Acheter ce livre: Amazon.fr, FNAC, Eyrolles, Gibert Joseph
Could France be right about regulating powerful American internet companies?
In a stunning show of muscle, Amazon removed all of MacMillan's books from its store.
A major US publisher, MacMillan wanted to set the price of its books at around 15 dollars, 50% more than Amazon's standard Kindle price of 9.99 dollars.
Amazon responded by pulling all of MacMillan's books from the world's largest electronic bookstore.
How will this play out? Will Apple's new IPAD reader change the game ?
Who has the right to set book prices? The publisher? The distributor? The market? The state? How will this affect authors? It's a whole new world...
See NYT article here.
Of course, he flamed out quickly and thoroughly, and none of his proposed reforms came to pass, in part because he relished a fight more than results.
In the past few years, Monsieur Allègre has kept his name in the news by spouting off on the environment. Global warming is a sham! Ecologists got everything wrong. And now, most ridiculous of all, Nicolas Hulot is an imbecile!
But Nicolas Hulot, one of the most productive forces behind the fledgling French ecological movement, is, as anyone who has seen him speak knows, far from idiocy. Stardom is a two-edged sword, but he has used it well, steadily pushing a pragmatic ecological agenda.
All this inflammatory nonsense is actually designed to sell books. (Not unlike Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s pathetic attempt to capitalize on curiosity about dead princesses.)
Why does Allègre stoop to vile name-calling like a snot-nosed kid ?
Because President Sarkozy did not call. After painful months of cursing a silent phone, Allègre took matters into his own hands.
Global warming is a fraud! Nicolas Hulot is an imbecile! And Claude Allègre is an honorable man.
The dead factory worker wore five layers of underclothing (like a Muslim suicide bomber) and had ties to Islamist groups.
Yet
For exploring the Islamist ties of a temporary worker of Tunisian origin killed in the explosion, Le Figaro and Valeurs Actuelleswere charged with "diffamation.
French intelligence services saw their investigatons stopped.
And while an "accident" was the official thesis from the start, no reconstitution of events or hypothetical chain of events was able to recreate the explosion.
Now, eight years later, a French court has ruled to aquit AZF's directors (a Total subsidiary) of any responsibility for the explosion.
Raison d'état is a familiar concept in France, and one which feeds the unhealthy French love of conspiracy theories.
But this time, the French state may have gone too far: to decree a lethal explosion an "accident", and then to hold no one responsible?
For readers interested in exploring this topic, I will be posting links to books and articles. Check this space for more. Here is the very complete wikipedia entry in French.
Mireille Guiliano's best seller French Women Don't Get Fat hit a raw (and plump) American nerve. Lucky French women! What's their secret?
Some insist that speaking French correctly is so hard that it burns extra calories. Others believe in the magic of red wine. And, of course, French women smoke, but it would be irresponsible to mention that, so better not.
Guiliano herself published a French Women's Manifesto which claims that French women eat three meals a day (basically true), that they care about looks, both their own and their food's (true) and that they don't diet (absolutely false). She also maintains that French women "are individuals and don't follow mass movement". (The guys in Mad Men couldn't have put it better.) .
But what if you are not a French woman? What then?
With eatfests Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Years bearing down on us like a drunken 18 wheeler, evasive action is needed, now! Here's my modest contribution...
FIVE WEIGHTLOSS STRATEGIES BY VERITABLE EXPERTS
1. The first, of course, is to become a French woman, not from the north, (where sadly they're as fat as Americans) but from Paris, where nervous ladies with the racy look of greyhounds, rush about on cruelly elegant high heels -- from kids to husband to work to garage (to get the car fixed) to grocery store, to psychiatrist to herbalist to lover to garage (to pick up the car) to kids and husband and dishes and laundry and sleeping pills and -- merde!, time to get up again! (Diet may not be the sole explanation for their svelte looks.)
2 . Change just one thing! Peter Bregman, blogging on Harvard Business Review's site, reveals that all diets have one thing in common: reduction of calorie intake. His solution: go simple. Figure out which single action will have the most impact and do that, just that. In his case, he cut out sugar. And lost 18 pounds. (see To Change Effectively, Change just one Thing)
3. Get really sick. Flu, malaria, dysentery--options are many! For that pale, Kate Moss look, nothing beats disease.
4. Give your food to your spouse. Or, lacking that, your dog. As they say, one woman's loss is another man's gain!
5. Eat only vegetables for dinner. No-one actually likes vegetables, though even the president of the United States cannot admit this (except for broccoli)
Zucchini, cabbage, cauliflower, beets, green beans, carrots--I've cooked them all with love and my family still acts like it's doing me a favor to choke them down. Don't fight it! use it! From now on, dinner is Herbevore Delight.
As H1N1 vaccination programs ramp up around the world, France faces an unusual challenge: there's plenty of vaccine but French people--and in particular French medical staff--are refusing vaccination.
This is due partly to the specific fear that the vaccines might not be entirely safe, partly to a generalized distrust of French health officials due to previous scandals, and partly to a Gallic weakness for conspiracy theories.
1. If the vaccines are safe, why are doctors refusing to get vaccinated?
Fear focuses on additives to the vaccine.
While in the USA, the decision was taken NOT to use additives to boost immune response, in France, the government purchased 94 million doses of vaccines, most with additives then refused to communicate clearly and honestly about the exact nature of contracts worth nearly one billion euros.
The government's muddled message: some of additives were well-known; while some had been tested less. Patients may neither choose their vaccine nor even obtain information about what it contains. Trust us.
As a result, French medical personal has refused vaccination. And normal citizens are not reassured.
Clearly French doctors and medical staff do not trust the government not to poison them. Why?
Health scandals in the not-so distant past are partly to blame. These include: contaminated blood, contaminated growth hormone, the decision to protect the nuclear industry instead of citizens during Chenobyl, and the disastrous response to the heat wave of 2003.
AIDS: Thousands of entirely avoidable deaths were caused by French officials' attempt to promote the French HIV-screening industry: blood supplies continued to be contaminated by HIV AFTER American screening technology became available because health officials wanted a French solution. See Time article.
GROWTH HORMONE : 117 gratuitous deaths, mostly of children, from Creuztfeldt-Jacob disease due to use of contaminated tissue in the lucrative manufacture of growth hormone. Half of the deathtoll worldwide was in France.
CHENOBYL LIES : To protect the nuclear industry the French goverment claimed that the radioactive cloud from Chenobyl had miraculously avoided France. The evening news showed entirely false maps and French government officials blatantly lied that there were no health concerns. No precautions of any kind were taken to reduce the public's exposure.
HEATWAVE: The stunningly inept response to the heat wave of 2003 which caused 15,000 more deaths than usual in France. Procedures have changed and one air-conditioned room is now required in institutions housing the elderly; however the most visible result in my town was the disappearance of death notices from municipal publications. (Previously published automatically as public information, this information is now considered privileged: a family member must make a request.)
The idea of collusion finds fertile soil in France, which loves conspiracy theories. A (disgusting) book claiming that 9/11 was all an American-fabricated conspiracy and that no plane ever hit the Pentagon was a mega-best-seller in France. (A polytechnicien colleague of mine praised it for revealing the truth.)
The idea that French health officials would deliberately expose the people to a dangerous vaccine in order to boost pharmaceutical companies' profits is widespread, especially among the educated classes.
The result: tens of millions of doses of vaccine are available in France but people are afraid to get vaccinated.
Funny observation: in hospitals and doctors' offices, magazines have been removed from waiting rooms as disease vectors. But unvaccinated French doctors continue to shake hands with all their patients, including (like me) the coughing ones.
Click here for Center for Disease Control Update on H1N1
There is nothing abnormal about a father’s pride in his son. But when
And how could the math mavens let President Sarkozy propose a “national bond” for unclear purposes with the French budget deficit already soaring towards 9 % and no serious spending cuts in sight? (Why does brilliant Finance Minister Christine Lagarde say nothing?)
President Sarkozy is a man of tremendous talents. But, like many gifted and ambitious politicians, he is flawed. Good advisors tell truth to power. Sycophants, yes-men and cowards ensure the great man’s downfall.
Will no one who loves the King speak out?
To see Jean Sarkozy's qualifications to run a billion dollar entity, click here.
Kiss and tell is bad enough, but dreaming of kissing, then telling, well that’s just—weird.
As if Princess Diana hadn’t suffered enough in life, former president and well known ladies man Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has written a book called The President and the Princess, in which a French president who eerily resembles himself meets a British princess, who is the exact portrait of Diana, except for the name (now Patricia).
Giscard d’Estaing is a member of the Académie Française despite his previous foray into fiction, a rather forgettable fantasy about an older fellow who picks up a pretty young hitchhiker, who then consents to live with him. This jaw-droppingly silly book left my mouth hanging open when I chanced to read it a few years ago—this is what presidents dream of? Really? Also: Académie Française? But why?
Well now he’s in for it, the poor schmuck. “Ungentlemanly.” “Pathetic.” “In Bad Taste.” “Dream On.” These are just a few of the unkind comments from readers of Le Figaro (click here).
Lady Di may be an historical figure but her children, husband, real lovers and entire family are still alive and kicking.
Rather rude forcing her to sleep with him in writing.
What possessed the old guy?
