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Knocked Up
France's glamourous Justice Minister, Rachida Dati, has announced her pregnancy. The Algerian-born 42-year-old, a leading figure in Nicolas Sarkozy's crusade to end the exclusion of minorities from government, made a plea for privacy and refused to name the father of her child.
"I have a complicated private life", she told reporters yesterday, adding that she will not discuss it with the press.
The Loneliness Of The Synchronised Swimmer
A wordle is a tool for creating "word clouds" from text. They work by scanning the text, then presenting it in graphic form, giving greater prominence to words which occur more frequently. So a word cloud of an essay or report would be expected to show words repeated often in large font.
The author of the fine blog What I Learned Today put Obama's speech through Wordle.
Food For Thought
You are what you eat. And New York City has enacted legistlation to oblige everyone who sells food – down to the guy at the last hot-dog stand – to label the content of calories of what you may buy.
Valerie Singleton Was Never Like This...
The Telegraph reports that new Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton is a "WAG" - in other words, the wife or girlfriend of a footballer.
So what? Newspapers are always quick to sneer at footballers and the women who date them - despite plastering these celebs over their covers in the hope of selling more copies. And, indeed, Ms Skelton's WAG credentials are meagre. Her boyfriend David Graham plays for Scottish side Hamilton Academical, who, thanks to having spent a few games shivering on the stands of the old Douglas Park ground in the 1990s, your correspondent can affirm barely qualify as a football team.
Coming To The Surface
It's fascinating how objects buried for hundreds of years are surfacing all over Europe, a constant reminder of how our shared history has a habit of nudging into the present. Earlier this month, a massive head of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was uncovered during excavations in the ancient city of Sagalassos in Turkey.
A Question Of Character
Prospect Magazine publishes an excellent essay by Richard Reeves on character.
It might be old-fashioned to talk about men of good character today, but Reeves, who is a director of think-tank Demos, as well as a scout leader, reckons there is something in Robert Baden-Powell's hope of instilling "some of the spirit of self-negation, self-discipline, sense of humour, responsibility, helpfulness to others, loyalty and patriotism which go to make 'character'" in his scouts.
Reeves admits much of what makes up character is "treacherous political terrain", not least because it is traditionally seen as something handed down from the upper classes to the lower orders. However, as he concludes, "Good societies need good people," so it may be a territory government needs to explore once again.
Top Gear Vs Germany
Britain's BBC Top Gear team do their bit for European relations in a series of races against their counterparts from German TV.
Ping Pong Is Coming Home
London Mayor Boris Johnson delivers the greatest Olympic speech of all time:
Carla And Jackie
They can be a bit slow on the uptake in the mainstream media. Vanity Fair's summer edition features Carla Bruni as its cover star: France's first lady is draped beguilingly over an armchair in the grand Elysée Palace. The headline? "The New Jackie O?"
Well, if the writers had been reading EURSOC in January, they might have come across our story titled The Next Jackie O?
My Husband And I...
"The president is the one who is not being professional", writes Agnes Poirier in the Guardian, "Again his advisers have failed to rein him in. Sarkozy should have know better than to put the Elysée palace and France's national symbols up for hire. He may be authorised to live at the Elysée, but he doesn't own it. Sarkozy should have asked his landlords, the French, their permission to use France's political heart as a backdrop to increase his rock-chick wife's CD sales. Imagine Mick Jagger, as a former flame of the Queen's sister, photographed with the crown jewels on his head, half-reclined on the throne at Windsor, with an admiring Queen standing by. All to promote his latest album."
France To Release Red Brigade Terrorist
Disappointing news for anyone who thought that France, under Nicolas Sarkozy, might take a tougher line on terrorism. Yesterday, a Versailles court ruled that ailing Red Brigades terrorist Marina Petrella should be freed from prison because of her deteriorating health.
Hack Apologises For "Asian Babes" Gaffe
Martin Bashir
Roger Mellie
British reporter Martin Bashir has made a name for himself as the ABC News equivalent of Viz character Roger Mellie. Speaking at the to the Asian American Journalists Association in Chicago, the Man on the Telly said “I’m happy to be in the midst of so many Asian babes... In fact, I’m happy that the podium covers me from the waist down.”
He followed this up with a series of lewd remarks about his co-presenter Juju Chang.
Short Shrift For Miliband
Former development secretary Clare Short has attacked Labour leadership challenger David Miliband, writing that party Blairites have "lost control of their senses" if they believe the young foreign secretary is the solution to the government's ills.
"The first problem is that most normal people have never heard of David Miliband", she writes (rather rich for someone who came to the attention of "normal people" only via her ill-fated campaign to ban Page Three in the 1980s).
