Monday, July 08, 2013

Noteworthy

- Guylaine Massoutre of Le Devoir:

Âmes sensibles s’abstenir. Éric Fottorino, ancien directeur du journal Le Monde, signe un petit essai de vie quotidienne sur les accidents mortels dans le métro. Tout le monde sait que les Parisiens qui travaillent passent une partie de leur vie dans les transports. Et qu’ils y étouffent, suent, peinent, vivent la promiscuité, les divers fracas et le vacarme du trafic. Et qu’ils subissent les avaries de matériel, les grèves, les encombrements inopinés, les rames bondées, les malaises, les incidents inénarrables et perturbateurs. Tout cela contribue à leur morosité.

Sensitive souls absent themselves. Eric Fottorino, previous editor of Le Monde, has written a short essay about daily life on suicides on the Metro. Everyone knows that working Parisians spend part of their lives on public transport. And there they will suffocate, sweat, toil, while experiencing the promiscuity, din and noise of the human traffic. And there they will endure equipment breakdowns, strikes, congestion, discomfort, crowded trains, and shocking and disturbing incidents. All this contributes to their gloom.


- Alex Good on World War Z:

How you finally respond to it, though, will depend on how you take its political messages. As noted, underlying everything is an anxiety (quite understandable and widely held) that this planet just has too damn many people on it already. Especially Chinese people. Progress is also shown to be a chimera. We have to learn to "break from our comfortable, disposable consumer lifestyle[s]" and learn other lessons from the greatest generation, chief among them the value of real work and austerity. 


- More adventures with WordPress.

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