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2) Slate: French Women Do Too Get Fat [Contrairement à ce que prétend Mireille Guiliano, les Française grossissent.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2113911/

French Women Do Too Get Fat
What the best seller neglects to mention.
By Kate Taylor
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 3:23 PM PT

Mireille Guiliano, the French-born CEO of Clicquot Inc., Veuve Clicquot's American subsidiary, has many things to toast these days. Besides being 58 and still weighing what she did in her 20s, she is now a best-selling author, too. Her recently published memoir-cum-diet book, French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure is currently at No. 3 on the New York Times list for hardcover advice books. Since the book's publication, she says, she has been inundated with offers to write a sequel, host a cooking show, and wear various designers' dresses to the Oscars. There has even been discussion of a movie. While it's still too soon to tell, it is possible that Guiliano has helped launch one of the periodic turnovers in American dietary mythology. Out with carbophobia; in with Francomania.

Guiliano's book centers on the well-worn idea often called the "French Paradox": French people, who love their cheese and foie gras and croissants, are nonetheless thinner and have lower rates of heart disease than we diet-obsessed Americans. Scientists used to attribute it to red wine; the current theory is that the French "secret" lies in no one food or ingredient, but in their traditional culture of eating.

As Guiliano tells us, the French have elaborate food rituals. They go to the market several times a week and eat only what's in season. Unlike Americans, who buy processed, flavorless food and therefore need to eat a lot of it to feel gratified, the French, by eating better-tasting food and savoring it more consciously, "fool themselves" into being satisfied with less. That is, French women do, since, in Guiliano's book, it is specifically the women who must master "the useful art of self-deception"—mentally balancing the pleasures of food against the competing desires to fit into the latest fashions and to be attractive to French men, who she says like their wives to be "very elegant, very thin."

Before we come under assault by the rest of the French Women empire (the TV show, the movie) we should take this mythology—Americans, hopelessly schizophrenic about food; French, universally blessed with natural moderation—with a grain of Breton sea salt. The first problem with this picture is that it may already be out of date. Guiliano grew up and learned her eating rituals in the '50s and '60s. Today, thanks to globalization, the French are starting to eat, and look, more like us: According to a recent article in the Times of London, the traditional French meal is eaten by only 20 percent of the population. Instead, they increasingly favor the abbreviated, on-the-go meals of Americans. The national rate of obesity is rising fast. While only 6 percent of the population was obese in 1990, today the proportion is 11.3 percent. That is still well behind the same figure for the United States (22 percent) but on track to match our levels by 2020. The French are not happy about it. In a parliamentary report last spring highlighting the dramatic increase in obesity, legislators proposed launching a new government agency to fight weight gain, to be funded by a tax on high-calorie or high-fat foods.

Which brings us to the second way in which the American/French divide is more complicated than Guiliano acknowledges. The French accept a level of government paternalism that would not go over easily here. The way that French families eat, or until recently ate, is actually a product of state intervention, as Greg Critser pointed out in a 2003 piece in the New York Times. At the beginning of the 20th century, concern over France's high infant mortality rate led to a largely state-sponsored movement called puericulture. The movement's initial focus was on getting mothers to breastfeed; clinics were set up across the country, and the government required factories to have areas for nursing. But puericulture advocates also stressed that overfeeding infants was worse than underfeeding them. For older children, they advised regular mealtimes, modest portions, no seconds, and no snacks. Children's own appetites and preferences were to be ignored. This is the tradition in which Guiliano was raised, and which she proposes to those of her readers who are parents. It is another interesting paradox: The French ability to take pleasure in food, and to choose food based on taste rather than dietary dogma, begins with a child's lack of choice, and a degree of parental and state authoritarianism.

The third problem is that, while they may be admirably successful at staying thin, French women are not necessarily more balanced in their attitudes about food. While many people think of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia as an American problem, they are, as far as can be measured (and these statistics should always be taken with some degree of skepticism), equally prevalent in France. In the United States, somewhere between 0.5 percent and 3.7 percent of women will be anorexic in their lifetimes, while 1.1. percent to 4.2 percent will suffer from bulimia. Between 2 percent and 5 percent of Americans binge eat. Among young French women, an estimated 1 percent to 3 percent are anorexic; 5 percent are bulimic; and 11 percent have compulsive eating behaviors. Certainly, young French women today are as interested in eating disorders as their American counterparts. While Guiliano enjoys her publishing success here, a quite different book is in the spotlight in France: a memoir of bulimia called Thornytorinx. (The title is an anatomical name for the digestive tract.) The book has been favorably covered by the French press, and its author, a 25-year-old actress named Camille de Peretti, appeared last weekend on one of France's most popular talk shows.

That the incidence of eating disorders in France roughly equals that here suggests that anorexia and bulimia do not require a widespread, openly discussed culture of calorie- or carb-counting and devotion to the gym. They may take slightly different forms, depending on the prevailing national habits, but eating disorders arise wherever thinness is deeply valued and admired.

French women do not care less than American women about being thin; if anything, they may care more. And while much of Guiliano's advice seems sensible, there is also an opening for extremism in her suggestions* that we savor our food and refuse to eat anything that isn't of the highest quality and taste. When she met the New York Times' Elaine Sciolino for coffee in Paris, Guiliano took one bite of her croissant, declared it "disgusting," and left the rest on her plate, thereby demonstrating a lesson from her book: "Life is too short to drink bad wine and to eat bad food." Sounds nice enough, but sticking to this philosophy in all circumstances would be remarkably neurotic. What if you're hungry? The scene calls to mind a certain type of weight-obsessed woman, the kind who uses the excuse of a refined palate to mask her suspicion of food (and to justify how little she eats).

The essence of Guiliano's book is the claim that women can trick themselves into experiencing what is actually self-denial as a kind of pleasure. She never questions that most women, if they wish to be attractively thin, will have to play some mental games. But such games are, as Guiliano acknowledges, something that the French generally value. They think of themselves as an old culture, skilled in the arts of irony, hypocrisy, and nuance. We Americans may be innocent, artless, and nuance-allergic, but we are sharp enough to recognize that French women's advantage over us is simply that they are thinner—not that they have better, saner, less complicated attitudes about food. "The useful art of self-deception"? Let 'em have it.

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7) Car Talk/The Puzzler: Baseball team hats [Un casse-tête. Quelle est la probabilité que chacun rentre avec la bonne casquette ?]
http://www.cartalk.com

There's a baseball team, which consists of 20 kids. At the end of the season, they all go to the coach's house to have a barbecue. The coach says, "You can't wear your hats at the barbecue." So, all the kids take their hats and they throw them in a big pile. So there are 20 hats in a pile. They fill their little faces with hot dogs and corn on the cob. And, they barf into their hats. At the conclusion of the evening, they all reach in at random, grab a hat and put it on their heads.

What's the probability that 19 out of 20 of these kids get their correct hat?

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9) The Economist: Jacques Chirac, socialist [Jacques Chirac serait le parfait homme de gauche.]
http://www.economist.com
The French president

Jacques Chirac, socialist
Mar 17th 2005 | PARIS

A veteran Gaullist politician, Jacques Chirac has in office turned into one of Europe's most left-wing leaders

WHEN France's president, Jacques Chirac, dropped in recently on José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's Socialist prime minister, his host paid him a rather unusual compliment. “Some people may well wonder,” said Mr Zapatero, “whether Jacques Chirac really is a leader of the centre-right, compared with others that we know.” In recent months, the pair seem to have become inseparable, meeting for summits and congratulating each other on their shared vision. To many outside France, it might seem odd that Europe's longest-serving conservative leader is so keen to identify closely with a Spanish Socialist. Yet Mr Chirac's fondness for his new Spanish friend should perhaps not be that much of a surprise. For Mr Chirac himself is these days one of the most left-wing of Europe's leaders.

Consider Mr Chirac's credentials as a champion of the left. His recent proposal to create an “international solidarity levy” on international financial transactions or airline-ticket sales, so as to finance African development and the fight against AIDS, won him the acclaim of the third-world lobby. “Development is both the greatest challenge and the greatest urgency of our time,” he declared in a speech broadcast at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, calling Africa's poverty “morally unacceptable”. Mr Chirac is also a certified écolo (green), having got his cherished environmental charter enshrined in France's constitution last month. This puts the right to live in a healthy environment on the same legal footing in France as human rights, setting the country up as a pioneer in environmental protection—and Mr Chirac as potential saviour of the planet.

The French president has no rivals as global spokesman on anti-Americanism, a doctrine that usually belongs to the left in Europe but in France has a long history on the Gaullist right as well. To this, he has added his own blend of anti-globalisation, globe-trotting with the likes of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former trade-union leader, and dispatching representatives to the World Social Forum. Moreover, with his Arabist foreign policy in the Middle East, and his defiant hostility to the war in Iraq, he seems to have a soft-left world outlook that would fit well on any university campus.

On economic matters, this is certainly no market-liberalising, right-wing government. In May, Mr Chirac will celebrate ten years in office. It is hard to detect what mark his decade has left. Admittedly, he shared five years (1997-2002) with a Socialist government, which introduced such policies as the 35-hour week. But even this is not something that Mr Chirac's present centre-right government, under Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has been in any rush to dismantle: its reforms have loosened the rules, not overturned them.

Mr Chirac has contined to resist EU efforts to liberalise the energy market. He is now blocking the services directive, which he said this week was “unacceptable” and should be “picked apart”. He has even reactivated an interventionist industrial policy. And he has a high spender's tendency to throw money at political problems, especially ones that spill out on to the street—one reason why France's budget deficit has widened sharply.

Only this week, Mr Chirac's government was busy yet again caving in to demands for public-sector pay rises after 600,000-1m protesters took to the streets. Having stood firm for a full three days, it promised to reopen wage talks, and did not rule out another increase in the minimum wage, after a rise of 5.8% last year. Even the left-leaning Libération could scarcely believe it: “The volte-face of the government, which is today proposing to open the coffers which it swore yesterday were empty, will prove right all the numerous unionists who believe that there is no point in discussing coolly and that social dialogue is a sham unless they turn up at the negotiating table with a loaded gun.”

Mr Chirac has not strayed entirely from centre-right territory. He campaigned for election in 2002 with a promise to cut income tax by a third, and this is still official policy. Yet the combined efforts of four successive finance ministers have secured only a modest 10% reduction. He is pressing ahead with privatisation too: his latest finance minister, Thierry Breton, has confirmed that Electricité de France and Gaz de France are being prepared for sale. But the right hardly has a monopoly on privatisation, a policy embraced in some ways just as fervently by the former Socialist government.

What does all this add up to? “Compared with the rest of the European right—Berlusconi, Merkel, Aznar—he is certainly different,” comments a leading French Socialist. “They are all both more liberal and more Atlanticist.” Mr Chirac's economic policy certainly puts him to the left of Britain's Tony Blair. Even Germany's Gerhard Schröder has done more to deregulate the labour market and reform welfare than Mr Chirac. His new chum, Mr Zapatero, is arguably his closest ideological ally now.

One explanation for Mr Chirac's embrace of a soft-left, statist, instinctively anti-capitalist creed could be that he is playing Mr Blair's post-ideological game of stealing the opposition's clothes ahead of the 2007 presidential election. A French presidential candidate needs broad electoral appeal in the run-off, and the country's political centre of gravity lies well to the left of Britain's, say.

Another explanation is that his variety of continental conservatism belongs to a social Gaullist tradition, which—like Christian Democracy—often defines itself precisely against liberalism. Under this doctrine, the language of “social cohesion” and “solidarity” belongs to the right as much as to the left. In other words, Mr Chirac has not been liberalising simply because, as one adviser says, “he does not believe in untempered liberalism”.

Yet this may be to lend more coherence to Mr Chirac's policies than they deserve. More plausibly, exactly 40 years since he was first elected to public office, he is guided less by conviction than by a desire to keep the social peace and avoid confrontation. As prime minister in the late-1980s, Mr Chirac was seen as an energetic reformer. Age and power have tempered such zeal; consensus now matters more than change. At the EU summit next week to consider economic reforms, France will again be in the rearguard, not the vanguard. Despite GDP growth of only 2-2.5% this year, and unemployment of 10%, Mr Chirac's advisers argue that not much in the French model needs radical change. Try telling that to the jobless.

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10) The Economist: The future of innovation [Pour de plus en plus d'entreprises, ce sont leurs clients qui sont le moteur de l'innovation.]
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3749354


The future of innovation: The rise of the creative consumer
Mar 10th 2005 | LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

How and why smart companies are harnessing the creativity of their customers

LAST November, engineers in the healthcare division of General Electric (GE) unveiled something called the “LightSpeed VCT”, a scanner that can create a startlingly good three-dimensional image of a beating heart. This spring Staples, an American office-supplies retailer, will stock its shelves with a gadget called a “wordlock”, a padlock that uses words instead of numbers. In Munich, meanwhile, engineers at BMW have begun prototyping telematics (combining computing and telecoms) and online services for a new generation of luxury cars. The connection? In each case, the firm's customers have played a big part (GE, BMW) or the leading role (Staples) in designing the product.

How does innovation happen? The familiar story involves boffins in academic institutes and R&D labs. But lately, corporate practice has begun to challenge this old-fashioned notion. Open-source software development is already well-known. Less so is the fact that Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers, and is putting several of them into production. Or that Electronic Arts (EA), a maker of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product-development manager, too.

This is not all new. Researchers such as Nikolaus Franke at the University of Vienna and Christian Lüthje at the Technical University of Hamburg have demonstrated the importance of past user contributions to the evolution of everything from sporting equipment to construction materials and scientific instruments. But the rise of online communities, together with the development of powerful and easy-to-use design tools, seems to be boosting the phenomenon, as well as bringing it to the attention of a wider audience, says Eric Von Hippel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is about to publish a book, “Democratising Innovation” (MIT Press). “User innovation has always been around,” he says. “The difference is that people can no longer deny that it is happening.” Indeed, it is “very likely that the majority of innovation happens this way,” says Mr Von Hippel. Such innovation, he says, has a “much higher rate of success”.

According to Mr Von Hippel, in the past firms have mostly resisted customer innovation or not known what to do with it. American farmers were lobbying manufacturers to make cars with detachable back seats as early as 1909. It took Detroit more than a decade to “invent” the pick-up truck. Even now, carmakers respond to customer modifications such as performance-exhaust systems by voiding the warranty. Within three weeks of launching “Mindstorms”, a build-it-yourself robot development system, in 1997, Lego was facing around 1,000 hackers who had downloaded its operating system, vastly improved it, and posted their work freely online. After a long stunned silence, Lego appears to have accepted the merits of this community's work: programs written in hacker language may now be uploaded to the Mindstorms website, for example.

DIY innovation

BMW's efforts to harness the creativity of its customers began two years ago, says Joerg Reimann, the firm's head of marketing innovation management, when it posted a toolkit on its website. This toolkit let BMW's customers develop ideas showing how the firm could take advantage of advances in telematics and in-car online services. From the 1,000 customers who used the toolkit, BMW chose 15 and invited them to meet its engineers in Munich. Some of their ideas (which remain under wraps for now) have since reached the prototype stage, says BMW. “They were so happy to be invited by us, and that our technical experts were interested in their ideas,” says Mr Reimann. “They didn't want any money.” BMW is now broadening its customer-innovation efforts.

Westwood Studios, a game developer now owned by EA, first noticed its customers innovating its products after the launch of a game, “Red Alert”, in 1996: gamers were making new content for existing games and posting it freely on fan websites. Westwood “made a conscious decision to embrace this phenomenon”, says Mike Verdu of EA. Soon it was shipping basic game-development tools with its games, and by 1999 had a dedicated department to feed designers and producers working on new projects with customer innovations of existing ones. “The fan community has had a tremendous influence on game design,” says Mr Verdu, “and the games are better as a result.”

Traditionally, firms have innovated by sending out market researchers to discover “unmet needs” among their customers. These researchers report back. The firm decides which ideas to develop and hands them over to project-development teams. Studies suggest that about three-quarters of such projects fail. Harnessing customer innovation requires different methods, says Mr Von Hippel. Instead of taking the temperature of a representative sample of customers, firms must identify the few special customers who innovate.

Researchers call such customers “lead users”. GE's healthcare division calls them “luminaries”. They tend to be well-published doctors and research scientists from leading medical institutions, says GE, which brings up to 25 luminaries together at regular medical advisory board sessions to discuss the evolution of GE's technology. GE then shares some of its advanced technology with a subset of luminaries who form an “inner sanctum of good friends”, says Sholom Ackelsberg of GE Healthcare. GE's products then emerge from collaboration with these groups.

Staples found its luminaries by holding a competition among customers to come up with new product ideas. It got 8,300 submissions, says Michael Collins, boss of the Big Idea Group, a start-up firm that helped Staples to organise its competition.

At the heart of most thinking about innovation is the belief that people expect to be paid for their creative work: hence the need to protect and reward the creation of intellectual property. One really exciting thing about user-led innovation is that customers seem willing to donate their creativity freely, says Mr Von Hippel. This may be because it is their only practical option: patents are costly to get and often provide only weak protection. Some people may value the enhanced reputation and network effects of freely revealing their work more than any money they could make by patenting it. Either way, some firms are starting to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.

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By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page C01

Toby is a bunny with wheat-colored fur and innocent brown eyes. He's about 10 inches long and the picture of fuzzy-wuzzy cuteness.

Sadly, in a matter of months Toby will be chopped, skinned, sauteed and served in a wine sauce.

Maybe.

The anonymous operator of Savetoby.com has vowed to take this beloved pet to a butcher, slaughter the animal and then devour him in a midsummer feast, unless visitors to the site send $50,000 by June 30. You read it right: Send money, or the bunny is dinner.

"I don't want to eat Toby," the site operator writes on the home page, "he is my friend, and he has always been the most loving, adorable pet. However, God as my witness, I will devour this little guy unless I receive 50,000$ USD into my account from donations or purchase of merchandise."

To underscore the gravity of all this, there is a section with recipes for, among other dishes, Lapin Braise (take "1 Toby cut in serving-sized pieces, flour for dusting with salt and pepper"), Moroccan Hare Tagine ("Ingredients: Toby, olive oil, cinnamon") and Toby Confit ("Place Toby's legs together with the sliced garlic and rock salt in a bowl overnight"). In the gallery section, there's a photo of Toby on a cutting board, just to make sure you get the idea.

To date, if the site's claims are to be believed, more than $18,000 has been raised to rescue Toby from the crockpot. But verifying that figure is impossible, and the site could be nothing more than a darkly comic and rather inspired way to make some quick cash. This is not the first send-money-or-Fluffy-gets-it scheme in history. What's certain is that a) Whoever runs this site owns a very cute bunny, b) the site is selling more than 90 Toby-related products and c) thanks to some careful planning, the identity of the bunny's keepers is a well-kept secret.

Oh, and d) some animal-rights people are really really peeved.

"We've received hundreds of death threats," says a guy who calls himself James and who readily admits that James is not his real name. In response to an e-mailed request for an interview, he called Wednesday afternoon and would say only that he and his business partner are in their twenties and live on the East Coast.

Are you really going to, you know, eat the little fella?

"There's no doubt about it," said "James." A few of the angry e-mails the threat has generated have been posted on the site. A page dedicated to feedback quotes letters such as this: "I would just like to warn you that if you do not take down your Save Toby web site immediatly [sic], I will have you arrested for the felony crime of extortion." Judging from their replies, the webmasters sound unconcerned, flippantly so.

Even the most vocal bunny lovers out there say that although Savetoby might be distasteful, its operators are not committing a crime, unless they violate animal cruelty statutes. A spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals counseled everyone -- the news media, in particular -- to ignore the site.

"We know from history that the more press this thing gets the more copycats there will be and the more animal deaths," spokeswoman Jen McClure writes in an e-mail. "Since these heartless people are encouraged by attention, the most effective way to discourage them is to avoid visiting their sites and to urge others to do the same."

Also appalled: PayPal, the eBay-owned online payment service. When Savetoby launched in January, a PayPal account was collecting money for the site. But after fielding complaints, the company took another look and decided in late February that the site violated its offensive-materials standards.

"I get a little sick to my stomach every time I look at that site," says PayPal spokeswoman Amanda Pires. "We have discontinued service."

She wouldn't say how much Savetoby had collected by the time PayPal opted out, citing privacy issues. Savetoby still has a PayPal link and what looks like a running donation counter, but when you click to donate you get an error message that says, "This recipient is currently unable to receive money."

But Savetoby is hardly out of business. A spokesman at Godaddy.com, the company that is hosting the site, says it has no plans to kick Toby's keepers off the Web.

"There's nothing illegal about eating rabbits," says Nick Fuller, a Godaddy spokesman. "And we haven't been contacted by any authorities with regards to any fraudulent activity on the site."

Though the PayPal link no longer works for donations, the mini-mall selling Toby stuff is open for business, says a rep for CafePress.com, which hosts the site's merchandise transactions. Up for sale: T-shirts, stickers, tank tops, coffee mugs, a tote bag, clock, mouse pads, aprons, throw pillows, thongs, trucker hats and teddy bears. Everything comes with the bunny's black silhouette, or his photograph, or the name of the Web site.

Whether you think any of this is actually funny is a matter of personal taste. What's certain is that Savetoby.com is likely part of a long tradition in the annals of prankdom. In the 1970s, National Lampoon ran a cover that featured a huggable mutt looking at a gun pointed at its head, with the cover line, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog." (Apparently, we bought the magazine.) More recently there have been Web sites with the same theme, including Save Bernd!, which threatened to fricassee a rabbit by that name if the owner didn't receive a million euros by March 27. Probably not true. Bernd was originally scheduled for a garnished plate on New Year's Eve, and there is a disclaimer buried deep in the site that reads, in small print, "It's a joke."

A similar disclaimer was actually spotted on Savetoby by a visitor in early February, according to an entry at Snopes.com, a Web site dedicated to studying urban myths. "Note: this is a joke: please only donate to buy gear or help support savetoby.com."

"James" said he didn't know about that disclaimer. What he does claim to know is that Toby will be dinner unless $50,000 is raised. So $49,500 won't do?

"Uh . . . that's right," he said. "It might be hard to understand."

It might be. Or it might just be funny.

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12) The Miami Herald/Dave Barry: Man's best friend is always ready [HUMOUR : Dave nous parle des chiens.]
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/10446732.htm

Man's best friend is always ready

DAVE BARRY

I'm trying to convince my wife that we need a dog. I grew up with dogs, and am comfortable with their ways. If we're visiting someone's home, and I suddenly experience a sensation of humid warmth, and I look down and see that my right arm has disappeared up to the elbow inside the mouth of a dog the size of a medium horse, I am not alarmed. I know that this is simply how a large, friendly dog says: ''Greetings! You have a pleasing salty taste!''

I respond by telling the dog that he is a GOOD BOY and pounding him with hearty blows, blows that would flatten a cat like a hairy pancake, but which only make the dog like me more. He likes me so much that he goes and gets his Special Toy. This is something that used to be a recognizable object -- a stuffed animal, a basketball, a Federal Express driver -- but has long since been converted, through countless hours of hard work on the dog's part, into a random wad of filth held together by 73 gallons of congealed dog spit.

''GIVE ME THAT!'' I shout, grabbing an end of the Special Toy. This pleases the dog: It confirms his belief that his Special Toy is the most desirable item in the universe, more desirable even than the corpse of a squirrel. For several seconds we fight for this prize, the dog whipping his head side to side like a crazed windshield wiper. Finally I yank the Special Toy free and hold it triumphantly aloft. The dog watches it with laser-beam concentration, his entire body vibrating with excitement, waiting for me to throw it . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . until finally I cock my arm, and, with a quick motion I . . .

. . . fake a throw. I'm still holding the Special Toy. But WHOOOSH the dog has launched himself across the room, an unguided pursuit missile, reaching a velocity of 75 miles per hour before WHAM he slams headfirst into the wall at the far end of the room. This stimulates the M&M-size clump of nerve cells that serves as a dog's brain to form a thought: The Special Toy is not here! WHERE IS THE SPECIAL TOY??

The dog whirls, sees the toy in my hand and races back across the room. Just as he reaches me, I cock my arm and . . .

. . . fake another throw. WHOOOSH! WHAM! The fake works again! It will always work. I can keep faking throws until the dog has punched a dog-shaped hole completely through the far wall, and the dog will STILL sprint back to me, sincerely believing that THIS time, I'm going to throw the toy. This is one reason why I love dogs.

My wife, who would not touch the Special Toy with a barge pole, is less impressed. She fails to see the appeal of an animal that appears to be less intelligent than its own parasites. Oh, I've tried to explain the advantages of having a dog. For example:

A DOG IS ALWAYS READY. It doesn't matter for what: Dogs are just ready. If you leave your car window open, the dog will leap into the car and sit there for hours. It will sit there for DAYS, if you let it. Because the dog knows that sometimes the car just starts moving, and you have to be ready! Usually the dog will sit in the driver's seat, in case (You never know!) the dog is called upon to steer.

A DOG IS VIGILANT. One time, on a movie set, I watched a small dog walk past a line of six metal light stands. When the dog came to the sixth light stand -- which was EXACTLY the same as the other five light stands -- the dog stopped and began barking furiously at it. The dog would NOT stop. The owner finally had to drag the dog away, with the dog yanking wildly at its leash, still enraged by the light stand. Clearly the dog had detected some hostile intent in this particular light stand, something that we humans, with our inferior senses, were not aware of. We humans were thinking: ''What's WRONG with that dog?'' Whereas the light stand was thinking: ''Whew! That was close!''

These are just a couple of examples of the practical benefits provided by dogs. There are many more, and I have tried pointing them out to my wife, but she doesn't see it. This is why, in our house, we have fish. They're nice fish, but they're not a whole lot of fun. Although they are excellent drivers.

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13) The Economist: Business conferences [Un entrepreneur anglais tente de rendre les conférences professionnelles plus funs.]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%29%280%28RA%2B%2B%21%40%213%0A
Business conferences: Barns' storming
Mar 10th 2005

A man with a mad, desperate mission: to make business conferences fun

ON MARCH 17th, Tom Peters, a management guru, will climb into a boxing ring at an old brewery near the City of London, wearing a silk cloak with his name on the back. Facing him across the ring, similarly draped, will be Richard Scase, a business professor at the University of Kent. But the only sparring between the two men will be verbal. The boxing kit is a stunt dreamed up by Brendan Barns, the organiser of the fourth annual London Business Forum, and a man with a mission: to exterminate boring business conferences.

He has a long way to go. Almost all such conferences conform to a tired formula in which there is no conferring. There are lots of PowerPoint presentations, chocolate biscuits and nodding heads, some in silent assent, some in sleep. Delegates turn up to these dreary affairs because they get out of the office for a while, and their employer pays. When asked what's the point, many mumble about “networking”. They go home with a fistful of business cards which they delude themselves will open up countless new opportunities.

Mr Barns is changing several ingredients in this tired formula. First, the venue: he held a conference earlier this year at Fabric, a fashionable nightclub. “A bit dark,” commented one of the delegates. Mr Barns is also planning a conference in October on HMS Belfast, an old battleship on the River Thames. Pegged to the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, it will discuss Nelson's strategy and leadership skills.

Mr Barns is trying to get away from the usual dismal roast-and-two-veg lunches. Delegates to this year's London Business Forum will get bacon baps and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. In May, Mr Barns plans to hold a conference on quality management where the key speaker will be Gordon Ramsay, a quality-obsessed chef responsible for some of London's fanciest restaurants.

Mr Barns is also trying to make networking simpler. Those arriving at the London Business Forum will be given a clever little electronic device called Spotme, into which their contact details and photographs are fed. They can then identify fellow delegates from a distance and e-mail them. “It's a bit like speed-dating,” says Mr Barns. The next day delegates get a list of all the electronic contacts that they made.

Mr Barns's is a good cause. But he has to overcome the powerful economics of business conferences. Engrossing, knowledgeable speakers are few and expensive: Tom Peters costs $85,000 a day; Jim Collins, author of “Built to Last”, $150,000. That forces organisers to go for big conferences when everyone who ever attended such an event knows that small ones are the best.

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14) The New York Times/Travel: Does the affordable Paris bistro still exist? [Existe-il encore de bistrots parisiens bon marché ?]

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/travel/13tables.html
March 13, 2005
Does the Affordable Paris Bistro Still Exist? Oui.
By MARK BITTMAN

INSIDE Chez Michel, a cozy neighborhood bistro beyond the Gare du Nord, the atmosphere is a tad nautical, the menu dotted with specialties of Brittany. My companion and I share brouillade d'oeufs, the creamy stew of scrambled eggs and cream, a stew of wild boar and a fantastic brandade de morue, the elegant and classic salt cod mousse - this one served in a little jam jar, beautifully browned on top and accompanied by broiled tomato, tapenade and salad. We eat well - too well, bien sûr - and can't come close to finishing what's set before us, three-plus courses and no stinting in sight. I finish with a gorgeous Paris-Brest - cream-filled puff pastry with almonds; she, with a quince claufoutis. It is a meal any chef would be proud of, and one that would immensely please most diners.

The prix fixe bill: 30 euros each, or $40, at $1.35 to the euro.

Paris isn't cheap: its luxury restaurants are among the world's most expensive, and the neighborhood bistro is no longer common. But a careful search reveals places both old and new that are not only affordable but terrific. There remains a tradition of chefs' setting a budget and then finding the food that will work within it, and frequent changes of the menu maintain interest and help take advantage of seasonal decreases in price. Furthermore, the frequent use of less expensive ingredients - beautifully prepared eggs, respectfully treated local fish and less expensive (and often more flavorful) cuts of meat - is an important factor in holding prices down.

It helps, too, that many of these restaurants barely nod to ambience or service; the clichés about being ignored by servers are all too often well grounded in reality. But for good-to-spectacular food at near-bargain prices, this scene is hard to beat. At each of the following restaurants, I found myself saying, "I would kill to have a place like this in my neighborhood." And, remember, all of this takes place in Paris. Not bad.

L'OS À MOELLE

With its blackboard menu, unimpressive country look and relatively remote location (in the 15th Arrondissement, just beyond the Eiffel Tower), the food at L'Os à Moelle had better be good. And it is, almost amazingly so, especially the 38-euro prix fixe menu. The seating is fairly comfortable, too, so the couple of hours you spend indulging your palate won't leave you crippled.

The table is set with good rye bread with a super crust and bulots - the large snails that are so delicious one would happily order them if they weren't being offered free - served with a parsley sauce. This was followed by a soup of Jerusalem artichokes with crunchy croutons and a shaving of black truffles. My companion opted for seared foie gras, served quite rare, with apples, beet greens and a slightly sweet dressing, while I chose a black truffle omelet. Other highlights: big scallops, served in shells, with root vegetables, lots of butter, and salt, and a huge, gorgeous marrow bone, served with a small steak.

Desserts were a first-rate chocolate mousse and gratin of fruit with crème anglaise. The wine list was filled with relatively inexpensive and quite decent selections from Burgundy, not a coincidence - you will probably want a good red here.

CAFÉ MODERNE

Across from the old Bourse, in a businesslike neighborhood with little night life, Café Moderne feels as if its owners were enamored of New York style. The clean, unfrilly look and very good service - far more attentive than what one comes to expect in Paris - show that the owners are striving to occupy a different niche. The prix fixe for both lunch and dinner is 30 euros.

Though generally very good, the food is more contemporary than classic bistro fare. My favorite dish, hands down, is the fried oeufs mollet on a bed of spinach, topped with bacon. (Oeufs mollets are six-minute eggs, which, done correctly, yield the same texture as a properly poached egg and can be removed intact from their shells. Here, they are rolled in bread crumbs and fried.) I cannot help but wonder how often I would begin the day with this if I were given the option.

There's another exemplary dish, a "millefeuille" with pastry cream and fruit (on my visit, pears, but I'm sure it changes seasonally). I put quotation marks around millefeuille because it's closer to a three-layer sandwich than a true millefeuille, and, rather than puff pastry, the crisp layers are thin cookies made from butter and sugar, with just enough flour to crisp them up.

In between, the food has its highs and lows: nicely crisped dorade, served with green cabbage, tiny clams and beurre blanc, was a winner, as was risotto with langoustine. Pan-fried chicken stuffed with garlic and herbs, with about a pound of mashed potatoes and a sweet and sour brown sauce, is a bit too straightforward, which isn't to say it was not good enough to finish. A couple of other dishes were questionable, especially the lasagna with escargot.

Nevertheless, the pluses far outweigh the minuses here. The small but carefully assembled wine list is filled with bargains, and on Mondays great wines are offered at cost (beware: it's not easy to get in on those nights, though it's worth a shot).

LA RÉGALADE

When the ownership (and chef) of La Régalade changed last summer, many of its regulars feared a great thing was gone forever. I can hardly count myself as a regular, but a recent visit revealed little change: this remains a bistro worth the journey from anywhere in town. It's hard to get into; it's crowded and cramped; you will certainly not be the only Americans there (many locals appear to have given up); the service can be astonishingly rude (ask for something whenever you catch a server's eye; your next opportunity could be a half hour later) ... and the food remains terrific.

When the staff deigns to notice you, you're brought a pork terrine, along with bread and cornichons. The terrine, which is so silken one might think it contained 80 percent fat, is divine; you could easily get full on this and a glass of Beaujolais, and probably leave without anyone's noticing.

But that would not be wise. You might miss the exemplary brouillade d'oeufs (with black truffles, for a supplementary charge), and you would not be able to exclaim, as did one of my companions upon cutting into a breast of pork with glistening, crunchy skin and a fork-tender underbelly, "This is the best thing I ever ate in my life." It was certainly up there, and my other visits indicate that someone in your party should always order the slow-roasted pork special - these vary, and are all good. This trip, I was satisfied with a quite Spanish dish of arroz nero with squid cut like baby eels and enough garlic to make my ears wiggle.

Cheese, desserts, wine - it's all good. The fixed price for both lunch and dinner is 30 euros, and though you'll undoubtedly select a dish that carries a supplement, at 40 euros it's still a bargain. I suppose one should be thankful for the less-than-adequate service, because it undoubtedly keeps some diners away, leaving room for those of us who will tolerate almost anything for food this good.

AUX LYONNAIS

This is the Lyon-style bistro of Alain Ducasse, one of the world's best-known chefs (his partner here is Thierry de la Brosse, who owns another bistro, L'Ami Louis, in the Marais). Uncomfortable seating and climate control aside, this provides a very good eating experience. In fact, many people will prefer it to Mr. Ducasse's overdone three-star (Michelin) extravaganzas at the Plaza Athénée and elsewhere. There is a 28-euro prix fixe at Aux Lyonnais, but the best offerings are à la carte.

Here, the gutsy food is prepared with great attention, and the service is better than average. (You have to figure that Mr. Ducasse's staff is reasonably well trained.) I've eaten my way through the menu and have yet to find a nondessert dish that I didn't adore. Eggs cooked in cream with mushrooms and shrimp were universally beloved (one of my companions, who ate this back in October, is still talking about it); a stew of winter vegetables (served in January) was a surefire remedy for midwinter blues, containing chestnuts, salsify, turnips, shallots, onions, potatoes, a load of butter and a bit of good stock.

There is sabodet, a variation of a classic Lyonnaise dish of salami and potatoes, here stewed in sauce gribiche; it is enormously satisfying. On one visit I shared a pot of braised pork belly (bacon), something for which Mr. Ducasse is justifiably famous.

The place is drop-dead gorgeous, an 1890 bistro that does not feel contrived, with cement tile floors, walls painted amber (they look smoke-stained but my guess is this is a mock-up), zinc moldings, iron-mounted tables, and so on. It is not the movie-set look of Le Grand Colbert (which you have seen in movies), but it is one of the bistros of your dreams, or at least of mine. The wine list focuses on the Rhone region; I strongly suggest you order the pink sparkler Bugey Serdon, which one doesn't see too often in the north of France (and almost never in the States). It's fruity, enjoyable and cheap.

CHEZ DENISE

I well remember the first time I visited this boisterous, usually smoky, bistro near Les Halles. It is often packed, with its inaccessible banquettes - benches may be a better word - filled with diners, elbow to elbow. A neighbor, struggling with a pot of tripe au calvados that was clearly enough for four, practically forced a plateful on me before I'd even ordered. It's that kind of place - friendly, truly unpretentious, fun - and filled with meat, mostly off-cuts. In fairness, there are vegetables on the menu and, at the right time of year, they're wonderful. The most popular, however, remain the French fries, served, as is everything else, in abundance. I'd start with something like leeks vinaigrette (you'll get a pound of leeks - I'm only exaggerating slightly) or a frisée salad; starting with saucissons or pâté is complete overkill. The main courses are almost all meat, and they're huge.

The côte de boeuf, served with marrow bones, is theoretically for two but really suitable for a family of four. On my most recent visit I ordered pied de cochon and was served an entire foot, grilled. The waiter mocked me because it didn't come with French fries - they are really not to be missed - but my companion's calf's liver did, and since she was busy with the liver and its mound of bacon, I got my share. The crisp-tender pig's foot was work, as it always is when the kitchen doesn't disassemble it (there are 32 bones in a pig's foot), but it was a chore well worth tackling. Other choices include kidney, brains, steaks and chops, and I've yet to find a loser among them. A meal comes to about 30 euros.

The barrels of Brouilly (one of the nine crus Beaujolais) at the front door tell you what you ought to be ordering, and a quick look around tells you where to head for dessert. Many people opt for the cheese tray, which is fun: it's set on your table, and you serve yourself as you like. And sharing an île flotante - meringue in a kind of custard soup, with caramel drizzled on top - is a faux "light" way to finish up.

Bill of Fare

A few words of advice: All these restaurants take reservations, and I'd advise that you book any of them at least a few days in advance. And even if a restaurant is nearly empty, a reservation - even a half-hour in advance - will often get you treated a little bit better. Typically, in Paris (and France in general), the no-smoking laws are ignored. If you ask to be seated in a no-smoking section, chances are you'll simply be seated with other Americans (which, generally speaking, works).

The price for a meal for two, with wine and tip, at these six restaurants is about 100 euro, or $135. And though they all accept credit cards, it's safer to assume that American Express will be refused; take your Visa card or MasterCard. You can travel to all of these places effortlessly (and relatively inexpensively) by taxi, or with a little work by Mètro.

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