The Chain Bridge over the River Danube between Buda and Pest
Octopus fighting an ocean crayfish, mosaic from Pompeii now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples
Françoise Castex, Member of the European Parliament for SW France (image from the Françoise Castex website)
A Eurodeputy has asked the European Commission to examine whether or not Facebook is in compliance with its laws respecting personal privacy. Françoise Castex, Socialist member of the European Parliament for South-West France, has asked for the review in the context of Facebook’s practice of keeping personal information in its databases without informing or giving recourse to users. Read full article
Caffe Capitolino, Capitoline Hill, Rome
Rome Correspondant –
Too late and too rarely spoken, the words “responsibility” and “of conscience” heard Tuesday, 8 November, after Silvio Berlusconi had presented his resignation to the president of the republic, Giogio Napolitano, are insufficient to award him the portfolio of statesman. After nearly ten years of power in the course of the last seventeen years, he leaves Italy more or less in the same condition in which he found it when he ascended to power for the first time in 1994. Read full article
Bumble bee at the University Botanic Gardens in Stockholm
All around the world, bees are dying off. Last week David J. Hawthorne of the University of Maryland published results that showed that some of the drugs used to treat beehives preventively against mites and disease cause the bees to become 1,000 times more sensitive to toxins used as pesticides and herbicides. This work confirms incontrovertably suspicions published in Belgian studies five years ago, and adds one more dismal detail to a situation that may see the near-term demise of a miracle of biological design and a vital part of the food chain. Even if this new information were acted upon immediately and globally, there are still plenty of serious problems for the bees. Read full article
Translated from Des “tsunamis de montagne” menacent le Bhoutan
Le Monde, 3 November 2011
Reporting by Julien Bouissou
Stray dog in the high Andes
Daniel Buren's Les deux plateaux at the Palais Royal in Paris
Alden Gilchrist began his professional career in 1951 as an organist.
Much later promoted to music director, his impressive musical career continues into its sixth decade at the same institution. This evening, at a concert celebrating that tenure at the Edwardian-style Calvary Presbyterian Church—on Fillmore Street in San Francisco since before the Great Quake of 1906—he told the story of a young man who came up to him after a concert at the city’s Community Music Center, saying that he was escorting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, who wanted to speak with him, but couldn’t get across the room because of the crush. Could he wait for her to come over later, when it cleared out?
“Certainly,” he replied.
When the room had thinned out, the woman arrived to talk to him. “Oh Mr. Gilchrist,” she said, “I’m happy to be able to speak to you. I so used to enjoy your father’s organ concerts at Calvary Presbyterian Church.” Read full article
