Speech and its freedoms

"His freedom of speech protects my freedom to call him a bigot." I believed this would be an easy article to write: quote J.K. Rowling in the opening, always a good move, and then skewer the French and expand on the First amendment of the US Constitution, with maybe a nod to Tyrion Lannister for …

One of these things is not like the other

In the middle of polite conversation earlier today, a friend turned to me and said: "you know, deep down, I wonder if it would not have been the same if Hillary had won." Now, this conversation was not taking place in the US so for a second I saw what she meant. In terms of …

The answer might surprise you

What should be the point of education? The question seems worthy of attention, especially from those in charge of it. It seems, however, that we're getting increasingly worrisome answers. Just look at France: the gilets jaune movement might attract most of the attention recently, but other protests are going on as well. The government has …

Voices

I've done my fair share of ranting on this blog, on a wide array of topics, but there is a lot that I haven't talked about yet. I could have endeavored to talk about the kind of crises that everyone says no one is talking about, like the Yemeni civil war or the ongoing political …

We need to talk

It might seem like there's a theme here, but we need to talk. More specifically, we need to talk about the way we talk. It seems that the conversation, particularly in politics, is more and more radicalized. In the US it's become quite obvious: you're us or them, your the liberal snowflake or the pro-Trump …

France, let’s take a breath shall we

Arguing over politics, usually with a glass of wine in hand, seems almost quintessentially French and is to be expected around a presidential election. But this year it feels like political debate is on steroids. The kind of mass hysteria surrounding French elections is quite unprecedented, especially at the international level: I am not sure …

A matter of letters

This is probably a post with a very narrow audience, and might be just me getting old, but I am having a hard time with the number of letters now frequently added to the LGBT acronym. I can live LGBTQ, because queer has been claimed back a long time ago and is a good umbrella …

Hoping for a conversation

Before anything else I feel like I need to clarify a couple of things. I am not a US citizen, but if I was, I would have voted for Clinton. I would have campaigned for her, I would have spent my days calling people to get out the vote, I would have done anything in …