A journalist friend once said that he’d never write a certain airline’s name “airBaltic,” because he refused to do their brand management for them. I can’t remember if he chose to call them “Airbaltic,” “AirBaltic,” or “Air Baltic” instead, but the lowercase initial was beyond the pale. In English, of course, proper names are always [...]
Continue reading about Free advertising and trademarked names
As far as I can tell, there are three men named Corentin (it’s a Breton name) who are memorialized in some way in (slightly greater) Paris: Corentin Cariou, Corentin Celton, and Corentin Cloarec. Cariou has a métro station and street named after him. Celton, a métro station and hospital. And Cloarec, a street. Corentin Cariou [...]
I may also mention that the book was written… where the libraries are not well equipped for European studies… Hence it is possible and even probable that I overlooked things which I ought to have considered and that I occasionally assert something which modern research has disproved or modified… On the other hand it is [...]
Continue reading about Erich Auerbach on scholarship in the post-Library.nu era
Coworkers today, knowing of my deep interest in football supporter culture, asked me what I thought of what happened in Egypt yesterday, where 70+ people were killed in violence in Port Said after a match in which al-Masri defeated visitors al-Ahly 3–1. I meekly responded that the football pitch is often a proxy for the [...]
Continue reading about Organization and tactics: when football isn’t just a game
It’s tough to read through the sneering contempt shown by the journalist, but lrytas.lt is reporting that Algirdas Paleckis was found innocent of denying Soviet atrocities. The court found that Paleckis’s comments were an opinion, and therefore protected. Then the journalist, in a non sequitur, reminds us of who Paleckis’s grandfather was. I’ve already covered [...]
Continue reading about Paleckis found innocent in something resembling a victory for free speech
[I expanded and updated this on 21 December 2011, to organize the argument better and provide more background.] News has broken over the past week about the uncertain fate of Algirdas Paleckis, the head of the Socialist People’s Front, a party in Lithuania. Speaking on the radio in November of last year, he talked about [...]
Continue reading about Lithuanian speech laws can claim first scalp
When I came to the center yesterday, it was clear that I had rolled in via Vélib’. “Be careful tomorrow with Vélib’,” one instructor warned me, because today’s general strike will make the bicycles extremely valuable. With at least the RER B scheduled to be out of commission, it’s entirely possible that I would have [...]
Continue reading about Are grass’s roots that much more impressive than trees’?
When the Awl complains that this has been a miserable American summer, they’re mostly right, but it hasn’t been exactly a great summer in France, either. Sarkozy has decided to kick off the 2012 presidential campaign extra early by re-burnishing his xenophobic credentials, angling to get the support of the far-right Front National types–the very [...]
Continue reading about Mechanical reproduction of la manif and the Tea Party
This xkcd comic from Monday has been forwarded around a bit. My own reaction was heavily influenced by @sepoy’s comment that maybe JFK was talking about the “global south (po folk)” avant la lettre. I think it’s funny that JFK could have merged the idea of the “Global South” with the literal southern hemisphere. Randall [...]
Yoann Gourcuff is blaming the vuvuzelas for France’s uninspired play on Friday night in Cape Town. The players couldn’t hear each other on the field, he whined, and they had to rely on gestures. Patrice Évra added that the players can’t sleep because the vuvuzelas start going off at 6am every morning.1 Twitter has been [...]
Continue reading about Imperialist n00bs: quit complaining about the vuvuzelas