way to look presidential

This picture looks like the evolution of man:

awful movie

When I first got to France and had watched a few of the movies my father gave me, with English subtitles, I asked him to rip some DVDs from Netflix that had French subtitles, since I thought it would make it easier to focus on the audio, while still giving me some help. As it turns out, the best way I've found to watch French movies is by using the English subtitles, but putting them on delay (pressing 'h' in VLC). With a delay of a second and a half, I get a chance to hear the French and try to understand it, but the subtitle comes up afterward in case I didn't. However, in addition to the many excellent films he gave me, I now still have a random assortment of French movies that were released in the U.S. with French subtitles available, and I watched one of them, "Crimson Rivers."

It has to rank as one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. Spoiler alert: I feel no compunction about recounting the "plot" because it's nonsense. The dialogue, situations, etc., are abominable (there's a random fight scene with video game sound affects "A new challenger enters!"; the two main cops, both of whom "play by their own rules" have habits of randomly attacking people for no reason), but the biggest issue is that the plot makes no sense whatsoever. A prestigious university in the French Alps, which also has a hospital, has been switching the babies of professors with those of people in the village, to avoid the inbreeding problems the professors have had. When a mother delivers identical twins, they take one of them, apparently believing themselves safe because the mother lives up the mountain somewhere. However, she later moves to the village of the university, and the identical faces of her child and the stolen twin, brought up as the child of professors, is a threat to the university. They hunt her, and she fakes the death of her daughter, cutting off the daughter's finger as evidence of her death (are all children in France fingerprinted?). Later, she starts gruesomely torturing and murdering various people who were involved in this baby-switching plan. The police are dumbfounded when they learn that the killer, whom they almost catch at the scene of a murder, has the same fingerprint as the "dead" girl's finger (which was preserved, with no decay, in a plastic bag for 15 years). They are especially puzzled because the lead cop saw clearly that the killer had 10 fingers. Of course, everything is resolved when they discover that the killers are identical twins, and it was the 10-fingered one that they saw. Except that identical twins don't have identical fingerprints. And how dumb are you to steal one identical twin in your master-race breeding plan?

I watched a documentary on the DVD afterward, since the plot made no sense and I was hoping for some explanation. I learned that the director cut out all exposition, one main actor had no idea what was going on, an Arab main character in the book was replaced by a white one, and the editor said not to "over-intellectualize" the movie. But the writer of the book the movie was based on gave the nice, clear explanation above, that still doesn't make any sense. Nevertheless, "Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse" was made and is available for your viewing enjoyment.

representation

I learned at some point that Andorra was jointly ruled by France and Spain. The truth is weirder. It's been a real democracy since 1993, but the titular heads (that's right, heads) are the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell in Spain. So it has co-princes, one of whom is an elected leader of another country, and the other a religious official.

censorship

I'm listening to Lily Allen's "Fuck You" on French radio right now. I don't know how I feel about this. Guess I'm really a conservative American at heart.

hotels

I'm staying in a very nice hotel in Wrocław. They've supplied me with soap, shampoo, shower gel, shower cap, sewing kit, and vanity kit. Why no toothpaste?? A shower cap is something you can easily bring on an airplane, as is a sewing kit (I brought many needles accidentally on a few flights this summer). Toothpaste, though, requires a little travel tube to get through airport security, which I never have when I'm about to travel. I'm not even sure what's in the vanity kit, but whatever it is, it's way less useful than toothpaste.

another in the line of french medical "horror" stories

Last night, I noticed, taking a break from working (shock!), that I had triple vision in my left eye. I couldn't decide if I'd had it for long, but I went to bed with a worried feeling -- I have a pending eye appointment, but the earliest I could get was September 24th, and I didn't want to wait a month with triple vision in one eye. This morning, it was gone, but against my natural laziness, I started calling ophthalmologists. The first was gone all of August, but the second, after learning that I was going to Poland tomorrow, agreed to see me today. The secretary warned me that it would cost at least 79 euro. I saw the doctor, who guessed that I probably had had a visual migraine (migraine without a headache). The bill was 23 euro. Now the confusing part. Their machine was broken, so I got a form which I'm supposed to give to my health agency. They will then reimburse me for part of the 23 euro. So (I guess) the full bill was 23 euro, which (a) sounds insane, and (b) means I don't understand something basic about the 79. The doctor was in no hurry -- chatted with me about mathematics research, and spoke pretty good English. In total, what we have is a same-day eye appointment for what will probably turn out to be around 10 euro if I ever turn in this form, and 23 if I don't. Score one for French health care over every other health plan I've ever had, in which vision was never included.

From a NY Times article on marijuana

The people who become chronic users don’t have the same lives and the same achievements as people who don’t use chronically.

Don't you mean "people who don't use chronic"?

common currency

You have to wonder why Canadians choose to make their coins just like the U.S. For example, their dimes are tiny, smaller than their nickels. I've gotten an American quarter mixed up in my change, and people don't seem to have any problem using American coins. And yet, Americans don't really appreciate Canadian coins. I would definitely complain if I got Canadian quarters in my change. On the other hand, I realize that I've started picking up pennies I see on the ground. I think it's because I secretly rejoice when I can pay for things with Canadian pennies -- these objects that have been worthless my entire life!

this is why I can't work in coffeeshops

Same place as the Robinson Crusoe conversation, all from a guy (20 yo?) whose companion replied "uh huh" a lot. He said that he was studying evolutionary biology:

"Spiny anteaters are the closest living relative, of all mammals, to dogs and cats." (He repeated this a few times.)

"I'm so a part of this technological revolution. I'm so into blogs and stuff, like Twitter."

[about his ex] "She's a really next-level individual. She's a really different order of being from most people."

"I can direct my mind's eye to some point in the past, and get a good idea of what things look like."

right-to-left script rendering

I happen to be sharing an office with an Iranian. His English is pretty bad, but he says the election was definitely stolen, and he thinks there's no hope that things will be righted. He also says, which I have not heard elsewhere, that polling stations were "captured," or at the very least there were fake votes, as opposed to just centralized fraud. But it's possible there was a language barrier. Of course, a math researcher currently in Canada is certainly part of the educated elite. I guess the explanation for how poor the fraud is is just that Mousavi was on his way to winning outright, which they weren't at all prepared for, and so they then did a frantic, clumsy fraud. But it's startling how poor a fraud it was -- almost unbelievably bad as a fraud. It almost makes you agree with the Douglas Adams quote

"I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But", says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? it could not have evolved by chance. it proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.