Mad Men, for Mad Times

I often write about the cultural differences between two countries, two nations, two languages... But sometimes you can look back and consider the disparities between two ages. This came to my mind the other day when watching the last episode of the brilliant TV series Mad Men on BBC iPlayer.

The time difference.

This award-winning drama depicts the life of Don Draper, an advertising agency creative director in the 60s. Back then JFK was president, Cuba the devil, TV sets were in black and white, and so was the American society. Each episode is shot with great level of accuracy and realism, and can thus be watched from a sociological angle. For instance, I was amazed by how looking back in a mirror can be disturbing. Our society is evolving at fast pace, but as long as you live the change, you do not realise it. It is therefore good to step back and seize these opportunities to appreciate the progresses made.

In Mad Men, the hero smokes cigaret after cigaret, he drinks in his office too. Every man in the company has overtly affairs and nobody cares, as long as they are males. Homosexuals are bullied and seen as satanists, so are Jews. Women are discarded and can only be seen as mere complacent secretaries... Smoking, drinking, adultery, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and racism, in the very first minutes of the series you had it all. You are unsettled, because all that seems so different from today's values. And none of these today's sins seems to be seen as negative. This NY Times article sums it all, I must say.

Things change, for the better.

OK, there are still some legacies of this conservative mindset nowadays, but overall, when watching the first episodes, it stroke me how uneasy I was by seeing this guy light his cigaret in front of his children (not to mention the rest). That was only 40 years ago, two generations away, but so alien already.

The scene that struck me most was a family picnic. The couple and their two chilren seem to be the perfect imagery from glossy magazines from the fifties. He stands by the flamboyant cadillac, she sits with their children on a blanket, smiling. You can almost hear the Coca-Cola music in the background. And then it is time to leave. Don finishes his can of bier... and through it away in a bush. The mother collates the cuttlery and shakes off the rest on the ground leaving behind them a mayhem of dirty papers, platisc plates and rubbish. Shoking? Probably by our current standards, but so the norm back then. Who cared about the environment? About the greenhouse effect?

And then when you think hard about it, when I was younger, back in the 70s, did we care much either? We probably started to have some ecological consciousness. But let's face it, ecology, sexual preferences, gender equalities, etc. were still no primary concerns despite pockets of protest and progresses. We have seen these cause cut through only recently, in the last ten to fifteen years. That is not much in light of our history.

TV series are rarely more than entertainment. Mad Menwas an eye-opener to me and for that specific reason, and also because it is simply a thrilling drama, I would strongly recommend it to anybody. Even if you don't care about these guys who tried to rule the world from Madison Avenue.

To read further:

• The bad education, an article on the hidden sexual message behind child TV programmes
• Forbidding is forbidden, an article on May 68 protests in France and their influence on todays mindset

Quote of the day

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

The kingdom strikes back

First I was afraid...

I made it! I have witnessed my first ever British strike... For a French expatriate, it's like realising that there are Paul bakeries in Great Britain. It's like the first time you discover a bunch of Baby Bel in dairy aisle of your local Tesco. It feels a little bit like home.

We are so used to facing strikes in France that I was starting to feel slightly unsettled after three years in this country. Where were the Unions? No sign of angry Students willing to recall their parents' revolutionary protests. No burning tires or anti-CAP farmers uloading tons of sheep dungs in front of the Parliament. London was a quite place, the capitale of the Kingdom of social piece. Was until this week.

London was pretrified.

For two days, the main Union of Transport for London has imposed a strike to gain a salary increase for their members. Almost no tube were consequently navigating in the London underground. You had to opt for alternative transportation modes: buses, car, bike, your good old feet or for the lasiest, to work from home. Like every former Parisian I had also pulled my old roller-blades out the attic, just in case. As a matter of fact, in Paris, when TfL-equivalent RATP is on strike, there is no public transportation at all. So having the luxury to enjoy double-decker buses in sunny London was almost a treat. Almost.

Having to live without you by my strike

But these two days were also an experience. The opportunity to discover some new insights about the locals.

First, strikes are qualified as "industrial movements". I found this choice of vocabulary very interesting. Why "industrial"? By definition it would imply that the movement was produced by the industry, and yet public transportation is not an industry but a service. If I look further down the dictionary I can read that industrial is relating to a noisy, experimental genre of music that originated in the 1970s... Unless this refers to the noise of the vindicative crowd of underpaid tube staffs, I am not sure that I found a proper rational.

In France, we call these protests "mouvements sociaux", social movements. The reason is obviously that the protest are intended to ask for social benefits: pay rises, shorter weeks, subventions, more paid holidays, more bank holidays, more holidays, etc. Maybe it is in the History of each country that lays the solution of my riddle. France is the country of human rights. It is a democracy (from ancient Greek "dēmos" = "common people" and "kratos" = "rule, strength"). It gives the power to common people who can and should voice their opinion. On the other hand, the UK is the home of the successive industrial revolutions. Here lays its history, its own past glory... So that is maybe the reason these movements are refered to as "industrial": they remind the hard working people that we think we nowadays are that our ancestors have suffered for us. It may be some kind of a tribute?

The second learning is that in such abnormal conditions, the average Brit remains an average Brit. Although the BBC called these two days chaos or mayhem... Compared to past experiences, I can confirm that this was pure fun. The locals were waiting dilligently their bus, in well-ordered queues. The only people trying to sneak in were tourists and foreigners. And when the bus driver was announcing that there was too many people in the bus to take more on, the next people in the queue accepted the statement without shouting or insulting anybody. The only complaint I heard was about a football fan who would not be able to get to Wembley to see the national team slash Andora 4-0 that night. A well-ordered turmoil, as usual on this side of the Channel.

Every good thing has an end.

But tomorrow, Friday, business as usual. The tubes will be transporting their lot of workers across its underground network. "Mind the Gap" and "Keep your belongings at all time" will be repeated thousands of times to fellow travelers... I don't even know if the TfL staff got what they were protesting for. That is also the charm of such an amateur action: in France, were striking is a national sport, you would protest until you get what you want or at least part of it. And that means that a strike has a start but no set end... That is not the case here. We knew we were up for two days strikes, and we got two days, on the dot. As I said, a well-ordered turmoil.


To read further:

• Forbidding is forbidden, an article on May '68 and its striking slogans
• A brief story of time, or the boring life in the underground
• Downhill or down ill, an article about the possibilities to ski in the London Tube!
• People from the North, an article about UK industrial past glory and inspirational strikes

Slick chop-stick-style.

Japanissimo.

Just bumped into this vlog (video blog) about an American in Tokyo. Kevin Cooney is a writer, comedian and performer born and raised in New York but currently residing in Japan. His approach is somehow aligned with my own take on life that I try to capture in my own blog: cultural differences are interesting, even if they can make you smile at times.

Since I have myself walked the streets of Tokyo and Japan, his stand-up resonates to me. But I guess it would to anyone genuinely open-minded about what is available out there. What I liked about Japan was that the cultural choc is not biased by a so-call difference of economic development. This country is as advanced if not more than most of the Western countries. They have simply adopted a different route which drove them in a different place. Not better, not less enticing. Simply different.

Here is episode #1 of the series of mini-clips, shot in 2006:

To read further:

• Eat your Japanese carrots, Boy!, an article about food, drinks, health and puzzling labels.
• A breeze of fresh air, a sneak peek at Japanese high-tech though hygienic gizmos
• Japanese pictures, a self explanatory post packed with my pictures of the country of the Rising Sun

Cliffhanger, search to the top

Lost in procrastination

First I wanted to apologise for my less frequent postings. I have been very, very busy these days at work and consequently have not had the time to properly blog about the things that I have in mind. So please bear with me, there are a few thoughts around cultural differences, across countries and across generations, coming soon.

But as I said I have been busy working on a very secretive project that has finally come to the open today. As you may have heard through the press, social media, etc. Microsoft has decided to launch a new search experience, under a new brand: Bing! I have long thought about whether it would make sense for me talk about that in this blog as I tend to dissociate office and home, chore and leisure... But this has taken so much of my time lately that the limit between both spheres has blurred. I have been thinking a lot about it and then here was today's homepage, a mountain dweller... So I could not resist any longer.



Bing, a new search experience

I will not resist any longer because I genuinely think that the search experience is something new and different from the other engines available out there. As you may have noted the service in the UK is in Beta: Microsoft has something like 60 engineers based in London dedicated to localise the global experience to the very specific needs of the British surfers. They work on the algorithm, the front and the back end to lift the Beta tag in a few months time... To know more about the UK features, have a tour of the already-available features at http://www.discoverbing.co.uk/.

But in the meanwhile if you would like to get a better sense of what is coming, have a play with the US product which is available in its full feature set. How to do so? On the top right corner of http://www.bing.com/ you can select your contry. Simply click there and select the relevant destination.

Let me draw your attention to some features that I personally find great:

• The rich image homepage: when connecting to http://www.bing.com/ you will notice that the search box is embedded in a vibrant image. It changes daily, and is country-dependant. So this enables to have pictures that reflect what is happening near you. You will notice on the US site that you have hotspots on the image, providing with some information about the bespoke image and its subject. For someone like me, a photo-enthusiast keen on learning new things every day, this feature touches me straight in the heart. I have my new home page!
• The categories to refine my search: I guess I am just like you all, I have learned to work my way through the search engines. I typed a keyword, get some results, click through the first ones and realise that that is not exactly what I am after. So I refine my query using more keywords, some quotation marks and & signs... Ultimately I make my way through. But on Bing you can see that on the left hand side the engine is offering you a series of option to refine automatically your search, stripping out irrelevant results. I am not talking about the usual 'image', ' video', 'news' categories that you can find on most of the engine no matter what you are after. I am refering to tabs that are dynamically populated depending on what you look for. Type Wimbledon, and you get 'tickets', 'video', 'results'... Type MP3 player and you are prompted a whole new set of refinments like 'Brand', 'Accesories', etc. Ultimately it helps you click on the right link first time, instead of going through the pain of the try-and-miss process.
• Save and share your search: Bing saves your search history so that no matter your series of searches you can always come back to what you previously looked for. Even better, you can share this history through social media (Facebook, Windows Live...). Helpful when you plan your next trip with your wife...
• Travel-planning becomes a no brainer: talking about travels, Microsoft has integrated a series of new technologies in its new experience, from mapping solutions to restaurant reviews. Farecast for instance is just brilliant. If you search, let's say, a flight between NY City and Atlanta, the engine will provide you with some price comparisons and tell you, based on statistics, if the price is likely to go up or down. You can then make your purchase decision without the pain of discovering that you could have saved 15% by waiting an extra week.

The freedom of choice

I have picked up just a few of the innovations that are available or about to be launched. There are a lot more in the pipeline, and even more in the sleeves of the developers. But what I like most about this experience is the fact that Bing does not try to be like Google. I have come across a brilliant quote by this reknown philosoph called Homer Simpson (1987-): "Kids, you have tried your best and you've failed... The lesson is clear: do not try!" Well, Microsoft has stopped trying to be like Google and started offering a radically different approach.

By reading this blog you must have probably realised that I see in cultural differences a source of enrichment, of dynamism, of enthusiasm. I despise what we call in French "Pensée Unique" (uniform thinking). I hail the difference of point of view. I therefore like that from now on, I have a choice between two search engines offering me different experience. Choice is a key element of freedom, isn't it?

To Read further:

• Life without walls, and clichés. an article on Microsoft 'I am a PC' campaign
• Still moving! a post on what recent innovations can do with a couple still images

Victim of your origins

French lover.

Sorry about that, but yes, I am French. Nothing I can do about it: it is my nationality and I don't intend to reject my history. The problem is that with a nationality comes some stereotypes. Got the demonstration of that a few months back.

As a matter of fact my wife and I are expecting an happy event for September. As a wired urban I had to share the news with my network, using the social media and other technologies. However, when it comes to such statement, everyone recommends you to be cautious. Especially in the early months when shit can happen (well actually, shit can happen at that time, but no matter what, it will come any time soon anyway, literally).

You are then torn apart between your desire to share the news and the rational part of your soul encouraging you to play it safe. So ultimately you opt for the intermediary solution: you reveal the information in some cryptic way so that only the people in the know will get it. That is why I updated my status on Windows Live Messenger by stating "3.1496063 inches of happiness". I was indeed just back from our first scan and had seen the face of the baby to be for the first time ever. And the Choosen One was no bigger than 8cm back then... The problem arose when three of my colleagues, who are connected to me through this instant messenger service, picked up on that status and made some questionnable inquiries. "You perv'...", "Stop boasting...", etc. So I wondered: is that me or is that just because I am French and that we have a reputation to focus most our interests around baguette and sex? And since everyone knows a baguette is longer than 8cm, the shortcut was easy.

Face your future.

Anyway, this was making me laugh because I like creating discussion. And as a matter of fact, people started talking about that. They were sharing assumptions. Some clever managed to decyphere the riddle, and did not stop at the obvious dodgy cliché. Other had to wait for the reveal that came after the third full month.

But the initial reactions remain engraved in my mind. Because with the realisation that I will soon be a dad came the first thoughts around the legacy. With two French parents, our toddler will most certainly inherit from our cultural influence. He will be expected to be a great cook, a charismatic doctor, a talented lover... But he will be born in the UK, so fellow pupils might not bully his predictable red hair as much as if he was born on the other side of the Channel. He might end up being a diplomat, or an over-paid football player. No pressure Junior...

And yet, the later might simply turn back and blame us for all that. That is double dose of expectations. So he might just look at us and say: "les parents, allez vous faire fuck yourself". Bloody youth, no respect for their ancestors. But after all, as David Mitchell says it in the following video, that might simply be well-deserved!


To read further:

• Becoming an advertising reference or how advertising can pass from generation to generation even after the product was discontinued
• Tattling ta-ta!, an article about the different generations and their own referential scheme
• French letters from my windmill, how two best enemies are blaming each other for sinful plastic toys

Big fishes, in shallow waters.

Worrying commute.

As you know I am French, and therefore travel quite often between the UK and my home country. If I fly sometimes when heading to the French Alps, my preferred transport method is the Eurostar. Convenient and carbon-neutral, it has the great advantage to drive you from central London to central Paris in a couple hours. The only thing is the consciousness of going through the Channel under the water. Probably influenced by this scene from the Jaws movie where the shark attacks the aquarium tube full of visitors, I cannot refrain myself from associating the moment we enter the chunnel with the idea that there are stuff going on over my head.

It's a bit like the monster in the closet story from your childhood. Now that you are a grown-up you may be aware there is nothing to worry about in your wardrobe, but you cannot avoid double-checking... Well, that is also what I thought before a friend brought to my attention that my apprehensions might be somehow legitimate.

Nessie on a trip down?

The ‘Association of Maritime Research’ was created in 1901 in order to promote a better understanding of deep-sea life and the curious and unknown phenomena that occur in the depth of the oceans and on the sea- bed. Their approach to research is to gather testimonials and question scientists specialising in marine research in an attempt to find a scientific explanation for the various sightings.

The AMR’s intention is to communicate their findings to the general public and enable them to participate interactively in the continuing research.

On 20th April 2009, it seems that a French couple who was enjoying a walk at the Boulogne Harbour, captured a large shape on camera . Intrigued, the guy has zoomed in to focus more clearly and saw a huge, dark, rapidly moving object, which disappeared within a matter of seconds. Something of an amateur expert about the sea and marine life, he knew this was not simply the outline of a whale or any similar creature and was convinced that he had sighted some phenomenon as yet unseen by man. He decided to contact the AMR who are pursuing further investigations.

Subsequently the AMR has collected a substantial number of further testimonials from different areas. The strong similarities between the descriptions seem to confirm the existence of a ‘gigantic’ and extremely ‘fast-moving’ creature off our shores.

Of course we have all heard about those urban legends, and in this case marine legends. The Scots have been chasing Nessie for years. The Tibetans have their Yeti. The French Alps the Dahu... So why could not the people from Boulogne have their own beast. This could maybe explain the scars on Frank Ribery's face, since he was born there.

In any case, the AMR is calling for all witnesses of sightings of any strange phenomena in the English Channel to contact the AMR via their website www.thechannelcreature.com. A reward is even being offered for evidence leading directly to proof of this creature’s existence. I don't know you, but I will certainly keep my hears open when I will cross the Channel. That might help me get rid of my fears. Maybe not.


To read further:

• Vini, Vedi, the Ch'ti..., an article about people from the North.
• Ghost train, an article about an awkward Eurostar trip.

Still moving!

Moving lies.

Those who follow me across the various social media platform know that I am a photo-enthusiast. Back in my student years though I chaired the video association. I used to produce short films with a bunch of friends to capture the student life through its events, sport performances, parties, seminars, binging... Lot of fun and also a realization: when editing videos you can easily manipulate the truth. You can make people believe. Two characters can appear to be in the same room whilst they were not for instance... This was an eye-opener, because if I were able to achieve that effect with our very restricted means, what could the bigger media corporations do?!? I since went back to my first love, still images and photography. I am not saying that I went back to photography because they are more trust-worthy, in fact they can lie as well as films (read this interview of multi-talented artist David Hockney from the Guardian)... It's just that I personaly prefer a single lie to 24 lies a second!

With the rise of digital a new array of possibilities have become accessible to the masses. And with them people are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, even more easily. David Hockney for instance enjoyed doing photo-collages back in the analog era. He was thus showing the bigger picture through smaller ones. He used to achive that manually with loads of print outs of a bespoke subject, glue, and patience. The results in his portfolio are exceptional, to my mind. And they are great because you can see the process through the result. A bit like Impressionism which is showing you the landscape through brush strokes.

Nowadays, softwares enable you to automatically stitch batches of pictures by recognising common denominators in the landscape. I personnaly feel that the result look a bit clinical, and consequently fake. So I prefer to adopt a more manual, though digital way, and accept the imperfections. It is maybe a way to demystify the lie some could say... Here is a link to a panography tutorial if you are interested to experience it by yourself (beware, this is both time-consuming and addictive!), and some of my own collages:

But I am not saying that the softwares that enable you to turn still images into more than a 10x15 piece of paper are bad. Let's take a look at Microsoft Photosynth for instance. This is a brilliant piece of software by the Redmond giant which does exactly what I mentioned above: it looks at 2D images, identify common visual denominators, and stich them to create a 3D image that you can explore. The best thing? These pictures do not have to have been taken by a single individual, on the contrary the diversity of the point of views enable a greater experience. I find this really bluffing. For instance, here you can explore Venice, the Piazza San Marco, the Doge palace... All that by photosynthing something like 500 snapshots by tourists. You are not into pizzas, and preferbig historical event? Well, Microsoft and CNN partnered to capture the Obama Inauguration speech through PhotoSynth. Zoom in from the back row to the speech balcony thanks to the thousands of people who were in Washington that day and snapped... Finally here is another example for the couch potatoes on how Photosynth can help the CSI experts to solve a crime using the camera phones!

Moving though still.

There is another techniques based on still image that has been around for a while and which I keep on being baffled about: Stop Motion. I already wrote about it in a previous blog post as this original technique is becoming popular again in short movies, advertising, etc. And when I say 'original', I really mean it: it is the origins of cinema. You can indeed manualy create a movement by collating still images at the right pace. Your eyes and brain do the rest, i.e. extrapolate the missing pieces to provide a smooth movement.

Here is another great example of genuine creativity through stop motion:

To read further:

• London in Stop Motion, a visit of the UK capital on a Daft Punk beat.
• Bunn-invasion, an article featuring a stop-motion advert for Sony Bravia which hides a bit more than just a unique selling proposition...

Ride on the edge of difference

I like to ride my bicycle...

I appreciate people who dare to do things differently, and you can only admit that Danny MacAskill does things differently with his bike. Neither gravity, nor edges or handrails seem to prevent him from riding the street of Edinburg, Scotland. The best thing is still to let the artist speak for himself, or at least demonstrate his expertise...



Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen. There's some huge riding, but also some of the most technically difficult and imaginative lines you will ever see. Without a doubt, this video pushes the envelope of what is perceived as possible on a trials bike. Credit to Band of Horses for their epic song 'The Funeral.' You can find out more about the band and their music at www.bandofhorses.com.

Just one thing, Danny, you are so busy jumping around that you have not realised that some one stole your saddle a couple weeks back. Beware, it could really hurt.


To read further:

• Downhill or down ill, an article about the possibilities to ski in the London Tube!
• Now this is a downturn, a new way to consider defenestration for failing tycoons from the City
• Thinking out of the box, and the beach, or how beach sports can also find a new expression in Urban environments.

Be Welsh!

Great Britain is... great. It is a patchwork of nations. I have often shared my enthusiasm for Scotland but I recently bumped into this webcast by David Mitchell in which he bitches about lot of things. The British comedian who also stars in the UK-version of the PC vs. Mac advertising campaign, looks at the British society, its flaws, etc. In the below-stated clip, Mitchell pays a tribute to the Welsh nation, with great humour. I simply love it:



To read further:

• Love Scotland, an hilarious portrait of the people from the North by actor Robin Williams
• Subtle differences among English speaking nations, self explanatory...
• British heights. a list of British geographical non-senses

In-form uniforms

6-a-side and 6-pack.

For those who are actively following my activities (I love you mum) through the various social media platforms you must now be aware that I am back on track with my sporting life. Before moving to the UK I used to play really regularly volley ball. I am not talking about working on my tanning in a cute little bathing suit whilst flexing my abs every time a lady walked by... No, I am talking about regular indoor volley ball, 6 on 6, no sand, just hard (really hard) ground.

"Regularly" means, sorry "meant", two two-hour practices per week plus matches on the week-end. Usually that was just enough to remain sharp and to leave my professional stress in a locker. But let's face it, after 18 years jumping and digging around, winning a few medals on the way like a University National Champion title in 1998, the skin of my knees and my meniscii were asking for some relief. I thus decided to grant them and stopped playing when I crossed the Channel in 2005. Since then, the harsh combination of Cornish Pasties and sudden lack of exercise have had a dramatic effect on my athletic silhouette. Bye bye 6-Pack, hello "one-pack with handles"!

Merry Christmas... she said.

Of course I could not decently let my beautiful body down, and as decided in my 2008 resolutions, I joined a gym and got on a diet. Not enough apparently for my beloved better-half who had the brilliant idea to offer me for Christmas a forced registration for the Annecy Half Marathon. Got the message, I love you too...

Obviously the great thing about volleyball is that it is played indoor, on a 9m by 18m field. So it suited perfectly my taste for explosive short sprints in a warm environment, rather than endurance runs in the freezing countryside. But as I said above, I have now quited my career of volleyball player, so I have to discover the joys of the other sports. As a result, since January I am regularly running on the Thames banks and around Hyde Park. Every two days, 10km as a minimum. And when I really want more, I go to the gym...

Uniforms... Doh.

My gym being part of the Fulham and Hammersmith borrough infrastructure, it is also visited by the local schools. It is therefore not too rare to share the apparels with a bunch of girls in their school uniforms.

Now this is something quite odd to me. Obviously after a few years in the UK I am now used to seeing all these pupils in their uniforms in the tube. The boys with their stripped ties half done over a stained white shirt, the girls in skirts and dark tights. But to see the later in the gym with skirts over jogging pants is really puzzling me. I don't get it. It seems to me like a desperate attempt to respect outdated traditions, no matter the practicity of it.

I understand why the school uniforms. It is statutory for the private schools and set their pupils aside from the crowd... A social statement that will one day be replaced by an expensive car or silk suits. In public schools, the interest is different. It is a way to normalise the different social classes. All students are equals: no one can boast an expensive pair of sneakers or a fancy designer sweatshirt... This should enable to avoid tensions linked to different buying power, or even racket.

Tradition versus practicity and pragmatism.

As a child of the Republique, this social value is critical to me. "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity) is indeed the motto of the French Republic. It is thus critical that everyone has equal chances, especially in terms of education. Back in the 60s, all French pupils attending state schools (by opposition of private catholic schools) were wearing grey blouses as a uniform. One model, no fancy accessories. Everyone dressed in the same dresscode. The only eventual difference were maybe the buttons of the trousers (which inspired a book to Louis Pergaud, "the Button War" where two bands of village boys are fighting over a treasure of buttons). It was a social choice, combined with some pragmatism, i.e. avoiding the children to get dirty.

But soon enough these codes relaxed to enable individual expression, non-conformism... And practicity. For instance, the technical evolution of sport gear and the intensity of exercises rapidly required the sport gear to evolve. You could no longer run with basic shoes, or you would risk to damage some ankles and knees in the process. The State is of course responsible for the physical integrity of the pupils. It is also supposed to remain commercially unbiaised: as a result it could not encourage parents to buy a given brand of sport shoes. The decision to buy or not shifted to the parents...

So you can wonder whether school uniforms are good or not. In Italy the politicians are considering bringing them back after dropping them in the 60s. France is more reluctant, maybe because uniforms relates to an iconography of private education.

I personaly understand the social dynamic behind the debate, but for god sake let's remain pragmatic. There is no need for a girl to wear skirts in all circumstances, and certainly not over a trouser... Why would they? To make it clear that they are girls? Let's level social differences, but at the same time let's stay away from sexual discrimination. Girls don't need to be ridiculous in a sport uniform. Otherwise, how do you want to cheer desperate sportsmen like me to finish their gruelling endurance programmes, seriously?

To read further:

• Thinking out of the box, and the beach: an article on traditional beach sports repurposed for urban conditions... Impressive.
• International F.C., an article on advertising, football and cultural differences
• Shoot the stereotypes, on how sport stars can also lead the charge of social equity

Edit: for the curious, I ran the above-mentionned half marathon in 1 hour 56 minutes... And celebrated that with a delicious cheese fondue. Well worth it!

Yodeling is not a crime

At the crossroad of my interests, it crashes

I am a geek, a couch potatoe, a technology enthusiast, a gamer... and a mountain dweller. As a result, I could not let pass the opportunity to blog about this new game that will soon be available on the XBox:


I must say that I am not fully convinced by this game. Being a Guitar Hero, a Rockstar is somehow something valuable, but endorsing the traditional Lederhosen is slightly less appealing. And yet, why not. Some are doing their gym in front of their TV Set, some boxe, some ski... So let's open our mind, and close our hears.

To read further:

• Life is a game, a post on Assassin's Creed video game and its politically correct disclaimers

A breeze of fresh air

The best run ever

I will not crack a series of bad jokes on running to the loo, sliding marks, etc. No, I am not scatological enough to clutter this page with such vocabulary. However, I am from the French Alps, and I have also visited Japan recently, as a result, I could only be seduced by these Japanese toilets...
"Regular" Japanese bogs are already over-equipped with interesting features, including well-positioned water and air jets, heated seating, onboarded music to cover up your own soundtrack and preserve your integrity... So I was just wondering if this limited edition had a few more tricks in its bag. I don't know: evergreen scents, chilled breeze to give the feeling of speed, clapping and crowd roaring to encourage your skiing performance, etc.

In fact, I am not sure to let my brain wander any further, because I am certain that it will never even come close to the reality. Japanese toilets rules, that is all.


To read further:

• Toilet centric vocabulary, on shity days and toilets of all sorts.
• Love dispenser, an article on a weird dispenser found in the toilets of a major global media company.
• Japanese pictures, a slide show of my recent trip around the Japanese islands.

And the burger started to rule the world

Kingdom or neo-imperialism.

I have already mentioned several times the efforts led by creative agency Crispin, Porter+Bogusky to shift paradigms though clever usage of creativity. One of their customers is Burger King and in the US the fast food brand is facing the tough competition of archrival McDonald's but argue that their hero product, the Whopper, is simply the best burger to be sold on US soil. So how to substantiate such a claim?

When it comes to food and beverages, organoleptic tests have been used for ages. Would Mrs Smith prefer the coffee A versus coffee B? Mustard X versus Mustard Y? Coke or Pepsi? Now there is an obvious skew in the test results depending on your own history. If you have been bred on mother's apple marmalade, it is very unlikely that any other apple jam will ever compete. There are some elements engraved in our subconsciousness, be it individual or collective, that bias our perception of things. We tend to associate some emotional variables to what are sensations. I wrote an article a few months back on that topic when walking around the street of London and smelling the peculiar smell of evergreens...

That is the challenge that CP+B decided to address by setting a comparison test that would not be biased. They thus decided to move to remote places around the globe to meet people who had been lucky to escape the double-quarter-pounder-with-cheese tsunami. The principle is simple: if we present two unknown products to a consumer that has never been exposed to that category, then their ratings would really be valuable as totally objective.

Cultural checks... For your sanity.

When I looked at that video I have been torn between two feelings: on the one hand I was interested in this experiment from a ethnological standpoint, on the other hand I felt kind of upset about it. A few things bothered me.

First the way that these people are pictured, most of the time they are dressed up in their celebration outfits, just to over-stress the fact they were different people. That was a little bit too much for me. The other elements that bothered me was the necessity to go in such places and "corrupt" their perception by forcing them to evaluate the lowest quality of Western food. Would you like to participate in a test where you are asked to evaluate which goat turd tastes better because in some country it is considered a delicacy? I really like for that reason the very last sentence of the film: "seal meat taste better". After all, the US norm and especially Burgers are not, and should never be considered as a standard in terms of culinary excellence.

To read further:

• Londoniaz 1850, on how smells can bring you back in time.
• This is not a Method, an article on the Pepsi provocation in front of Coke UK Headquarters.
• Life without wall and cliches, an article on Crispin, Porter+ Bogusky campaign on PC and Apple
• Live to eat or eat to live, an article on British fast food habits

Happiness in a bottle

Some said that the message was in the bottle... Coke decided that the message would be happiness. A new bucolic advert by the Atlanta fizzy brand. Something to make you lighter in the current gloomy days. Cheers.

Edit
And yet I have just come across the latest Pepsi ad aired during the last week SuperBowl. Their own message is not bottled. They argue that even if things are changing, evolving, across generations... there are things that continue to be cornerstones of each generation, as long as they evolved too.

To read further:

• This is not a Method, an article on the Pepsi provocation in front of Coke UK Headquarters