Foreign Dispatches

The Best Reason to Watch French TV

I present to you "Les rouleaux de Fort Boyard"! (Warning: Probably NSFW)

To be honest, I'm surprised a show like this is allowed to air in France; this is the kind of thing I'd imagined was relegated to Berlusconi's RAI network in Italy. Certainly this show would never stand a chance in the UK, where joyless, Daily-Mail and Guardian  reading schoolmarm types would guarantee its stillbirth in the name of "morals" or "equality".

PS: For illustrative purposes, let me show you a (relatively very tame) clip from an Italian show. The Italians even have a special term for beautiful women who act as ornaments on TV shows: "Veline".

More risque examples of Italian TV programming can be found here, here and here. All links are NSFW: don't say I didn't warn you.

What is it with the Lesbian Thing?

An article on The Local about the prevalence of same-sex activity amongst young Swedish women gives birth to the mother of all Fark threads, and leaves me wondering yet again:  what is it about lesbianism that other men find so damned fascinating? 

"Journalism", Daily Mail Style

I think any adult with half a brain* should know by now that the Daily Mail is hardly to be counted amongst the more objective or thorough news outlets in the English-speaking world. Indeed, this is one of the few periodicals whose Uncyclopedia entry gives a far more accurate idea of what the newspaper is really about than the corresponding Wikipedia article: fear-mongering, sensationalism and fanning the flames of nearly every prejudice under the sun. Still, you'd think the Daily Wail's "journalists" would adhere to a certain minimal level of conscientiousness when spinning their tripe, and that there'd at least be a kernel of truth to whatever outrageous claim they may choose to present to their audience. Unfortunately, any such assumption would be wrong, as this German-language article illustrates [excerpts translated below.] Apparently putting fictitious words in a researcher's mouth is not a problem where the Daily Heil is concerned, especially when it presents an opportunity to indulge one of the primary fascinations of its bigoted readership - Adolf Hitler.

Protest in North Korea?

The normally cowed North Korean populace is finally daring to speak out against the communist regime, after being pushed to the wall by the latest currency devaluation - or at least, so claims a certain Claudia Rosett in this Forbes article. 

Narcissistic Norwegians

It would seem that the Norwegians, having decided to bestow this year's Nobel Peace Prize on a sitting US President who clearly had done nothing to deserve it - he'd only been in office a month before being nominated! - are now throwing a tiff because the President of the United States has more important things to do with his time than spending three days in Oslo swanning about with the Norwegian figurehead.

Who wants to be on Google Wave?

I have a bunch of invites to hand out, so anyone who's interested can either send me an email message, or leave a comment on this post.

Michael Bay Delivers

The director all wannabe film-critics love to hate takes some time out from making movies about robots to shooting a commercial for Victoria's Secret. Needless to say, it has all off the expected Michael Bay ingredients, brought to you in glorious HD video format. (PS: Don't play this one at work, folks!)

I dare anyone to tell me that wasn't awesome.

How Often Do You Wash Your Hands?

If you're washing your mitts less than 8-12 times a day, you're probably not washing them enough (and as the article indicates, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are no substitute); if what passes for "hand-washing" in your mind is dabbing your hands under the tap for 1-2 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Hand-washing is just about the single most effective thing one could do to improve one's health - arguably even more so than giving up smoking - and yet it's shocking how few people know or care enough to carry it out properly or sufficiently often. To think that the majority of people even in the "developed" world continue to neglect so simple and effective a preventive measure frankly makes me furious: we are only living some 160+ years after Ignaz Semmelweis first discovered the importance of this practice ...