Factlet

A Korean man over 75 is more likely to be working than a Frenchman in his early 60s. [NYT via Sullivan]

But you knew that already, didn't you.

it's a factlet, not a factoid.

Telling stories

As an historian I just tell little stories. Or, as Carmen puts it, "You just make crap up!" Actually, I don't have to make stuff up. The story of real people is so improbable that I don't need to.

Here is a Canadian-born French author talking about stories, and explaining a lot about French intellectual history in the late 20th century:

“After the war French writers rejected the idea of narrative because Hitler and Stalin were storytellers, and it seemed naïve to believe in stories. So instead they turned more and more to theory, to the absurd. The French declined even to tell stories about their own history, including the war in Algeria, which like all history can’t really be digested until it is turned into great literature. Francophone literature doesn’t come out of that background. It still tells stories.”

You can find the whole article, which is about the French language and how it has burst the narrow bounds of France and true 'Frenchiness.'

suddenly I have the strangest desire to get back to reading "La Reine Margot."

Linguistic Terrorism

I have discovered a new news source: GlobalPost.com. It's interesting. They only pay their reporters about $12K a year, but for that price they get some pretty good talent since most newspapers are laying off their foreign correspondents. After all, if it doesn't happen in America how could it be news?

The first article I read was about the French fear of linguistic terrorism. Well, it is the French, but to some small extent they have a point. OTOH, French is not exactly the international language it once was, and nothing is going to change that.

Still, I wish I could speak it better.

.

On the other hand ...

... I also write with a "slightly meandering baseline" according to the same book on handwriting anallysis.

Meaning? "Liveliness; intelligence; well-balanced character." Remember, the author has a PhD! In Psychology. From the Sorbonne!

The French language and a hero for our times

Now that I am trying to improve my French, and have already written a lot on this blog about Muslims in this age of terror, here is my idea of a contemporary hero.

Pilot Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, a 20-year-veteran of Air Mauritania.

Lemine's Boeing 747 was hijacked by a lone gunman waving two pistols when it took off from the capital of Mauritania bound for the Canary Islands. While talking to the hijackers the pilot realized that he could not understand French.

So he got on the intercom and told the passengers and crew in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump him.

It worked perfectly. When the hijacker was caught off guard he fell and dropped his pistols. The flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him.

Not quite United 93, but still, A for courage, A for cleverness, A for passenger participation and A+ for using French to do it!