Archive for December, 2005
Benefits
Guest post by tf Lieutenant Laurel Hester, an investigator with the Ocean County, New Jersey, prosecutor’s office, is gravely ill, and would like for her same-sex domestic partner of six years to be able to inherit her pension benefits. If she were a state employee, it would not be a problem. If she were an [...]
For Dummies
Guest post by tf The book Tropical Colonization: An Introduction to the Study of the Subject by Alleyne Ireland (New York: Macmillan, 1899) uses the term “subject” in its title without irony. The United States had recently taken possession of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Before then, “The American people [had] never been interested [...]
Elocution
Guest post by tf With all the talk of call centers in poorer countries, one sometimes forgets that they are a booming business in the rich world. In Eugene, Oregon, Lane Community College has just reintroduced its eight week certificate program for would-be call center employees. As reported by Sherri Buri McDonald in The Register [...]
Poonam
When I took this picture I didn’t know the name of the girl. Now I do. It is Poonam, and she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. The thing is, she is now 14 and that is the time when most girls in Chharanagar get married. Her older brother was pressuring her [...]
Courage
Guest post by tf Daniel Schneidermann lost his job because he spoke out. Now his associate, Judith Bernard, has had a job offer withdrawn because she, too, spoke out. Schneidermann is the host of Arrêt sur Images, the television show that analyzes television, shown every Sunday at 12:36pm on France 5. He was also a [...]
Chartjunk
Guest post by tf As of November 7th, Le Monde has changed its look. The new format makes greater use of color photos, eliminates the short resumés that used to precede articles, and provides a cleaner appearance in general. Readers in France have argued one way and the other about whether the paper is more [...]
Reading
Guest post by tf Fifteen percent of French students leave elementary school without being able to read properly, according to Ministry of Education statistics. The Education Minister, Gilles de Robien, blames this on the whole word method of teaching, which emphasizes word recognition, over the phonetic method, in which children spell out words syllable by [...]
Represent
Guest post by tf What is the CRAN? If you rely on The New York Times for your news, you don’t know. Same thing if your source is The Wall Street Journal. Or The Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times, or the The Boston Globe, or The Miami Herald. The only major daily paper [...]
Fair Use
Guest post by tf The French government plans to introduce a draconian copyright law, the DADVSI, to be discussed in parliament on December 20th and 21st, as Eric Nunès reports in Le Monde. DADVSI would impose criminal penalties for activities that until now have been considered fair use, such as making backups of music or [...]
Skype Out
Guest post by tf Each French cabinet ministry has its own official responsible for the national defense related aspects of that ministry’s work. For the Ministry of National Education, Higher Education, and Research, that official is Bernard Vors, who, in September, acted boldly to protect France from the malign influence of a dangerous piece of [...]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
