Tag: FRENCH

Whenever you choose to block or report a person on Facebook, the social network prompts you to choose from an automatically generated list of reasons for your action. On the English version of the site, you'll see options like "Inappropriate profile picture," or "Inappropriate Wall post." On the French site, however, recent visitors may have noticed an additional option, concerning not fake ...

There are very few things this writer loves about France, but here are two: government-subsidized healthcare, and, now, government-subsidized music. That's right, the country of Debussy and Gainsbourg will now (partially) pay for its young citizens' digital music. As the BBC reports, the new program is aimed at encouraging French youth to get in the habit of actually paying for music. From now ...

They may be mild by Bostonian or New Yorker standards, but Parisian winters can still get pretty frigid. Residents at one old building near the Centre Pompidou, however, might have an easier time staying warm next winter, thanks to an environmentally friendly renovation that takes full advantage of one of the city's most elusive natural resources: humanity. Located at the edge of the Marais ...

In Italy, high-level political scandals involve tantalizing things like underage girls and Mediterranean sex parties. In France, they involve boring things like campaign finance and L'Oreal. Still, in a country starved for any opportunity to pounce on its diminutive president, Nicolas Sarkozy, rumors involving dirty money and the heiress of a corporate empire are enough to make headlines across ...

Despite the twin facts that most everything closes at 7 p.m. and no one who lives there is ever, ever happy, Paris, for some reason, is still known as the 'City of Lights.' [Ed. Note: We feel like we have to say this every time Amar tackles Paris. He lives there. He is grumpy.] Yet, when all the bars close at midnight, and everyone goes home to the warm bed of someone other than their wife, one ...

It wasn't supposed to be this way. May 23 was supposed to be the day Parisians could forget about their country's stagnant economy, their strenuous six-hour workdays and their oversharing first lady. It was supposed to be a day when thousands of anorexic sisters and effeminate brothers, brought together under a tri-colored Facebook flag, could sport their finest identical black and gray wardrobes ...

Share For a couple days next week, Parisians will be jarred from their customary afternoon strolls (and their customary griping, cigarette smoking and croissant munching) when they encounter a two-story BlackBerry looming high above the Beaubourg Esplanade. From May 20th to May 22nd, the Phonolith, as we like to call it, will display whatever texts you and yours decide to enter into BlackBerry ...

Perhaps no other person in the world is kept under closer security than President Obama. His Twitter account, on the other hand... not so much. A small gap in Presidential security was publicly exposed Wednesday, as French police, in coordination with the FBI, arrested a man who'd successfully hacked his way into Obama's Twitter. The (not surprisingly) unemployed 25-year old Frenchman, who ...

Those French journalists who locked themselves in a farmhouse, with only Facebook and Twitter as links to the outside world, have emerged from their self-imposed exile. What did they learn from their social networking experiment? Janic Tremblay, a reporter with Radio Canada, talked with NPR about the experience. "You are - if I may say - who you follow," Tremblay told NPR. In other words, ...

If there's one thing the French have always been fiercely proud of, it's their culture. Faced with the very real prospect of losing control over their most treasured historic documents to Google, the country (in typical French fashion, we might add) has decided that if they can't beat 'em, they might as well join 'em. The New York Times reports that President Nicolas Sarkozy has devoted over ...

The mellifluous, oh-so-romantic French language may be dying a slow death throughout much of the world, but on Twitter, at least, it's as vivant as ever. Just a few weeks after the site unveiled its new Spanish version, Twitter has now made itself available in French, as well. The site commemorated the latest achievement in its ongoing translation project with a French post on its blog. (You ...

Take this from someone who went to college in a French-speaking country: no one takes la langue more seriously than the francophone. Heritage, cultural pride, and a sense of protection keep the government involved in the purity of francais, so much so that other languages have suffered in many francophone countries, most particularly France, itself. (Just ask the English-speaking Montrealers who ...

Life's little indignities add up, so you'd better be learning how to laugh at them. The French are. "Vie de merde," a French Web site that revels in humanity's daily humiliations (the name literally means "A Crappy Life"), provides readers the chance to indulge in other people's tales of misfortune. It is, not surprisingly, one of the most popular Web sites in France, and has seen its readership ...

Look, there's not a whole lot we can say about this commercial featuring bright-eyed French children and phallic candy. We're all for suggestive marketing campaigns (really, we are!), and this commercial probably says more about the people that watch it (like us) than the people that made it. Maybe we've just seen so many suggestive ad campaigns that, at this point, we can't help but to look ...

And you thought The Shining cuckoo clock was terrifying -- imagine waking up to this. Designed by French artist Stephane Vigny, the loudspeaker clock does exactly what you'd expect it to. When the time comes, the doors flip open, the bottom woofer extends out and a cacophonic emission of sound is heard as you angrily wake from your slumber. We can't imagine that outstretched woofer surviving too ...