National characteristics

Kanji (Japanese pictograms) are often made up of two or more elements.

The lower half of the kanji for 'man' is the character meaning 'power':



The lower half of the kanji for 'cheap' is the character meaning 'woman':


The Japanese haven't quite cottoned on to this feminism thing yet.

What's the buzz?

My children are enthused by anti-adult ring tones. Adults can't hear as high as children. So an appropriately-pitched ring tone can sound in the classroom, say, without the teacher hearing it. (Presumably you have to speak in a high squeaky voice as well for this to be really useful).

The principle is sound, anyway. My hearing cuts out before 12KHz. But a loud 16Khz will send the children diving for cover with their hands over their ears, while I blissfully wonder what the problem is.
http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/fr/

Which points to the other use of this phenomenon. The 'Mosquito' is a device used to disperse unwanted teenagers at shopping centres. As the inventor says, "It's very difficult to shoplift when you have your fingers in your ears."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/international/europe/29repellent.html

Vocabulary

Some words you never wanted to know:

Fosse septique = septic tank

Vidanger = to empty

Election fever, continued

For all (any?) of you who've been waiting to hear the result of the Castres municipal elections, Pascal Bugis got 50.32% of the vote, the combined left (now led by Philippe Guérineau, Samuel Cèbe having yielded) got 32.19% and Philippe Folliot 17.49%.

The somewhat complicated rules provide that the top list gets half the seats on the council, and the other half of the seats are split between all the lists in proportion to the number of votes achieved. So Bugis's 50% translates into 75% of the seats, or 33 out of a total of 43. The left got seven and Bugis's arch-rival Philippe Folliot just three. Ouch.

Then and now

Then: 1976

Now: Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 8 p.m. on BBC2.

Election fever

There are elections this Sunday for town councils and mayors throughout France. For these, we actually get a vote, unlike the presidential election last year.

On the right, the current mayor Pascal Bugis is standing for re-election. He's being challenged by the centrist local member of parliament Philippe Folliot (slogan: Castres Ensemble - Le Changement Responsable) who wants to do both jobs at once. This 'cumul des mandats' is quite common in France, if not always popular.

Up against them both are Samuel Cèbe, the official Parti Socialiste candidate (slogan: Ensemble pour Castres - Le Vrai Changement), and Philippe Guérineau, representing everyone else on the left (slogan: Castres à Gauche Vraiment - Un Réel Changement), a split memorably described by a dismayed Green party councillor as 'mortifère'.

As the slogans suggest, it's difficult to detect any real difference in their manifestos. Bugis seems to have been doing a good job, and to be popular, so I expect he'll get back in.

Technology, again

That seems to have worked. So here's my other database table, of individual books and manuscripts available online. When I'm confident the databases are working well, I might turn this into a collaborative project that other people can contribute to. That would speed up the research and data input no end!

Old music, new technology

I'm experimenting with setting up a database of lute and early music sources available online. And this further experiment is to embed it in my blog. Here goes.....



It should even be possible to add records from here (I've disabled Edit and Delete records for now).

Database (free!) courtesy of www.zoho.com