What En L'An 2000 (In the Year 2000) got right

En L'An 2000

Excerpt:

En L'An 2000 (In the Year 2000, also loosely translated as France in the 21st Century) is a French image series depicting scientific advances imagined as achieved by the year 2000. At least 87 were produced, by artists including Jean-Marc Côté. They were printed in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1910, first on paper as cigar box inserts, and later as picture postcards, but never distributed. The only known set of the postcards was acquired by writer Isaac Asimov, who featured them in his nonfiction work Futuredays: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000 (Henry Holt and Company, 1986).

Comment: See Google search and this and this and this

A drawing from 1930, depicting the future of communication pic.twitter.com/gWUqOXycbD

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) July 7, 2018

More: Looks like the above image is from 1930

cc @jrpeet @kareanderson How to search for image sources: https://t.co/Jc7kcnxQtd This one looks lost with sources just being other sources that grabbed the image. Reddit discussion 3 years ago: https://t.co/8MXEbZ5enr article: https://t.co/JZO0wTFEwI me: https://t.co/yz3Z77EGGA

— Linda Sherman Gordon (@LindaSherman) July 9, 2018

The concepts aren't that far off from today's reality. Delivering mail and putting out fires was predicted to be done in mid-air. They even have electric roller skates and rolling houses. (via @mymodernmet) https://t.co/ZMMSJSzvBP

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) July 16, 2018

France's national symbol - 2030?

President Hollande has admitted 'France has a problem with Islam' and warned that the country's national symbol will one day be a woman in a burka

Excerpt:

In the French President’s new book named ‘A president should not say that’, he declared women who wear the veil will be the “Marianne of the future”.

Marianne is France’s national icon and a symbol of its values of liberty, egality and fraternity.

Comment: I'll take the Liberty Lady

"The Grizz" mauls "the French way"

US Exec to France: "Keep Your So-Called Workers"
Excerpt:

"I have visited that factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages, but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three hours," he wrote.

"I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!" Taylor, who is nicknamed "the Grizz" by Wall Street analysts because of his tough negotiating style, said he had other expansion plans in mind for Titan.

"Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs," he wrote. "You can keep the so-called workers. Titan has no interest in the Amiens North factory."

Comment: Titan Tire website

Full document of letter

Comments: The Grizz website, Image source of Morry Taylor, US boss berates French for 'three-hour' working day

This is the kind of company that would be a good investment! TWI.

France's answer to their health care crisis

France takes first step toward medically-assisted suicide
Excerpt:

A government-commissioned report released on Tuesday has recommended that France allow doctors to “accelerate death” for terminally-ill patients who want to end their lives. French people overwhelmingly support medically-assisted suicide, with an October poll showing 89% in favour. Examining the case for medically-assisted suicide was a campaign pledge made by French President François Hollande ahead of his election in May 2012.

Comment: Coming to America?

A French emergency

World Edgy on Korea, Russia Sees 'Colossal Danger'

Excerpt:

A French diplomatic source said the U.N. Security Council could hold an emergency meeting in the next day or two.

Comment: Had to laugh at this! At work, if we had 10 desktops out of commission because of a software push we would be 24 x 7 to resolve. Well the UN is feckless anyway!

France: "stay on the job until 62 to collect a full state pension"

France Makes Crucial Move to Raise Age of Retirement

Excerpts:

Despite vocal protests, French lawmakers approved President Nicolas Sarkozy's sweeping retirement reforms Wednesday, including a highly contested measure to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62.

The National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, voted 329-233 to pass the broad retirement package, clearing a crucial first legislative hurdle and sending it onto the Senate for debate starting Oct. 1.

The retirement reforms are one of the pillars of Sarkozy's conservative agenda and a prime target of France's powerful unions. Wednesday's vote puts France on track to become the latest European Union country to require workers to stay on the job longer because of a deficit-plagued pension system.

...

The central and most controversial reform requires workers to stay on the job until 62 to collect a full state pension.

Even then, France would still have one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe. In contrast, Germany recently raised its retirement age from 65 to 67 to offset a shrinking, aging population, and the U.S. is also gradually raising its retirement age to 67.

Comment: In the US, retire at 62 and one's Social Security is 75% of what it would be at full retirement.

Paris theoretically stricter than hardline Sudan?

Women banned from wearing trousers in Paris

Excerpt:

The rule banning women from dressing like men – namely by wearing trousers - was first introduced in 1800 by Paris' police chief and has survived repeated attempts to repeal it.

The 1800 rule stipulated than any Parisienne wishing to dress like a man "must present herself to Paris' main police station to obtain authorisation".

In 1892 it was slightly relaxed thanks to an amendment which said trousers were permitted "as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse".

Then in 1909, the decree was further watered down when an extra clause was added to allow women in trousers on condition they were "on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars".

In 1969, amid a global movement towards gender equality, the Paris council asked the city's police chief to bin the decree. His response was: "It is unwise to change texts which foreseen or unforeseen variations in fashion can return to the fore."

The latest attempt to remove the outmoded rule was in 2003, when a Right-wing MP from President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party wrote to the minister in charge of gender equality. The minister's response was: "Disuse is sometimes more efficient than (state) intervention in adapting the law to changing morays."

As Evelyne Pisier, a law professor whose book Le Droit des Femmes (The Rights of Women) unearthed the curious decree points out, given that trousers are compulsory for Parisian policewoman, they are all breaking the law.

Comment: Humorous!

Ma Verite Sur la Planete

Gore Milks Cash Cow, Sego May Run Again: What France Is Reading

Excerpt (Re Global Warming):

The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, ``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' (``My Truth About the Planet''), doesn't mince words.

He calls Gore a ``crook'' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.

Allegre doesn't deny that the climate has changed or that extreme weather has become more common. He instead emphasizes the local character of these phenomena.

While the icecap of the North Pole is shrinking, the one covering Antarctica -- or 92 percent of the Earth's ice -- is not, he says. Nor have Scandinavian glaciers receded, he says. To play down these differences by basing forecasts on a global average makes no sense to Allegre.

He dismisses talk of renewable energies, such as wind or solar power, saying it would take a century for them to become a serious factor in meeting the world's energy demands.

Let Us Eat Cake

To his relief, France has taken another path: Almost 80 percent of its electricity comes from nuclear reactors. What's more, France has a talent for eating its cake and having it, too: Although it signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the country is nowhere near meeting the agreed targets.

``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' is published by Plon/Fayard (240 pages, 18 euros).

Comment: Read on about "Les Precheurs de l'Apocalypse" and "Ma Plus Belle Histoire, C'est Vous" (w Ségolène Royal's kooky idea of "having the military deal with unruly juveniles"!)

French (Sarkozy) Backbone!

Sarkozy says letting Iran go nuclear could cause war

Excerpt:

In his maiden speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Sarkozy said: "There will be no peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of nuclear arms proliferation."

Iran was entitled to nuclear power for civilian purposes, he said, "but if we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we would incur an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world".

In a broader warning against the dangers of appeasement, the new French leader said: "Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war."

Comment: Wow a breath of fresh air! What a change (improvement!) from Jacques Chirac!