If ever you doubted that Boris Johnson was a figment of P.G. Wodehouse’s imagination, then see here.
On this day…
… in 1944, Paris was liberated from German occupation.
Through a glass, brightly
A reflection in a bedroom mirror.
The pool
It’s easy to see why the young David Hockney was fascinated by pools.
Apple’s ‘Kill Switch’
Useful Economist.com piece about “the struggle to balance openness and control”.
“I AM RICH” is an iPhone application that made a brief debut on Apple’s software store this month. It cost $999.99 and did nothing more than put a glowing ruby on the iPhone’s screen. Seeing it as cynical rather than practical, Apple yanked it (after eight people bought it).
Apple has fought with developers and killed applications before. Indeed Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs, acknowledged that the iPhone has a “kill switch” that lets the company remotely remove software from people’s handsets. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Apple’s corporate culture is famously closed. By closely overseeing their hardware and software, the company believes it can better ensure that everything works properly. Opening their systems to independent developers entails a loss of control that they find hard to handle. Other companies can sympathise…
The article also mentions Jonathan Zittrain’s book.
Urban living
Moules ‘n Boules
Every Friday evening in the Summer, villagers and guests in Cotignac gather to eat moules marinières and (afterwards) play Boules. The latter is not for the faint-hearted. Think of it as the French equivalent to croquet: banal in appearance and vicious in reality.
Bottle washing, Provencal style
Blue remembered hills
Seen yesterday on a nearly-impassible country road in Provence.
Facing up to one’s responsibilities
I’m not a fan of the French President, and became even more irritated by his antics down the road on vacation in Cap Negré, where he’s been running a kind of holiday camp for chopper-ferried celebs like U2’s Bono. But at least he knew what to do when ten French paras were killed in Afghanistan. First he interrupted his holiday by flying out to see the troops, and then he was in Les Invalides at 11.30am yesterday for the ceremony to honour the returning dead. Compare that with the fact that Tony Blair never turned up at Brize Norton to greet the coffins of soldiers he had consigned to battle. Or the way that George Bush has always studiously avoided any public encounter with his returning casualties.