A time to gather stones together?

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time …

(via Donald Jenkins)

The superficiality of the Twitter #Iranelection fad and Mr Obama’s cynicism about the thug regime in Tehran sicken me

I am deeply distressed by the current treatment the disturbances in Iran by the media and the blogosphere.
These are the same wishy-washy, liberal elite that deliberately allowed Iran to be taken over a bunch of reactionary thugs in 1979. In doing so, they thrust a once …

(via Donald Jenkins)

I was the first customer in the entire world to activate an iPhone 3G S

It looks like I was the first person to have activated a newly-acquired iPhone 3G S. The people at Orange called me yesterday to ask whether I wanted to collect mine at midnight, as they were opening their Champs-Elysées store specially for the occasion, making them …

(via Donald Jenkins)

France’s HADOPI ignominy: it’s all the fault of ageing May 1968 trendies with no understanding of what culture is all about

Now, the strategy of giving intellectual property away so that people will buy your paraphernalia won’t work equally well for everything. To take the obvious, painful example: news organizations, very much including this one, have spent years trying to turn large …

(via Donald Jenkins)

Why I have finally decided to blog in my own name

When I started blogging, in 2005 on a Saint-Tropez beach, I decided not to use my own name. I used an amusing pseudonym. I don’t believe this choice has any way hampered my style. But with the change in my life, interests and job that occurred last year, and also the …

Will Mr Obama bring the United States any closer to abolishing the death penalty?

On November 4 2008, I went downtown to Times Square with Flo after the inevitable result had come through and mingled with the crowd of New Yorkers celebrating the end of the hated Bush era. They were all young and enthusiastic and many of them convinced that they were …

Is Nancy Mitford no longer understood?

When the loo-paper gets thicker and the writing-paper gets thinner, it’s always a bad sign at home1

(Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, Hamish Hamilton, 1949)
It is pretty standard, nowadays, to denigrate her as frivolous and out of touch, but I’ve always had …

The four traditionalist bishops: were they ever validly excommunicated?

I have been reading comments from all kinds of people about the Congregation for Bishops’ announcement yesterday that the decree of July 1 1988 that had recorded the excommunication, latæ sententiæ, of the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) …

Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne: Gerard Mortier shuts his bolt pretty triumphantly

I haven’t written much about the Paris Opera in the recent past, despite continuing to go there as often as my travels permit. Last night’s triumphant world première of Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne by Philippe Boesmans at the Palais Garnier, which Flo and I …

Blogging sequentially using Writeroom, TextMate and ecto or MarsEdit

This is an updated version of a post published on my previous blog on November 6 2007, and now no longer online because I have switched all my blog posts to this domain. Owing to its popularity and the fact it was outdated, I have republished an updated version of the …

The man who dreamt of a modern, rich, democratic, peaceful Iran

Shah of Iran interview with Temps présent (1978) from astorg on Vimeo.
On January 18, 1979, just one year after the above documentary was produced by Swiss television, the Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and his Empress, Farah, were driven from their official …

Facebook Connect vs. OpenID

There is an obvious need for an easy, cross-platform secure login and identification system to replace the cumbersome systems implemented on individual blogger sites
Login and identification systems on the web are a fast-evolving topic. When I first started blogging in …

Golda Meir on “Palestine”

There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian …