I even know about the scandalous game in ‘84. Well, I heard about it, anyway.) Anything can happen this year including scandals, lies and lots of cheating – but wouldn’t it be so excellent if the country that wins is one that no one expected to win? Yeah, I love Brazil but it would be fun if say, Japan wins.

Anyway, to get into the spirit of World Cup, I offer…what else? A Game! Kickin Soccer was created by French developers based in the U.S. (though the main programmer for Kickin’ Soccer is from Argentina) Kickin’ Soccer is a retro top-down (perspective) arcade game for true footies who are also gamers.

Dribble the opponent players, slide into their defenses with quick and accurate passing, score with shoots from a distance or use crosses and try to head the ball in the back of the net. Use the pass button/key (x key) to perform quick low passes, or if the button is kept pressed longer players are able to lift the ball for higher passes. The shoot button (z key) works in a similar manner: the longer the key is pressed, the stronger the shoot will be. The arrows will move you around.

Kickin’ Soccer features 1 and 2-player game modes: an “arcade” mode where you can play one match at a time, and a “Cup” mode, which lets you play one country’s team (from a roster of 16), each with specific skills, trying to win the World Cup. The 2-player mode gets you head-to-head with another opponent on the same keyboard.

Download the free demo (12 MB):

PC Demo Download
Mac Intel Download (Universal)
Mac OSX Download (10.2+)

[via Kickin Soccer]

UPDATE: Read the review of Kickin Soccer at Macworld

Tags: france, soccer, football, zidane, world+cup, thierry+henry, ronaldhino, kickin+soccer, games

Sooooo….. I’m wondering why I have to read the news in an Australian newspaper to find out about nuclear waste leaking into the groundwater in France. Answer: Because they haven’t reported this to the general population of France. (just like the 60 tons of fuel spilled in Brittany)

RADIOACTIVE waste from a storage site in Normandy, France, is leaking into groundwater used by dairy cattle, says a report by a French laboratory, ACRO.

The aquifers showed levels of radioactivity, on average, more than seven times the European safety limit, said the report, published yesterday. Scientists from ACRO and Greenpeace have surveyed the contamination leaking from the low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste disposal plant at La Hague.

In the aquifer near the site, radioactivity was 90 times above the safety limit during 2005, the report said.

Greenpeace said the report followed news that a proposed Electricite de France nuclear reactor was unable to withstand the impact of a commercial aircraft.

The nuclear waste contaminating the Normandy environment was produced by reactors operated by Electricite de France and overseas customers of the reprocessing company.

Greenpeace has criticised the French Government for not seriously dealing with what it says is France’s nuclear waste crisis.

The director of ACRO, Dr David Boiley, said mismanagement was damaging the environment.

“Repeated incidents have led to a constant release and, as a consequence, the groundwater and many outlets are highly contaminated with tritium [a radioactive form of hydrogen],” Dr Boiley said.

“We must note that for a long time there has been a lack of information regarding this chronic pollution, and even now a precise assessment of its impacts still needs to be done,” he said.

“As far as the future situation, it could worsen in the long run because there is no guarantee that the wrappings of the older wastes, which also contain more hazardous elements, will last for long periods of time.”

[via The Sydney Morning Herald]

Tags: france, travel, french, environment, pollution, normandy, nuclear+waste, greenpeace, radioactive

I have a feeling this photo has been around since the last presidential elections in the U.S. but I just saw it yesterday and seriously, had to post it.

It’s a clothing label from a jacket that was manufactured by an American company that exports their products to France, so the label is in English and in French, but some of the French wasn’t translated into English – and is necessary here! The translation:

Wash with warm water.
Use mild soap.
Dry flat.
Do not use bleach.
Do not dry in the dryer.
Do not iron.
We are sorry that our president is an idiot.
We did not vote for him.

[via]

Do you remember when you were a kid (or maybe you still do this or maybe you ARE a kid) telling ghost stories in the dark with a flashlight under your chin facing up to create a scary look? This photo has that same effect with the sun coming down and from behind Lulu. Anyway.

Beaune, 150 miles southeast of Paris, is the wine capital of Burgundy and if you are an oenophile (aka wine lover) you will be smack right in the middle of your element and may never want to leave. Ever! Take a wine tasting tour or create your own tour (you can’t miss the wine caves or the wine bars; they’re everywhere) or take classes at the wine school. Some of the most active days in Beaune, particularly at this Hotel-Dieu, an intact medieval hospital for the poor turned museum, take place on and after the third Sunday in November. The event is the world-renowned “Les Trois Glorieuse” where, over three days, the city auctions off the wine yielded from 53 hectares of vineyards owned by local hospitals around Beaune. 53 hectares is approximately the same size as 75 football fields. When in this area, you’ll notice that every square inch of land is covered in vineyards if there’s not a building or street already there; it’s remarkable.

More recently in the news, Beaune, which usually hosts a film festival every year, has cancelled it! It is quite sad, indeed. Apparently, Alain Suguenot, the mayor of Beaune (and a deputy in the National Assembly) supports legislation where a global license would be in effect that legalized downloading of media for an annual fee. But the big media companies (media conglomerates Time Warner and Vivendi) lobbied heavily against it and this amendment was “lobbied” to death, literally. Still, because of the mayor’s stance, big film distributors threatened to withdraw their film directors from participating in the film festival. So before they could do that Suguenot cancelled the event. Do I hear high school politics, anyone? [read the article]
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*Lulu Lundi features an adorable Boston Terrier named Lulu, somewhere in France every Monday.

Tags: travel, france, beaune, dogs, boston+terriers, tours, wine, lulu+lundi, ipod+law, burgundy

My visit to Paris last weekend lasted approximately 30 short hours before I was back on the train heading home to my beautiful Burgundy. Once in a while, I just have to take a day off from work to get a fix of a French city, breath in the pollution, shop, maybe step in a poo or two and sit in a cafe, sip a coffee or four and people watch. After catching the Salon Saveurs Friday morning (which I might write about later), I felt I should check out La Defense. I’ve actually never been to La Defense before. Over the years, going to La Defense from where ever I was in Paris always seemed far and like too much of a schlep so I’d never made it there. This time I had no excuse and it was an easy 10 minutes from the 17th arrondissement to the concrete village and business district with the big giant arch of La Defense, just outside the peripherique (perimeter). It’s so different there because it’s so much more modern architecturally than the rest of Paris but fun to visit. You can take an elevator up into la Grande Arche at La Defense for a good view of Paris. I passed on this because it was very hazy and clouds were coming in, so I hung around to people watch then decided to go shopping. There’s a huge mall there with big department stores, shops and restaurants. There’s also a movie theater with 16 screens and an art gallery at the top level of the arch. On my way to the FNAC (a French version of the Virgin Megastore) to get Florent Pagny’s new CD “Abracadabra,” I got sidetracked. After entering the mall, I walked up to this cute guy standing next to a cow I saw a cow from the Vach’Art project (Cow Parade) and walked up to it. I noticed that there was a guy hanging around one of the two cows in there and realized he must be the artist, so we chatted a minute in front of his cow named, Litsy (Vote for No. 176 Litsy!!). He introduced himself as William Let. His last name didn’t sound very French until I realized it was shortened from Letourneau. Wasn’t that the name of the elementary school teacher that spent 7 years in jail because…nevermind. That’s probably NOT why he changed his name but anyway I digress. He gave me this adorable postcard of his Litsy, which, by the way, is a very cool Vach’art cow (Vote for William Let’s Litsy!!!), and wrote a little note and signed it for me (I’d told him I’d probably write about him in Why Travel to France.) Translation: (Litsy the cow is saying): “I’m happy to be on PT Ford’s blog. Kisses” The idea behind Litsy is this: A storyboard is a way to achieve a goal or dream and the filming of it, makes it a reality. Litsy is an allegory representing this very concept of making the dreams in our lives come true. Notice the lens around her neck (instead of a cowbell)? Looks like our artist’s dream is to be in the clean, clear air surrounded by nature, far, far FAR way from the city. Wanna see “the Making of Litsy”? Click on the photo below. His postcard had his website on it, so I check it out recently. It turns out that not only is William Let a talented artist (illustrator, painter, sculptor, storyboard artist, graphic artist/designer, photographer – is there something he DOESN’T do??), he’s also an actor participating in various theatre productions around France. And there’s a short indie film (quicktime) called Titre (Title – and it’s in French), which is sort of hilarious (in fact, ultra silly to the Nth degree), in which he plays the leading role as, Fax Meuledor, a spoof on Agent Fox Mulder from the X-files. (btw, Meule d’or is a French cheese). The short is a fun trip that brilliantly melds together manga, arcade games, Saturday Night Live and the Pink Panther. It made me laugh out loud. To see more artwork from William Let, check out his website: William Let and remember to Vote for William Let & Litsy!

Tags: travel, france, french, artists, william+let, litsy, la+defense, cow+parade, paris, vach'art

Before entering the Temple in La Boulaye we saw this “couple” from afar. I had to take the photo from where I was because I didn’t want to disturb the scene. It’s times like these when I think about getting a more powerful ZOOM LENS!

Related: Buddhist Temples in France

The cute little long-haired Jack Russell Terrier is tied to the pole, as this cat very well knows. (click on photo to zoom out)

Do you have a Mac from the U.S.or other region but want to play DVDs from France or other countries on it? When I was still in the U.S. I could play French DVDs (zone 2) on my American (zone 1) Mac because I had a handy dandy decoder that one of my French friends gave me. It played DVDs from France wonderfully. Then, after an update it no longer worked. Grrrrr! There’s some ridiculous law about the having different regions for different countries. All of our Macs are from the U.S. and Macs only let you change the region on the built-in DVD player four times. That is not very cool.

Luckily, what IS cool is this hack that shows you how you can get your Mac to play DVDs from various zones. Here it is: How to Play Multiple Region DVDs on Your Mac

[related: VLC]

Tags: france, mac, dvds+regions, hacks

I don’t think I would have known there was an exhibition of dragons in Paris, if I hadn’t seen this fire breather at the Gare de Lyon train station the other day. This particular dragon claims to be made with eco-packaging but it has that evil symbol that tricks people into thinking it is environmentally friendly and recyclable (but in reality it isn’t). The saving grace is that this dragon is, in fact, getting recycled in the form of a sculpture.

Despite my bitterness toward evil conglomerates that pretend they are being good to nature, it doesn’t mean that the exhibition is not worth visiting. The exhibition looks pretty cool, actually.

Exposition of Dragons
April 5 to November 6 (the dragon at the station will be there until June 15)
La Grande Galerie de l’Exposition
Jardin des Plantes
36 rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
75005 Paris

Hours: 10am to 6pm (Saturdays open ’til 8pm)
Admission: 8 Euros

Tags: france, french, art, exhibits, dragons, paris, myths, museums, galerie+de+l'evolution

Remember the very cool French Nabaztag? The wi-fi enabled bunny rabbit? Well, a hundred of them are getting together on May 27 at the Beaubourg for a mob opera called, “Nabaz’mob” as part of the Web Flash Festival. The Nabaz’mob opera is the brainchild of Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birgé and coproduced by the Web Flash Festival and Violet, creators of Nabaztag. Essentially, one hundred of these bunnies, brought by their owners, will perform a digital opera. They will be sent information by the composers in order to know what to do. The individual bunnies have their own preferences of sounds so they will not all sound the same at the same time. In fact, synchronization will be diffilcult to achieve, but should create an interesting effect musically. This definitely fits into the experimental music category.  It seems to have the potential to be fun or funny maybe both. In any case, it sounds like something to check out. The opera comes in three parts (movements): The first movement starts out in a basic form allowing the Nabazmob to sound their most simple sounds, much like a glockenspiel. In the second movement, the music will take on longer notes interspersed with silences and bunny ear choreography The last movement will incorporate excerpts of classical music that has been totally transformed digitally. Nabaz’mob Opera May 27, 2006 – 8pm at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) Opening Ceremony of the Flash Festival (Free admission but with limited seats. More info and sign up here) [via pasta and vinegar]

Tags: france, french, music, web+flash+festival, nabaztag, nabaz'mob, experimental, concerts, paris

Our house is on a cul-de-sac and at the end of the road, there’s a forest that we call our own even though we don’t own it. Lulu loves this forest. NO ONE is in the forest, ever. Well, there are animals but no people. It is empty nearly all year, in fact, I could probably run around naked and scream like crazy maniac in the forest, and no one would hear me for miles around. Does that mean I didn’t actually scream if no one heard me?

Click on the photo to enlarge.

*Lulu Lundi features our adorable Boston Terrier, Lulu, somewhere in France every Monday.

This photo of a beautiful English Bull Dog in the 9th arrondissement of Paris was taken by me just yesterday. I swear he smiled just for the picture. (click on the photo to zoom out)

Visit all the other dogs chez Sweetnicks for Weekend Dog Blogging! – this is also a late submission for Friday Ark.

For some crazy arse reason, Maxwell House is sort of considered hip and trendy in France. And even..good! Can you imagine that? It is so wrong and baffles the mind. Yes, the very same Maxwell House coffee that you can buy in the U.S. in bigger-than-your-head cans; 5 bucks gets you 80 pounds of the junk or something to that effect. It is the coffee of choice for taste bud impaired people. Or perhaps they are masochists. Maxwell House, by the way, that so-called “coffee” strangely DOESN’T even smell like or remotely taste like coffee. I’m not gonna mince words here: I hate the stuff and the company.

Remember, Maxwell House is owned by Altria, a name that is supposed to hide the fact that it is actually the evil tobacco giant Phillip Morris. I swear that it sometimes tasted like tobacco. It is the lowest quality product you’ll find. It would insult dirt to say it tastes like dirt. Anyway, if you haven’t gotten my point, the stuff is ick.

So I noticed these “chocolate” bars and looked a little closer to discover that Maxwell House teamed up with Cote d’Or Chocolate to make a new candy bar called Maxiccino. Yuck. You might guess that I’m not going to recommend these. Cote d’Or Chocolate was originally a Belgian company until the 90s and it used to be a basic, better than average chocolate bar. We’d have to throw a few bars in our carts each time we went shopping. It didn’t have as much cocoa as with the higher quality chocolates chez the independent chocolatiers in Europe but for its category, it wasn’t a bad bar. Then, exactly one year after we moved to France, in August of 2003, the EU passed a directive that declared up to 5 percent of cocoa butter in chocolate could be replaced by ANY other vegetable fat – and still can be called chocolate. Vegetable fats are 10 times cheaper for chocolate producers than cocoa butter, and to add insult to injury, there are no controls required so many believe there is possibly more than 5% vegetable fats in chocolate now. The fat content is extremely difficult to test, which will leave a large margin for unscrupulous activity. Basically, the consumer doesn’t even know what he/she is consuming. I wondered if I’d be able to taste a difference in the Cote d”or chocolate but forgot about it until recently when I got a Cote d’Or chocolate bar. Not only can I tell the difference in the quality, which has declined by leaps and bounds, it now has “something” in it that irritates my throat. What the hell is that? I don’t think I want to know. Many Europeans blame this bastardization of chocolate on Britain saying they won the 30-year war on bringing their crappy chocolate to continental Europe, but if you look at a timeline of events, the real culprit is unambiguously obvious: The American Conglomerate, Phillip Morris. Reality crashes down in shards of clarity when looking at the timeline: 1987 – Cote d’Or, the leading Belgian chocolate maker gets acquired by Jacobs Suchard. 1988 – Phillip Morris acquires Kraft for $12.9 billion. 1990 – Kraft acquires Jacobs Suchard (Cote d’Or) – So Maxwell House and Cote d’Or are essentially the same company. 2001 – Phillip Morris Companies conducts an Initial Public Offering for Kraft Foods. 2002 – Phillip Morris spends the most ever within the last 8 years on lobbying firms defending trade issues (U.S. domestic and foreign). 2003 – EU Directive to allow vegetable fats in chocolate is passed. The most powerful and influencial lobbyists unmistakably work directly with the biggest companies worldwide in the following industries: Tobacco, Oil (Plastics), Pharmaceuticals and Health, Chemicals, Automotive, Insurance – to name just a few. Companies (like Philip Morris), labor unions, and other organizations spend billions of dollars each year to make campaign contributions to elected officials and candidates, as well as lobby Congress and federal agencies in the U.S. They also spend these billions to lobby foreign governments agencies to influence legislation. Philip Morris ranks amongst the biggest spenders in lobbying activity. In 1998 it was the leading spender out of all of the lobbying corporations which includes Exxon Mobil Corporation, Monsanto, Microsoft Corporation, Shell Oil, Pfizer among others. The list of 100 is here. I mentioned some that I particularly deplore but there are more and I must note that not all companies that lobby are necessarily working to pass evil legislation. related: Grand’mere coffee is Maxwell House

Tags: france, foods, europe, chocolate, maxwell+house, phillip+morris

A photographer friend of mine once sent me a photo of a cactus from a dessert in the southwest (U.S.) that was perfectly in the shape of a heart, and he didn’t digitally manipulate it as he didn’t know how to use Photoshop let alone even knew what Photoshop was so it was simply a beautiful photo of this heart-shaped cactus. Since then, I notice heart shapes in nature.

How could I not post about this stunning heart photograph? This aerial photo taken above New Caledonia, an overseas French Territory in the Pacific (Southwest) Islands, is by photographer, Yann Arthus Bertrand. It’s a semi-aquatic swamp forest (called a Mangrove) that has naturally created a heart! He’s taken aerial photos from all over the world and has posted them on his website, where he offers them as desktop wallpaper, which is nice since most people will never get that same perspective and will have to live vicariously through his aerials.

He’s also taken beautiful photos of farmers with their animals in France. They are amazing. You can see that cows, particularly the white Charolais breed found mostly in my neck of the woods in Burgundy, are HUGE!

Visit his website: Yann Arthus Bertrand

Not long ago, Jacques Chirac announced plans for a French-German collaboration to create an internet search engine that would rival…well, no one but nevermind – they were envisioning that this project would rival Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Calling it “Quaero,” Chirac’s pipe dream objective for this search engine would be to engage in the global challenge posed by these American search engine giants. The planned budget over a 5-year period is 450 million Euros ($575,000,000), 90 million Euros ($115,000,000) of which include government subsidies.

“Quaero,” by the way, means “I search” in Latin. Why couldn’t they have simply called it Isearch? Maybe that’s taken. Anyway, I do hope Quaero is a code name and they will replace with something easier to spell and pronounce.

Is this a bad accident waiting to happen? Will Quaero be a total waste of large sums of taxpayers’ money? Oh Quaro Qaureuo Quaero, How do we hate thee? Let Loic Le Meur count the ways:

10 reasons why Quaero, the French search engine, will fail, and “by a frenchman”

1- Can’t spell it.
How can you trust a project that has not been even able to get its domain name and that nobody can spell right

2- Centralized.
There are no centralized projects on the web that succeed. The web is a web and decentralized by essence. Look at Firefox and the way it takes market share against the centralized Internet Explorer, look at Wikipedia

3- Secret versus beta.
There are no successful secret projects anymore. With 60 million bloggers out there and the dramatic shift from an era of vertical communication into a many-to-many conversation, you have to build your products with the consumers using beta versions, going live and improving the product as you go, not in secret.

Continue reading…

Millions of people have iPods and the numbers aren’t going to slow down in the near future, I’m sure. Just to give you an idea about the insanity, Apple sold 8,526,000 iPods during just this year’s first quarter. So, this little tiny piece of technology has and will continue to change the way some people live their lives and also, the way they travel.

Pod City Guides are free files you can download for your iPod. They have over 300 cities to choose from and contained in the files that you store in your iPods “Notes” or “Calendar,” is timely and important information for each city, which includes current events broken down into several categories, museums, hotels, restaurants and even movie theaters including movie listings and showtimes. That is pretty neat. Here are the links for cities in France: Aix-en-Provence, Bordeaux, Cannes, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice, Paris, Toulouse It’s an easy install: Download the city guide and expand it. Click on the iPod button from iTunes on the bottom right, then click on the ipod icon on your desktop that should open up. Drag the folders to the correct location. Events should be placed in “calendar” and other information should be placed in “notes.” I tested it out a few days ago and that’s actually how I found out about the “Salon Saveurs” I posted about recently. Ok, so they made a mistake on the dates but hopefully, most of their information is accurate. (I emailed them about the error so I imagine that will be fixed.) The files are regularly updated and corrected so make sure you download the most current version in order to receive timely information on events, etc. Lastly, this does not have maps but the site does offer city maps for pda’s and mobile phones. Also pod city guides do NOT work with 1st and 2nd generation iPods. The iPods must have the “notes” feature. [related: metro maps for iPod] Pod City Guides

Tags: travel, france, french, ipod, cities, guides,