Obviously, I would fail the French Turino Test

Turino Test: a test of machine (or human) translation, where a native speaker has a text-only conversation a person who is either a native speaker, or with a person who has no knowledge of the language, but has a translator. If the native speaker cannot tell that the conversation is being translated, the translator passes the Turino Test.

This seems just as hard as the Turing Test. Probably harder.

more accurate

Violence: the universal language.

Photos from around Lyon

Cover of a used book, part of what looked like a standard collection of different authors, like Victor Hugo, etc.:

Two from a health clinic:
Yes, that's a condom.
And that's a butterfly having sex butterfly-style with what appears to be a very ill ant. "The summer favors new encounters. Protect yourself."

travel plans

I will be in the following places at some point during the summer:
NYC, South Bend, Minneapolis, Toronto, Lyon, Geneva, Barcelona, London, Paris, San Francisco. If you'll be in any of those places, and I don't already know that (i.e., you don't live there), then let me know.

so civilised

Check out this article about FOTC ending. Two things: :( , and read the comments. Have you ever read such literate/polite web comments anywhere in your life? New Zealand is fucked up.

overheard in Toronto

College-age girl in coffee shop: Have you heard of 'Robinson Crusoe'?
College-age guy sitting with her, studying: No.
Girl: Oh, it's this really famous book. The author's name is exactly like the main character, Robinson Crusoe, like, it's 'Daniel Crusoe.' It was written in like the 17th century, and it's about this guy, Robinson Crusoe, who's like a world traveler. And he goes to all these places, and he goes to a place where everyone's really little, and another place where everyone's really big. And he gets this little slave.
Me: [WTF]
Guy: Huh.
Girl: And it's all about, like, Victorian ideas of colonialism and of how people of that time thought about exploration, and control over the native population.

The amazing thing to me about this conversation is how in the end, the girl managed to put out a semi-coherent point, although her getting nearly every fact wrong about the book somewhat detracts from said point. But you can make these points without actually knowing any real facts. I would like to blame post-modernism for this, as for everything else, but I'm going to go with dumbness instead.

cultural heritage

On a flyer I got:
TEX MEX
Tout nos Tex Mex sont servis avec potatoes ou frites+sauce barbecue
8 pièces nuggets
10 pièces nuggets
8 chicken wings
20 chicken wings

People in California tend to slag on Tex-Mex, but even they don't think it consists of nuggets or wings and french fries. I don't really get how the "Mex" got in there at all.

divorcées

All four women I've done a language exchange with who have been married are now divorced or in the process of being divorced. I'm pretty sure this shows the immorality of the French.

pronounciation

I find it surprisingly hard to pronounce my name correctly when I'm speaking French. This is true even when I'm just trying to record the greeting on my answering machine.

Resemblance

On St. Patrick's Day, I struck up a conversation with some girls at a bar who had remarked upon my resemblance to Marshall in "How I Met Your Mother," who it appears is played by Jason Segel. It's not a very flattering comparison, in my view, but that's possibly because in the first 5 minutes that I saw of Jason Segel, he got pretty naked.