Lac Léman or Lake Geneva Seen via Shelley and Byron

Image via WikipediaIn spite of never mentioning the correct name for the Lake, Lac Lemon, Tony Perrottet writing in The New York Times Travel section puts together a lively account of his journey in the footsteps of Shelley and Byron.

Besides a really good guide to the current day Swiss shore of the lake, it is an intriguing window on the past adventures of the then the 28-year-old celebrity poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, and the struggling poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.



see Lake Geneva as Shelley and Byron Knew It

Original caption from the article "Panoramic view of Lake Geneva and the medieval Château de Chillon, which inspired Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon.”


Why Lac Léman? Geneva is only one, small part of the lake whose shores touch the Swiss Cantons of Vaud and Valais, and of course the French side of the lake dominated by Evian-les-Bains with that water.

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Les frigos ouvertes - Paris souterrain

"En temps normal, l’endroit est interdit au public. On entre aux Frigos en grimpant un escalier en colimaçon barbouillé de graffitis. "

from Merci Alfred

see Les frigos de Paris : Virée underground

200 artistes vous attendent pendant les portes ouvertes des Frigos de Paris 


Entrée gratuite 
- samedi 28 mai de 14h à 22h 
- dimanche 29 mai de 14h à 20h 


Au 13 rue des Frigos, 75013 Paris

The Pandora IPO: To Bubble or Not to Bubble?

?"Pandora will be hitting the public markets in the near future, and if it's successful we have no doubt it will be one of those IPOs that has people screaming bubble."

from SAI Business Insider's Chart of the Day

see The Next Tech IPO That Will Drive People Crazy

The Happiness Index: Top and Bottom's Rule!

The Economist's widely quotes index, at least in the Australian press, shows a curious fact: the happiest countries are all either at the top of the world or the bottom of the world.

At the Top:       Canada and Sweden
At the Bottom:  Australia and New Zealand

What does that mean?

Being further away from the centre means you get less spin, perhaps?

And yes I know Chile is down there with the 'Bottom's'. But hey, that's the exception the proves the rule, right?

FPS - First Person Shooter - For Real

"In real, modern combat, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some soldiers have cameras attached to their helmets."

from Gizmodo

see This is Real War, Viewed from the Call of Duty Camera Angle

Link to the video in The New York Times featured in the Gizmodo article


Combat in the First Person: Haruti

Other YouTube videos can be found here

Facebook vs 4Chan: A Comparison.

Graphic from NameSake via Techi

Techi original article Transparency vs Anonymity (aka Zuck vs Moot)

One to Watch: Woody and Paris after Midnight.

Paris today during the day and Paris of the 1920's after midnight.

That's not hard to imagine for anyone who has spent time in the City of Light, and Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, shows a "Paris, golden and gray, breezy and melancholy, immune to its own abundant clichés"

In the concluding paragraph of The New York Times movie review by A.O. Scott

"Mr. Allen has often said that he does not want or expect his own work to survive, but as modest and lighthearted as “Midnight in Paris” is, it suggests otherwise: Not an ambition toward immortality so much as a willingness to leave something behind — a bit of memorabilia, or art, if you like that word better — that catches the attention and solicits the admiration of lonely wanderers in some future time. Ah, did you once see Woody plain? How strange it seems, and new"

see The Old Ennui and the Lost Generation

Lunettes de Soleil à Louer

"Jamais, oh grand jamais, vous ne porteriez la même petite robe deux jours de suite. Alors pourquoi vous coltiner la même paire de lunettes de soleil tout l'été?"

Alors! Louez des lunettes de soleil à 20€ par mois!

from (as ever) My Little Paris

see Louez des lunettes de soleil

eBooks Take Over: Amazon UK Sells 242 e's for Every 100 Hard.

"In the UK, Amazon announced it had sold 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks since 1 April 2011. "Amazon.co.uk customers are choosing Kindle books more often than hardcovers at a rate of more than 2 to 1," said Gordon Willoughby, European director at Kindle."

from The Guardian

see Amazon and Waterstones report downloads eclipsing printed book sales


This time the UK is ahead of the US as "The company said that in the US it has sold 105 ebooks for every 100 print books since 1 April this year, less than four years after it introduced its Kindle electronic book reader."

Facebook: The IM Jungle.

"For years now we have been suffering Facebook's chat system, perhaps the worst in the industry. You can't maintain a conversation without you or your buddy being logged off. Sentences, entire paragraphs don't get delivered. I can't count the times I've wanted to punch the screen and given up. Everyone else I've spoken to has had the same experience."

from Gizmodo

full article Facebook Fails

Could not agree more. It's instant messaging and Facemail system leaves a lot to be desired. With all those 'also ran' messaging systems out there, you would have thought that Facebook could have bought one and integrate it in to theirs? Too hard?

Trillian, anyone?

Dominique Strass-Kahn: Vanity Fair Has a Go.

"The head of a powerful international institution is about to announce his candidacy for the French presidency. All the polls show him well ahead of the unpopular incumbent. The gilded salons of the Elysée Palace seem within his grasp—until a stunning event derails his presidential hopes and his political career: incredibly, improbably, he is accused of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid and is arrested aboard an airplane shortly before takeoff.

It could be the plot of an international thriller if it were not true. At least the above details are true..."

full article from Vanity Fair

Strauss-Kahn: Predator or Plot Victim?

No comment.

LinkedIn: 'Bulk of the Revenue Comes from Recruiting'

LinkedIn priced it's IPO (Initial Public Offering or 'Float' for everyone down under) at the top of the indicated price range at US$45 per share, which will see it raising US$274 million.

It is interesting to see that the bulk of it's revenue generated last year of US$274 million came from recuiting.

Recruiting?

And you really thought this was a only a site that allowed you to connect with business friends, colleagues and partners. Did you?

see SAI Business Insider's Chart of the Day - Where LinkedIn's Revenue Comes From

In the US Netflix is the Bandwidth Hog

from SIA Silicon Valley Business Insider

original article link | Netflix Is Eating Up More Of North America's Bandwidth Than Any Other Company 

And guys note that YouTube is bigger than BitTorrent!

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: When is a Honey Trap is not A Honey Trap?

Image via WikipediaSlate Magazine has this article, originally published in their French edition, entitled:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Conspiracy Theorists Are Embarrassing Themselves

It is interesting to note that the translation of the heading (not the text) of the French article is subtly different.

The original French is "Affaire DSK: présomption d'innocence ou victime disqualifiée?" as the heading, with the sub heading being "Attention à la théorie du complot: ce que dit la femme de chambre mérite d'être pris en compte."

The heading as a raw translation gives:

 "Affaire DSK: presumption of innocence or victim disqualified"

The sub heading in raw translation gives:

 "Attention to the conspiracy theory that says the maid should be taken into account."

Cannot really see how the above two headings in the co-opted French Slate article come to mean  'the conspiracy theorists are embarrassing themselves'. All the French heading in the article is saying is that the maids' point of view must be taken into account, and that those who are looking for a conspiracy theory should, or rather must take that into consideration.

Could not agree more.

However from there to heading the article to make out that the conspiracy theorists are embarrassing themselves is pushing the translation.

To say the least.

Sex, Strauss-Kahn, The IMF and Greek Debt

Image by Getty Images via @daylife"The arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual-assault charges threatened to upend French politics and weaken the IMF's central role in resolving Europe's deepening debt crisis."

from The Wall Street Journal

The law of unintended consequences, or was it?

The ripples from this will effect the financial markets as they open this week as we ask why did he do it?

Even if the whole hotel room scenario emerging in the press via drips of information from the New York Police seems bizarre in the extreme.

Extremely bizzare.

In any other circumstances one would be very tempted to say "honey trap".

Pris au piège, Dominique?

Paywall vs Free: Forbes Says Free

“Even if you have a successful paywall, the revenue you get will not come close to matching what you’re going to get on the advertising side,” Forbes Media chairman and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes told paidContent:UK."

At least some publishers have got it right.

see Interview: Steve Forbes Says Pay Walls Can’t Pay The Way

from paidContent:UK

Movies: Some Real Hard Ones to Watch.

The New York Times Movies for this Cannes week has three very hard, or rather extremely violent movies in review amongst the glitter:

• Hesher - the story of ..."a violent California drifter who barges into the home of a grieving suburban family and is given the run of the house." 

see Burn This, Curse That, Wreak Your Havoc

• The hugely controversial 'A Serbian Film' directed by Srdjan Spasojevic, "(that) doesn’t just push the envelope of the extreme-cinema niche, it shreds it." 

see Torture or Porn? No Need to Choose

• And the hunting, no compromise 'City of Life and Death' about the infamous Rape of Nanking by the Japanese just before the start of World War 11. 

see A Tale of Nanjing Atrocities That Spares No Brutal Detail

And we though that extreme violent flims were an American only specialty...

The Oil Price Collapse and Bin Laden

An interesting take on the recent collapse in the oil price from Christopher Joye writing in the (Australian) Business Spectator.

Normally I would say this was a conspiracy theory, and my view on them is they are bunk. In this case the story is very good and the timing of the alleged US Government trades and intervention, especially concerning the raising of margin requirements on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange).

Who knows?

My take? It's a good story!

see Did the US government short oil prices? (free sign up is normally required to read articles)

chart © Bloomberg Finance LP

The iPad is a PC

A survey by SAI Business Insider asked which computing device is primary used for 'personal computing'.

Check out the chart below

original article link Chart Of The Day: The ipad Is Becoming The Only PC That Matters

The Phone Wallet: Coming Now.

from Credit Sesame via Techi under When will smartphones replace our wallets?

I would say, now!

Arracher son bikini - yes!

"Scénario interdit aux moins de 18 ans."

"Vous baignez avec elle dans l'océan, enlacés. Elle a la peau salée. Coup d'oeil alentour, personne ne vous observe. Il y a un truc dont vous avez toujours rêvé : lui arracher son maillot de bain. Vous décidez subitement de vous lancer, elle ne bronche pas. Normal, il est fait pour ça. A la place des attaches classiques de la culotte, des aimants invisibles qui ne demandent qu'à sauter."

from Merci Alfred of course! 

see Un maillot qui s'arrache

Pakistan by KAL

from KAL The Economist's weekly cartoon

Must be a fun place to live in....

The Jasmine American Revolution.

Image via Wikipedia
Joseph E. Stiglitz, writing in the May edition of Vanity Fair has the intriging article about the wealth gap in The United States of America.

"Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

The end of this opening extract is worth repeating:

An inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.


see Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

The Pakistan ISO or Who Was in My Backyard.

"...claims that Pakistan’s blundering spies had no idea that the world’s most wanted terrorist had been living, probably for years, not in a remote cave on the Afghan frontier but cradled in the arms of retired and serving generals in the pleasant, hillside town."

...'are hard swallow'.

So starts this article from The Economist blog Banyan.

Someone in the Pakistan spy community knew, as I mentioned in Bin Laden or Death in Plain Sight.


The other questions for Pakistan are:

• Who was paying who to turn many blind eyes?
• And how much was those blind eyes worth, seeing as they remained blind for so many a year.

Days and nights included.

The Uno Transformer

See the picture:

See the transformation:

Watch the video:

Read the post (from Techi):

Your personal Uno transformer can now be pre-ordered

The Cars: "Move Like This" - First New Album in 24 Years

Cover of Ric OcasekRolling Stone Magazine has an "Exclusive Listen to" The Cars first new album in 24 years.

Good to hear Ric Ocasek's voice again!

see Exclusive Listen: The Cars' First Album in 24 Years 'New Wave legends sound like they never went away'

Bin Laden or Death in Plain Sight.

Image via WikipediaThe New York Times has this well written article on the hunt and execution of Bin Laden.

The best place to hide is always in full sight, and of course the someone in the Pakistan security apparatus knew all along where he was hiding. If you believe otherwise then you are just as naive as the Yanks.

see Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden

Chat Clients and Chat Ups.

from DOGHOUSEDIARIES

Original title Complications

Tech Futures Past

From the Socialcast blog via Techi comes this historic chart of past failed tech predictions, as well as a few that came close.

Techi asks what would their readers foresee?

I would look for (within the next 100 years) that the speed of light space/distance barrier will be overcome and we will take the first steps to colonising the stars.

see 136 Years of failed Tech Predictions