I am hardly a geek. I like my Internet but my use of it would probably look boring for many people who are up to date with all sort of shiny and fancy web tools. After years of resisting, I finally got a cell phone but I mostly use only when I'm travelling or for emergency, and it's an old mobile phone, with buttons to press, not the touch kind. Tumblr, Instagram are just words for me...

Sometimes I heard people mentioning an app for this or that, and I don't always understand what they are talking about (I guess app is short for application?), but I figure it's some sort of tech gadget allowing to do "more stuff" with either their computer or their phone.

But I've just read this, and I don't understand. What the heck is this app? I mean, what does it do exactly? Why would anyone need a app to masturbate? A sex toy? Of course, they are very effective; some pornographic pictures or films?, I get it, even if women are supposed to be less visually oriented than men. But an app????

Is it just some sort of user instructions?

I guess there are already many web pages providing such instructions for masturbation -- the idea that some girls/women wouldn't know how to masturbate kinda puzzles me since even a foetus in the womb can do it but let's imagine that some are indeed clueless -- so what does this app provide that those do not?



And I agree with the journalist, the design is VERY infantilising.

Anyway, if our species now needs app to do something as natural as masturbation, we are really doomed.

Yesterday I found the above picture via twitter and then this article:

"Everyone who has ever owned a cat will be familiar with their unmannerly feline habit of walking across your keyboard while you are typing. One of the manuscript pictures tweeted by @erik_kwakkel (http://twitter.com/erik_kwakkel/status/303614922103865346/photo/1 ) revealed that this is nothing new."

The marks of cat paws were neat but my favourite mention of cat on manuscript is:

"A Deventer scribe, writing around 1420, found his manuscript ruined by a urine stain left there by a cat the night before. He was forced to leave the rest of the page empty, drew a picture of a cat and cursed the creature with the following words:

Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum ostum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem uni cattie venire possunt."

Paws, Pee and Mice

You can also check this article:

Cats on keyboards? It's a long ancient tradition.

Tom McRae is playing in Dublin. This interview was published here on Irishtimes.com

"What’s on your rider? I always ask for the finest single malt whiskey as befits my status. But cooking sherry will do at a push.

How do you get to the gig – limo, taxi, walking? If the helicopter can’t land close, I’ll walk.

What’s the best gig you’ve been to? The best gig is probably more to do with my age and enthusiasm than anything else. When I was a teenager, The Waterboys at Norwich UEA made me want to be in a band. Radiohead at Brixton Academy made we want to give up, they were so good. Rickie Lee Jones in Copenhagen taught me grace and humour. The Bruce Springsteen solo on The Devils and Dust tour reminded me that live performance is worthless unless you’re prepared to take risks and ride the silence.

And the worst? There’s always something to take from a gig, even if it’s another band’s rider.

Who is the most famous person to show up at one of your gigs? Technically, David Bowie and John Cale, but I’m pretty sure they were there to see The Waterboys (I was opening for them in New York.) However, Scott Walker did choose me for his Meltdown Festival, and apparently watched from the shadows. For a moment I felt cool. The moment passed.

Most embarrassing on-stage moment? I once singled out a girl by saying “you, the pretty one”, and the girl next to her raised her hand and I said “no, not you, her”. I still have nightmares about it.

What’s your crowd-pleasing number? I like to think that in the absence of a genuine hit, each song is a least one person’s favourite. Even if that person is me. But probably The Boy with the Bubblegun.

Groupies. Would you? I had some groupies banging and yelling on my hotel door just the other day. Eventually I let them out.

How many roadies does it take to change your lightbulbs (ie, how big is your entourage)? 

In the glory days, we had a lighting director, tour manager, three technicians, front-of-house and monitor engineers, a merch person and two bus drivers. No wonder I still owe Sony a million pounds. Now, it’s me and my wife. She’s as strong as an ox with good teeth, so there’s nothing we can’t wrangle into position.

If you could be in any other band, which one? Any band that Frank Black is in, or Bob Mould or Neil Finn. But I’m still waiting for the call from AC/DC. That’s the job my whole career has been a warm-up for.

Who’s invited to your aftershow party? My idea of an aftershow party is to get back on the bus, put a West Wing on the TV, pour a whiskey and let the road unfurl. If you promise to be quiet, you can all come."

That's my Tom!

Being a historian, I'm very picky when it comes to historical fictions, either in books or on screen. Usually, when a book is accurate history-wise, it is lacking in terms of literary qualities...and vice-versa. It's difficult to find historical novels that are actually great books so it is not a genre that I read much.

BTW this post was prompted by selenak 's last entry in which she mentioned an article from The Observer about a top ten historial novels.

So I wondered...what would be my top ten?

Here is the answer:

( My favourite 10 historical novels )

I don't know whether it's me being me, or me being French, but as I wander on this American-oriented web world, sometimes the cultural gap feels so huge and I feel so...on the outside.

It's quite baffling, for instance, that birth control can still be an issue and cause debates in USA but it's possible to buy sperm on American websites or pick features for your future baby in certain clinics -- something that calls eugneics to the mind -- while, over here, birth control has been settled for a while -- and nobody would even thought of bringing it on -- but we have bioethical laws that forbid many things or try to restrict what we can do with biological stuff (sperm donation has to be free, donor must be anonymous, etc.) and the potential debates precisely focus on that moral ground versus the economic side.

And there's all the religious talk (I don't mean preachy posts but general notes on personal faith, use of God word, or church going comments) that I can't avoid, and that I find sometimes so...overwhelming. What sounds, probably, so commonplace and normal for many people, looks weird to these French eyes.

I don't think it's because I'm an atheist, myself, it's just cultural. I'm sure there are several people around who aren't as godless as I am (I know for a fact that a few of my friends do believe in a higher being, and I'm even the godmother of one of my friends's daughter and I know that my friend send her kids to catechism), but we live, here , in a secular society, in which faith -- or religious practice -- is something very private, completely pushed into the inner world, so intimate that it has completely deserted public speeches or conversations, even between friends, and all the more with "strangers". It wouldn't occur to anyone I know in RL to express religious feelings or casual talk about going to church, unless it's an ad hoc conversation. I might shock some people if I said that it would be like sharing favourite sexual positions or telling about going to partner-swinging clubs, but the analogy would work because it's THAT private.

So sometimes, surfing the Internet is very exotic and feels a bit like watching an American tv show!

Most of the time, it feels like I'm...different.

But, of course the world is more interesting if it's filled with people who are not like me.

Speaking of American tv shows, I'm still rewatching BSG (but have been too lazy to write posts!)and enjoying it a lot. I was so right to be crazy in love with that show when it was on. The finales of s1 and s2 were terrific, the beginning of s3 was awesome. I adore Saul Tigh more than ever (he started breaking my heart at the beginning of season 2 and I have loved the old bastard since then); I have warmed up to Lee, whom I used to find dull and lacking in character until the end of season 3; I keep flipping sides between Roslin and Adama; I cried  a lot at the end of 'The Passage", and Helo is my hero (re-watched " A measure of Salvation" and "Rapture" yesterday, and "The Woman King" today). So good, so beautiful, so tall.

The show was so good at dealing with moral issues and at trying to define what being human meant and what it takes to remain "civilized" (something that The Walking Dead with its poor writing and idiotic characters fails to do). It was so good that it allowed the viewers to overlook some flaws, or plot holes, here and there.

( Read more... )

I usually try not to hurt people around me, but I know that my word can be very sharp sometimes.

Being a teacher facing about 35 students ready to pounce on you, day after day, makes you quick to act and good at saying repartees that put insolents in their places. My word is the whip that reinforces my position but it is also my role as an educator to chastise them verbally; it hardens the pupils and helps them to learn...and it's a cautionary tale for the others. It serves as an exemplum (as mediaeval preachers would say). But I usually do it in a way that is not mean but rather looks like a verbal joust that I won because I have to. The students get it, it's part of the game, it even amuses them.

But it's different when the other can't see your face and the smile in your eyes, and the teacher in me shouldn't bleed out on this virtual world. I can argue, make my point in an online discussion but I am not here to correct others or shows them the wrongness of their ways like La Statue du Commandeur.

Online there are only words that bite and the cold loneliness that surrounds them.

Looks like American atheists have been subjected to death threats that overran the Fox News' Facebook page in the process...

It's always nice to see that people think like you. Suddenly you feel that you aren't alone anymore.

I just checked David Lavery's blog, as I regularly do, for he's the pope of all things tv and a grand priest in the Whedon church. And here's what he wrote on saturday evening:

Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad) just won the Best Support Actor Emmy. Although O'Quinn and Emerson (among others) also deserved it, how could anyone deny the justness of the award? He is astonishing.

And while I write, Bryan Cranston (Walter White in Breaking Bad) has just won for Best Actor!! His third in a row.

Now will you watch "Breaking Bad"? There is no better show on television.