By Mark | January 7, 2015
This was Stéphane Charbonnier, better known as Charb. He was a political cartoonist, and the editor-in-chief of the French satire publication Charlie Hebdo. Today, he was murdered in Paris by masked gunmen along with 11 others, including cartoonists Cabu, Wolinski and Tignous. The men who perpetrated the attack have yet to be found, but evidence […]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Religious Extremism, Uncategorized | Also tagged Allahu Akbar, Cabu, cartoons, Chab, Charb, Charlie Hebdo, David Pope, Everybody Draw Mohamed Da, France, Free Speech, God is Great, Islam, Islamophobia, Joe Randazzo, Muhammad, political satire, radical Islam, religious extremism, satire, Stéphane Charbonnier, The Onion, Tignous, Wolinski |
A few months ago, I received a nice note from two French filmmakers, who, for some reason, had stumbled across my site and liked it. Their names were Nora Mandray and Hélène Bienvenu, and, as I’d come to learn over the course of subsequent emails, they had been living in the the area for some […]
Posted in Art and Culture, Detroit, Sustainability | Also tagged Arthur K. Peters Memorial Travel Grant, Beaubien, bikes, Caspar David Friedrich, Centre National de la Cinématographie, cities, community, community coming together, decent human community, decline, Detroit je t'aime, Detroit Soup, DIO, DIY, documentary film, Fender Bender, film making, France, French Film Institute, Fulbright scholars, generation Y, Grace Lee Boggs, hackers, Hantz Farms, Hungary, ingenuity, Kickstarter, La Croix, Lafayette, metaphors, Nora Mandray, Packard Plant, parables, Paris Institute of Political Studies, post-industrial era, Recycle Here, Romain Meffre, Romantism, ruin porn, self-reliance, soup, the Detroit situation, the future of American cities, the lessons of Detroit, the parable of Detroit, UCLA, urban farming, urban food system, urban living, urban renewal, utopias, Yves Marchand |
By Mark | September 18, 2011
The French government announced on Friday that, from now on, public prayer would be illegal. The move, which comes on the heels of legislation prohibiting French students from wearing headscarves and French women from wearing the face-covering niqab in public, is said to be in response to the fact that French Muslims, unable to find […]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Politics | Also tagged A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population, assimilation, France, honor killings, laïcité, Marine Le Pen, Marseille, McGuillicuddy, MetaFilter, mosques, multiculturalism, Muslim, National Front, Nazi analogies, Nazi occupation, Nicolas Sarkozy, niqab, prayer, public prayer, public streets, secularism, separation of church and state, stealing content from Metafilter, UMP |
By Mark | December 13, 2009
I’m wondering how my friend Ted, in two days time, got from a Peaches concert in Paris, to what looks to be an airplane hanger containing the Unabomber’s cabin. I suspect that alcohol was involved… Anyway, I think it probably goes without saying that I’m impressed… And, for what it’s worth, I’m thinking about running […]
