Daily Blague

Kristin Scott Thomas has been made a chevalière of the Légion d'honneur. Hats off! I'm not counting, but she may have made more films in French than in (her native) English.

Leave it to Dartmouth to prepare an on-line manual for the repair of books - and call it "Simple". It is aimed at institutions, not home enthusiasts, but the material will be of interest to anybody who spends time with books (that would include readers), and the tools are undeniably neat.

JR at L'homme qui marche muses on the difference between temps de merde and temps de chiotte, and ponders the ancient riddle: why is it that newscasters around the world think that listeners give a damn about the Nikkei, the Japanese stock index? I used to wonder, too, but then one of our doormen turned out to be the only person we knew who caught Kathleen on her little financial television appearances last year. JR rightly observes that the weather in Paris, whether sunny or grey, is genuinely temperate. The weather in New York is temperate only on average.

Ah, youth. There's probably no way to say this without seeming to condescend, but Justin Hall's video clip of his "breakdown," apparently brought on by a failure to connect with people through the Internet, despite eleven years of publishing his diary, gives real backbone to the sentiment that Kathleen and I often express but don't really think about: nothing could get me to go back to being in my twenties. Ignorance is not bliss.