Minarets

Vous avez sûrement entendu parler de la votation contre la construction de minarets en Suisse.

Il y aurait beaucoup de choses à dire, mais ce qui me frappe c'est qu'il y a un overdose d'hypocrisie de tous les côtés.

Les médias sont dégoûtés pour ça, mais l'abolition des croix dans les salles de classe en Italie passe presque sans commentaire.

Je soupçonne qu'il y a beaucoup de groupes qui ont bien voulu dire qu'ils étaient contre l'initiative, mais qui sont quand même contents que ce soit passé.

Les politiciens français veulent faire la morale, mais ils ont bani le port de la voile.

Je préfère ça à avoir des tribunaux sharia - comme c'est le cas en Angleterre.

C'est clairement un vote contre l'islamisation, et non contre les minarets, ni les musulmans.

Dans la forme, ce n'est pas une question de liberté religieuse, mais d'architecture. C'était idiot de la part des 'anti-islamisation' de ramener les minarets sur le terrain de la religion, là où les opposants pourront du coup parler de discrimination religieuse.

Si ça a passé, Gadafi n'y est pas pour rien, à mon avis.

Enfin, vive la démocratie. Si les anglais en avait eu la possibilité, je suis certain que la sharia n'aurait pas passé en Angleterre non plus.

Un pays européen voterait ça, il serait obligé de revenir en arrière. Vive la démocratie toujours...

You've probably heard the media up in arms about the vote on minarets in Switzerland.

There are many things I could say, but what strikes me is the amazing amounts of hypocrisy on all sides.

The media are all alarmed, but banning crosses in Italian classrooms didn't seem to bother them so much.

I suspect that there are many groups who wanted to be seen to be against this ban, but are privately relieved that it was voted in.

The French foreign minister gave a sermon - but they banned headscarves years ago.

I'd rather have banned minarets than parallel sharia courts, as in the UK.

It's clearly a vote against islamisation, not against minarets, or muslims.

The subject of the vote was unfortunate. By associating architecture with religion, the 'anti-islamisation' team have scored an own goal, in my opinion, because now the opposition will be able to say that it is about discrimination, and not buildings.

I suspect that if there hadn't been a long running political imbroglio with Gadafi, the vote would probably have gone the other way.

Long live democracy, I say. If the Brits had this kind of direct democracy, I'm pretty sure the sharia courts would never had been passed.

Then again, even if they had voted it, Europe would have overridden them anyway. So long live national democracy!

Tard

C'est tard, je suis au boulot, j'attends que ma dernière correction compile.

Ca faisait longtemps que je n'avais pas fait un coup de pompier au boulot.

Bref, 2 heures et demi pour trouver les 4 lignes de code à corriger...

Mais on dort toujours mieux quand ça marche.

It's late, and I'm at work, waiting for my last correction to compile.

It's a long time since I last did a late night firefighting job.

Two and a half hours to track down the 4 lines of code that needed changing...

But I'll sleep better now it works.

Gorgeous?

Désolé, j'ai la phlegm de traduire cette fois-ci.

Someone tagged me as a gorgeous blogger. This dubious honour apparently implies revealing 6 unknown (and presumably mildly interesting) facts about myself.

Not sure if I'll make it to 6.

(Hint, you'll probably need to follow that link to understand some of what follows)
1. In one month's time, we will have been living in this flat for 7 years. This is the longest period of 'domicilic' stability I've ever experienced. (And I like it)
2. One 6th of november, when I was something like 6 years old, I ventured onto the remains of a large bonfire (only UK people will understand the significance of the date), in what I assumed were invincible wellies. As it turns out, I never got the chance to find out how fast wellies melt, because I lost my balance first, and fell with my two hands in the cinders. I still have the skin graft on my left wrist to prove it.
3. I grew up in the same church as Miranda, but didn't go the headscarf route. I did go through a personal crisis something like 15 years ago, where I had to chose between believing what I had been told, or thinking for myself. I'm hoping you know me well enough to know which choice I made. My current theology is a bit like a jellyfish, it is fairly coherent and has a recognisable shape, but there aren't really any bits that won't give if you poke them.
4. Given the male to female ratio in the church youth group, it is statistically plausible that I could have had a fleeting crush on Miranda...
5. The first time I flew in a plane was at the age of 13. If I recall correctly I went on a light plane with school (or something?) then shortly afterwards on a big plane to our holiday in Tunisia (my only ever foray out of Europe). I had flown numerous times before that, in a recurrent dream I had where I could fly by stretching out my parka coat! Much later on (about 12 years ago now), I had a job where I was flying out to Belgium every week. I flew 52 times in one year. Kind of took the shine off the whole thing.
6. (Wow, I got to six!) Several years ago, a guy called Noel died. At the time I was nonplussed, as he "used to be" my brother. He (and his older brother and sister) had been fostered by my parents from when I was 5 to when I was 12. When we moved house, he elected to change families, and kind of dropped out of my life. Weird. Difficult to know what to do with that.

Oh, I'm also supposed to tag 6 other bloggers, but I won't be doing that. I'll suggest 6 other blogs though:
Flight level 390: excellent pilot blog
InternetMonk: if my jellyfish were articulate it would sound like this (in my dreams!)
Paris Daily Photo: Not too taxing, photo a day, little text
Random Acts of Reality: One of the first blogs I started reading, one of the first bloggers to make it to book form too. Start with the post I've linked to...
Basic Instructions: Not as funny as it once was, but still gets coffee out my nose on occasion
xkcd: Only technical/scientific blog in this list - two cartoons a week. (Don't forget to hover the mouse over the image)

For the record, those are the only non-programming blogs that I read, except for those by people I know personally. (Only other exception is Cramner).

Rebecca

Tree ... Arnaque

On a échappé de justesse à se faire arnaquer ce week-end. J'avais répondu à un appel avec une offre du style "venez à ce rendez-vous et vous aurez droit à un panier gourmand et une caméra numérique".

La caméra ça me disait rien, mais le panier gourmand...

Mais j'ai quand même eu un doute, j'ai cherché "Swiss Promo Jeux" ai je suis tombé sur un blog qui racontait que c'était de l'arnaque, quand ils s'y sont rendu, on leur a dit que 'les cadeaux étaient bloqués à la douane'.

L'internet a du positif quand même!

Another nice photo, taken the same day as the previous one.

Boat ... Bâteau

Je suis assez fier de cette photo. J'ai eu l'idée de me mettre le plus près possible de l'eau, presque avec l'appareil dedans.

Et ça donne bien, je trouve.

I'm quite pleased with this photo. I experimented with getting the camera as low as possible, almost in the water.

Quite pleased with the result.

Pop

Voilà ce qui arrive aux grand papas qui ont la mauvais idée de percher sur des échelles mal installées.

Des talons cassés.

Et des dessins de leurs petites filles.

Le patient va de mieux en mieux.

Here's what happens to grandfathers who venture to climb up badly placed ladders.

Broken heels.

And drawings from their granddaughters.

Could be worse, I guess.

Plaster ... Sparadrap

Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé?!

Accident?

Problème occulaire?

Non, une petite fille avec une boîte de sparadraps, et de l'imagination.

(Je ne crois pas qu'elle va recommencer, elle a souffert quand il a fallu l'enlever!)

What happened?!

An accident?

Lazy eye?

No. Just a little girl with a box of plasters, and a fertile imagination.

(I don't think she'll try that one again, she had a hard time when we had to take it off!).

Romain

Il y a quelques temps, Romain est venu passé la nuit chez nous. Les enfants ont profité de faire les fous à table avec Mamma.

A while ago, Romain came to stay for the night. The kids had a great time 'being silly' with Mamma.

Bethany, Joshua & Caleb

On n'a même pas passé 24 heures ensemble, mais c'était tellement super de voir mes neveux et ma nièce quand j'étais en Angleterre.

We didn't even have 24 hours together, but I was very very happy to see my lovely nephews and niece when I was in the UK.

Picnic

La météo a légèrement changé depuis que j'ai pris cette photo.

I think I may have N.A.D.D.