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Probablement un peu bateau, mais bon. Je cherche a offrir a mon frère, en France, un livre sur le mal entendu entre les français et les Americains.... A la recherche d'une bonne idée.

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Our Living Well, On Location series explores cities and countries from around the world. How do other people pursue health and happiness? We're going coast to coast, country to country to find out.

Turns out the French haven't banned email after 6 p.m. after all, as American media rushed to report last week. Turns out, the labor agreement that was largely -- optimistically? -- misinterpreted, only applies to a small group of independent contractors, who, it should be mentioned, can already legally work up to 13 hours a day.

But the idea of limiting connectivity to work outside of working hours is still a good one, considering there's essentially no quicker route to burnout than never disconnecting.

And it's not the only way the French show their appreciation for la belle vie. Here are a few things we could all stand to learn from les Français.

President François Hollande recently banned cell phones from cabinet meetings, to make sure government ministers are paying attention. "Each of us will now have to talk and listen to what is said and will no longer be able to tap away at this magnificent tool," government spokesperson Stephane Le Foll told reporters, the Guardian reported.

Most of us -- French or not -- probably consider ourselves pretty good at multitasking, but you're not fooling anyone with that sorry attempt to text under the table. Multitasking actually makes us less efficient and more stressed -- and could hurt our memory to boot.

Their work week is only 35 hours long.
At least in theory. Yes, the 35-hour workweek is legally on the books, but turns out, in practice, French workers are most likely logging paid overtime, the BBC reported. "It's really the 35 hours that have created this false idea that the French don't work a lot," a French worker who asked to only be named as Olivier told the BBC. "The idea sticks in people's minds. But it's not a reality."

Like employees around the world, many French workers have been tasked with more in a struggling economy, Reuters reported. Still, we much prefer the lingering idea of a 35-hour work week than the stereotype of one that lasts 100 hours.

They're not afraid of carbs.

You have not lived until you've eaten a freshly-baked French baguette from a French boulangerie. Trust us on this one. Not to mention a diet with too few carbs can seriously dampen your mood.

Higher education is affordable.
Because most large universities in France are public schools, tuition bills range from 181 euros (about $250!) per academic year for undergraduates to 380 euros ($525) a year for Ph.D. students, according to French Agency for the Promotion of Higher Education. (Business and engineering schools, as well as private schools and France's famed grandes écoles can be much more expensive.) While other governments have cut funding over the past few years, France pledged to increase it, bumping up higher education spending by 5.3 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to Time. Not only does education enrich a person's intellectual and professional life, it seems to help people make healthier decisions and live up to nine years longer, according to a CDC report.

They don't eat on the go.

There is no Starbucks on the subway to work, or finishing up breakfast as you run out the door. It might seem simple, but the French make time to sit down to eat -- which makes a surprisingly big difference when it comes to eating mindfully. Taking the time to sit and eat helps us monitor exactly what we're eating (which can in turn promote weight loss or healthy weight maintenance) while giving us the opportunity to savor each bite.

They take vacation seriously.
French workers are given 30 paid vacation days a year, and their vacation days begin to accrue as soon as they're hired, 24/7 Wall St. reported. They also take all 30 of those days, Expedia reported, often, like much of Europe, during the month of August. We know we don't need to convince you that vacations, in theory, are good, but U.S. employees do need some convincing when it comes to actually taking them: The average American workers uses just 51 percent of his or her paid vacation days, according to a Harris Interactive survey.

France wants to help parents raise kids.

A wide range of childcare services are completely covered by the government. There are government subsidies for in-home childcare and cash benefits for having larger families. In practice, France's childcare system may not always work smoothly, critics say, but the intention is a good one: "The French don't often get the how right, but they have the what right, and they've had it right for well over a century," Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes for Forbes. The French government aims to improve the highly-selective process of enrolling a young child in a day care center -- called a crèche -- by creating 275,000 "additional childcare solutions" by 2017, according to the European Union website.

The French embrace civil unions.
In 1999, France created a civil union system meant to address same-sex marriage. But opposite-sex couples quickly adopted the pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS: 95 percent of couples who signed a civil union in 2009 were heterosexual, the New York Times reported.

Despite a steadily declining marriage rate in France, "getting PACS'ed" quickly gained popularity, until there were two civil unions for every three marriages in the country, according to the Times.

"It has the air of social independence associated with the time-honored arrangement that the French call the 'free union' but with major financial and other advantages," the Washington Post reported. "It is also far easier to get out of than marriage." Whether it's simply for tax purposes or more like a trial marriage, coupling more permanently has noted health benefits, including a longer life.

Did we miss anything? Tell us in the comments!

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story provided the incorrect word for French bakery.

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healthy living france living well on location

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What France Can Teach The Rest Of The World About Living Well

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Our Living Well, On Location series explores cities and countries from around the world. How do other people pursue health and happiness? We're going coast to coast, country to country to find out. Turns out the French haven't banned email after 6 p.m. after all, as American media rushed to report last week.

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iSpot.tv | Realtime TV Advertising Performance Measurement

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Thomas Jefferson's colleagues are in disarray as they await Napoleon's approval of the Louisiana Purchase. But, all is well when Jefferson receives an Instant Purchase Notification from Capital One letting him know the $15 million transaction was complete.

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Qu'est-ce qui est mou, large ou fitté, confort et flex, moderne et cool ? Réponse : le jogging. Surnommé "joggo" par les ados et "urban jogger" par les spécialistes qui veulent le distinguer de son ancêtre, le bas de survêt.

Hier encore, il avait mauvais genre, sentait le soufre ou la sueur, habillait les sportifs, les cailleras et les patates de canapé. "Aujourd'hui, c'est un must have, énonce Laure Nicolai, tendanceuse indépendante. Il est sorti du ghetto rap, de la cité et du sport pour devenir une pièce mode incontournable du vestiaire unisexe." Sur les traces de Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian ou Kendall Jenner, les femmes se le sont vite approprié en l'accessoirisant de bijoux, d'un sac griffé ou de talons. Plus méfiants (ou plus prudents), les hommes y viennent à pas de velours, différemment inspirés selon leur degré d'audace et leur place dans la pyramide des générations.

"Les millennials, qui adorent la marque française Sweet Pants, le portent façon pyjama années 2000, avec des pressions sur les côtés, poursuit-elle. Ou en total look, comme le rappeur Roméo Elvis, toujours en ensemble Lacoste. L'idée est de le rendre le plus ostentatoire possible, une tendance qui colle au grand retour du logo. Les trentenaires, eux, le préfèrent auréolé d'une nonchalance toute parisienne, et l'accessoirisent d'un sweat-shirt brodé Kitsuné ou d'une surchemise AMI. Le jogging s'infiltre aussi dans la garde-robe d'hommes plus âgés, avec des détails ajoutés à des coupes classiques : matières très à la mode comme le jersey ou le molleton, taille élastiquée, chevilles resserrées, cordons de serrage."

La tendance athleisure

Inventé, dit-on, en 1939 par Le Coq Sportif, le jogging s'aventure même sur le terrain du jean, qu'il concurrence par son côté foncièrement cosy et casual (on n'a pas dit relâché). S'il ne le détrône pas encore - même si le volume des ventes de jeans stagnent en France -, il est, comme lui, tête de pont d'un nouveau mode de vie, moins formel, plus centré sur le bien-être. "Il y a l'effet Coupe du monde, rappelle Yvon Berenguer, directeur de la filiale sport et homme du bureau de style Carlin Creative Trend. Et le fait que des footballeurs comme Mbappé soient devenus des leaders d'opinion. Mais c'est surtout l'un des marqueurs de la déferlante du sport en ville mixé avec des codes urbains. Aujourd'hui, les gens veulent s'occuper d'eux, faire du sport ou du yoga, et ajouter du mieux-être à leur travail ou à leur vie de tous les jours. Et même si ça ne se voit pas à l'œil nu, ils ont intégré à leur dressing des notions de souplesse, de confort et de respiration sur lesquelles ils ne reviendront pas."

À l'origine de cette lame de fond de l'athleisure (contraction des mots anglais signifiant "athlétique" et "loisir"), la basket, bien sûr, et son incroyable imprégnation au sein de toutes les générations et de toutes les classes sociales. Puis c'est le sweat-shirt (ou hoodie) qui est devenu l'uniforme forcément cool des startuppeurs, Mark Zuckerberg en tête. Désormais, place au jogging. Kanye West a été le premier à le sortir de l'ornière rap en le rendant fashion avec une collection, Yeezy Season 1, en collaboration avec Adidas, en 2015.

Depuis, le joggo a diffusé son style dans les collections des marques du mass market (Zara, H&M, Celio) et les griffes de luxe (Gucci, Balenciaga, Hugo Boss ou Louis Vuitton) le proposent en version couture ou légèrement transgressif. "Pour preuve, le succès du tracksuit Gucci en collaboration avec Dapper Dan, créateur culte de Harlem dans les années 1980, rappelle Dinah Sultan, senior fashion designer chez Peclers Paris. Le jogging a aussi son propre héritage stylistique, et les rappeurs américains, désormais flanqués de stylistes perso au quotidien, en usent et en abusent." Les Français ne sont pas en reste : Eddy de Pretto, la nouvelle révélation musicale de l'Hexagone, le porte avec une chemise Burberry, jouant les dandys de la street avec charisme et conviction.

Le jog fait le job

Une chose est sûre : le jogging, même s'il ne convainc pas à 100 %, a gagné ses lettres de noblesse. Notamment chez l'homme, en apportant diversité et bouffée d'air frais à un vestiaire classique souvent réduit à quelques pièces : le chino, le pantalon de ville classique, le jean. En clair, ce dernier a du souci à se faire s'il veut conserver sa place de leader basique. "D'autant plus que le secteur du denim, avec ses fibres teintées, a été pointé du doigt comme étant éminemment polluant, ajoute Dinah Sultan. Or, l'un des grands défis pour la mode de demain sera de produire de manière éthique et écologique." Là encore, le jog pourrait bien faire le job.

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Qu'est-ce qui est mou, large ou fitté, confort et flex, moderne et cool ? Réponse : le jogging. Surnommé "joggo" par les ados et "urban jogger" par les spécialistes qui veulent le distinguer de son ancêtre, le bas de survêt.

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L' Europe est l'un des continents contenant (pas facile à prononcer) le plus de pays, il y a donc de quoi faire parler, et elle en prend pour son grade niveau clichés ! Après "la France vue par ...", petit tour de l'Europe revisitée par d'autres pays, en version illustrée s'il vous plait. (mais pour anglophones uniquement)

1. L'Europe vue par la France (2)

2. L'Europe vue par la Bulgarie

3. L'Europe vue par le Vatican

4. L'Europe vue par Berlusconi

Et pour d'autres cartes de l'Europe qu'on trouve pas dans les bouquins de géo, c'est par ici.
Source (et achat de posters) : Alphadesigner

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Top 15 des cartes de l'Europe vue par..., à chacun ses clichés

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L' Europe est l'un des continents contenant (pas facile à prononcer) le plus de pays, il y a donc de quoi faire parler, et elle en prend pour son grade niveau clichés ! Après "la France vue par ...", petit tour de l'Europe revisitée par d'autres pays, en version illustrée s'il vous plait.

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En ce moment aux Etats-Unis, il y a de grandes chances qu'un sujet lié à la politique, l'immigration, la religion ou les questions raciales s'invite dans la discussion. Mais " small talk " et débats d'idées ne font pas bon ménage !
Le " small talk " est par essence consensuel et poli : sa pratique ne se prête guère aux sujets politiques. Un débat à la française ressemble à un match d'escrime : les deux adversaires se portent des coups, mais avec une certaine élégance, presque comme une danse. Les Américains, en comparaison, se jettent des cailloux. Une discussion politique se termine souvent en bagarre verbale. Voici comment naviguer, étape par étape, une discussion sensible avec des Américains.

Veillez à préparer le terrain avant de vous lancer. Introduisez votre question par " Can I ask you something? " ou " Do you mind if I ask you... ". Vous montrerez ainsi que vous savez que votre question risque de piquer et que vous comprendrez si votre interlocuteur ne souhaite pas entrer dans les détails.

Par exemple :
Eva : Do you mind if I ask you, what is Black Lives Matter about exactly?
Kyle : I'm glad you asked...

2. Echangez des avis divergents

Si vous ne partagez pas l'avis de votre interlocuteur - ce qui est fort probable -, pas de panique. Vous pouvez quand même avancer un avis contraire, à condition de le faire avec tact et politesse. Au lieu de hurler " That's nonsense! ", introduisez votre argument avec : " Yes, but you have to admit... " ou " Don't you think that... ". Votre argument devient ainsi une question et votre désaccord une opportunité pour mieux comprendre la position de votre interlocuteur. Au lieu de chercher à convaincre, cherchez à comprendre - ou au moins à éviter un " screaming match ".

Par exemple :
Kyle : I don't want to pay for lazy bums who don't want to get a job or get insurance. That's their problem!
Eva : Don't you think it's better if everyone in the country has some form of healthcare?

3. Ecoutez votre interlocuteur

Même " small ", toute discussion est un échange. Jouez le jeu. Vous n'allez pas faire changer d'avis votre interlocuteur en cinq minutes.

Après quelques échanges, la conversation peut devenir intense. C'est le moment de penser à une issue de secours. La sortie se déroule en deux étapes :

- " Agree to disagree "
Vous n'êtes pas d'accord ? Soyez d'accord sur ce fait ! Si vous trouvez un point d'accord, même tout petit, c'est le moment de clôturer avec " Well, at least that's something we can agree on! " S'il n'y a aucun accord à l'horizon, pas de panique. Optez pour la simplicité : " Well, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. "

- Changez de sujet
Pour apaiser l'atmosphère, enchaînez sur un sujet plus léger sans perdre un instant. Pour faire une transition rapide mais naturelle, vous pouvez dire " So, anyway... " ou encore " Oh, by the way... "

Par exemple :
Kyle : I'm sorry, but I think that the government needs to know what people are doing on Facebook. It could help them prevent a future terrorist attack.
Eva : Well, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Oh, by the way, did you see that cat video I shared on Facebook this morning?

Américaine installée en France depuis 2004, Christina Rebuffet a développé une technique d'apprentissage de l'anglais adaptée aux Français complexés par leur niveau d'anglais ou désireux de parfaire leur maîtrise de la langue sans prise de tête. Avec une attitude positive et encourageante, elle les aide à dépasser leurs blocages, en privilégiant l'oral et les exercices ludiques.

Abonnez-vous pour recevoir gratuitement ses leçons sur christinarebuffet.com et retrouvez ses trucs et astuces pour mieux appréhender la culture américaine et progresser en anglais sur www.france-amerique.com.

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Parler politique avec un Américain : comment éviter la guerre ?

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En ce moment aux Etats-Unis, il y a de grandes chances qu'un sujet lié à la politique, l'immigration, la religion ou les questions raciales s'invite dans la discussion. Mais " small talk " et débats d'idées ne font pas bon ménage !

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Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)

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Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)

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Quand tu pars aux États-Unis pour la première fois, tu te rends compte que les Américains ont un mode de vie légèrement différent du nôtre. Alors oui, dans certains domaines, les Américains ont clairement plus de classe que nous, mais il y en a d'autres où la comparaison ne joue pas forcément en leur faveur...

Les États-Unis, terre de contrastes.
Sinon, tu cherches des idées pour Noël ? On a déniché les cadeaux les plus cool du web :

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Top 12 des expressions qui changent de sens quand tu vas aux États-Unis

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Quand tu pars aux États-Unis pour la première fois, tu te rends compte que les Américains ont un mode de vie légèrement différent du nôtre. Alors oui, dans certains domaines, les Américains ont clairement plus de classe que nous, mais il y en a d'autres où la comparaison ne joue pas forcément en leur faveur...

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©Kelly Dochy

Using tennis matches, good wine that needs time to breathe and English-style gardens, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau have an impressive arsenal of metaphors when it comes to illustrating the subtleties of French conversation.
This couple of journalists from Quebec lived in Paris for four years, and observed the codes that govern verbal interactions between French people during a bus journey, at a dinner party with friends, while waiting to pick up the kids from school, at a picnic at the Jardin du Luxembourg or during an afternoon at the swimming pool. Using sketch after sketch to explain observations, the couple has co-written The Bonjour Effect, a book "more anthropological than journalistic" which was recently translated into French under the title Ainsi parlent les Français. Jean-Benoît Nadeau talked with us about the art of French conversation, its traditions, its codes and its taboos.

France-Amérique: Where does this tradition of conversation in France come from?

Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Historically speaking, this oral culture can be traced back to the salons of the 18 th century. While the same settings no longer exist today, this culture of lengthy dinners in the city, colloquiums and debate clubs is still very present today in France. Eloquence is something of a bargaining chip in French culture. Certain social environments are not accessible to those who are unable to express themselves impeccably. Eloquence is a passport.

You describe the French education system - l'Education nationale - as a "factory" that cultivates and maintains this oral tradition. Could you elaborate?

According to the French sociologist Cécile Van de Velde , being an adult in the United Kingdom - and therefore in North America - means "standing on your own two feet": becoming responsible and obtaining independence. In France, it means "finding one's place": finding a good job and a favorable position in society. In its role as a social passport, correct oral expression is instilled in children from a very young age by their families, and especially by schools. The enormous number of recitals, presentations and oral exams is indicative of this trend.

You analyze French conversation as a succession of highly codified interactions. What advice would you give a non-French person trying to get by in the language?

Understanding the importance of taboos is vital. North Americans' greatest fear is not being accepted, while the French are most terrified of making mistakes and being ridiculed. These taboos have an effect on human relations. For French people, silence is a form of communication. If they are silent, it means they are refusing to engage in conversation. On the other hand, North Americans never refuse a conversation, as they want to show they are friendly and accepting. They speak to keep the person in front of them at arm's length. People talk to each other very spontaneously in North America, but these conversations have practically no meaning. Codes of communication between Americans do not allow an exterior listener to understand the type of human relation based on one conversation, which is exactly why many French people find Americans to be superficial.

A number of misunderstandings are found in the distinction between public and private lives.

This is the main cause of misunderstandings between the Americans and the French. Everything seen as private in North America comes under the public umbrella in France, and vice versa. An American would not hesitate to talk about their job or family life with just about anyone. But when a French person starts discussing family, work, money, or starts being humorous, it means they are ready to welcome the person into their private life.

An entire chapter in your book is devoted to the word "no". Do the French really say "no" that much?

The French have been raised and educated in the fear of mistakes and ridicule. Not knowing something is a mistake. When a French person says "no", it is not a refusal but rather a defensive stance. They are protecting themselves from a situation in which they could make a mistake. Similarly, in order to protect themselves from ridicule, a French person would rarely say "I don't know". Pessimism is very popular in France, and it comes from the same taboo. In a culture where you are asked to form an opinion very quickly, admitting your ignorance is not an option. Pessimism is an escape route, a form of ready-to-wear intellectual clothing. As the old saying goes, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", but that's not true in Paris!

You write that the French are raised as "language fanatics" but that they become more tolerant as they get older. How is this transition made?

In an attempt to "place" the students in a "good social environment", schools maintain the idea of linguistic purity. In the French education system, writing is the referent for speech: spoken French must conform to the same rules as written French. But the language spoken outside of school is not necessarily in keeping with the scholarly ideal. This leads many French people to experience cognitive dissonance, which is why we now talk about decadence in the French language.

Are purist defenders of the French language right? Is the French language in decline?

People were already decrying the decline of the French language three centuries ago! The French have always undermined their own language. They adopt words borrowed from slang, from jargon, and from foreign languages. The English example is staggering. The entire country has spoken French since the middle of the last century, but English has started to impose itself as the language of power. Public opinion 20 years ago thought that the Americans and the British were forcing English upon the French. But we can now see this is wrong. The French themselves adopt the English language. In the Bordieusian sense of the term, this is a very powerful new element of distinction.

The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed, by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau. St. Martin's Press , 2016, 310 pages, 25.99 dollars.

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The Art of French Conversation for Dummies

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Using tennis matches, good wine that needs time to breathe and English-style gardens, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau have an impressive arsenal of metaphors when it comes to illustrating the subtleties of French conversation.

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Un passant consulte son téléphone portable devant le " New York Times ", à New York, le 6 septembre 2018. ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Chez les Etats-Uniens, prendre son petit-déjeuner en lisant un quotidien est - presque - devenu un réflexe du passé. En 2018, pour la première fois, les réseaux sociaux dépassent les journaux imprimés comme principale source d'information, rapporte une étude publiée, lundi 10 décembre, par l'institut Pew Research Center.

Un adulte sur cinq (20 %) affirme qu'il s'informe souvent sur les réseaux sociaux, soit un peu plus que la part de ceux qui disent s'informer grâce aux journaux papier (16 %). En 2017, la proportion de ceux qui s'informaient par les réseaux sociaux et de ceux qui le faisaient par les journaux était à peu près équivalente.

Dans l'ordre, les Américains privilégient :

Facebook (43 %) ;

YouTube (21 %) ;

Twitter (12 %) ;

Instagram (8 %) ;

LinkedIn (6 %) ;

Reddit (5 %) ;

Snapchat (5 %) ;

WhatsApp (2 %) ;

Tumblr (1 %).

Paradoxalement, une majorité (57 %) s'attend à ce que les nouvelles qui s'y trouvent soient inexactes, mais estime que cela n'affecte par sa compréhension de l'actualité : ils sont plus nombreux (36 %) à estimer que les réseaux sociaux les ont aidés à comprendre l'actualité plutôt que l'inverse (15 %).

En mai 2017, le Pew Research Center notait encore que 45 % des adultes américains s'informaient " souvent " sur leur smartphone (36 % en 2016 et 21 % en 2013).

Regarder plutôt que lire l'information

L'érosion de la diffusion des journaux, elle aussi mesurée par le centre de recherche, et un léger accroissement du nombre d'Américains utilisant les réseaux sociaux pour s'informer expliquent cette tendance, relevait le Pew Research Center, le 3 décembre.

La diffusion de la presse quotidienne et dominicale aux Etats-Unis, depuis 1940

Pour autant, la télévision reste le moyen d'information le plus populaire (49 %) même si elle enregistre un léger déclin depuis 2016. Elle est talonnée par :

les sites d'information (33 %) ;

la radio (26 %) ;

les réseaux sociaux (20 %) ;

les journaux (16 %).

Mais qui dit télévision ne dit pas nécessairement chaînes câblées : les chaînes d'information locales sont les plus prisées (37 %), devant celles du câble (30 %) et les grands " networks " que sont ABC, CBS, NBC et Fox (25 %). Pew Research relève, en outre, qu'environ 9 % des Américains consomment de l'information depuis un appareil de diffusion connecté.

La consommation d'information varie aussi en fonction de l'âge : 65 % des 50-64 ans s'informent principalement avec la télévision, proportion qui grimpe à 81 % chez les plus de 65 ans. A l'inverse, seuls 18 % des 18-29 ans s'informent en regardant la télévision, proportion qui passe à 36 % chez les 30-49 ans.

L'imprimé résiste chez les " seniors "

Les plus de 65 ans restent aussi fidèle au papier : 39 % de cette tranche d'âge s'informe en lisant des journaux, proportion qui ne dépasse pas 18 % chez les 50-64 ans, 8 % chez les 30-49 ans et 2 % chez les 18-29 ans.

Les sites d'information sont plus populaires parmi les 30-49 ans : 42 % des adultes de cette génération s'informent par les sites d'information et les applications. Près d'un tiers (27 %) des 18-29 ans vont sur des sites d'information, qui sont la deuxième source d'information la plus utilisée dans cette tranche d'âge.

Chez les 18-29 ans, les réseaux sociaux sont la principale plateforme d'information : 36 % d'entre eux s'y informent, devant les sites d'information (27 %), la télévision (16 %), la radio (13 %) et les journaux (2 %).

Mais malgré leur appétit pour le numérique, les 18-29 ans et les 30-49 ans ne privilégient aucune plateforme d'information aux dépens d'une autre, à la différence des 50-64 ans et des plus de 65 ans, qui ont les yeux rivés sur leur télévision.

Le Monde.fr

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Pour s'informer aux Etats-Unis, la télévision règne mais les réseaux sociaux supplantent le papier

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Chez les Etats-Uniens, prendre son petit-déjeuner en lisant un quotidien est - presque - devenu un réflexe du passé. En 2018, pour la première fois, les réseaux sociaux dépassent les journaux imprimés comme principale source d'information, rapporte une étude publiée, lundi 10 décembre, par l'institut Pew Research Center.

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Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants? | Working in development | The Guardian

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In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word "expat".

What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, "an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person's upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex ('out of') and patria ('country, fatherland')".

Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad.

Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can't be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for 'inferior races'.

Don't take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they featured a story ' Who is an expat, anyway? '. Here are the main conclusions: "Some arrivals are described as expats; others as immigrants; and some simply as migrants. It depends on social class, country of origin and economic status. It's strange to hear some people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with roots in a western country is considered an expat ... Filipino domestic helpers are just guests, even if they've been here for decades. Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats ... It's a double standard woven into official policy."

The reality is the same in Africa and Europe. Top African professionals going to work in Europe are not considered expats. They are immigrants. Period. "I work for multinational organisations both in the private and public sectors. And being black or coloured doesn't gain me the term "expat". I'm a highly qualified immigrant, as they call me, to be politically correct," says an African migrant worker.

Most white people deny that they enjoy the privileges of a racist system. And why not? But our responsibility is to point out and to deny them these privileges, directly related to an outdated supremacist ideology. If you see those "expats" in Africa, call them immigrants like everyone else. If that hurts their white superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there. The political deconstruction of this outdated worldview must continue.

Mawuna Remarque Koutonin is the editor of SiliconAfrica.com, where this blog was first published. Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter. Follow @siliconafrica on Twitter.

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Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?

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In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word "expat". What is an expat? And who is an expat?

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Eco-friendly open-air urinals cause uproar in Paris - KEYT

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(CNN) - An attempt by officials in Paris to tackle public urination by installing open-air urinals, or "uritrottoirs," has outraged some residents of the French capital.

The new urinals, housed in flower boxes, aren't subtle -- they're fully exposed on street corners, are painted bright red and have nearby signs advertising their presence.

One in particular, located near the Notre-Dame cathedral, has drawn attention for its view of the River Seine.

The "intelligent urinals," which have a straw layer that eliminates odor, were installed in areas where public urination is a problem, according to a statement from city officials.

Officials say the urinals are eco-friendly -- they will harness nutrients in waste to produce compost for parks and gardens. According to the statement, one year of a person's urine holds enough nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to fertilize 400 square meters of wheat.

However, these features have done little to calm the ire of local residents, who have written to the town hall in protest.

"I think installing a urinal in the streets of Paris for those who don't respect their surroundings is a good idea, but in my opinion, this model is not attractive at all, and where it's been set up is not appropriate at all," one man told reporters.

Another resident complained that "it is definitely a desirable and historic neighborhood, but seeing people urinating right in front of your door is not the nicest thing."

Ariel Weil, mayor of the fourth district of Paris, tweeted in defense of the urinals on Monday, calling them "an invention of genius." Four have been installed so far, with a fifth being planned.

Paris isn't the first European city to install outdoor urinals. Amsterdam has had them for years, and cities in Belgium and Australia have also trialed them.

A centuries-old tradition

Public urinals, or pissoirs as they're known in French, have a long history in Paris, dating back to the late 1800s when they were installed for men traveling to and from work.

It wasn't until women started entering the workforce in greater numbers decades later that the need for enclosed cubicles with seats, toilet paper and hand basins emerged, explained Raymond Morris, managing director of the British Toilet Association.

"In London, this is where the phrase 'spend a penny' came from, as it cost a penny to use these facilities -- the equivalent of buying a loaf of bread in those days," Morris told CNN.

Meanwhile some Parisian public toilets became "almost ornamental, due to their decorative features," said Morris. He added that the buildings had the added advantage of offering space for advertisers.

But centuries after the first pissoirs were installed in Paris, women are still not being adequately catered for, said Morris. "The trouble today is the inequality for women," he said, adding that in the UK, various proposals for female urinals had been rejected on the grounds that they exposed women in public.

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Eco-friendly open-air urinals cause uproar in Paris

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(CNN) - An attempt by officials in Paris to tackle public urination by installing open-air urinals, or "uritrottoirs," has outraged some residents of the French capital. The new urinals, housed in flower boxes, aren't subtle -- they're fully exposed on street corners, are painted bright red and have nearby signs advertising their presence.

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Paris installs completely exposed urinals near popular tourist spots

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CLOSE

Tourists visiting Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral and River Seine might see more than they came for as public, exposed urinals are now available for use across the city.

The bright red "uritrottoirs" are meant as an eco-friendly solution to public peeing. The receptacles look like a planter at first glance, with greenery filling the top. But a sign directs eyes down to the side of the structure, revealing a urinal. Aside from a slight U-shaped catcher, there are no privacy shields for any man using it.

And not all of the urinals are tucked away in private places - one actually faces a waterway frequented by tourist boats.

The uritrottoir on the Ile Saint-Louis, near the Notre Dame cathedral and about 22 yards away from a school has been widely criticized by locals, Reuters reports.

"There's no need to put something so immodest and ugly in such an historic spot," local art store owner Paola Pellizzari told Reuters.

Paris has struggled to prevent public or "wild peeing" for years, even implementing an "incivility brigade" to enforce fines for uncouth behavior in 2016.

The company behind uritrottoir says the receptacles are filled with straw, where the urine flows, and can be used for compost within a year. The uritrottoir, marketed as odor-free, also comes in a variety of shapes and sizes.
Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets
More: Passenger: Airline made me sit on urine-soaked seat

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2B5aPwB

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Paris installs completely exposed urinals near popular tourist spots

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CLOSE Tourists visiting Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral and River Seine might see more than they came for as public, exposed urinals are now available for use across the city. The bright red "uritrottoirs" are meant as an eco-friendly solution to public peeing. The receptacles look like a planter at first glance, with greenery filling the top.

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Emmanuel Macron came, saw and conquered Washington this week. But the French president is trying to do something much harder than generate buzz and goodwill. He is trying to stop President Trump from dividing the Western alliance and disrupting the (already turbulent) Middle East. Watching him at work - flattering Trump, then politely disagreeing with him, all while proposing compromise solutions - is like watching a skilled dancer execute a complex set of moves. It remains to be seen whether Macron can pull it off, but thank goodness he is trying.

Macron thinks that "Donald Trump will get rid of the Iran deal for domestic reasons," he told me and a small group of journalists on Wednesday. What will ensue, he predicted, is "a period of tension." That might be an understatement. Tehran has signaled that if Trump pulls out of the deal on May 12 - when he faces a deadline on whether to restore sanctions on Iran - the most likely result is that Tehran would also withdraw. And as Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told me on Monday, "Once we withdraw, all the restrictions on our nuclear program end."

Zarif said that, in the accord, Iran made a much stronger pledge than most realize. "President Trump does not seem to have read the agreement. The third line of it states: 'Iran commits to never developing nuclear weapons.' There is no time restriction on that. The word we use is 'never.' The time restrictions relate to voluntary limits on our nuclear energy program that we have undertaken to give the international community confidence that we are sincere in our intentions."

Macron is not so sure that Iran would withdraw from the deal. "If Iran pulls out as well, the U.S. might put very tough sanctions on it and things would spiral downwards," he said. He plans to urge President Hassan Rouhani to temper the Iranian reaction and agree to find a new way forward.

Macron has pushed Trump privately and publicly to keep the Iran deal. "It sets a terrible precedent for the world's leading power to renege on an agreement that it spearheaded and signed," he said. And Macron sees it as part of a dismaying pattern from an administration that has decided to pull out of the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, weakened its commitment to the World Trade Organization and now seems determined to scuttle the pact with Iran.

But Macron is also critical of Iran. "Since the agreement was signed, Iran has made some decisions. It expanded its regional interventions [in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria]. It has strengthened its ballistic missile arsenal. It appears to have used the proceeds from sanctions relief to fund its militias and external operations more than provide relief to its population. All these decisions have consequences," he said.

In any event, Macron is determined not to wring his hands, but rather to find a way forward. Hence his artful proposal for a new nuclear deal. While this may sound like Trump, Macron is actually suggesting something quite different. The first pillar of his new approach is adherence to the existing nuclear deal, unamended and unabridged. But he proposes three additional pillars that would address Iran's ballistic missile program, counter Iranian influence in the Middle East, and extend the commitments Iran has made beyond various timelines in the current deal (which range from eight to 25 years).

In other words, were Iran to agree to start discussing these topics, the current deal would stay intact. It's not clear that the Iranian government would accept this demand. And it's not clear that Trump would agree to a framework in which the agreement that he has branded " the worst deal ever negotiated " would remain in place. Both sides would have to climb down from their positions.

One Iranian who is well-versed in the issues made an interesting observation about why the nuclear deal has had so many critics in both Washington and Tehran. For 40 years, the United States and Iran have settled into a pattern of behavior. The United States sees its role as applying pressure and threats to Iran, while Iran thinks its role is to bravely resist. The nuclear deal was an effort to break with the past and create a new dynamic of dialogue. But it generated a backlash in both countries.

Macron is trying to forge a new path for dialogue and diplomacy. If he fails, it will be because too many in Washington, and even in Tehran, have gotten comfortable with the old pattern. By mindlessly sticking to it, they seem to be leading us down a path of tension, conflict and, perhaps, even war.

Read more from Fareed Zakaria's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his daily newsletter.

Read more on this issue:

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Macron treats Congress to a full-scale takedown of Trumpism

William Drozdiak: The fate of the Western alliance is in Macron's hands

Anne Applebaum: Macron embraces Trump - and elegantly knifes him in the back

Zalmay Khalilzad: Trump shouldn't forget Iran's big Achilles' heel: Its economy

Fred Hiatt: The president who could change Trump's mind

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Opinion | Macron is trying to save the West

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Emmanuel Macron came, saw and conquered Washington this week. But the French president is trying to do something much harder than generate buzz and goodwill. He is trying to stop President Trump from dividing the Western alliance and disrupting the (already turbulent) Middle East.

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Les affiches sont de véritables symboles culturels de chaque pays. On vous avait déjà parlé il y a peu des types de films dont les affiches se ressemblent en fonction de leur sujet , mais on a choisi cette fois-ci de nous concentrer sur les différences affiches d'un même film d'un pays à l'autre.

7. Intouchables : France vs. Corée

Alors que l'affiche d'origine cachait le handicap du personnage principale, en Corée on y va à fond les manettes de façon à que l'affiche résume à elle seule le sujet du film. Bon ça manque peut-être un peu de mystère, mais a-t-on vraiment besoin de mystère pour regarder Intouchables ?

9. Mommy : Canada vs. Corée

Le truc marrant c'est que dans la version coréenne, on dirait presque que le personnage principale est obèse comme Baymax dans Big Hero. Quoi qu'il en soit on est sur une affiche très éloignée de l'originale.

Source :

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Top 15 des affiches de films qui sont différentes en fonction du pays

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Les affiches sont de véritables symboles culturels de chaque pays. On vous avait déjà parlé il y a peu des types de films dont les affiches se ressemblent en fonction de leur sujet , mais on a choisi cette fois-ci de nous concentrer sur les différences affiches d'un même film d'un pays à l'autre.

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By nature, humans tend to be tribal. We affiliate naturally with those who look like us, believe like us, or live like us.

This is as true today as it was thousands of years ago. But in today's interconnected society, we should realise that the simple fact that someone is of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status does not mean that they agree with all others who share the same characteristic.

I do not know every Muslim. Nor do I associate with every African American. Or agree with every Hoosier.

In celebrating the diversity of America, many Americans lose sight of the fact that even with our various groups, there are distinct differences.

This core misunderstanding is preyed on by hateful people around the world - from ISIL to anti-Muslim hate groups in the United States. Yet, despite near 24/7 coverage of "terrorist" groups overseas, we are quick to overlook the hate in our own backyard.

We should consider the similarities between "terrorist" organisations abroad and hate groups in the US.

Both preach an ideology of hate for those who are different, both use fear to attract followers and spread their message, and both see violence as the means to achieve their objectives.

But people afraid of groups of Muslim militants marching with guns in a foreign city often fail to see the similarities with groups of American men, clad in riot gear and carrying torches and guns through American streets.

While their ideologies differ, al-Qaeda has more in common with white nationalist militias than they have with the vast majority of Muslim and white families in America.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric on the rise

It is time for us to see hate groups not for their affiliations, ideologies, or nationalities but for their tactics of preying on the fearful and ignorant. This is the true nature of "terrorism".

Fear in the face of violence is natural, particularly after seeing years of seemingly endless "terrorism" coverage.

But organisations that push anti-Muslim bigotry here at home, like ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy, look to amplify fear and condemn an entire religion.

Make no mistake, they have a strategy and weapons to rival hate groups around the world. Rather than guns and bombs they use political contributions and cable news to stir suspicion and unease in the population.

They plant entirely disproven narratives about [Islamic] Sharia law and widespread "terroristic" sympathies within the Muslim community, aggressively pushing them until they influence policy at the highest levels of government.

And their victims are real.

We need to set aside our tribalism and recognise where our real similarities lie.

With anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric on the rise, the US saw hundreds of hate crimes against Muslims in 2017 - a double-digit increase by some estimates. When someone is injured or killed in a bigoted attack, a direct link can and should be drawn to the hateful propaganda spread by these recognised hate groups.

If this happened anywhere else in the world, we would label this bigotry and violence as "terrorism".

It's time for us to do the same in the US.

We need to set aside our tribalism and recognise where our real similarities lie. Most of us work hard for a living. We love our families and strive to raise strong, self-sufficient children. We want safe streets and tight-knit communities. Chances are, this description applies to you whether you are white, black, Muslim, Jewish, or Christian.

As a Muslim, I do not consider men with guns and black flags part of my faith. I have far more in common with my neighbours, regardless of religious affiliation. We share values and common interests, even if we pray differently. It is time for us to mute the voices pushing hate.

They do not deserve a place on our televisions or radios or pushing their hate in our classrooms or government. Let's turn a deaf ear to their hate while we work together to build a better, more tolerant country.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

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By nature, humans tend to be tribal. We affiliate naturally with those who look like us, believe like us, or live like us. This is as true today as it was thousands of years ago.

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Peut-on avoir confiance dans un " camembert " ? Un axe vertical doit-il forcément commencer à zéro ? A quel point une carte peut-elle être trompeuse ?

La grève des employés de la SNCF est aussi une bataille de communication, dans laquelle chaque élément compte. Et au cours des dernières semaines, il a été fréquent de voir passer des représentations graphiques qui ne respectaient pas les règles élémentaires en la matière, qu'il s'agisse d'erreurs ou d'une volonté de présenter les choses sous un jour particulier. C'est donc l'occasion de revenir sur quelques manipulations ou erreurs classiques.

1. L'échelle distordue dans les " bâtons "

Ces bâtons, qu'on appelle aussi histogrammes, sont censés représenter des rapports de grandeur. Par exemple, pour quantifier le suivi de la grève sur plusieurs mois par les employés de la SNCF, la direction de l'entreprise a choisi cette représentation qui minore la participation :

Il aurait fallu privilégier une représentation s'appuyant sur un axe des ordonnées à zéro, comme ici :

Ce n'est par ailleurs pas la première fois que le service de communication de la SNCF joue avec la notion d'échelle pour minimiser le taux de participation des grévistes : un communiqué de presse diffusé le 4 avril utilisait les mêmes méthodes aux mêmes fins.

Lire aussi cet autre exemple : Air France : pourquoi il faut se méfier des graphiques

2. La courbe qui ne commence pas à zéro

Trois semaines avant les élections départementales de 2015, le Front national, voulant surfer sur la dynamique enclenchée lors des élections municipales et européennes, avait diffusé un tract trompeur montrant les (fortes) hausses des impôts et du chômage entre 2007 et 2013.

Sauf que l'axe des ordonnées ne commence pas à zéro, ce qui donne à la " pente " une courbe beaucoup plus forte qu'elle ne l'est en réalité. En outre, il manque deux années (notamment 2009, au cours de laquelle les prélèvements ont baissé à cause de la crise). Enfin, l'unité choisie est trompeuse car il est préférable de rapporter les montants à la production globale de richesse (le PIB).

En respectant tous ces critères, l'évolution des impôts sur la même période ressemblerait plutôt au graphique ci-dessous, beaucoup moins impressionnant :

On retrouve le même problème de distorsion de l'axe des ordonnées, avec la cote de popularité de Jean-Luc Mélenchon qui semble s'effondrer dans la représentation qu'en fait France 2 lors de la présidentielle de 2018 :

Bonjour @France2tv. J'ai regardé quelques-uns de vos graphiques récents et recalculé ce qu'ils représentent vraimen... https://t.co/LDxpgMMouj
- vince13008 (@vince13👀8 ·🔻ت)

Il ne s'agit pas d'une règle absolue mais d'une convention ; les courbes devant montrer des chiffres négatifs (comme des températures) doivent évidemment commencer en dessous de zéro. Il peut en tout cas être utile au lecteur de se méfier de la " pente " d'une courbe et d'aller regarder le détail des données qui la compose.

3. Le " camembert " qui ne respecte pas les proportions

Toujours à propos de la grève à la SNCF, BFM-TV a récemment diffusé ce diagramme, critiqué sur les réseaux sociaux, où l'on peut voir que les 48 % d'opposition à la grève représentent plus de la moitié d'un camembert :

[ Une question posée sur @CheckNewsfr ] Est-ce que BFMTV a vraiment affiché un graphique à camembert trompeur sur l... https://t.co/3DMhS79Bwe
- libe (@Libération)

Selon CheckNews, l'erreur viendrait d'un problème de logiciel qui n'aurait pas réparti correctement les pourcentages. Voilà, ce qui aurait dû être diffusé :

Cela étant, un " camembert " est de toute façon un mauvais choix graphique pour représenter plus de trois valeurs : au-delà, l'œil ne distingue plus bien les volumes ni les angles des " parts ". Pour le professeur de statistiques et référence en " datavisualisation " Edward Tufte, un tableau vaut presque toujours mieux qu'un diagramme, faible en quantité de données et en ordonnancement de ces dernières.

4. Le graphique qui compare ce qui n'est pas comparable

Un graphique apparaissant sur Internet de façon récurrente veut montrer que les abus sexuels commis sur des enfants par des prêtres catholiques américains sont bien peu de chose, en nombre, par rapport à d'autres professions qui sont au contact d'enfants, par exemple les personnes travaillant dans l'enseignement.

Le graphique oppose des cas avérés d'abus sexuels reconnus par l'Eglise outre-Atlantique à des chiffres issus d'entretiens et de questionnaires, extrapolés pour les besoins de l'étude citée en source, qui mêle elle-même divers niveaux de gravité d'abus sexuels subis, du harcèlement au viol.

Sans compter que ces chiffres ne sont pas mis en perspective dans des cohortes comparables : il y a 80 fois moins de prêtres catholiques aux Etats-Unis que d'enseignants du secteur public.

5. Le graphique qui triche avec la base 100

Lors d'un des débats télévisés à la présidentielle de 2017, la candidate du FN, Marine Le Pen, brandit un graphique illustrant, selon elle, les conséquences de l'euro sur la production industrielle française. Il s'appuie sur des " vrais " chiffres mais les présente de façon exagérée, en trichant notamment avec la " base 100 ".

Prendre un indice 100 sur une année permet de comparer l'évolution de données relativement à cette année de base. La base vaut 100 et le reste des données évolue ensuite sur cette base. Exemple : avec une évolution positive de 4 %, l'année 2 affichera la valeur 104, une évolution de - 1 % vaudra 99.

Outre le fait que l'axe des ordonnées (vertical) ne commence pas à zéro, le graphique exacerbe l'idée que l'introduction de l'euro est " le " tournant dans la production industrielle en Europe, en prenant 2001 comme année de base de la comparaison, année d'introduction de la monnaie unique.

Si l'on prend les mêmes données comme elles sont présentées sur le site de l'OCDE, en prenant comme base 2010 cette fois, les courbes ne se croisent plus autour des années 2000, mais pendant la crise de 2009, dont l'Allemagne s'est mieux relevée que les autres pays. Il est donc trompeur d'affirmer, sur la seule base du premier graphique, que l'euro a fait plonger la production industrielle française en faveur de celle outre-Rhin.

6. La carte qui s'appuie sur des données brutes

Les cartes passionnent, même lorsque ce n'est pas nécessaire et qu'un graphique suffirait, ou quand elles ne montrent aucune tendance géographique (régionale, nationale...). C'est souvent le cas des cartes qui représentent des données brutes, sans les mettre en rapport avec la population. Comme cette " carte de France de la radicalisation " qui fait ressortir (malgré l'imbroglio des couleurs, sans gradation dans les teintes) les départements les plus peuplés, sans grande valeur informative :

Pour comparer des zones aux populations diverses sur une carte, il vaut mieux utiliser des taux ou des valeurs relatives. En statistiques, lorsqu'il s'agit de compter des cas, le plus commode est de rapporter un nombre à 10 000 habitants, ce qui donnerait ceci :

Lire aussi : Quelques conseils pour réussir vos cartes géographiques

7. La projection cartographique qui distord les pays

Il n'y a pas de projection " vraie " ou " fausse ", mais il y a une projection pour chaque usage. La plus utilisée actuellement, la projection Mercator, a ainsi été inventée pour faciliter les transports maritimes car elle conserve bien les angles et donc les caps. Mais elle déforme les distances et les surfaces.

Ce qui peut être avantageux si un Etat cherche à montrer son rayonnement ou, comme dans le cas de cette carte datant de 1938, pour accentuer un message - ici la mise en garde contre la " nouvelle peste noire ", les Etats dictatoriaux.

Selon l'endroit dont on regarde le monde, on peut aussi véhiculer un message spécifique, comme dans cette perspective " vue de Moscou ", où l'auteur cherche à montrer l'avancée inquiétante du communisme, ou dans cette autre, vue de Chine, qui affirme le pouvoir de l'empire sur le reste du monde, représenté dans les petites îles tout en haut à gauche de la carte.

Lire aussi : Pourquoi les cartes géographiques sont forcément (un peu) mensongères
Mise à jour le 22 mai à 17 h 35 : ajout d'une précision sur l'axe vertical des courbes.

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Sept conseils pour ne pas se faire avoir par les représentations graphiques

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Peut-on avoir confiance dans un " camembert " ? Un axe vertical doit-il forcément commencer à zéro ? A quel point une carte peut-elle être trompeuse ? Ces bâtons, qu'on appelle aussi histogrammes, sont censés représenter des rapports de grandeur.

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France and the United States have a very close relationship, but clichés and stereotypes remain persistent. How do we view each other's countries? In Intersecting Perspectives, Americans living in...

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Cultural Services | French Embassy in the US

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Watch this clip of Cultural Counselor Benedicte De Montlaur and Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu speaking about different approaches to studying the Middle East in France and the United States....

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By Katherine Stewart

Ms. Stewart is the author of "The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children."

America's Christian nationalists have a new plan for advancing their legislative goals in state capitols across the country. Its stated aim is to promote "religious freedom." Not shy, they call it "Project Blitz."

"Blitz" accurately describes the spirit of the enterprise, but the mission has little to do with what most Americans would call religious freedom. This is just the latest attempt by religious extremists to use the coercive powers of government to secure a privileged position in society for their version of Christianity.

The idea behind Project Blitz is to overwhelm state legislatures with bills based on centrally manufactured legislation. "It's kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side; it'll drive 'em crazy that they'll have to divide their resources out in opposing this," David Barton, the Christian nationalist historian and one of four members of Project Blitz's "steering team," said in a conference call with state legislators from around the country that was later made public.

According to research provided by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, more than 70 bills before state legislatures appear to be based on Project Blitz templates or have similar objectives. Some of the bills are progressing rapidly. An Oklahoma measure, which has passed the legislature and is awaiting the governor's signature, allows adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate on the basis of their own religious beliefs. Others, such as a Minnesota bill that would allow public schools to post "In God We Trust" signs on their walls, have provoked hostile debates in local and national media, which is in many cases the point of the exercise.

" 'Project Blitz' Seeks to Do for Christian Nationalism What ALEC Does for Big Business," reads the headline of a recent piece Frederick Clarkson wrote for Religion Dispatches that highlighted the danger. ALEC, of course, is the corporate lobbying group that crafts and promotes model legislation advancing business interests.

In their guidebook for state legislators and other allies, the authors of the Project Blitz program have grouped their model legislation into three categories, according to anticipated difficulty of passage. The first category consists of symbolic gestures, like resolutions to emblazon the motto "In God We Trust" on as many moving objects as possible (like, say, police cars).

Critics of such symbolic gestures often argue that they act as gateways to more extensive forms of state involvement in religion. It turns out that the Christian right agrees with them.

"They're going to be things that people yell at, but they will help move the ball down the court," Mr. Barton said in the conference call.

The second, more difficult category for Project Blitz consists of bills intended to promote the teaching and celebration of Christianity in public schools and elsewhere. These bills are a means of spreading the message that Christian conservatives are the real Americans, and everybody else is here by invitation only.

The sponsors of Project Blitz have pinned their deepest hopes on the third and most contentious category of model legislation. The dream here is something that participants in the conference call referred to in awed tones as "the Mississippi missile." The "missile" in question is Mississippi's HB 1523, a 2016 law that allows private businesses and government employees to discriminate, against L.G.B.T. people for example, provided that they do so in accordance with "sincerely held religious beliefs." The bill offers extraordinary protections, not to all religious beliefs per se, but to a very narrow set of beliefs associated mostly with conservative religion. If you hold a different set of religious beliefs, like, say, a commitment to gender and L.G.B.T. equality, there is no liberty in this bill for you.

In another piece of model legislation, the blitzers' goal is to get state legislatures to resolve that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's recent decision on same-sex marriage, "This state supports and encourages marriage between one man and one woman and the desirability that intimate sexual relations only take place between such couples." We have known for a long time that Christian nationalists seek to control what goes on in other people's bedrooms. The striking thing about this model bill is the cruelty with which it advances the argument. The bill claims that people in same-sex relationships have a "higher instance of serious disease."

It would be touching to think that the sponsors of Project Blitz have at last turned their attention to health care, but, no - their concern here, according to the guidebook, is that all of this gay sex is costing taxpayers lots of money - "estimated to be in the billions of dollars annually," according to the bill template.

If you examine the roster of people and organizations behind Project Blitz, it becomes clear that demeaning whole groups of people in society is really just a means to an end. The aim is political power. In their language, it's sometimes called "dominion" - meaning, specifically, the domination by those with the correct "biblical" worldview over all aspects of politics, culture and society.

David Barton is the founder of WallBuilders, an organization that promotes the view that America is a nation of, by and for Christians of a very specific variety. Buddy Pilgrim, another member of the Project Blitz steering team, is a businessman who founded Integrity Leadership, a ministry focused on "equipping Christians with biblical principles for the workplace." According to Mr. Pilgrim's website, "Dominion in earthly realms of authority (business & politics) is a biblical mandate."

A third steering team member is Bill Dallas, a convicted embezzler who later founded United in Purpose, a data-collection operation that aims, among other things, to increase turnout of conservative evangelical voters in local, state and national elections. "We have about 200 million files, so we have pretty much the whole voting population in our database," Mr. Dallas said in a Sept. 5, 2016, interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. "What we do is track to see what's going to make somebody either vote one way, or not vote at all." In October 2016, Mr. Dallas offered a neat summary of his political philosophy, one built on an idea by Abraham Kuyper, "There is not a place in the universe where Christ does not shout out, 'Mine!' "

One of the most remarkable features about Project Blitz has to do with the mood of its organizers. This is a very upbeat crowd. "We have this window of opportunity now; I think we're all feeling it," said Lea Carawan on the conference call. Ms. Carawan is a co-founder and the executive director of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, which supports Project Blitz, and she is the fourth member of Project Blitz's steering team. "We believe this is just the beginning," she said.

There is a story going around, on both the left and the right, that America's "true believers" are a declining force and are now conducting desperate, defensive maneuvers in a secularizing society. But that is not how the leaders of the Christian Nationalist movement see it - because it is not true. They played a key role in putting President Trump in power. They are protecting him now, as they giddily collect their winnings in legislatures and in the courts. Why should they doubt that they can pull off the same trick again?

What Christian nationalists know - and many of us have yet to learn - is that you don't need a majority to hijack a modern democracy. You just need a sizable minority, marinating in its grievances, willing to act as a bloc, and impervious to correction by fact or argument. Make this group feel good about itself by making other people feel bad about themselves, and dominion may well be in reach.

As with most of what Christian nationalists do these days, Project Blitz and its form of religious freedom is as bad for religion as it is for freedom. Religion, as most Americans understand it, has something to do with care of the soul - not ramming bills through gerrymandered legislatures. And faith has something to do with showing love for other people, not writing contempt for them into the law.

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By Katherine Stewart Ms. Stewart is the author of "The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children." America's Christian nationalists have a new plan for advancing their legislative goals in state capitols across the country. Its stated aim is to promote "religious freedom."

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POLITIQUE - Ambiance salle de classe dans la nuit du mardi 29 au mercredi 30 mai dans l'hémicycle. En pleine séance sur le texte agriculture et alimentation, le député de la Somme François Ruffin s'est fait taper sur les doigts par la présidente de séance, la députée LR Annie Genevard, comme l'a remarqué sur Twitter un collaborateur parlementaire.

En cause, la tenue de l'élu Picard, jugée non conforme au règlement. "La chemise dans le pantalon s'il vous plaît! Merci", a grondé la présidente, alors que François Ruffin commençait à prendre la parole. Une somation qui lui en a rappelé bien d'autres, et ce dans le même hémicycle (voir notre vidéo en tête d'article).

Pour information, voici ce que dit le règlement de l'Assemblée nationale concernant le "dress code" des parlementaires: "la tenue vestimentaire adoptée par les députés dans l'hémicycle doit rester neutre et s'apparenter à une tenue de ville. Elle ne saurait être le prétexte à la manifestation de l'expression d'une quelconque opinion: est ainsi notamment prohibé le port de tout signe religieux ostensible, d'un uniforme, de logos ou messages commerciaux ou de slogans de nature politique".

Rien sur la chemise dans le pantalon donc.
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* Quand les députés s'essaient à la "méditation de pleine conscience"

* En soutien aux cheminots, ces sénateurs ont revêtu leurs gilets orange dans l'hémicycle

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À l'Assemblée, Ruffin s'est fait remonter les bretelles à cause de sa chemise

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POLITIQUE - Ambiance salle de classe dans la nuit du mardi 29 au mercredi 30 mai dans l'hémicycle. En pleine séance sur le texte agriculture et alimentation, le député de la Somme François Ruffin s'est fait taper sur les doigts par la présidente de séance, la députée LR Annie Genevard, comme l'a remarqué sur Twitter un collaborateur parlementaire.

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America is a wonderful country, but there are a few things it could improve.

Blue Laws seem incredibly antiquated.

The measurement system is bonkers.

America is a wonderful country.

From breathtaking natural wonders to incredible attractions, there's a lot that the US gets right.

But boy, is there a lot it gets wrong.

What's up with the giant gaps between bathroom stalls? And why do Blue Laws still exist? Why can't Americans drink outside like civilized humans?

As a European (I grew up in Germany, Austria, and France) who has lived in the US for 11 years, there are still a plethora of things that never cease to boggle my mind, as well as the minds of my foreign friends and relatives.

Keep reading for 51 egregious mistakes the US is making.

Read the original article on INSIDER. Copyright 2018. Follow INSIDER onTwitter.

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America is a wonderful country, but there are a few things it could improve. Blue Laws seem incredibly antiquated. The measurement system is bonkers. America is a wonderful country. From breathtaking natural wonders to incredible attractions, there's a lot that the US gets right. But boy, is there a lot it gets wrong.

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Qui sommes-nous ? | Association des Américains Accidentels

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L'AAA - Qui sommes-nous ? - Des problèmes avec FATCA. Votre banque vous demande un W9, un SSN ? L'AAA défend vos intérêts et vous représente. Adhérez et devenez membre. pour appuyer nos...

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Wherever you look, this is the year of white working-class males - or, as Donald Trump describes them, "the smart, smart, smart people that don't have the big education." Who are they, and why are they sticking with Trump even as other voters are peeling away?

Sociologists talk about the disaffected white underclass. Marxists talk about the lumpenproletariat, or riffraff, which makes " Trumpenproletariat" almost irresistible. But others on both the left and right have used more familiar epithets. A columnist in the New York Daily News calls Trump's supporters " bigots, bumpkins and rednecks." The New York Post calls them the " hillbilly class" and " white trash Americans."

Back in 1989, the historian C. Vann Woodward said that "redneck" is the only epithet for an ethnic minority that's still permitted in polite company. He could have said the same thing about "hillbilly" or "white trash."

The fact is that Americans don't find class prejudice quite as shameful as racism. College fraternities are thrown off campus when they hold parties with themes like "Crips and Bloods" or "south of the border." But there's no surge of indignation when their members break out their mullet wigs and "wifebeater" shirts for a "white trash bash."

Used in a loose way, those labels all call up the same images: the good ol' boys at Trump rallies wearing feed-store caps and Confederate flag T-shirts, or the hapless Kentucky layabouts living on opioids and food stamps that J.D. Vance describes in his best-seller Hillbilly Elegy.

To be sure, those aren't actually the typical Trump supporters, who turn out to be a bit more affluent than other non-college whites - not so much the people who live in the trailer courts as the people who own them. Even so, the words embody the long history of class contention that the Trump phenomenon has brought to the surface.

Over the years, Americans have probably coined more epithets for poor whites than for any other group, even including blacks. Rednecks and hillbillies, white trash and trailer trash, Okies and Arkies, peckerwoods and pinelanders, crackers and clay eaters, mudsils and ridge-runners and dozens more.

Many of those terms are forgotten now, and others were regional - in fact, state nicknames like tarheels, buckeyes and hoosiers began their lives as pejoratives for the local yokels. But that multitude of labels also reflects a basic difference between class and race. Americans have always thought of race as an either-or business, a trait that's passed along in your blood or your genes. But we can define class in any number of ways, which is why we have so many labels for it and why their meanings keep changing.

"White trash" is older than any English slur but the N-word, and the two have always gone hand-in-hand. In her recent history of class in America, White Trash, author Nancy Isenberg traces the origins of the phrase to the early 19th century, when genteel Southern whites used it to disparage poor whites, whom they saw as a kind of human waste - ignorant, brutal and lazy.

Two centuries later, it still reeks of tackiness and turpitude. It's the most offensive thing you can say about a white person - and also the most vulgar.

"Hillbilly" and "redneck" both appeared later in the 19th century. Hillbillies were originally just the poor mountain whites, but to outsiders the word suggested a caricature of slow-witted backwoods ectomorphs with a shotgun and jug of moonshine - either the comic yokels of Al Capp's Li'l Abner and The Beverly Hillbillies or the degenerate predators of the film Deliverance. Rednecks were originally Southern white laborers - their sunburn contrasted with the pallor of the upper classes. But it soon became a label for uncouth working-class racists from any rural region.

... all stereotypes are reversible, when the people they're aimed at reclaim and redefine them and throw them back at their original users.

But all stereotypes are reversible, when the people they're aimed at reclaim and redefine them and throw them back at their original users. The era of redneck chic began in the 1970s, when the word became a badge of working-class patriotism and authenticity, as contrasted with the PC airs and affectations of the coastal elites. Country playlists were full of songs like Johnny Russell's " Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer." The other slurs were reclaimed, too. Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle wrote paeans to the hillbilly, and singers from Toby Keith to Eminem even made "white trash" a positive identification.

As the labels became more popular, they also became more socially elastic. Jeff Foxworthy's "you know you're a redneck" jokes allowed New South audiences to laugh at the Old South stereotypes while still claiming the redneck label for themselves. In his 1983 song " Just a Redneck at Heart," Ronnie Milsap explained that wearing a suit and tie to your corporate job didn't disqualify you from being a redneck as long as you kept a copy of Field & Stream in your desk.

Nowadays, everybody is eligible - a few years ago, Donald Trump Jr. told an interviewer that his love of fly fishing and bow hunting made him a closet redneck. At that point, redneck isn't a class, it's a lifestyle choice.

But whoever is claiming the label, redneck pride is always infused with attitude. When you call yourself a redneck, you're not simply proclaiming your authenticity - you're calling out the scorn and condescension of the people who use the word as a slur.

That's why the word always sounds a little belligerent, and why it encapsulates the populist anger and resentment that the Trump campaign has stirred. As the Los Angeles Times' columnist Gregory Rodriguez put it, "You know you're a redneck when you're mad as hell and you just want to spread it around."

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A Resurgence Of 'Redneck' Pride, Marked By Race, Class And Trump

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Wherever you look, this is the year of white working-class males - or, as Donald Trump describes them, "the smart, smart, smart people that don't have the big education." Who are they, and why are they sticking with Trump even as other voters are peeling away? Sociologists talk about the disaffected white underclass.

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When you hear the word "American," which of the following pops to mind:

1. A woman with brown skin who wears a hijab

2. A black-skinned woman with curly hair

3. A white-skinned man in a baseball cap

It could be all of the above, and a whole lot more, but if you picked the man in the baseball cap, you probably wouldn't be alone.

The notion of what it means to be American - to look and sound American - is constantly expanding, and yet many Americans struggle to comprehend the vast variety of human beings encompassed by that little word.

Consider Tahera Rahman, a TV reporter originally from Naperville and educated at Loyola University in Chicago. She's making history as the first woman to wear a hijab on a mainstream American television station.

In a recent article in The Des Moines Register, she recalls being told that "America wasn't ready" for such a sight on TV.

But there she is these days on WHBF-TV in Rock Island, reporting stories of all kinds for viewers in the Quad Cities, despite the comments like one from an online poster who wrote, "Just take the rag off your head and be a good American and enjoy your job."

She tries to ignore the haters, takes heart in the many people who have cheered her on and says, though it shouldn't need saying, "This my America too."

And consider Tayari Jones.

She's the author of "An American Marriage," a novel about two young, middle-class newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, who, like her, are black. In the book, the couple haven't been married long when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. The story proceeds from there.

It's a novel about a marriage, set in America, but when Jones' editor advocated for the title, she hesitated.

"I had never really thought of myself as American without saying black American or African-American," she said in a recent interview on "PBS NewsHour." "I told my editor that I felt like 'An American Marriage' sounded like a novel about white people in Connecticut. And he says, 'Connecticut is a very small state. Why would you think that what happens in that small state was somehow more representative of America than what happens in Atlanta, one of the largest cities in the country?'"

He urged her to shoot for the bold idea. She did. "An American Marriage" is currently No. 4 on The New York Times best-seller list.

And consider the Chicago fashion blogger Hoda Katebi.

In a recent interview on WGN-TV, she criticized U.S. "imperialism" in the Middle East.

"You're an American," the show's co-host replied. "You don't sound like an American when you say things."

After Katebi, who was born and raised in Oklahoma, blogged about the incident, the video went viral. The TV anchor apologized, and Katebi accepted, but she sees it as a moment worth thinking about.

"So, for me, that was an important moment to really bring to light a lot of assumptions that guide American thinking," she told the Tribune later. "But also it makes you think about, well then what does an American sound like? ... And if I'm not American, what is American?"

Once upon a time, to many, many people, American meant white.

It didn't mean Native American or South American. It rarely included Hispanics or Asians or any of the ethnic groups that all right-thinking Americans today acknowledge as fundamental to the country.

As Jones' remark about "white people in Connecticut" suggests, it wasn't even a term all black Americans were allowed to claim or ready to embrace.

The All-American boy. The All-American girl. The Ugly American. In the popular imagination, they were all white.

And, in fact, through most of its history, the United States has been overwhelmingly white. In 1940, the beginning of the decade in which Donald Trump was born, 89.8 percent of Americans shared that racial identity.

Think about it. Nine out of 10.

Now barely three-quarters of the country is white - or two-thirds, depending on how you're counting - and the white population continues to shrink. As it does, our vision of what American looks and sounds like will continue to grow.

At its most technical, American is a legal status. It means citizenship, along with its rights and responsibilities.

At its philosophical best, American is an identity imbued with ideals that however poorly practiced continue to guide us and unite us, the most important being: All people are created equal.

No matter how it's defined, here are some things American doesn't signify:

A skin color. A religion. An accent. An ancestry. A hair style. A style of dress.

It's a small word that contain multitudes:

A TV reporter in a hijab. A black author and her characters. A Muslim fashion blogger who speaks out on U.S. foreign policy.

And it contains millions more, all of us who know that being American comes with the excitement of sharing the word with people who are different from you.
mschmich@chicagotribune.com RELATED: WGN anchor told a Muslim blogger that she didn't 'sound like an American.' Her response went viral. "

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A TV reporter in a hijab, a black novelist, a Muslim fashion blogger: What 'American' really means.

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When you hear the word "American," which of the following pops to mind: 1. A woman with brown skin who wears a hijab 2. A black-skinned woman with curly hair 3. A white-skinned man in a baseball cap It could be all of the above, and a whole lot more, but if you picked the man in the baseball cap, you probably wouldn't be alone.

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For immigrants, this past week has been a doozy: First, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services took the words "nation of immigrants" out of its mission statement. Then, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants held in detention are not entitled to bail hearings. The Court also declined to to take up a case that deals with the DACA program, sending it back to the Ninth Circuit.

All this came after weeks of debate about who's allowed to come to, and stay in, the country, as Congress tries to draft a new immigration bill. Among the proposals on the table is the 50-year-old provision that allows family members to sponsor relatives.

This week on the podcast we explored how one family is handling the stress of decisions and policies like these while facing a mix of immigration-related challenges. In the Gonzalez family, some members are covered by DACA, some aren't, and one child is a U.S. citizen. You can listen to their story here.

But we also wanted to know more about the bigger picture of where immigrants fit into this nation and how that might be changing.

And so we reached out to an expert who can identify with the Gonzalezes and millions of people like them. Hiroshi Motomura is an expert on refugee and immigration law, and teaches at UCLA Law School. But the subject isn't merely academic for him. He comes from a mixed-status family himself, and has spent decades researching, and living, the shifting fortunes of immigrants and their families.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What did growing up in a mixed status family look like for you?
My father was born in San Francisco, but he grew up in Japan. So he was a U.S. citizen by birth. My mother was born in Japan, so she has Japanese citizenship by birth. I was born in Japan. My family brought me to this country when I was 3 years old under a loophole, at a time when the laws were expressly, explicitly racially discriminatory.

My brother is six years younger than me, and he was born in the United States, so he had citizenship. So in my own family, my father's a U.S. citizen but really felt Japanese, my mother was a Japanese citizen who felt Japanese, I grew up in this country feeling very American but finding out as a young teenager that I had no citizenship at all.

I'll never forget the time my mother and brother and I went to visit relatives in Japan [when I was a young teen.] I had to travel on a document that can be given to refugees. I was a stateless person living in the United States.

So it's a lot of details, but I think it shows that in one family, we often have a people separated into different legal statuses by the accident of their birth. And yet functionally, in terms of how they relate to American society, even living in the same household, they're either identical, or separated only by generations.
Supporters of immigrants' rights have criticized President Trump for saying he wants to limit family-based immigration. These critics have compared his policy proposals with parts of the Immigration Act of 1924 How important is family-based immigration for the people who come to this country? , which had a national origins quota, or the There are a lot of misconceptions about U.S. citizens sponsoring family members. Can you help explain the process? Chinese Exclusion Act. Is that a fair assessment?
There's a couple ways to think about the legislative proposals coming out of the White House. We've had a system for many years that has put a high value on family unity. So the proposals would seriously cut back on that.

What does that actually mean? Since 1965, we have family-based immigration playing a central role, as it always has, but a central role in a non-discriminatory system - at least as far as the legal categories are concerned. That's meant that we've really diversified who can come to this country.
Historically, how has the United States treated immigrants?
So now, the administration is trying to cut that back. One way to think about that is to look at the consequences: This would really make it hard to immigrate from Latin America. You'd have cutbacks in immigration from Latin America, you'd have cutbacks from Asia. The proposals to cut back on the diversity lottery would cut off a significant amount of immigration from Africa. So at one level it looks like it's very neutral. But the fact is, in historical terms, it's really a rollback to the period from the 1920s until 1965.

It's really been a consistent strand in American immigration history that families are the vehicle for integrating Americans into American society, and helping immigrants be productive members of American society. It's not enough to come to this country with a diploma. It's not enough to come with a particular skill set. You have to have people help you become part of American society. And many of the "immigrant success stories" we have are people who came with relatively few resources, or not necessarily stereotypically high education levels, but [succeeded] because there was a family standing behind them.

In many mixed families, you have a younger child who is a U.S. citizen. And the rules say that when that citizen child turns 21, then the citizen child can sponsor or petition for their parents. But it's not as straightforward as all that. It's true that when the parents have the child turn 21, the child can file paperwork and the parents qualify to get into a category that allows them to get legal status. But there are a couple complications. One is that the sponsor needs to guarantee the financial support of himself and the parents.
How do you feel about USCIS taking the line "nation of immigrants" out of its mission statement?
The other thing is that just because you get into a line, it doesn't mean you can get legal status. The system is actually incredibly complicated, and there's talk about, Why don't you stand in line? And yet, we have situations where even people who qualify for a status find the going very difficult.

Looking at the system as a whole, we have an emphasis on employment-based immigration that pretty much requires that you have a college degree. And yet the economy seems to have a very great need for people who don't have a college degree, though many of them are actually very highly-skilled. And one of the reasons that in many of these families, the parents come without legal status is because the system has been set up in such a way that we, for several generations now, have tolerated, and even acquiesced, and to some extent invited people to come outside the law. Occasionally it becomes politically expedient to enforce the law harshly, and we express some shock that people are in the country working illegally.

And yet, that's the way the system has run for at least 50 years, and to some extent the last hundred years. Especially regarding workers from Latin America who have been essential to many industries, but for whom there's no actual line to stand in.

I think the arc of American history has been one of generosity toward immigrants, punctuated with periods of retrogression, downright repression. That's been the flow.

And we see this actually in the fact that the people who are kind of being hard-line against immigration now are often the very people who would've been discriminated against in an earlier age.

So one can look at this as hypocrisy, or irony, but the fact of the matter is, it's also a sign that this country moves forward. And the people we discriminated against in an earlier generation, my God, they've become so American that they can actually discriminate against others.

Well, I think it's very troubling. The reality is, the United States is, and will continue to be, a nation of immigrants. I'm really focusing not on the possibility that one administration or one agency can change the nature of this country or the character of this country. But I'm focusing on what that means. And I think that it really means that the government is not really taking seriously the types of contributions that immigrants have made to this country. And I think the government is really adopting the posture of, You can only come to this country if you're going to jump through a lot of hoops. You're going to pay a lot of money. And it's going to be based on what you can do for us now. As in tomorrow. Or even today.

But I think many of the contributions that immigrants have made to this country have not been very obvious on Day 1. This is the many stories we have of people who came to this country either penniless or at least under modest circumstances, and really contributed and created jobs and created entire industries. And I think a lot of what I see in the removal of "nation of immigrants" is, are we not understanding the history of this country? We're being extremely short-sighted about what has made this country great.

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What Does It Mean To Be A 'Nation Of Immigrants'?

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For immigrants, this past week has been a doozy: First, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services took the words "nation of immigrants" out of its mission statement. Then, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants held in detention are not entitled to bail hearings.

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This is a short film that was directed by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy + Ludovic Houplain. It was presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2009. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and won a 2010 academy award under the category of animated short.

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A PERFECT Answer To A Super-Duper Annoying Question

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©National Archives

Some 4,500 Black American soldiers, victims of segregation laws in force in the U.S. army, fought in French uniforms during World War I. Nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, these soldiers displayed exceptional valor in combat. Here is their incredible yet little-known story.
"Up the wide avenue they swung. Their smiles outshone the golden sunlight [...]. New York turned out to tender its dark-skinned heroes a New York welcome." This was written by a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune in 1919, describing the triumphant parade down Fifth Avenue of 3,000 African-American soldiers from the U.S. Army's 369th infantry regiment. Thousands of people watched the procession, crowding onto the sidewalks. "Never have white Americans accorded so heartfelt and hearty a reception to a contingent of [...]

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The Harlem Hellfighters: African-American Fighters in French Uniforms

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Some 4,500 Black American soldiers, victims of segregation laws in force in the U.S. army, fought in French uniforms during World War I. Nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, these soldiers displayed exceptional valor in combat. Here is their incredible yet little-known story. "Up the wide avenue they swung.

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State legislators in Florida came together on Wednesday - the same day student activists gathered outside the House chamber in Tallahassee to demand stricter gun laws, one week after the school massacre in Parkland - to pass a measure related to schools, but not guns. HB 839 would require every public school in Florida to display "in a conspicuous place" the state motto, "In God We Trust."

House members passed the legislation 97 to 10.

It is unclear what will happen in the Senate, where a bill using identical language was introduced last month.

The bill's sponsor in the House, Rep. Kimberly Daniels, a Democrat from Jacksonville who also runs a ministry, said the bill is "so simple, just saying put a poster up to remind our children of the foundation of this country."

"In God We Trust" is also the national motto.

On Wednesday, in a speech from the House floor, Daniels indirectly referred to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last week that left 17 students and educators dead.

"It is not a secret that we have some gun issues that need to be addressed, but the real thing that needs to be addressed are issues of the heart," she said.

Daniels said she had a vision earlier in the week, "I believe it was God, and I heard a voice say, 'Do not politicize what has happened in Florida and do not make this a thing of division.' "

Daniels continued to speak about God: "He's not a Republican and he's not a Democrat. He's not black and he's not white. He is the light. And our schools need light in them like never before."

The bill would take effect July 1, 2018.

Passage came one day after lawmakers in the House failed to pass a motion advancing a bill to ban assault rifles.

Student survivors of last week's attack have said they want more than "thoughts and prayers" and are turning their anguish and anger into activism. Around 100 traveled to the state Capitol Wednesday to amplify their calls for gun control.

They are also planning a mass rally March 24 in Washington, D.C., to demand an end to gun violence and school shootings.

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Florida Lawmakers Advance Bill Requiring Schools To Display 'In God We Trust'

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State legislators in Florida came together on Wednesday - the same day student activists gathered outside the House chamber in Tallahassee to demand stricter gun laws, one week after the school massacre in Parkland - to pass a measure related to schools, but not guns.

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Every morning at a supermarket called Auchan in central Paris, Magdalena Dos Santos has a rendezvous with Ahmed "Doudou" Djerbrani, a driver from the French food bank.

Dos Santos, who runs the deli section of the store, is in charge of supervising the store's food donations. She sets aside prepared dishes that are nearing their expiration date.

Opening a giant fridge, Dos Santos shows what else the store is giving away - yogurt, pizza, fresh fruits and vegetables, and cheese.

But giving leftover food to charity is no longer just an act of goodwill. It's a requirement under a 2016 law that bans grocery stores from throwing away edible food.

Stores can be fined $4,500 for each infraction.

Food waste is a global problem. In developing countries, food spoils at the production stage. Well-off nations throw it away at the consumption stage. Grocery stores are responsible for a lot of that waste. France is trying to change that with its 2-year-old law.

Out back on the store's loading dock, Djerbrani plunges a thermometer into a yogurt. "I take the temperature of dairy products to make sure they've been kept refrigerated," he says.

Djerbrani loads the food into his van and drives it across town to a church, which will distribute it to poor families.

Gillaine Demeules is a volunteer with the St. Vincent de Paul charity. She's getting ready for the weekly food handout.

"Tomorrow, we'll give people soup, sardines, pasta and whatever fresh items they deliver us today," she says. "We never know what they're gonna bring."

Across France, 5,000 charities depend on the food bank network, which now gets nearly half of its donations from grocery stores, according to Jacques Bailet, head of the French network of food banks known as Banques Alimentaires. The new law has increased the quantity and quality of donations. There are more fresh foods and products available further from their expiration date.

He says the law also helps cut back on food waste by getting rid of certain constraining contracts between supermarkets and food manufacturers.

"There was one food manufacturer that was not authorized to donate the sandwiches it made for a particular supermarket brand. But now, we get 30,000 sandwiches a month from them - sandwiches that used to be thrown away," Bailet says.

While the world wastes about one-third of the food it produces, and France wastes as much as 66 pounds per person per year, Americans waste some 200 billion pounds of food a year. That is enough to fill up the 90,000-seat Rose Bowl stadium every day, says Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland, about food waste in the United States. He says there are different ways of cutting back on food waste. For example, you can start from the end of the chain by banning food in landfills.

Bloom says the French law is great, and he would love to see such a policy shift in Washington. But it strikes him as difficult, politically, especially in today's climate. He knows Americans will be less excited about the government telling businesses what to do.

"The French version is quite socialist, but I would say in a great way because you're providing a way where they [supermarkets] have to do the beneficial things not only for the environment, but from an ethical standpoint of getting healthy food to those who need it and minimizing some of the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that come when food ends up in a landfill," he says.

The French law seem to have encouraged the development of a whole ecosystem of businesses that are helping grocery stores better manage their stocks and reduce food waste, although a formal review is still in the works.

Parliamentarian Guillaume Garot wrote the law. He believes the fight against food waste should be as important as other national causes, like wearing seatbelts. Garot says he has been contacted by people from all over the world who want to do the same thing.

"It's changed the supermarkets' practices," he says. "They're more attentive to their environment, and they give more."

But most important, says Garot, is that a supermarket is now seen as more than just a profit center. It's a place where there has to be humanity.

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French Food Waste Law Changing How Grocery Stores Approach Excess Food

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Every morning at a supermarket called Auchan in central Paris, Magdalena Dos Santos has a rendezvous with Ahmed "Doudou" Djerbrani, a driver from the French food bank. Dos Santos, who runs the deli section of the store, is in charge of supervising the store's food donations.

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Ten years ago, Rageh Omaar embarked on a unique journey across the United States to reveal the truly surprising, counter-intuitive, and little-known world of Islam in America.

From the major conurbations of New York City and Chicago, to the small town hinterlands of Texas and the west, Al Jazeera pulled together the history of Islam in the US and painted a vivid portrait of a vibrant, diverse and growing group of followers of Islam that is unlike any Muslim community in the world.

Since then, much has changed globally, with the rise of ISIL, and in the US, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of "the free world". Among the numerous controversial decisions that have come to pass under the Trump administration is what has come to be known as the Muslim travel ban - a law temporarily barring entry to the US for travellers from six different Muslim-majority countries.

REWIND spoke with Rula Jebreal, professor of international relations at the University of Miami, about the shape of Islam in America 10 years since the film was first aired, and how things have changed for Muslims living in the US.

"A lot of things have changed. There has been a major shift in Islamophobia and attacks against Muslims, especially in 2015 and 2016. It is not a coincidence that the FBI report about Islamophobic hate crimes skyrocketed in those years, far more than in 2001 after 9/11," Jebreal says.

"Immediately after the election, President Trump [travel] banned six Muslim countries ... it looked like the religious persecution of one group based on the actions of individuals in Pakistan or Afghanistan ... he then went on to attack [London's] first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, immediately in the aftermath of a terror attack in London, singling him out because he's Muslim and he's brown, because he has the platform.

"We are a minority [in the US]. We are under-represented in the political arena and in the media. When you go to the Holocaust museum, it is clear and written in the walls: the Holocaust did not start with a killing. It started with violent words, it started with politicians dividing people with "them versus us". It started with demonising an entire group of people and criminalising them. That paved the way to the killing and the gas chambers."

Jebreal believes that "America today is fighting a monster: white supremacy, the pure race. In the name of the pure race, every minority is the enemy."
Editor's note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Ten years ago, Rageh Omaar embarked on a unique journey across the United States to reveal the truly surprising, counter-intuitive, and little-known world of Islam in America.

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Overview to French Dating Culture and Customs (with Dan Rock)

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Salut ! Dating a French person is a challenge. Really. :) Not because of the language barrier (you always find ways to communicate!), but mainly because of all those unwritten rules and HUGE cultural traps! Today, thanks to my guest Dan Rock, you will discover the sometimes subtle, sometimes BIG differences between French & American dating cultures.

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Cheers! Kampai! L'Chaim!

No matter how you say it, the clink of glasses brimming with beer can bring universal joy to humans. But the preferred choice of amber nectar differs vastly by country.

Vinepair, a site focused on wine and booze, mapped out the world's favorite beers by cross-referencing corporate earnings and research reports. Countries where data were unavailable, such as Papua New Guinea, Angola and Mongolia, were excluded.

Americans love Bud Light. The Japanese drink a lot of Asahi. Israelis go for Goldstar.

Here's a map showing each country's favorite beer:

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Here Is The Most Popular Beer In Every Country

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Cheers! Kampai! L'Chaim! No matter how you say it, the clink of glasses brimming with beer can bring universal joy to humans. But the preferred choice of amber nectar differs vastly by country. Vinepair, a site focused on wine and booze, mapped out the world's favorite beers by cross-referencing corporate earnings and research reports.

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As a newcomer in the United States, I have made many cultural gaffes. Some were not such a big deal, some were mildly embarrassing and some were, well, quite painful.

When I first started working in the U.S., I followed my boss into the restroom one day. There were five urinals and all of them were free. He went to the one at the far end. I wondered why he didn't go to the one that was closest to him. I chose the urinal right next to him. Standing beside him, I said, "It's a nice day today, isn't it?"

He didn't respond.

"Nice day, isn't it?" I repeated.

No answer. He acted as if he didn't know me. It was very strange.

Later in the day, he called me to his cubicle and said: "In America, you don't use the urinal right next to the one that is already in use. You do that only if the others are not free. And, definitely do not talk to the person while urinating. It's not cool."

I grew up in India - a country where a thousand people are walking in your direction at any given time of day. The country has a huge population, and it seemed as if there wasn't enough room for us all.

My family - parents and three children - lived in a tiny, two-bedroom apartment. Under ordinary circumstances, space was tight. When relatives came to visit, things got tighter. A lot of times, I shared a bed with my brother and dad.

I rode to school with eight kids on a cycle rickshaw that was built to carry three. At school, there were 50 kids in a classroom that had room for only 25. On trains and buses, I could never truly claim a seat for myself. If there was room to adjust, move my bottom back or forward, or sideways, I made space for another person. In such close quarters, I had to learn to love the human touch in order not to hate it.

That's especially true in lines. In India, I have waited in lines at train stations, cinema halls and banks with 100 or more people. The line acted like one organism, every individual connected, everyone inching forward at the slightest hint of movement.

When I moved to the United States, I didn't quite understand the idea of personal space - both in terms of privacy and body contact. It took me quite a while to understand that I didn't have to stand right behind the guy in a line - when I say right behind I mean my body touching his - waiting to get on the train or to order food at a café.

I learned this lesson the hard way. Several years ago, I found myself at a post office in Virginia. The big gaps between the customers made the line longer than it needed to be. It was spilling out of the small space. I had never seen anything like this before.

It didn't make sense to me that people were standing so far apart. So I moved closer to the guy in front of me. He immediately turned back and looked at me, then moved a couple of paces ahead, reopening the gap between us. I didn't understand why. I turned back and saw the person behind me hadn't moved closer to me. I moved a couple of steps again and got closer to the guy ahead. This time he gave me a stern look and moved away. I was confused and wanted to know what I was doing wrong. I put my hand on his shoulder gently and asked, "Is there anything wrong?"

He actually got out of line and left the building. In a hurry.

After living in the States for more than a decade, I have learned to appreciate personal space. I have come to understand that while in India you touch anyone and everyone in the course of a day, that kind of close physical contact is reserved for very close friends and family in the U.S.

I go back to India every year, and I see the friends I grew up with. My ideas about human touch have changed, but my friends haven't. They like to hold my hand while going for a stroll. They put their arms around me and sit next to me on a couch - thigh-to-thigh. This makes me wonder about a lot of things. Being in close physical proximity with friends in India makes me feel close to them, close enough that I could share anything.

I find Americans very friendly, but the unsaid rule of personal space never lets you get close to people, even when they are your friends. There is an invisible circle around a person, which seems impenetrable. Sometimes, I'm tempted to throw my arm around my American friends, squeeze their shoulders or hold their hand a little longer during a handshake.

Then I wonder if it would be a touch awkward.
Deepak Singh is a writer living in Ann Arbor, Mich.

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Learning The Hard Way Why You Just Shouldn't GetTooClose

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As a newcomer in the United States, I have made many cultural gaffes. Some were not such a big deal, some were mildly embarrassing and some were, well, quite painful. When I first started working in the U.S., I followed my boss into the restroom one day.

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Distractify is a leading entertainment company in the mobile era.

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C'est en France que le nombre de naissances et le taux de fécondité sont les plus élevés en 2014, selon les données d'Eurostat.

Plus de 5,1 millions de bébés sont nés en 2014 au sein de l'Union européenne, selon des données publiées par l'office européen de la statistique, Eurostat. Et parmi ces nouveaux européens, les petits Français sont les plus nombreux avec 819 300 naissances.
(Pour cette carte et les suivantes, touchez ou survolez de la souris les pays pour afficher les informations) Nombre de naissances par pays européen en 2014
La France reste en effet la championne d' Europe de la fécondité, avec 2,01 enfants par femme en âge de procréer, loin devant les pays méditerranéens (1,23 au Portugal, 1,32 en Espagne) ou de l'Europe de l'Est (1,32 en Pologne, 1,37 en Slovaquie). Des différences qui s'expliquent par " des politiques familiales et sociales traditionnellement plus généreuses " dans les pays du nord et du nord-ouest de l'Europe, analyse Gilles Pison, chercheur associé à l'Institut national d'études démographiques.

Toutefois, même la France n'a pas de raison particulière de pavoiser, car son indice de fécondité est inférieur à celui du niveau de renouvellement de la population dans les pays développés (2,1), c'est-à-dire le nombre moyen de naissances vivantes par femme nécessaire pour maintenir constante la taille de la population en l'absence de toute migration.
Indice de fécondité dans les pays européens en 2014
Les Européennes deviennent mères assez tard, à plus de 30 ans en moyenne, avec une forte disparité entre les pays de l'Est (27,3 ans en Bulgarie, 27,5 ans en Roumanie) et les pays méditerranéens (31,8 ans en Espagne). La France se situe plutôt dans la moyenne, à 30,3 ans.
Age moyen des femmes à la naissance de leur enfant
Mais la plus grande disparité au sein des pays d'Europe concerne les naissances hors mariage. Alors qu'en Grèce, seuls 7,6 % des enfants sont issus d'un couple non marié, ils sont plus des deux tiers (66,9 %) en Islande.
Part des naissances hors mariage en Europe

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Bébés hors mariage, âge des mères, fécondité : 4 graphiques sur la naissance en Europe

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C'est en France que le nombre de naissances et le taux de fécondité sont les plus élevés en 2014, selon les données d'Eurostat.

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People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

In her new book, " Presence," Cuddy says that people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

Can I trust this person?

Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both.

Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.

But in fact, warmth, or trustworthiness, is the most important factor in how people evaluate you.

"From an evolutionary perspective," Cuddy says, "it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust."

It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to kill you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire.

But while competence is highly valued, Cuddy says that it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire.

She says that MBA interns are often so concerned about coming across as smart and competent that it can lead them to skip social events, not ask for help, and generally come off as unapproachable.

These overachievers are in for a rude awakening when they don't get a job offer because nobody got to know and trust them as people.

Cuddy says:

If someone you're trying to influence doesn't trust you, you're not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative. A warm, trustworthy person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you've established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat.

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A Harvard psychologist says people judge you based on 2 criteria when they first meet you

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People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating? Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

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It's a self-managed social housing project devised and run by a community of dynamic female senior citizens who want to keep their independence, but live communally.

"To live long is a good thing but to age well is better," says 85 year old Thérèse Clerc who dreamt up the project back in 1999.

"Growing old is not an illness," says the elegant, feisty Clerc. "We want to change the way people see old age," and that means "learning to live differently."

The building houses 25 self-contained flats. 21 are adapted for the elderly and four are reserved for students.

Residents pay an average of 420 euros for 35m2.

The five-storey building is in the heart of Montreuil, just a stones throw from metro, shops and cinema.

Being central was important. "The message is 'you will go out, you have a right to be active'," says Jean-Paul Blery from the town's housing department.

Janine Popot moved into her 29m2 studio a few weeks ago and still hasn't opened all the boxes. As one of ten children, she says she wanted to live alongside others but not in a conventional home.

"I wanted to avoid ending up in a retirement home at all costs. When you don't have much money, a retirement home becomes a prison," she explains.

Growing old well means keeping the grey matter going. So the house isn't just a place to live. The ground floor is reserved for activities and will house a university for senior citizens.

Residents were selected partly in relation to what they could contribute to the "community" and the extent to which they shared the Babayaga philosophy.

Many, like Jannine, are active in the voluntary sector.

The project cost nearly 4 million euros and funding came from no less than eight different public sources, including Montreuil city council which is accustomed to investing in innovative projects.

It was a difficult, long road, "a forceps delivery," says Clerc.

Not least because getting funding for a project run by an association was genuinely innovative.

"Local authorities aren't used to working with associations," says 62 year old resident Dominique Doré. "Associations in France can't buy land. Cecile Duflot (the French housing minister) is trying to change this."

The Babayagas have generated a lot of interest, both here in France and in Canada, but Doré denies they want to launch a franchise and prefers to be compared with the slow food movement.

"Slow ageing? Why not!" "We want to exchange ideas, take what's best out there."

And while some Babayagas say their house must remain women-only, Doré says the structure is bound to evolve.

"We have the recipe, we have the saucepan, now it's up to us to make the soup," she says.

Two similar projects are underway in Palaiseau and Bagneux, and other local authorities are interested in following Montreuil's example.

After all, a quarter of France's population (17 million) are currently over the age of 60. By 2050 it'll be a third.

The French will have to find solutions for the care of this growing elderly population. Helping senior citizens to help each other, as the Babayagas are doing, looks like a good one.

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The Babayagas' house, a feminist alternative to old people's homes, opens in Paris

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It's a self-managed social housing project devised and run by a community of dynamic female senior citizens who want to keep their independence, but live communally. "To live long is a good thing but to age well is better," says 85 year old Thérèse Clerc who dreamt up the project back in 1999.

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France is truly a land of contrasts. On the one hand it has historically been a leader in the arts, science and cuisine and on the other hand it was also one of the most prominent practitioners of colonialism and has some of the filthiest and most dangerous cities in Europe, such as Marseilles.

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"Alice au pays des merveilles ménagères", une conception de la femme parfaite en 1953

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Post by Ina.fr.

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Remember that study last year that found parenting is the worst?

It's seriously the worst for American parents.

Researchers with the Council on Contemporary Families examined data from 22 developed countries measuring the "happiness penalty" (the rate at which parents report lower happiness, mental well-being and marital satisfaction levels than nonparents) and found that parents in United States have the largest gap.
RELATED: TRENDING LIFE & STYLE NEWS THIS HOUR
Our gap is significantly larger than Australia's gap and Great Britain's gap, according to a briefing about the report. (The full report will be published in American Journal of Sociology in September.) And they found that in some countries - Hungary and Norway, for example - parents are actually happier than nonparents.

What are we doing wrong?

Researchers looked at all sorts of factors, including levels of unplanned parenthood, average family size and the cost of raising children. They found that workplace policies are the single biggest influence on happiness levels.

"What we found was astonishing," write authors Jennifer Glass, Robin Simon and Matthew Andersson. "The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers and fathers."

Researchers looked at the duration of paid parental leave, the number of annual paid sick and vacation days guaranteed by law, the average cost of child care for a 2-year-old child compared to median wage and the availability of flexible work schedules.

"We gathered this policy information for all 22 of our countries, along with their Gross Domestic Product and their fertility rate, to make sure that our findings were not simply reflecting the effects of living in a richer country versus a poorer one," the authors note.

It's almost like trying to raise children and earn a living in a country with zero weeks of guaranteed paid leave and child care that costs as much as college is draining. Who knew?

Parents. Parents knew. (And know.)

But better policies benefit nonparents as well, argues social historian Stephanie Coontz, research director at Council on Contemporary Families.

"We have reams of research showing that investing in children's well-being benefits all members of society down the road, in lower crime rates and more productive employees," she says in a statement. "This study highlights that, even when it comes to personal happiness, supporting working parents is not a zero-sum game."

Let's hope it's a game our policymakers want to win.
Twitter @heidistevens13 RELATED STORIES: Meet the modern dad: Hands-on and clued-in Being honest about what it's really like to bring home baby Parents, your kids should fight their own battles

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American parents are the unhappiest out of 22 countries

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Remember that study last year that found parenting is the worst? It's seriously the worst for American parents. Researchers with the Council on Contemporary Families examined data from 22 developed countries measuring the "happiness penalty" (the rate at which parents report lower happiness, mental well-being and marital satisfaction levels than nonparents) and found that parents in United States have the largest gap.

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Grande innovation ! Nous allons citer toutes les choses que nous avons aux Etats-Unis, les choses qui nous plaisent, que nous aimons et que nous n'imaginons pas un seul instant pouvoir laisser...

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The US presidential candidate Donald Trump reckons France is no longer the same country after all the terror attacks. But despite the horror, the grief and the understandable fear the resilient French are still eating baguettes, drinking wine and going on strike.

Has Donald Trump ever even been to France?

He certainly hasn't in the last 18 months, but that doesn't matter. He has the advice of one of his friends to base his opinions on.

During a news conference in Florida on Wednesday, the Republican presidential nominee brought up the recent attack on a church in Normandy, and said a friend who recently visited the country told him: "I wouldn't go to France. France is no longer France."

"They won't like me for saying that," Trump continued, "but you see what happened in Nice. You see what happened yesterday with the priest, who is supposed to be a spectacular man. France is no longer France."

Sorry to say, Mr Trump, but it is.

And it's largely because the majority French people defiantly won't allow themselves to fall victim to the kind of reaction Trump would call for in the aftermath of a series of devastating terror attacks.

No, France hasn't closed its borders to Muslims.

There have been some unsavoury incidents which saw some veil-wearing Muslim women verbally abused but the country's five million Muslims are still free to wander the same streets as everyone else.

There has been no walls put up around the banlieues - the poor suburbs home to mainly poor North African immigrant communities.

There may be anger but communities have not turned on each other.

As the BBC's man in France Hugh Schofield put it: "Since the killings began, there have been no crowds on the streets of Nice or Paris chanting "Death to Islamic State". Instead of flaming torches carried in angry procession, there are candles of remembrance."

After Charlie Hebdo, the journalists who survived returned to work and published an edition one week after the attack. Members of the Jewish community still shop at the kosher stores around Paris.

Granted it took a few weeks, but Parisians returned to their favourite café terraces and music fans were soon snapping up tickets for concerts again, despite the horror of November 2015.

The Paris fashion show took place this year, so did the Cannes Film Festival and the Tour de France. Paris Plages beach festival is underway and so too is the Féte de Bayonne.

Euro 2016 passed off peacefully, the only shame being that France could not win and give all their supporters of multi-ethnic backgrounds who had packed the fanzones reason to celebrate.

When The Local visited Nice in the days after the attack, there were the usual sunbathers and strollers along the Promenade des Anglais. People told us of refusing to give in to fear.

And after the barbaric murder of a French priest in Rouen, religious leaders of all faiths got back behind the pulpit and preached unity, tolerance and even forgiveness for the teenagers responsible.

Of course it's far from all being rosy. Yes, we see soldiers on the street now and there are barriers around the entrance to police stations.

We have to have our bags searched more often and it definitely takes longer to get into rock concert or a football stadium now. Some small summer events have had to be cancelled.

The government has upped security and surveillance of course but as of yet it has refused to contemplate the idea of creating a "Guantanamo a la française" for anyone acting suspiciously. Instead it calls for cohesion and togetherness.

But on the whole liberté is still alive and well, if a little concerned.

There's no doubt the French are on edge and angry, we'll give Mr Trump that. The atmosphere is sombre and with each attack we're left wondering what's to come. And there are worries that extremists - with views no doubt similar to the Republican candidate, give Isis exactly what they desperately want and react against the Muslim community.

But in the meantime most French have headed off on holiday, because it's summer you see. And they are determined not to let a small number of individuals ruin their annual exodus to the coast.

Outside our offices people are playing pétanque by the canal, drinking rosé wine and dipping tomatoes in hummus. The beaches are packed, campsites are full and if Trump needed any more proof life in France was continuing as normal, there has been riots in the suburbs and Air France is in the middle of a week-long strike.

So Mr Trump, despite all the problems it faces, both old and new, France is still France, and the French are determined to keep it that way.

We'll let the president have the last word as it was intended for you:

"France will always be France, because France will never yield and because France is always the bearer of ideals, values and principles, for which we are recognised throughout the world," François Hollande said..

"When you lower your standards, you are no longer what you are. That's something that may happen to others, on the other side of the Atlantic,"

If anyone would like to demonstrate to @realDonaldTrump that France is alive and kicking, perhaps follow us and tweet some pictures of everyday life to him under the hashtage #FranceIsStillFrance.

Here's a couple to use.

(Paris Plages beach festival. AFP)

(Parisians head out of the city on holiday. AFP)

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France is still France whatever Donald Trump might say

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The US presidential candidate Donald Trump reckons France is no longer the same country after all the terror attacks. But despite the horror, the grief and the understandable fear the resilient French are still eating baguettes, drinking wine and going on strike.

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"Between the World and Me" came out in French while you were there. How was the reception there different from its reception in the United States?
I didn't want to hustle anybody and pose as this big-time intellectual, which is something I'm uncomfortable with, even here. But the book became an organizing place for talking about their own issues, and I was happy to allow for that. Americans are always saying, "We need to have a national conversation about race!" But we have no idea - France doesn't even acknowledge race.
The festival's brochure cites as a jumping-off point a passage from Baldwin's book "No Name in the Street," in which he draws a comparison between himself and Algerians he met in Paris, who "spoke French and had been, in a sense, produced by France" and yet "were not at home in Paris, no more at home than I." How did you build the festival up from that idea?

I got a lot of help, but thematically it was me. Given the influence of Baldwin on my work, given this being the year of Donald Trump, coming off the first black president, and Baldwin having a renaissance, I wanted to reach back and use him as a framing device. This is an arts festival, so then we went through all the different art forms and figured out how they would fit in.
There are panels on film, art, dance, literature and popular culture, as well as politics. Is there one you're particularly excited about?
I'm maybe most excited about the dance panel, with Benjamin Millepied. I really don't know anything about ballet. I do know about the flak that he got at the Paris Ballet, and that there's debate around race in ballet, but I don't know anything about the history. With the exception of two panels I'm moderating, I chose things I'm not an expert on. I just asked myself, what would I like to know?
Are many of the speakers people you met in Paris?
In Paris I was lucky enough to sit a few times with Nacira Guénif-Souilamas [a sociologist who has written about structural racism and Islamophobia in France]. She's a dual citizen of both France and Algeria, and just listening to her talk about that experience showed me why it was dangerous to make a one-on-one comparison between black folks there and black folks here. Her experience sounded a lot more similar to African-Americans, with the Algerian war being a rupture, in the same way the Civil War was a rupture. Maboula Soumahoro [a scholar who has tried to establish an offshoot of Black History Month in France] is someone else who is going to be really brilliant. When I came to these people, I felt like a 5-year-old, with all my dumb and silly questions.
You're moderating the opening panel, "When Will France Have Its Barack Obama?," which features Jelani Cobb from The New Yorker, along with three French scholars, including Pap Ndiaye, the author of "La Condition Noire" and a founder of black studies in France. What's your answer to that question?
I'm going to let the folks on the panel talk. But I'd say that Barack Obama, to an extent that is not fully understood, is really a product of black institutions. It's not like he ran from Hawaii. He went to the South Side of Chicago, which has a long, long political tradition. There was a community to root himself in. How does that happen in France? There you had the lack of a trenchant Jim Crow system, the lack of slavery on the mainland. The things that made racism so severe here actually gave black institutions much of their vigor. And there is a strong sense of community held together by those institutions. I could be dead wrong about this, but it would be tough to look for a Harlem in Paris. There are black neighborhoods, don't get me wrong. But that's not all Harlem is.
The Albertine bookstore, which is co-organizing the festival, is sort of like a gorgeous dream version of a French bookshop. Did you have a favorite bookstore in Paris?
It's horrible to say, but my favorite was the English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company. They have a really quiet reading room where you can just sit and look at the river. People always asked me if I got in touch with my inner Baldwin. I didn't feel too much of that, but in that room I felt deeply connected.
Did you follow the Baldwin trail when you were there?
I really didn't. I love his work, but I don't want to fetishize him. I avoided Les Deux Magots. The last thing I wanted to do was look like some poseur.
You've been back for a few months. How did your year in Paris change your view of America?
We get into this very simplistic analysis of which country is more racist. But it's more productive to look at the history of a country. Racism certainly exists in France, but it's not the same. Is it better? I don't know. But I like it here. It feels like home.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates Asks: Who's French? Who's American?

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"Between the World and Me" came out in French while you were there. How was the reception there different from its reception in the United States? I didn't want to hustle anybody and pose as this big-time intellectual, which is something I'm uncomfortable with, even here.

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Rentrée universitaire à Aix-Marseille, en septembre 2014. BORIS HORVAT / AFP

Quel est le taux de réussite des étudiants à l'issue de leur première année à l'université, et quelle part d'entre eux réussissent un sans-faute en premier cycle, obtenant leur licence dans les trois années imparties ? Quelles sont les universités à plus forte valeur ajoutée, ce qui signifie que, compte tenu du niveau, de l'âge et de l'origine sociale de leurs étudiants, elles les font mieux réussir qu'escompté ? Les données publiées mercredi 23 novembre par le ministre de l'éducation nationale permettent de répondre, au niveau national, mais également, université par université.

Lire aussi Améliorer la réussite à l'université, un chantier inabouti

Si l'on considère la moyenne nationale, les chiffres demeurent globalement stables : 27,5 % des étudiants inscrits pour la première fois à l'université en 2012-2013 en sont sortis diplômés d'une licence en 2015 (qu'ils aient ou non changé d'établissement entre-temps) en progression de 0,3 point par rapport à leurs camarades entrés en fac l'année précédente. Quant aux nouveaux inscrits à l'université en 2014-2015, 40,1 % ont réussi leur première année de licence, là encore sans grand changement.

D'importants écarts s'observent cependant selon les universités, dont les résultats détaillés figurent dans le tableau ci-dessous. Comme ces dernières années, celles de Paris-VI, d'Angers et de Lyon-II forment le trio de tête concernant le passage en deuxième année de licence, avec des taux de réussite respectifs de 63,3 %, 58,2 % et 56,8 %.

Le CRUF Nord-Est-Midi-Pyrénées, plus connu sous le nom d' Institut national universitaire Champollion, se distingue par sa forte valeur ajoutée : il fait mieux réussir ses étudiants en première année que la moyenne des établissements accueillant un public similaire.

Lire aussi Réussite en licence : les bonnes recettes de l'université d'Angers

Concernant le taux de réussite de la licence en trois ans des étudiants n'ayant pas quitté l'établissement où ils ont effectué leur L1, l'université d'Angers termine première, avec 61,6 % de diplômés, l'université de Clermont-Ferrand-I la devance toutefois en termes de valeur ajoutée.

Claire Ané

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Taux de réussite en licence : les données 2016, université par université

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Quel est le taux de réussite des étudiants à l'issue de leur première année à l'université, et quelle part d'entre eux réussissent un sans-faute en premier cycle, obtenant leur licence dans les trois années imparties ?

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Lors du débat d'entre deux tours, François Fillon a tenu des propos qui ont fait réagir sur Internet. Il a affirmé que les médecins devaient être davantage payés, en faisant une comparaison avec le salaire que reçoivent les plombiers. "Demandez à quelqu'un qui a fait dix ans d'études et dont votre vie dépend d'être moins bien payé que quelqu'un qui vient réparer la plomberie chez vous", a affirmé François Fillon. Sur Twitter, les réactions ne se sont pas faites attendre.

On voit bien que dans la tête de Fillon, le plombier qui bosse avec ses mains ça vaut pas le médecin qui réfléchi. #LaPrimaireLeDebat
- Rouge-cerise (@RougeCerise) 24 novembre 2016

#PrimaireLeDebat Fillon: Un médecin moins bien payé qu'un plombier ? C'est quand la dernière fois qu'il a payé un plombier ?
- xavier ✏️ (@Icilexav68) 24 novembre 2016

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Salaire des médecins : la comparaison de Fillon fait réagir

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Lors du débat d'entre deux tours, François Fillon a tenu des propos qui ont fait réagir sur Internet. Il a affirmé que les médecins devaient être davantage payés, en faisant une comparaison avec le salaire que reçoivent les plombiers.

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Rien de plus confortables que des fringues de sport. merci Skit Box !

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Post by 136164895246.

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People's perception of every country in the world [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Google autocomplete found out what people most commonly search for every country in the world and mapped the results.

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Pierre Noro, a French international student, felt like an idiot. He must accidently have given the girl the wrong number. A week had gone by, and she still hadn't called him.

He had met the dark-haired American girl in front of Dutton Hall which she was drawing for a landscape architecture course. He gave her some advice, and they ended up talking for three hours. When they parted, the girl asked for his number.

Pierre worried she thought he was one of those persons who just gives a fake number in order to escape further action and decided to find her contact information through the university directory.

"I only knew her first name so I bothered a few people with my emails before I found the right person," Noro says. "We texted, and I asked her if she wanted to go out for a drink. There was an awkward text silence - the amount of time where you know it is impossible that the person has not checked her phone - and in the end she texted me and said she wanted to be my friend."
Friendliness v. the intention to be friends
Like many other international students, Noro had encountered a friendly American who at the end of the conversation asked for his number; and like many other international students, Noro was surprised to learn that Americans don't expect a conversation with a stranger to lead anywhere - that Americans ask for strangers' numbers without the intention of contacting them.

"Americans exchange numbers and Facebook and never hear back from each other. It's puzzling but they do it to show openness," says Moira Delgado, the Outreach Specialist for Services for International Students and Scholars. "For Americans, when they ask for your number, they are expressing a possibility of a friendship, more than a promise to be in contact."

Delgado is used to dealing with the different culture clashes that occur when international students arrive in Davis, and she recognizes Noro's confusion. In America, there is a paradox because an American showing friendliness does not necessarily mean that he/she has the intention to become friends. Meanwhile many internationals assume that the exchange of phone numbers will lead to some kind of follow through.
Peaches and coconuts
An analogy that has struck a chord with many exchange students is the comparison of Americans to peaches and many other nationalities to coconuts. A colleague of Delgado once described how Americans are peaches - they are soft on the outside, easy to approach, but the pit is harder - it's harder to get to know an American really well and to create a real friendship. In contrast, many other nationals will be like coconuts. It is hard to get inside, but once you are there, it is pleasant and you are real friends when you have gotten through the tough exterior.

Jeehye Choi, a 20-year-old chemistry major from South Korea, agrees with the peach analogy. She wants to build close relationships, but she doesn't feel she can do that with Americans. They are peaches to her. It is too hard to get close to them. She also thinks that the analogy describes Koreans:

"It fits a 100 percent. Koreans are definitely coconuts. If a Korean stranger smiled at you in the streets of Seoul, you'd think he was really weird."

Choi prefers that people are genuine, and that they only smile if they mean it. In America, people smile at strangers, but it is often not genuine:

"Americans are nice, they smile, and they try to help. They pretend to be friendly," Choi says. "They have an obsession with being nice to everyone, but I can see if it is a fake smile. I'm not stupid. When Americans ask me how I am and I answer, they have a certain smile. It's big, but it's bored if my answer is too long or if the answer is not great."
The origin of friendliness
Many foreigners are surprised to discover how friendly Americans are when they arrive in America. Strangers talk to each other, the cashier at the supermarket asks how your day has been, and you strike up conversations with people who are standing in line with you. For Europeans, who tend to keep a certain distance from strangers, this at first is a welcome change, but when they realize that "how are you?" only means "hi," they often see it as a lack of genuineness from Americans.

Delgado points out that there is a historical reason why Americans are friendly towards strangers. Americans are a mobile people. Historically, they have had to move around a lot, and they have needed to make connections quickly, but also to be able to let go of those connections. It also has to do with their deep sense of being independent and not relying on other people because once you have a deeper relationship, you also become dependent on that person.

The ability to let go easily is not something that goes unnoticed by international students.

"People are very nice and I like them but I know the relationships won't go any further. Americans don't care after you split up," says Tina Rodriguez, a 23-year-old law student from Switzerland. "Americans appreciate the moment, and when they are there, they are there. They listen to you, but the next day they have forgotten your name."
The definition of friendship
An important factor is also how Americans and internationals define friendship. Americans call other people their friend very easily. It is a term used loosely - perhaps because the English language does not offer any viable alternatives. According to Delgado, "acquaintance" sounds too cold and too remote. Especially among college students.

Evelyn Alper, a 21-year-old American national and food science major, somewhat agrees. Her definition of a friend is someone who loves you for who you are, who would help you in any situation, and someone you have fun with, but she realizes that she probably uses the term differently because most Americans use it for both intimate friends and for acquaintances.

"Americans use the word 'friend' for someone they would say hi to and have a casual conversation with," Alper says. "Generally, Americans would call somebody a friend even if they know the person is not somebody who would be there in situations where a real friend is needed."

At first, many international students feel happy that they so quickly become "friends" with Americans, but the enthusiasm fades when they get to observe Americans for a longer period of time and see how easily Americans deem somebody their friend. Quickly, the feeling of inclusiveness loses value.

"Sometimes I'm confused," Choi says. "Americans are always being nice so I don't know if we're close or if there's still a distance between us. I prefer that people say honest things. If there's something they don't like about me, I wish they would just say so. Americans are obsessed with being nice."
What to do?
How do Americans and internationals tackle culture clashes in the best way? One thing Delgado points out is that a good idea is for both sides to consider how they phrase their questions when they ask questions about other cultures. Asking "how" questions and not "why" questions allow conversations about any culture - like asking "How do you show friendship in your country?" while "why" questions limit the conversations and often sound accusatory even if they were not meant to - like Why do you say I'm your friend when you don't mean it?"

Delgado points out that you also have to think in the framework of a particular culture. It might be true that asking a stranger "how are you?" in a supermarket in France would be superficial because nobody cares about the answer, but in America it would be considered rude if you didn't say hi. Instead of feeling affronted, people should realize that the characteristic they are looking for, for example friendliness, might be missing in a person in a particular situation, but that it is often possible to find that characteristic in the same person but in another situation.

"If Americans analyze the French from their American cultural reference, it is true that the French appear cold and snobby, that they don't engage in conversation in public," Delgado says. "If you go back to America, it is true that somebody with that behavior is rude, but in France it is not necessarily so. Beware of what framework you are judging from."

According to Delgado both Americans and foreigners can learn from each other. Foreigners have to realize that they have to take the initiative. If an American says "we should go to a movie sometime," the foreigner should follow up and be specific. The foreigner should ask which movie and which day. Otherwise, it likely will not happen.

At the same time, Americans should learn not to be afraid of taking part in deeper conversations which they often refrain from because they don't want to cause conflict. In some cultures, it is okay to discuss politics but Americans tend to be more guarded.

"Internationals complain that Americans only want to talk about sports and the weather, and it's not because they're superficial, Americans just don't want to upset the balance," Delgado says. "It's okay for some people to talk about politics."

For Noro, who was rather disappointed by the outcome of what he saw as a profound conversation, his perception of Americans is somewhat pessimistic:

"I think Americans feel sociable by talking and asking for a phone number. They are satisfied with that. They connect over banalities that don't lead anywhere, and it becomes boring."

Not all internationals are deterred by Americans and their easy-going friendliness. Tina Rodriguez is in America for the third time and has realized that Americans rarely keep in contact, but she has accepted that and now quite likes their behavior:

"I think I prefer the American way even though it is fake. I like to see everybody smiling and happy even though I know it is not possible that everybody is."
KRISTINE NØDGAARD-NIELSEN is a contributing writer for The Centennial Magazine. Graphic by Jennifer Wu.

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The Paradox of American Friendliness - The Aggie

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Pierre Noro, a French international student, felt like an idiot. He must accidently have given the girl the wrong number. A week had gone by, and she still hadn't called him. He had met the dark-haired American girl in front of Dutton Hall which she was drawing for a landscape architecture course.

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The French view eating as a social experience, not a chore.

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FYS: Exploring Stereotypes in Society. 22 likes. First Year Seminar at Elmhurst College on Franco-American Relations

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Post by FYSFreedomFries.

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Below is France's response to the top 10 misconceptions about France, some of which, in my experience, are held both by people thinking about the move, and by some Expats who are already here. I found this on Expatica, and I love a good statistic that blows an assumption or misconception out of the water, so if you're with me then read on! You'll find my additional bonuses at the bottom - things that are great about France, whether others have misconceptions or not...

"The French government has had enough - it puts an end to common French falsehoods by proving that top French stereotypes have no basis in reality.

The French? 'They don't work hard enough'. France? ' It is on the decline and taxes are so high'. There have been one too many misjudgements about France and its business, economic and labour climate, but enough is enough. Here France Diplomatie debunks the most common misconceptions about France and proves that the top French stereotypes couldn't be further from the truth.
1. France is on the decline
France is the fifth largest economy in the world by GDP and the second largest in Europe, with more than 65 million consumers (IMF 2014, Eurostat 2014).

France also has the second highest fertility rate in Europe (Eurostat, 2014), with a birth rate that has remained constant for 40 years, unlike in Germany, Italy, or Spain (INED, 2014).
2. The French don't work hard enough
On average, employees in France work longer hours than in Germany. Managers work 44.3 hours versus the 42.9 hours of their German counterparts, while non-managers spend 36.2 hours at work per week compared to the 34.5 hours in Germany (Eurostat, 2014).

France also ranked sixth in the world for hourly labour productivity, ahead of Germany and the United Kingdom, which were ranked 7th and 13th respectively (The Conference Board, 2014).
3. The French don't have a word for 'entrepreneur'
Yet France is Europe's number one country for newly founded businesses (Eurostat, 2014, based on 2011 figures). In 2013, more than 538,000 new businesses were founded in France, of which nearly 275,000 were established under the 'auto-entrepreneur' business scheme (INSEE, 2014).
4. There is too little flexibility in France
A termination agreement (rupture conventionnelle) is a flexible procedure enabling employers and employees to terminate a permanent contract amicably by mutual consent. Moreover, the Employment Act of 14 June 2013 passed in the wake of an agreement between employer federations and trade unions responds to the needs of companies to adjust output, while consolidating employment security and career paths. It builds upon renewed social dialogue within the corporate sphere, and demonstrates that France is capable of reform through negotiation.
5. There's so much paperwork in France
France has one of the simplest procedure among G20 countries to found a company. Only five administrative procedures and seven days are required, compared to the G20 average of 7.6 procedures and 22 days (EY, European Attractiveness Survey, 2014).

France also ranked first in Europe and fourth in the world for e-government (E-Government survey, UN, 2014).
6. French taxes are so high
KPMG's 2014 Competitive Alternatives report, which compares effective corporate tax rates in 10 different countries, found that:

France ranked first for R&D services
France ranked third for digital services
France ranked fourth for manufacturing.
7. France is lagging behind on R&D and innovation
France is ranked second in Europe and sixth in the world for the number of international patents filed (WIPO, July 2013). For the fourth year running, France was again ranked first in 2014 by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA, with 86 of the top 500 fastest growth companies based on percentage revenue growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
8. France doesn't attract foreign talent
On average, 13 foreign company directors decide to invest in France every week. France ranked third in the world for hosting foreign students (Campus France, 2014). Nine students in 10 who come to France recommend the country as a study destination (Campus France survey, 2013).
9. France hasn't embraced globalisation
France attracted 6,660 job-creating foreign investments between 2003 and 2013 (IFA 2013 Annual Report: Job-creating foreign investment in France). More than 20,000 foreign-owned companies do business in France, employing nearly two million people (INSEE, 2014). Foreign investors accounted for some 46.7 percent of holdings in the market capitalisation of CAC 40 companies (Banque de France, 2014).
10. France is only great for luxury goods and cheese
France has no fewer than 17 major groups - excluding these two business sectors - among the 200 largest in the world (Fortune Global 500, 2014). These groups are very diverse, from energy to construction to insurance. France is also ranked first in Europe in an index of the 100 most innovative organisations in the world that includes seven French companies or institutions (Thomson Reuters, 2014).

With www.gouvernement.fr and www.businessfrance.fr"

Original post reprinted from France Diplomatie / Expatica, although I confess to correcting a spelling mistake and adding an omitted space-bar; sorry, the perfectionist in me just couldn't help it!

And what do I think is so great about being a French resident that isn't mentioned in this list?
Healthcare
I cannot make a comparison to healthcare in other countries, but my experience is simply that my surgeries, treatment protocols and follow-up/surveillance teams are second to none, and I received timely assistance covering every aspect of recovering from illness when it was needed.
Taxes
OK, I know this is covered in the article I shared above, but I'm not talking about corporate tax, I'm talking about personal tax. In France income tax is calculated and paid according to the income of the whole household - I wrote an article here giving the details on declaring & paying tax in France - but the element that impresses me most is that it is understood that having four mouths to feed is a significant drain on available income, and built in tax reductions are applied. I wrote another article here on how the French tax man is a generous supporter of your charitable donations - so not only are corporate taxes raking well, but in France citizens and companies are encouraged in their efforts to support charitable causes.
Food
I'm not just talking about Gastronomy - my palate is far from refined - I'm talking about the attitude that the French have towards food. It is considered one of life's pleasures, a joy to share and to write about. Flavours, textures, diversity,... And then there's the cheese... Mmmm...
Art
Support of the arts in France is fundamentally ingrained, and you can find museums built around a single artist, a single theme or sometimes even a single item - did you know that in the Lot et Garonne region, there is a museum all about prunes?! And a reliable informant tells me it's really worth the visit!

Are any of your French joys not covered? Have you been surprised by anything in particular since you made the move? Let me know in comments!

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False facts: Top 10 misconceptions about France

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Below is France's response to the top 10 misconceptions about France, some of which, in my experience, are held both by people thinking about the move, and by some Expats who are already here. I found this on Expatica, and I love a good statistic that blows an assumption or misconception out of the water, so if you're with me then read on!

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ATTN: - Dads and moms deserve more time off with their... | Facebook

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Dads and moms deserve more time off with their kids. -- Nev Schulman Like ATTN: on Facebook.

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FYS: Exploring Stereotypes in Society shared Shit Academics Say's photo.

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Travailler aux États-Unis, c'est mieux qu'en France ? Lien YouTube: http://bit.ly/2ccOvQF

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FYS: Exploring Stereotypes in Society. 22 likes. First Year Seminar at Elmhurst College on Franco-American Relations

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In a ranking of 67 countries around the world for 'Ease of settling in', the UK ranked 42nd for Friendliness, and 43rd for 'Finding Friends'.

This is according to the Expat Insider 2016 index by InterNations, which surveyed more than 14,000 respondents.

The UK ranked 33rd on the index of 191 countries, overall.

For the subindex 'Friendliness', we have produced a map of the rankings of the countries surveyed.

Taiwan, Uganda and Costa Rica were the most friendly countries, while Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait were found to be the least friendly.
Here are the full rankings, which you can also find in the report: More: These are the world's most gay-friendly countries More: Here are the funniest 'global stereotype' maps

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The best and worst countries in the world for making friends

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We might not be as friendly to expat families as we'd like to think. In a ranking of 67 countries around the world for 'Ease of settling in', the UK ranked 42nd for Friendliness, and 43rd for 'Finding Friends'. This is according to the Expat Insider 2016 index by InterNations, which surveyed more than 14,000 respondents.

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Ever think of how many great things come in fives? The Rolling Stones, the United States gymnastics team, fingers and toes, the Spice Girls. But, the next It crew stands strong at just four. Direct from Paris, the Gucci Gang, comprised of Angelina, Thaïs, Annabelle, and Crystal (who are all under the age of 18) is today'smore fashionable version of yesterday's BFF4L-type squads - hold the friendship bracelets, add skate hoodies. And though you probably haven't heard of them - admittedly, we stumbled upon the group on Instagram about a month ago - they're a prime example of today's ultra-woke, deliciously judicious youth.

If you're not already having flashbacks of your own high school friend group, perhaps it's easier to relate to them individually. Like most squads, the Gucci Gang has an unofficial leader - it's Angelina, who at 15 is the most outspoken and most followed, and has already landed on the cover of . She possesses a great talent for not giving a fuck, but is also the kind of teen who makes eye contact when she speaks. Next, you have Thaïs, also 15, whose Parisian aesthetic cleverly contrasts her open ears and open mind. There's Crystal, the youngest, at 14, and arguably most eager to make shit happen. And finally, Annabelle, 16, who is their secret weapon of sorts, the member who may not say much, but packs an unapologetic sense of humor, if you can get her to crack asmile. All of these young women are bonded, as their culture would have it, by being so French and anti-French at the same time.

Thanks to French icons like Françoise Dorléac, Sylvie Vartan, and Françoise Hardy, the Parisian woman is her own conundrum. She's dramatic yet poised, lovable yet absurd, and impossibly perfect. It's a misinterpretation people are hell-bent on mimicking, which is why books like How to Be a Parisian Wherever You Are exist, and are so popular. It's why so many of us conflate being "Parisian" with being "French," when they are not the same thing. But they are. But they're not.

This task of assuming the "French girl" role - which, thanks to the aforementioned clichés, we're led to believeFrench women are born into - is of no interest to the Gucci Gang. When it comes to fashion, for example, the idea of "effortless French girl style," to them, at least, is a thing of the past, a paradox, or at least unattainable bullshit. They're not phased by price tags nor hype ("Vetements is a joke" and "Sandro, it's old Paris," Angelina says), they know where to find style when they need it (in Paris, private parties and thrift stores are apparently where it's at - not the streets), and unlike their name might suggest, they have no qualms with admitting to notwearing Gucci all that often (or many designer goods at all, for that matter).

In fact, Gucci, the fashion label, has nothing do with their name: "This girl in high school's email address was called 'Gucci bella,' and we started calling each other 'Gucci bella,'" Angelina explains. "And then we thought, Shit, why don't we just call ourselves 'Gucci Gang?'" Finishing her sentence, which happens often in this group, Thaïs followed, "We put it in our Instagram bios, and then during our first interview, they asked if we call ourselves the 'Gucci Gang' for fun. Then it just blew up."

Yet as uninteresting as they'd like to present themselves (that's the self-deprecating Parisian in them), their coolness is seriously unavoidable. Between them, they boast over 50,000 followers; their #nofilter posts include photos from the front row at Paris Fashion Week; they host exclusive parties, share behind-the-scenes footage from photo shoots, and make Paris look like a playground of teenagers breaking with French tradition. They spend their time sifting through thrift shops, like Emmaüs, Kilo Shop, and Free'P'Star, which may seem like a quintessential teen activity, if these weren't the exact places Vetements mastermind Demna Gvasalia claims to get his inspiration. (Of course, he's also looking at kids like the Gucci Gang, who hang out in the 20th, 6th, and 4th arrondissements, neighborhoods populated by young people of all different backgrounds - the type notably left out of Gvasalia's runway casting.) Thus, the Gucci Gang is in a league of their own.

On a recent trip to New York, the girls found their answer to the often heated discussion between fashion folk: Parisian versus New Yorker style. "In France, everything is taboo," Angelina says. "Everything, really. It's true. The other day, we were walking around in the city, I was wearing an orange dress and Thaïs was wearing these super-short shorts, and we were saying we would never wear this in Paris. Never in the world. Guys here, they will talk to you like, 'Hey, you're cute.' But in France, it's more like, 'Bitch, look at that dress.'" Crystal adds: "They judge you a lot in Paris. It's a judgmental city."

Obviously, the girls haven't spent enough time in New York to get their first "fucking bitch" on the subway, but nevertheless, it's a sad-yet-helpful perspective that degrades the romantic image of Paris and New York as sublimely melancholic cities. That's been happening long before the Gang's time, of course, turning tradition on its head and making it one's own, but they're still piercingly what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Their mere presence amid Paris' climate of monotony and institution is a sign of progress.

So, what is there to learn from four young women who just go with the flow? Especially when there's no method to the madness and no secret French girl formula to follow? Apart from admiring typical luxury designers (Céline, Amélie Pichard, White Project, Grace Wales Bonner, and Gucci, duh), the Gucci Gang's unique identity includes other fundamental components: They've got the tenacity that comes with the youth of today's obsession with the internet (and its unlimited access to anything at any time), they possess a rawness that French culture hasn't seen since the days of Jean-Luc Godard and La Nouvelle Vague (or even earlier, the revolutionary time that was narrated by Simone de Beauvoir) and they're uncensored, which is the only thing that's going to tie American and French youth together.

Surprisingly, they set limits to their power (yes, we'd call it power). And they're brutally honest about their age, their haters, and their "fame." "It's easy to hate us, actually, because we are not doing something, we're not really doing anything," Angelina says. "Whenever you get a little bit of attention, work, and money, people are going to hate you - if you are 25, 16, 50 - people hate when you're successful. We are not successful, but that's a part of success. And we're making money. But we didn't ask for all this attention. We are just friends and we like to do things on Instagram."

Crystal notes aggressive Tweets the girls receive: "It's not even that [people are] mad at us; it's hate, real hate. It's personal shit and all. It's crazy." Thaïs interrupts: "I want to say something. I want to say something to all [of] the people saying fake things and all that. They need to understand that we are like 16." Sure, they may be young, but that doesn't change the fact that they're seated front row at fashion shows alongside industry influencers. Angelina (remember, she's the leader), isn't blind to that fact: "If I was a normal kid, I would hate us, too."

All of that, then (the followers, the haters, the je ne sais quoi 'tude) would make the Gucci Gang a piece of fashion's future. What started out as an innocent pact between friends has, beyond their strongest grip, turned into something worth documenting. The primal virtue of friendship (and girl power) is perhaps what makes the Gucci Gang - and, frankly, Generation Z - so strong. They don't need affirmation from anyone but themselves; and if they happen to gain international recognition along the way, so be it. Because if you ask them to describe what they are, they'll tell you plain and simple: "We're best friends."

Fighting for inclusivity, diversity, and gender-neutrality, Generation Z is poised to turn the fashion world on its head. Get to know today's most influential teenagers with #TheZList, our week-long celebration of under-20 visionaries changing how we think about style.

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Let These Parisian Teens School You On "French Girl" Style

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Ever think of how many great things come in fives? The Rolling Stones, the United States gymnastics team, fingers and toes, the Spice Girls. But, the next It crew stands strong at just four.

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Every American woman has certain expectations about what it will be like to live in France.

For instance, most dream of finding love. You'd be surprised how many of my friends (and of course by friends, I mean my mother) believed that moving abroad would instantly be my ticket to matrimonial bliss with some gorgeous, bearded, broadly defined "frenchman." In the weeks leading up to moving day, we talked up the promise of steamy trysts with hairy chested lotharios, and moonlit strolls under the Eiffel Tower while being serenaded by accordion music.

As an African-American woman however, all this talk got me worried. Would the men in France even like me? Would I be exoticized, or even worse, fetishized? I had read somewhere that in Europe, black women are often approached as prostitutes! I could see it now, "So how did you guys meet?" "Well, he tried to solicit me one night as I walking home, and we sort of just hit it off from there..." Staring at the long stay visa now permanently inserted in my passport, I wondered what it would mean- not just romantically, but culturally and socially- to be black in France. What was I getting myself into?
You're Just American
I live in Alsace, a large, diverse region where there's nothing unusual about seeing and/or being a person of color. However, most black and brown folks here come from the Caribbean, North or West Africa. First guess at my provenance is usually the Antilles, perhaps Martinique - that is, until I open my mouth. " Ah, vous êtes americaine! " To be honest, it's refreshing that no one really cares that you're black (at least not like Americans care). They just want to talk about Beyoncé, and ask if you can give their kid English lessons.

It has been my experience that, French people have no concept of the African Diaspora. The majority of people of color in France know their heritage and ancestry. If you're North African, your people come from Morocco, and maybe you yourself migrated from there as a child. The woman who does my hair is from St. Lucia and can most likely trace her family back for generations. As a result, most people here don't think about slavery when asking what kind of black I am.

This became apparent in conversation with a nougat salesman for whom I had to figure out at least three different ways to say (in French): "I have no idea what part of Africa my family comes from." I felt terrible, really. He was trying to be friendly, but there was no way to convey the murkiness of the historical and cultural swamp he'd waded into. Why try to explain the trans-atlantic slave trade when the real matter at hand was whether I liked the salted caramel?

Which, unlike slavery, was delicious.
...But Everyone's a Little Bit Racist
It's no secret that this country has issues with certain groups of people *cough* Muslims *cough*, but I cannot tell you how shamefully relieved I felt that, well, at least it's not me this time. That feeling of relief, however, has been adequately shaken on a few notable occasions.

For instance, that time when the bistro below my apartment - where I occasionally flirted with the server after a few too many glasses of Bordeaux - hired a new hostess. When I jokingly chided with the server for not considering me for the gig, he laughed in my face: "But you're black!". And that was the punchline.

To be honest, I'm not sure what was more offensive; the played out stereotype or the fact that there was, like, no setup. I hate when jokes fall flat. Way to ruin my day.
Home Sweet Home?
With all the events and media centered around police brutality, the protests, and Trump's hate-mongering, there is a special kind of guilt reserved for those of us who've managed to "escape" by moving abroad. On one hand, I thank my lucky stars that the inexplicable feelings of hate, anger and fear directed toward black Americans every day is no longer my reality. I am still slightly amazed that cops ignore me when I'm walking down the street in France. The America I read about on friends' Facebook statuses and Twitter feeds seems like some far-off nightmare to which I simply cannot relate. On the other hand, reading about black people being murdered every 28 hours, friends risking their lives to protest these injustices, and when every name that becomes a hashtag strikes a different nerve like some god-awful never ending game of Operation.

Living in the US, I never would have defended the social politics of my country. Now, there are nights my body aches for home, for my community; not just black people but black Americans. It is a twisted, compartmentalized sort of patriotism that I had never experienced living in the US.
The Balancing Act
Being an African American abroad definitely involves juggling loyalty to both countries. I constantly compare my experiences as a black woman here to what it would be like back home-from dating (HA!) to hair care (more HA!) to politics to sports. Do I root for France in the 2016 Eurocup, or do I stay up late on a school night to try and catch the NBA Finals? (I chose the latter and don't even get me started...) There are days when it is definitively "better" living here and other days when I'm so homesick I Google map my house and stare at the pin.

But even without moonlit walks or a hairy chested lothario, living in France these past two years has been the best experience of my life. Not bad for a little black girl from the south side of Chicago.

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Every American woman has certain expectations about what it will be like to live in France. For instance, most dream of finding love. You'd be surprised how many of my friends (and of course by friends, I mean my mother) believed that moving abroad would instantly be my ticket to matrimonial bliss with some gorgeous, bearded, broadly defined "frenchman."

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FYS: Exploring Stereotypes in Society. 22 likes. First Year Seminar at Elmhurst College on Franco-American Relations

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Post by FYSFreedomFries.

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FYS: Exploring Stereotypes in Society. 22 likes. First Year Seminar at Elmhurst College on Franco-American Relations

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Post by FYSFreedomFries.

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Les jeux de l'amour et du hasard n'ont pas les mêmes règles des deux côtés de l'Atlantique. Aux Etats-Unis, les règles du dating sont parfois bien mystérieuses -voire révoltantes- aux yeux des Français. Explications et témoignages.

Quand Danielle s'est rendue à Paris pour étudier, elle n'est pas seulement tombée amoureuse des croissants et des planches de charcuterie. Cette Américaine trentenaire originaire de Santa Monica, près de Los Angeles, a aussi testé le marché français des hommes et tout ne s'est pas exactement passé comme prévu.

"J'ai daté comme je l'aurais fait chez moi, cumulant les rendez-vous et les hommes avec qui je sortais. Je me suis vite fait traiter de tous les noms et je ne comprenais pas bien pourquoi", raconte-t-elle, un peu déboussolée.

Un enchaînement de dates codifiés

Les Français qui se rendent aux Etats-Unis sont tout aussi surpris. Alors qu'il est convenu de ne fréquenter qu'une personne à la fois en France, même si ce n'est que pour une semaine, les Américains voient les rencontres comme une étude de marché pragmatique: tant qu'aucun contrat moral n'est conclu, il est préférable de continuer à chercher.

Un phénomène d'autant plus important dans les grandes villes, où le choix est illimité, que dans des régions plus conservatrices ou les petits villages. Ils enchaînent les dates, ces rendez-vous codifiés qui ressemblent presque à des interviews, généralement initiés par les hommes, qui paieront l'addition. Les Françaises les plus modernes n'ont qu'à ravaler leur fierté.

Le premier rendez-vous est destiné à faire les présentations autour d'un verre, et éventuellement à échanger un baiser sur le pas de la porte de la fille après l'avoir raccompagnée. La seconde date se passera souvent autour d'un dîner, la troisième peut être une activité de jour, comme une randonnée ou un tour de vélo histoire de voir son potentiel partenaire en pleine lumière. A ce stade, si aucun baiser n'est échangé, les Américains en concluront que l'autre n'est pas intéressé et cesseront sans doute d'initier d'autres rencontres.

Le sexe doit arriver assez rapidement

Même chose si le sexe n'arrive pas assez rapidement, idéalement autour du troisième ou du quatrième rendez-vous, surtout chez les plus jeunes. "Je me souviens d'un garçon qui était fatigué d'attendre que l'on passe à l'acte, car on se connaissait depuis... deux semaines. Je n'ai pas l'impression d'avoir perdu grand chose", raconte Karine, 28 ans. "Si les choses n'avancent pas, on se dit que la fille veut juste être pote, et franchement je ne suis pas intéressé. Je préfère dépenser mon argent pour une fille qui ne se fait pas prier", balance sans complexes Matthew, un Américain de 25 ans.

Un calendrier difficile à tenir pour les Français, habitués à laisser faire les choses plus naturellement et sans pression. Maximilien, 27 ans et originaire de Paris, a débarqué à Los Angeles sans aucune notion de ce qui l'attendait. "Les films américains ne nous préparent pas à ça, car c'est dans leurs moeurs et ils ne voient pas l'intérêt de formuler ce qu'est une date et les étapes à suivre.

Quand j'ai rencontré ma copine, je l'ai emmenée dîner, puis on a fait une activité en plein air, puis on s'est revus une troisième fois, et elle, elle s'impatientait, elle attendait qu'il se passe quelque chose, pendant que moi, en bon Français, j'apprenais juste à la connaître. C'est un ami commun français qui lui a dit de m'expliquer comment ça marche ici. Si elle ne m'avait pas mis les points sur les i, on y serait encore", s'amuse t-il.

LIRE AUSSI >> "Faisons-nous l'amour assez souvent?"

L'épineuse question de l'exclusivité dans la relation

Et les difficultés ne faisaient que commencer. Car le jeu des dates doit mener à un exercice à faire frémir n'importe quel couple français naissant: parler du statut de la relation. Après quelques semaines vient la discussion sur ce que l'on attend de l'autre et la décision, ou non, d'être exclusifs.

Auquel cas le couple devient " officiel", s'appelle " boyfriend" et " girlfriend", et sera présenté comme tel en société. Comprendre que jusqu'alors, il était tout à fait toléré d'embrasser Martha le lundi, de coucher avec Samantha le mardi, de se balader main dans la main avec Helen le mercredi, puis de partir en week-end avec Martha, qui finalement semble être le meilleur parti.

Une règle qui fonctionne sur le papier autant pour les filles que pour les garçons, même si les filles seront jugées plus durement si elles semblent papillonner un peu trop. Un vrai casse-tête pour les Français, qui parfois obtiennent une dérogation de par leur statut d'étranger.

"Quand j'ai rencontré mon copain je n'avais pas particulièrement prévu que ce soit du long terme, mais je lui ai dit que si on couchait ensemble, il n'était pas autorisé à le faire avec quelqu'un d'autre. Que s'il voulait voir ailleurs, c'était fini. Il a fait une exception pour moi car j'ai expliqué que c'était culturel", raconte Charlotte, Versaillaise de 33 ans qui habite désormais Los Angeles.

"Tout le monde a des amants et des maîtresses en France"

Un message qu'il est souvent difficile à faire passer, les Français ayant, ironiquement, la réputation d'être polygames. "Tout le monde a des amants et des maîtresses en France" est un adage que les expatriés entendent en boucle. Un cliché véhiculé notamment par les médias américains qui se délectent des aventures extra-conjugales de nos hommes politiques presque autant que des leurs.

Un choc culturel donc, mais les Français ne sont pas les seuls à se plaindre des règles du dating à l'américaine. Les natifs du pays se disent épuisés par ce processus de sélection qui tient davantage de l'entretien d'embauche que de l'élan du coeur, et la multitude d'options virtuelles offertes par les sites de rencontre n'arrangent pas la situation.

Les Américains gèrent leur vie amoureuse comme on gère une entreprise, font jouer la compétition, tentent de faire des choix qui rapportent. Car le but ultime de cette danse amoureuse reste le mariage, institution toujours très ancrée dans la culture américaine. Un contrat que l'on se doit de conclure avec le meilleur parti possible.

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L'amour à l'américaine, les Français n'y comprennent rien

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Quand Danielle s'est rendue à Paris pour étudier, elle n'est pas seulement tombée amoureuse des croissants et des planches de charcuterie. Cette Américaine trentenaire originaire de Santa Monica, près de Los Angeles, a aussi testé le marché français des hommes et tout ne s'est pas exactement passé comme prévu.

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La malbouffe chez les étudiants n'est pas un secret. Tout le monde sait que la surconsommation de kebabs, de pâtes, de pintes, de whisky et de plats surgelés va souvent de pair avec le monde de l'étudiant fauché, qui préfère souvent perdre son temps ailleurs que dans sa kitchenette. La plupart des étudiants ont pour habitude de grailler sur le pouce, de sauter le petit-déjeuner, ou d'aller au plus simple dans le choix de leurs menus - ce qui mène souvent à une alimentation répétitive et basique.

Une enquête de l'UMSEM menée en 2011 va d'ailleurs dans ce sens. Elle dévoile que les étudiants simplifient de plus en plus leur repas et que leur régime relève d'un déséquilibre alimentaire - avec notamment la remise en cause du modèle établi des trois repas principaux. Et c'est peut-être d'ailleurs toujours le cas pour certains d'entre vous, que vous ayez trouvé votre place dans le monde impitoyable du travail ou non.

On en est tous plus ou moins passé par ces phases interminables de pâtes à la sauce tomate durant notre période estudiantine - principalement par manque de temps, de blé et de conviction culinaire. Pour voir si c'était toujours le cas aujourd'hui, je suis allé jeter un coup d'œil à quelques frigos d'étudiants parisiens et j'ai discuté de bouffe avec eux.

Marc, 23 ans, étudiant en art et médias numériques

VICE : Hé Marc, ça roule ? Tu bouffes quoi d'habitude ?
Marc : Je mange des pâtes, du quinoa, des pommes de terre, de la viande, du poisson... En gros, je bouffe un peu de tout.

C'est quoi ton budget hebdomadaire ?
40 euros environ. Je vais au supermarché deux fois par semaine et je dépense 20 balles à chaque fois. Je fais des économies en sautant un repas par jour, souvent le déjeuner. Je bouffe beaucoup au petit-déj alors je peux tenir la journée ; et avec la thune que je ne dépense pas, je m'achète des bouquins.

C'est plutôt un bon système. Et l'alcool, c'est une dépense importante pour toi ?
Non, pas vraiment. J'achète trois bouteilles de vin rouge par semaine pour accompagner mes plats, et je ne bois pas beaucoup d'alcool fort.

OK. Sinon, c'est toujours autant le bordel dans ta cuisine ?
Non, généralement c'est un peu plus clean, mais là je bosse beaucoup en ce moment. Le dernier truc que j'ai envie de faire, c'est bien la vaisselle.

Je comprends. C'est quoi le meilleur plat que t'aies cuisiné ici ?
C'était un köfte de lentilles, sans hésiter. J'en mangeais beaucoup en Turquie avant, et là j'avais envie d'en faire un à Paris. Ce n'est pas un plat facile à faire - et je ne le referai plus -, mais c'était vraiment excellent.

Régis, 20 ans, étudiant en graphisme

VICE : Hé Régis, ton frigo est toujours aussi vide ?
Régis : Ouais, c'est globalement le cas. J'achète à bouffer au jour le jour, et en plus c'est la fin du mois...

Je vois. Tu manges quoi d'habitude ?
Que des plats à base de riz. En fait, j'ai un rice cooker, et le riz c'est ce qu'il y a de mieux au niveau simplicité, goût et prix. En ce moment, je me fais beaucoup de poulet au curry.

C'est quoi ton budget bouffe hebdomadaire ?
Je dirais 30 balles par semaine. Entre le riz, le poulet et le steak, ça fait le compte.

J'ai vu que tu avais plus de bières que de bouffe dans ton frigo - ton budget alcool est compris dans les 30 euros ?
Non. Je dépense plus en alcool qu'en bouffe en général. Et encore je me suis calmé, avant je buvais beaucoup en semaine et je n'arrivais plus à aller en cours le matin. Aujourd'hui, je dois mettre entre 40 et 50 euros - surtout dans la bière et le gin. Quand j'ai de la thune en début de mois, je me prends une bouteille de gin Bombay Sapphire.

D'acc. Sinon, c'est quoi le plat que tu cuisine le mieux ?
Je me fais moi même mes sushis et mes makis. J'ai le matos adéquat, alors il ne me reste plus qu'à acheter du bon saumon, de l'avocat, des algues séchées et le tour est joué. Je m'en fais 50 pour 13 balles environ et ils sont délicieux. T'imagines bien que je ne foutrais plus jamais les pieds dans un restaurant japonais.

Anna, 24 ans, étudiante à l'école urbaine de Science Po

VICE : Hey Anna. Tu te fais souvent à manger ?
Anna : Je cuisine tous les jours ; j'aime bien ça. Ça me permet de " penser à rien ", c'est relaxant.

Tu te fais quoi en général ?
Je suis végane alors je me fais souvent des plats à base de grains. J'adore le curry alors j'en mets partout aussi ; ma cuisine ressemble à de la cuisine indienne même si ça n'en est pas vraiment.

Tu fais souvent les courses ?
C'est au jour le jour. Et c'est pour ça que mon frigo est si triste. Le dimanche j'essaye d'aller au marché avant que ça ferme pour payer moins cher - mais je suis souvent trop flemmarde pour y aller.

Je vois. Tu dépenses combien par semaine en bouffe ?
Je ne regarde jamais vraiment, mais je dirai que ça doit tourner autour des 55 euros. La bouffe végane est plus chère...

L'alcool est compté dans les 55 balles ?
Oui. Je dépense 20 euros par semaine en alcool. J'aime bien boire, mais je dépense plus en nourriture.

C'est quoi le meilleur plat que tu t'es fait ici ?
Du curry avec des pommes de terre, des épinards, des petits pois, du riz. Avec plein de curry, c'est excellent.

Alexia, 22 ans, étudiante en sociologie et anthropologie

VICE : Hé Alexia, tu te fais souvent à manger ici ?
Alexia : J'aime cuisiner mais je n'ai pas vraiment le temps la semaine alors je bouffe des trucs rapides, souvent déjà préparés.

D'acc. Tu te fais quoi à grailler ?
Je cuisine beaucoup de plats avec des pommes de terre et du poulet. Je me fais aussi souvent des pâtes ou du riz avec des légumes, des pizzas surgelées et des soupes en boîte.

Je vois. C'est quoi ton budget supermarché hebdomadaire ?
Je fais les grosses courses une fois par semaine, et je dépense environ 50 euros à chaque fois. Parfois, il manque des petits trucs alors je remets cinq balles par-ci par-là. Donc 55 euros en tout, je pense.

L'alcool est compris dans ces 55 euros ?
Oui, j'achète principalement de la bière pour chiller le soir et du vin pour accompagner mes dîners.

C'est quoi le meilleur repas que t'aies cuisiné ?
Des fajitas maison avec du poulet, des poivrons, des oignons et du fromage - accompagnées de vin rouge. Je matais une chaine de bouffe sur Youtube d'un Mexicain qui en faisait et j'ai décidé de faire pareil. C'était hyper bon !

Valentin, 23 ans, étudiant en musicologie

VICE : Yo Valentin, tu te fais quoi à bouffer généralement ?
Valentin : Je suis végétarien alors je me fais des omelettes, des lentilles, du riz, des pois chiche ; mais je me fais rarement à manger. J'ai rarement le temps, même si j'aime bien ça. La plupart du temps c'est resto U et des plats chinois à emporter.

C'est quoi ton budget bouffe hebdomadaire ?
50 euros, plus ou moins.

Ton budget alcool est inclus là-dedans ?
Non, mais je ne suis pas un gros buveur alors ce n'est pas une dépense fixe - ni trop importante.

D'acc. Ta cuisine est toujours aussi nickel ?
Non, elle est souvent à moitié propre parce que c'est chiant de nettoyer les petites kitchenettes. J'attends que toute la vaisselle soit crade et je me mets à la faire.

C'est quoi le meilleur repas que tu t'es préparé ici ?
Un dahl de lentilles corail, même si j'ai grillé la moutarde deux fois. Sinon, une fois on a fait un aprèm crêpes avec des potes. On a fini par être huit dans ma piaule à bouffer des crêpes et faire de la musique. C'était hyper bien.

Elodie, 25 ans, étudiante en communication

VICE : Hey Élodie, tu manges quoi le plus souvent ?
Élodie : Beaucoup de pâtes, du riz, des quiches, et des conserves - parce que ça ne pourrit pas et que ce n'est pas cher.

Et c'est quoi ton budget hebdomadaire ?
Je fais mes courses une fois toutes les deux semaines et je prévois 40 euros à chaque fois. Ça fait à peu près 20 euros par semaine, donc.

J'ai vu des bières au frigo ; c'est quoi d'ailleurs ?
Des bières Carrefour. C'est ce que j'ai trouvé de moins cher - mais qui reste quand même buvable. J'ai pas mal de potes qui passent chez moi à l'improviste le soir, ça me permet de leur offrir un truc à boire s'ils n'ont rien pris - sans me ruiner.

Tu mets plus de thune dans la bouffe que dans la picole alors...
Depuis que j'habite seule, oui. Avant le budget alcool était plus important; maintenant je privilégie la bouffe.

Sinon, qu'est ce que tu te fais à manger quand tu veux fêter quelque chose?
La dernière fois c'était un colombo de poulet accompagné avec du riz. J'ai appelé ma mère pour qu'elle me file sa recette. J'évite généralement de cuisiner pour le temps que ça prend et la vaisselle que ça laisse. Mais là ça valait le coup, c'était grave bon.

Luiza, 21 ans, étudiante en design d'espace à l'École Duperré.

VICE : Hey Luiza, tu cuisines combien de fois par semaine ? Luiza : Cinq fois, le soir généralement. Je me dis souvent que je vais cuisiner le soir pour le lendemain midi, mais je suis nulle en dosage - et surtout, c'est trop bon et je bouffe tout le soir même.

Je vois. Tu te fais quoi à manger d'habitude ?
Déjà, je ne cuisine jamais de viande. Je ne fais que des plats végétariens alors que je ne suis pas végétarienne - c'est parce que la bonne viande est trop chère et que je n'ai pas envie de m'acheter des produits animaux de mauvaise qualité. Je mange beaucoup de légumes et des pois chiche. Je ne me fais quasiment jamais de pâtes ; je n'aime pas ce cliché de l'étudiant qui ne bouffe que ça. Les légumes sont aussi peu chers, et puis j'aime bien expérimenter.

C'est quoi ton budget bouffe hebdomadaire ?
35 euros environ. C'est parce que j'ai arrêté les kebabs et que je ne prends pas de petit déjeuner. J'essaye d'aller au marché d'Aligre le dimanche avant la fermeture parce que c'est moins cher.

Et la picole ?
J'en achète quand je sors ou quand je reçois, mais le budget n'est pas très élevé.

D'acc. Tu te fais un repas en particulier quand tu fêtes quelque chose?
Ça reste un repas classique, mais je me fais des tomates séchées en entrée et je bois une bouteille de Monbazillac.

Félix est sur le World Wide Web

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La malbouffe chez les étudiants n'est pas un secret. Tout le monde sait que la surconsommation de kebabs, de pâtes, de pintes, de whisky et de plats surgelés va souvent de pair avec le monde de l'étudiant fauché, qui préfère souvent perdre son temps ailleurs que dans sa kitchenette.

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A few years ago, both the Financial Times and the reported, rather uncritically, on a letter that the CEO of the U.S. tire manufacturer Titan International, Maurice Taylor, sent to then-French minister of industry renewal, Arnaud Montebourg. It was not a flattering missive.

In his letter, Taylor had lashed out against French workers and labor unions. He called the workers lazy, the unions foolish, then asked Montebourg, "How stupid do you think we are?" (Montebourg had committed the offense of suggesting that Taylor might be interested in taking over a Goodyear tire factory in northern France.) In essence, the piece suggested that the strong trade unions in France were keeping labor productivity, and therefore economic growth, down. Taylor reported that when he'd spoken with French workers the year before, they'd told him that three hours of work per day was "the French way."

I've always enjoyed reading the rants of American CEOs. Usually the CEO is not hindered by any knowledge of facts about how European economies actually work, beyond a few handpicked anecdotes for the bad news. But in this instance, I must admit that I was a bit surprised to learn that French labor productivity had suddenly taken such a dire turn. When I became a student of the French economy almost 20 years ago, possibly the most remarkable change we'd studied was the steady increase in labor productivity in France during the late 1980s and early 1990s. But maybe Taylor knew something I didn't. Off I went, therefore, to the OECD Statistics website to find out what had happened.

I compared the GDP per hour worked as a percentage of that of the United States in 2011 for a handful of countries - a means of comparing working productivity across nations, using the U.S. as a baseline, as is common in international comparisons. I also looked at the average total hours worked per year per worker - a means of measuring, in the world of Maurice Taylor, laziness. I included the United Kingdom and the United States as his presumably preferred places for doing business. I included France for the opposite reason, Germany because it is considered the economy that everyone should aspire to become, and the large southern European economies that are, by most accounts, facing the deepest problems today.

French workers, the figures showed, did not suddenly fall prey to Club Med syndrome and take, as Taylor suggests, almost two-thirds of their working day off. The country's hourly labor productivity is almost on par with the United States. Surprisingly - at least for those who don't bother to check the facts - the total number of hours worked is also higher than in industrious Germany. Perhaps Taylor stumbled on a group of particularly grumpy French workers, but the aggregate statistics leave little doubt that the French are still grafting away. What was perhaps even more surprising was that the average number of hours worked per year in Italy and Spain - two other countries often treated as lazy pariahs - are higher than, or almost as high, as those in the U.S.; their problem, these numbers suggest, is labor productivity, not laziness. And that puts the ball in the court of government (think education) and management (think capital investment and technology).

The myths surrounding French labor have circulated with special intensity, in France and abroad, since the French government recently proposed reforms to the country's labor laws. These ideas have mostly served to highlight that there are many ways to be wrong about why a country's economy is struggling.

It is true that the recent furor in France over labor law reform highlights a couple of unpleasant truths about the country - but very few have anything to do with French workers, per se.

The new law - which has since been watered down since it was first introduced - takes aim at some of the French left's most precious holy cows, introducing, among other things, a rather dramatic expansion of what constitutes a "normal" working week to 46 hours, but with rather generous compensation arrangements from the 36 th hour onward and a redefinition of what unions are allowed to do in the case of disagreements and strikes. In short, French labor law, if the proposal is approved, would look a lot like it does in Germany, the country that everyone in the eurozone is supposed to emulate - no socialist paradise, but no ruthless capitalist rat race either.

Not surprisingly, much of the French public has branded the law, or large parts of it at least, an expression of a broader neo-liberal project this Socialist government is trying to force down French throats on behalf of the country's economically powerful. Although the unions have been relatively moderate in their judgment - according to le Huffington Post, they see a few good things in the law but on the whole wish to see a lot of amendments and retractions - French employers are ritually foaming at the mouth, while every other possible group that could be affected, from student groups, to the militant left, to the anti-globalization National Front party, have voiced their concerns.

To make matters worse, the law was introduced without much discussion with the trade unions that represent those affected. Instead of taking the time to bring constituencies on board and then pass a version that has broad agreement, the government wrote the law and sent it to the Assemblée for approval - and in case things don't work out through the standard channels, the government has made it clear that it might enforce the law without a vote, as if it were dealing with a state of emergency. The result is that much of the country has taken up the Gallic ritual of "social mobilization" - in other words, beware, traveler, when going around France by train or plane in the near future, because your pilots and conductors might not have reported to work.

This is not to be flippant about the proposal. These things are important. But it is crucial, however, not to lose track of the important point here: None of it will matter very much. Sure, France could perhaps do with a little more flexicurity here and there, which the law is introducing, and there are some relics among the current set of labor laws that make life comfortable for some groups of workers while doing the opposite for others. But the problem with France does not lie on the supply side of the labor market.

In raising the stakes over the labor law proposal, the country has fallen for the same myths that led Maurice Taylor to open his tire factory somewhere else. French growth and unemployment do not, did not, and never have depended on more flexible labor. The problem with France is simple: It is in a monetary union with Germany - a much stronger and better-organized economy, where workers are properly trained, employers and unions talk to each other, management and employees work together, and finance takes a strategic interest in what companies are doing - and therefore pays a high cost in no longer being able to control the main levers of economic adjustment, from interest rates via exchange rates to fiscal policy. There are a few ways out of this conundrum: Either France can leave the eurozone, or Germany can choose between raising its domestic demand drastically or abandoning the euro, so its real exchange rate can appreciate and leave others more breathing room. Labor market reforms have very little to do with any of this.

Why, then, so much drama over the labor law? Because many of the players involved have much to gain from all the fuss. The law has been the starting gun for grand maneuvers on the left in preparation for the presidential elections, which will take place in a little more than a year. President Francois Hollande is, to put it gently, not very popular: For the time being he is keeping his head under the parapet on this law, fully aware that such a move to the center would lose him votes on the left without necessarily picking him up much on the right. The proposed law, however, is a perfect opportunity for some major players in Hollande's Socialist Party to sharpen their profile with the party base. It is not a coincidence that Martine Aubry, the previous minister of labor and of social affairs in the 1990s, who introduced the 35-hour week, is among the law's most vocal opponents. She may have good, substantive reasons for her problems with the proposal. (It is important to keep in mind that her law introducing the 35-hour week was hardly a success: The actual working time in France went up after the introduction of the law.) There is also little doubt that her ambitions to run for president, as she did in 2011, when she lost to Hollande, have not been tempered, and that this is too good an occasion to ignore.

And so French politics will, rather dramatically, fill its time discussing something that doesn't matter, ignoring the real causes of French malaise that are much more fundamental. In many ways, the French politicians and the Brussels policymakers as well as the economists who egg them on remind me of the proverbial drunk who is looking for his keys under the light by the lamppost. He did not get home safely.
Portions of this article have previously appeared on the London School of Economics's EUROPP blog.
Photo credit: FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images

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The Persistent Myth of the Lazy French Worker

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A few years ago, both the Financial Times and the reported, rather uncritically, on a letter that the CEO of the U.S. tire manufacturer Titan International, Maurice Taylor, sent to then-French minister of industry renewal, Arnaud Montebourg. It was not a flattering missive. In his letter, Taylor had lashed out against French workers and labor unions.

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Post by FYSFreedomFries.

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Infographic: How people eat fries around the world

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From the messy to the mouth-watering, here are just some of the ways fries are eaten around the world.

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Mes 13 plus grands chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis
Cet article participe au défi blog " The 20th in America " initié par Laetitia de French Fries and Apple Pie et Isabelle du blog FromSide2Side.
Je suis là depuis trois ans, on pourrait croire que l'effet surprise est passé. Et bien non, parce que ces petits ou grands chocs culturels me poursuivent tous les jours. Certains m'exaspèrent tellement que je me suis défoulée ici, l'article le plus populaire étant sans doute celui sur la conduite aux Etats-Unis !

Ne vendons pas la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué. Choisissez-vous celui de mes chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis qui vous interpellent le plus et plébiscitez le par un commentaire ! Voici donc mes 13 plus grands chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis :

1. L'omniprésence de l'espagnol dans les magasins... et ailleurs

Une fois le container arrivé commence le rallye entre la maison et le magasin de bricolage. Entre les ampoules à remplacer et les trucs à racheter, nous avons de plus acheté une maison dès notre arrivée. Une belle maison avec beaucoup de travaux à faire. Notre équipe d'ouvriers était exclusivement d'origine Amérique latine et croyez moi, j'ai plus parlé espagnol qu'anglais pendant trois mois ! Mais ce qui m'a le plus sidéré, c'est le Monsieur Bricolage du coin, où l' affichage était à 100% bilingue : anglais d'un coté, espagnol de l'autre.

Les Etats-Unis restent un pays qui s'est bâti sur l'immigration et cela se voit, pas seulement dans les magasins. L'école élémentaire de mon fils envoie par exemple les informations importantes (et non relatives à sa scolarité) en français aussi !

2. L'absence de marque française dans les supermarchés... et ailleurs

Vivre en tant qu'expat' n'est pas facile si vous souhaitez garder les mêmes habitudes alimentaires.

Bonne Maman est présent partout, de plus à prix je dirais local. C'est l'exception. Evian, Perrier, Maille, quelques biscuits LU sont importés et hors de prix.

De même pour les vêtements. Mais où est le Made in France aux Etats-Unis ?? Nous avons de si belles marques de qualité dans la mode, aux abonnés absents ici. Une boutique Petit-Bateau à Beverly Hills. Le Comptoir des Cotonniers à New York qui ferme boutique. Quelle tristesse.

3. Le nombre de grosses cylindrées... alors que la vitesse est très limitée

Okay, je vis sur la côte Est, de plus dans la capitale. Il y a de l'argent à Washington et les Américains n'ont pas de complexe à le montrer. Mais j'ai vu des BMW, Mercedes et Audi partout du Massachusetts à la Floride. Seriously, à quoi ça sert à part montrer sa réussite ?

Il faut descendre vers le sud de la Virginie pour trouver, ô miracle, un tronçon à 70 miles per hour (environ 110 km/h). Rouler sur une autoroute ici est d'un ennui ! Alors une BMW voire une Porsche pour rouler comme tout le monde à 55 miles per hour (à peine 90 km/h), c'est bien inutile.

4. Les Américains ne savent pas conduire

Finalement ce n'est pas plus mal que les autoroutes soient faites pour des courses d'escargot. Les Américains sont de pur danger public au volant. Passer le permis est une blague et on donne le volant à des ados de 16 ans, qui dans le cas des garçons sont gorgés de testostérone. Après 10 ans de jeux vidéos, ils passent de la play station et des applications sur téléphone à une vraie grosse voiture et s'en donnent à coeur joie.

A mon humble avis, les Américains au volant sont encore plus dangereux que les Américains avec une arme. Parce que tout le monde conduit ! Pour en savoir plus, je vous renvoie à mes 10 raisons pourquoi les Américains ne savent pas conduire.

NB: Petite explication interculturelle: sans permis et sans voiture, il est difficile de survivre aux Etats-Unis.

5. Les phénomènes météo qui me donnent l'impression de vivre dans un pays du Tiers Monde

Comme tout Français qui a écouté à l'école, j'ai appris que la France était un pays tempéré, bénéficiant d'un climat doux grâce au Gulf Stream qui passe au large de la Bretagne. Bizarrement ce même Gulf Stream part des Etats-Unis mais semble avoir un effet inverse. En effet, depuis que je vis à D.C., nous avons eu des chûtes de neige impressionnantes, des tornades, des inondations, des orages dévastateurs etc etc.

La dernière tempête de neige, nommée Jonas, a laissé 80 cm de neige poudreuse derrière elle. Les écoles ont fermé le jeudi 21 janvier et n'ont rouvert que le lundi 1er février. Personnellement nous avons été bloqué cinq jours à la maison, attendant le chasse neige. 2,5 tonnes de neige séparait ma voiture de la rue principale, elle déjà dégagée plusieurs jours auparavant.

Il y a deux jours, avis tornade. Puis avis d'orage violant pouvant tourner sans avertissement en tornade. Nous n'avons pas vu la tornade mais l'orage était effrayant. J'ai assez de branches tombées dans mon jardin pour faire tourner la cheminée jusqu'au printemps.

6. La nullité des coiffeurs américains

Trois ans plus tard je suis toujours à la recherche d'un coiffeur correct. Je ne dis même plus un bon coiffeur. Correct veut dire qui être capable de me faire une coupe basique "vous ne coupez que les pointes s'il vous plait !" sans que je ressorte avec 10 cm de moins. Ou avec un dégradé loupé. Ou pas droit. Ou les trois.

Ce choc culturel là fait toujours mal, et fera mal aussi longtemps que j'aurais des cheveux. J'en ai parlé dans ce blog post " How to find a good hairdresser in the US?"

7. Le budget nécessaire pour les summer camps

Mai 2015, le choc. Je réalise que les vacances d'été commence le 11 juin et durent 11 longues semaines. Comment occuper trois enfants en dehors des deux semaines de vacances familiales ? Les Américains ont la solution : les summer camps, en français centres aérés ou colonies de vacances.

C'est un marché juteux. Une semaine coûte entre 200 et 500 $ dans une formule centre aéré. Notre budget pour 2015 s'est élevé à 6.000 $ pour deux enfants, notre ainée étant assez grande pour s'occuper toute seule. Pour plus de détails, consultez ce post "Summer camps in the US are a challenge".

8. La gentillesse et amabilité des serveurs dans les restaurants

On peut ne pas être d'accord sur ce point. Dire que les serveurs sont seulement aimables parce qu'ils sont payés au pourboire. J'en parle largement dans "Le client est-il vraiment roi aux Etats-Unis ? ". Pour moi, la réponse est oui sans hésitation. Peu m'importe leur motivation. J'aime leur sourire, disponibilité et envie de faire plaisir. Je n'ai jamais eu de mauvaises expériences aux Etats-Unis, alors que j'aurais des exemples à la pelle en Europe !

9. Le plastique chez Whole Foods... et ailleurs

Bienvenu dans le pays du plastique ! Tout est emballé et sur-emballé avec du plastique. Le plus choquant, c'est quand Whole Foods, le leader des supermarchés bio, emballe ses fruits et légumes dans de belles boites en plastique ! Que reste t'il d'écologique dans leurs produits ??

J'habite dans un comté qui encourage le triage des déchets. Nous avons donc dehors trois poubelles : une pour le plastique et le verre, une autre pour les cartons, la dernière pour tout le reste. Le recyclage reste cependant folklorique. J'ai vu de nombreuses fois les éboueurs tout mettre dans la même benne à ordures !

10. Vivre à la vitesse du "Time is Money"

Le rythme de la vie américaine n'a rien à voir avec la France. La vie ici ne s'arrête jamais. Magasins ouverts 24 heures sur 24. Commande livrée le jour même. Livraison le dimanche. Welcome dans un pays où les nouvelles technologies sont au service d'une mentalité.

D'après une étude de l'OCDE, un Américain travaille en moyenne 400 heures de plus par an qu'un Allemand, et 300 heures de plus qu'un Français. J'en parle largement dans cet article sur le " time is money " américain.

11. Le nombre de gens qui travaillent dans un domaine qui n'a rien à voir avec leur formation

Ma coiffeuse (je ne la laisse faire que les colorations, les coupes attendent que je rentre en Europe !) était prof avant de passer aux ciseaux et brosses. La maîtresse de Pauline (ma petite dernière) était assistante de direction avant de changer il y a 10 ans. Notre électricien est passionné par son job, mais n'a pas eu de formation dans son domaine.

Rien de surprenant aux Etats-Unis où beaucoup de professionnels n'ont pas suivi de parcours classique. Impensable en France où le diplôme d'une grande école est synonyme de porte d'entrée à un réseau bien fermé. Je trouve cela plutôt rafraîchissant !

12. La dégradation des manières de table chez mes enfants depuis qu'ils vont à l'école américaine

Mes enfants de 5 et 6,5 ans ne tiennent plus en place à table, font du bruit en mastiquant et nous accordent une vue magnifique sur le contenu de leur bouche. Pire, ils régressent et tiennent leurs couverts à pleine main comme des bébés. C'est un combat de tous les jours, mais que je vais G A G N E R ! Ils peuvent prêter serment au drapeau américain en récitant le serment d'allégeance tous les jours à l'école, mais ils mangeront comme des Français. J'ai dit. Point à la ligne.

13. Enfin mon dernier choc culturel aux Etats-Unis : Le nombre d'Américains d'origine allemande

Les Américains, si on réduit le terme américain à ceux qui sont ici depuis deux ou trois générations, ont beaucoup de points communs avec les Allemands. C'est très frappant quand on observe leur gestion du temps et sens de l'organisation.

Pas étonnant dès que l'on sait qu'en 1910, l'Allemagne était le pays d'origine de la majorité des immigrés aux Etats-Unis. En 2010, plus de 50 millions d'Américains indiquaient lors d'un recensement qu'ils étaient d'origine allemande. L'exemple le moins connu est... Donald Trump !

Et voilà, j'aurais encore pu parlé des machines à laver qui ne lavent pas, des sèches-linges trop chaud. Ou du manque de protection des données personnelles. Des sommes phénomènales dépensées dans la campagne présidentielle. Du peu de jours de vacances accordés. Ou pris. Etc. Etc. Cela sera pour une autre fois !

En attendant, chaque lien renvoie sur un article de ce blog. N'hésitez pas à commenter !

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Mes 13 plus grands chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis
Cet article participe au défi blog " The 20th in America " initié par Laetitia de French Fries and Apple Pie et Isabelle du blog FromSide2Side.
Je suis là depuis trois ans, on pourrait croire que l'effet surprise est passé. Et bien non, parce que ces petits ou grands chocs culturels me poursuivent tous les jours. Certains m'exaspèrent tellement que je me suis défoulée ici, l'article le plus populaire étant sans doute celui sur la conduite aux Etats-Unis !

Ne vendons pas la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué. Choisissez-vous celui de mes chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis qui vous interpellent le plus et plébiscitez le par un commentaire ! Voici donc mes 13 plus grands chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis :

1. L'omniprésence de l'espagnol dans les magasins... et ailleurs

Une fois le container arrivé commence le rallye entre la maison et le magasin de bricolage. Entre les ampoules à remplacer et les trucs à racheter, nous avons de plus acheté une maison dès notre arrivée. Une belle maison avec beaucoup de travaux à faire. Notre équipe d'ouvriers était exclusivement d'origine Amérique latine et croyez moi, j'ai plus parlé espagnol qu'anglais pendant trois mois ! Mais ce qui m'a le plus sidéré, c'est le Monsieur Bricolage du coin, où l' affichage était à 100% bilingue : anglais d'un coté, espagnol de l'autre.

Les Etats-Unis restent un pays qui s'est bâti sur l'immigration et cela se voit, pas seulement dans les magasins. L'école élémentaire de mon fils envoie par exemple les informations importantes (et non relatives à sa scolarité) en français aussi !

2. L'absence de marque française dans les supermarchés... et ailleurs

Vivre en tant qu'expat' n'est pas facile si vous souhaitez garder les mêmes habitudes alimentaires.

Bonne Maman est présent partout, de plus à prix je dirais local. C'est l'exception. Evian, Perrier, Maille, quelques biscuits LU sont importés et hors de prix.

De même pour les vêtements. Mais où est le Made in France aux Etats-Unis ?? Nous avons de si belles marques de qualité dans la mode, aux abonnés absents ici. Une boutique Petit-Bateau à Beverly Hills. Le Comptoir des Cotonniers à New York qui ferme boutique. Quelle tristesse.

3. Le nombre de grosses cylindrées... alors que la vitesse est très limitée

Okay, je vis sur la côte Est, de plus dans la capitale. Il y a de l'argent à Washington et les Américains n'ont pas de complexe à le montrer. Mais j'ai vu des BMW, Mercedes et Audi partout du Massachusetts à la Floride. Seriously, à quoi ça sert à part montrer sa réussite ?

Il faut descendre vers le sud de la Virginie pour trouver, ô miracle, un tronçon à 70 miles per hour (environ 110 km/h). Rouler sur une autoroute ici est d'un ennui ! Alors une BMW voire une Porsche pour rouler comme tout le monde à 55 miles per hour (à peine 90 km/h), c'est bien inutile.

4. Les Américains ne savent pas conduire

Finalement ce n'est pas plus mal que les autoroutes soient faites pour des courses d'escargot. Les Américains sont de pur danger public au volant. Passer le permis est une blague et on donne le volant à des ados de 16 ans, qui dans le cas des garçons sont gorgés de testostérone. Après 10 ans de jeux vidéos, ils passent de la play station et des applications sur téléphone à une vraie grosse voiture et s'en donnent à coeur joie.

A mon humble avis, les Américains au volant sont encore plus dangereux que les Américains avec une arme. Parce que tout le monde conduit ! Pour en savoir plus, je vous renvoie à mes 10 raisons pourquoi les Américains ne savent pas conduire.

NB: Petite explication interculturelle: sans permis et sans voiture, il est difficile de survivre aux Etats-Unis.

5. Les phénomènes météo qui me donnent l'impression de vivre dans un pays du Tiers Monde

Comme tout Français qui a écouté à l'école, j'ai appris que la France était un pays tempéré, bénéficiant d'un climat doux grâce au Gulf Stream qui passe au large de la Bretagne. Bizarrement ce même Gulf Stream part des Etats-Unis mais semble avoir un effet inverse. En effet, depuis que je vis à D.C., nous avons eu des chûtes de neige impressionnantes, des tornades, des inondations, des orages dévastateurs etc etc.

La dernière tempête de neige, nommée Jonas, a laissé 80 cm de neige poudreuse derrière elle. Les écoles ont fermé le jeudi 21 janvier et n'ont rouvert que le lundi 1er février. Personnellement nous avons été bloqué cinq jours à la maison, attendant le chasse neige. 2,5 tonnes de neige séparait ma voiture de la rue principale, elle déjà dégagée plusieurs jours auparavant.

Il y a deux jours, avis tornade. Puis avis d'orage violant pouvant tourner sans avertissement en tornade. Nous n'avons pas vu la tornade mais l'orage était effrayant. J'ai assez de branches tombées dans mon jardin pour faire tourner la cheminée jusqu'au printemps.

6. La nullité des coiffeurs américains

Trois ans plus tard je suis toujours à la recherche d'un coiffeur correct. Je ne dis même plus un bon coiffeur. Correct veut dire qui être capable de me faire une coupe basique "vous ne coupez que les pointes s'il vous plait !" sans que je ressorte avec 10 cm de moins. Ou avec un dégradé loupé. Ou pas droit. Ou les trois.

Ce choc culturel là fait toujours mal, et fera mal aussi longtemps que j'aurais des cheveux. J'en ai parlé dans ce blog post " How to find a good hairdresser in the US?"

7. Le budget nécessaire pour les summer camps

Mai 2015, le choc. Je réalise que les vacances d'été commence le 11 juin et durent 11 longues semaines. Comment occuper trois enfants en dehors des deux semaines de vacances familiales ? Les Américains ont la solution : les summer camps, en français centres aérés ou colonies de vacances.

C'est un marché juteux. Une semaine coûte entre 200 et 500 $ dans une formule centre aéré. Notre budget pour 2015 s'est élevé à 6.000 $ pour deux enfants, notre ainée étant assez grande pour s'occuper toute seule. Pour plus de détails, consultez ce post "Summer camps in the US are a challenge".

8. La gentillesse et amabilité des serveurs dans les restaurants

On peut ne pas être d'accord sur ce point. Dire que les serveurs sont seulement aimables parce qu'ils sont payés au pourboire. J'en parle largement dans "Le client est-il vraiment roi aux Etats-Unis ? ". Pour moi, la réponse est oui sans hésitation. Peu m'importe leur motivation. J'aime leur sourire, disponibilité et envie de faire plaisir. Je n'ai jamais eu de mauvaises expériences aux Etats-Unis, alors que j'aurais des exemples à la pelle en Europe !

9. Le plastique chez Whole Foods... et ailleurs

Bienvenu dans le pays du plastique ! Tout est emballé et sur-emballé avec du plastique. Le plus choquant, c'est quand Whole Foods, le leader des supermarchés bio, emballe ses fruits et légumes dans de belles boites en plastique ! Que reste t'il d'écologique dans leurs produits ??

J'habite dans un comté qui encourage le triage des déchets. Nous avons donc dehors trois poubelles : une pour le plastique et le verre, une autre pour les cartons, la dernière pour tout le reste. Le recyclage reste cependant folklorique. J'ai vu de nombreuses fois les éboueurs tout mettre dans la même benne à ordures !

10. Vivre à la vitesse du "Time is Money"

Le rythme de la vie américaine n'a rien à voir avec la France. La vie ici ne s'arrête jamais. Magasins ouverts 24 heures sur 24. Commande livrée le jour même. Livraison le dimanche. Welcome dans un pays où les nouvelles technologies sont au service d'une mentalité.

D'après une étude de l'OCDE, un Américain travaille en moyenne 400 heures de plus par an qu'un Allemand, et 300 heures de plus qu'un Français. J'en parle largement dans cet article sur le " time is money " américain.

11. Le nombre de gens qui travaillent dans un domaine qui n'a rien à voir avec leur formation

Ma coiffeuse (je ne la laisse faire que les colorations, les coupes attendent que je rentre en Europe !) était prof avant de passer aux ciseaux et brosses. La maîtresse de Pauline (ma petite dernière) était assistante de direction avant de changer il y a 10 ans. Notre électricien est passionné par son job, mais n'a pas eu de formation dans son domaine.

Rien de surprenant aux Etats-Unis où beaucoup de professionnels n'ont pas suivi de parcours classique. Impensable en France où le diplôme d'une grande école est synonyme de porte d'entrée à un réseau bien fermé. Je trouve cela plutôt rafraîchissant !

12. La dégradation des manières de table chez mes enfants depuis qu'ils vont à l'école américaine

Mes enfants de 5 et 6,5 ans ne tiennent plus en place à table, font du bruit en mastiquant et nous accordent une vue magnifique sur le contenu de leur bouche. Pire, ils régressent et tiennent leurs couverts à pleine main comme des bébés. C'est un combat de tous les jours, mais que je vais G A G N E R ! Ils peuvent prêter serment au drapeau américain en récitant le serment d'allégeance tous les jours à l'école, mais ils mangeront comme des Français. J'ai dit. Point à la ligne.

13. Enfin mon dernier choc culturel aux Etats-Unis : Le nombre d'Américains d'origine allemande

Les Américains, si on réduit le terme américain à ceux qui sont ici depuis deux ou trois générations, ont beaucoup de points communs avec les Allemands. C'est très frappant quand on observe leur gestion du temps et sens de l'organisation.

Pas étonnant dès que l'on sait qu'en 1910, l'Allemagne était le pays d'origine de la majorité des immigrés aux Etats-Unis. En 2010, plus de 50 millions d'Américains indiquaient lors d'un recensement qu'ils étaient d'origine allemande. L'exemple le moins connu est... Donald Trump !

Et voilà, j'aurais encore pu parlé des machines à laver qui ne lavent pas, des sèches-linges trop chaud. Ou du manque de protection des données personnelles. Des sommes phénomènales dépensées dans la campagne présidentielle. Du peu de jours de vacances accordés. Ou pris. Etc. Etc. Cela sera pour une autre fois !

En attendant, chaque lien renvoie sur un article de ce blog. N'hésitez pas à commenter !

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Mes 13 plus grands chocs culturels aux Etats-Unis - The Cross Border Blog

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Cet article participe au défi blog " The 20th in America " initié par Laetitia de French Fries and Apple Pie et Isabelle du blog FromSide2Side . Je suis là depuis trois ans, on pourrait croire que l'effet surprise est passé. Et bien non, parce que ces petits ou grands chocs culturels me poursuivent tous les jours.

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fareed's take: what makes america exceptional? - cnn video

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Fareed's Take: What makes America exceptional? - CNN Video

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After Rubio's robotic statements that Obama is trying to make the U.S. more like the rest of the world, Fareed asks what makes America truly exceptional.

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2. The obsession with icy-cold water.

Joris

No matter the season, American restaurants seem set on serving only icy-cold water. My American friends told me that's because it's "more refreshing," but who would want a brain freeze in December??

14. People wearing sweatpants outside of the gym, and flip-flops outside of the beach.

Parisians wouldn't wear flip-flops and sweatpants to take out their trash.

18. Prices being advertised before tax.

Scott Griessel / Getty Images

And feeling cheated when you receive the check. (I know this doesn't happen in every state, but still.)

21. The fact that that "how are you?" often only means "hello" and that the person asking you doesn't really wanna hear about your current state of mind.

22. People drinking their coffee while walking.

Dragonimages / Getty Images

Coffee should be sipped on while sitting at a terrasse.

23. The price of French cheeses at the supermarket.

24. Being able to pay with your card without entering a code, just by signing a piece of paper.

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26 Things French People Find Kind Of Strange About The U.S.

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14. People wearing sweatpants outside of the gym, and flip-flops outside of the beach. Parisians wouldn't wear flip-flops and sweatpants to take out their trash. 21. The fact that that "how are you?" often only means "hello" and that the person asking you doesn't really wanna hear about your current state of mind.

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Of course Michael Moore exaggerates. Of course he engages in cheerful, unabashed cherry-picking. Of course he sees black and white where most of us see shades of gray.

That doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong.

It just means he's being Michael Moore - and in his latest documentary, "Where to Invade Next," it's a more impishly entertaining Moore than usual, using comedy and even a bit of fantasy to prove his point. Which is, basically, that Europe has some ideas on how to run a society that Americans should plunder and pillage - er, adopt! - forthwith. But lest that seem an overly harsh indictment of the United States, Moore also seeks to remind us that many of these admirable ideas originated in America in the first place.

A jocular tone is set from the start, when Moore is "summoned" to the Pentagon. In this fantasy, U.S. military leaders beg him for help. "Michael, we don't know what the (expletive) we're doing," they say. "We've lost all the wars since World War II."

Can Moore help? Why yes, Moore replies. Yes he can.
MORE: Find more movie reviews of films now in local theaters or coming to theaters this weekend.
Here's the plan: Moore himself will "invade" other countries to bring home what's useful. The first "target" is Italy. "Have you ever noticed that Italians all look like they've just had sex?" Moore begins. In his opening camera shot, they sure do.

He zooms in on a working-class Italian couple that seems to truly have it all: good jobs, plenty of leisure time, and the money to enjoy it, thanks to seven weeks of paid vacation, an extra month's pay each year, and oh, two-hour lunch breaks. Maternity leave, you ask? Five months paid. To twist the knife, Moore reminds us there are only two countries in the world that don't have mandated maternity leave: Papua New Guinea, and, yes, the USA.

Next stop: France. "As usual, the French offered little resistance," Moore quips. But soon you won't be laughing at France's expense - not when you see how well they feed their schoolchildren. An average district in Normandy serves four-course lunches with scallops to start, followed by lamb on skewers and a cheese course - camembert is just one option - before dessert. Moore brings a can of Coke. Nah, the kids say.

On to Finland, where a forward-looking education system sees excessive homework as a hindrance to learning, and even eschews multiple-choice questions. Getting the picture? In Slovenia, which looks here like a fairytale kingdom, university tuition is free -even for Americans, some of whom come over to avoid the burden of student debt back home. Eager to question the country's leadership, Moore doesn't need to barge in unannounced: the president of Slovenia welcomes him into his office.

In Germany, Moore marvels at worker benefits, like three weeks at a spa to combat stress. In Portugal, the country's drug czar patiently explains that it's not illegal to carry or use drugs; they've found this approach reduces drug-related crimes. In Iceland, the strong leadership of women - in government and business - is extolled. In Norway, Moore visits a prison where guards don't carry weapons, and inmates live in well-furnished apartments. Shifting tone, Moore conducts a heartbreaking interview with the father of a boy killed in Norway's horrendous 2011 mass shooting. The father tells Moore he wouldn't change Norway's criminal justice system (maximum sentence 21 years) even to see his son's murderer punished more severely.

Near the end, Moore detours to Tunisia, where he finds a young radio journalist wondering eloquently why Americans know so little about others.

"Why aren't you curious about US?" she asks. "We deserve your attention."

It's the heart of Moore's argument, actually: that wherever we stand on the issues, we could stand to learn from others. And it's pretty hard to argue with.
'Where to Invade Next' ★★★☆
Director and star: Michael Moore

Length: 119 minutes

Rated: R for some violent images, brief graphic nudity, language and drug use
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/1TdnsHf

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Review: Moore 'invades' Europe to teach us a lesson

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Of course Michael Moore exaggerates. Of course he engages in cheerful, unabashed cherry-picking. Of course he sees black and white where most of us see shades of gray. That doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong.

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A photo of a pile of crepes cut like a cake has gone prompted "declarations of war" after going viral in France. And it's all (apparently) the fault of the English.

Tuesday was Mardi Gras - or pancake Tuesday - and in an unknown office somewhere in the world, a French person made crepes for their team.

The whopping pile of the delicious French delicacy was then sliced into IT AS IF IT WAS A VICTORIA SPONGE CAKE.

The image was shared on photo sharing site Imgur, and then took off on social media site Reddit, garnering almost a million views in a day.

It was captioned: "A French colleague made crepes today. English people are barbarians..."

The original poster chimed in later to say that the office also has two Irish workers, one Russian and one Mexican, adding that the culprit "could have been anyone".

But it was too late. The French media had noticed by then, and didn't hesitate to get into a little bit of Anglo-bashing.

Liberation newspaper screamed that it was "a massacre" and a "declaration of war" (above) and that the French rugby team must avenge the disgraceful cultural faux pas by beating Les Rosbifs in the Six Nations Tournament.

Buzzfeed France appeared to be so appalled by the act that it issued a "shocking image" warning, meaning readers had to click to reveal the blurred image.

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Outrage after the 'English massacre French crepes'

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A photo of a pile of crepes cut like a cake has gone prompted "declarations of war" after going viral in France. And it's all (apparently) the fault of the English. Tuesday was Mardi Gras - or pancake Tuesday - and in an unknown office somewhere in the world, a French person made crepes for their team.

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Disclaimer: If you're hoping to have an answer to the question in the subject line I'm sorry to disappoint you, because I don't have the answer. But let's talk about it anyway, shall we?

Let's "visit" Piscine Catherine Lagatu, where I swam this weekend. Unlike most pools in Paris (and trust me, I've visited them ALL) which have two vestiaire (locker rooms), this particular pool has FOUR. I know it sounds excessive, but my best guess is that in this case it was due to space constraints. Wait, cancel that--they totally could have made two big ones instead. Rather than being assigned a gender they are dubbed 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Given that's the case, there's always a minor moment of horror when you walk into the locker room and find yourself surrounded by the opposite sex-- some half naked. You've been to this pool many times, but you have to ask yourself "Am I in the wrong room?!?!". Thankfully, less than a minute later a woman walks in and you say to yourself, no, this is France, c'est normal.

Then you walk down the stairs to the shower and pool area. It happens again. It's you and a bunch of dudes. You wait in line to go to les toillettes, and again, men emerge. Let me explain: there are two sides to the shower, and toilets, but but despite being separated by a wall, both sides are co-ed. An example of French free love in the form of swimming pools!? I suppose it helps make things family friendly, but that's slightly negated when the man standing two shower heads away from you is cleaning his junk. You didn't actually think French pool showers were private stalls, did you!?! Ok, well, this pool does have one with a door. But it doesn't lock. In any case, most of the time the showers are open to the pool area, so never forget you're not in the privacy of your home.

During another swim at Piscine Aspirant Dunard in the 14th arrondissement when I had to get out of the pool in the middle of my laps due to an eyelash bothering my eye, I headed straight to the bathroom without thinking twice. Every pool is a bit different, and maze-like at times, so I just went for it. The good news is that I got the eyelash thanks to a mirror. The bad news is that I realized I was in the men's room when I saw the urinals on my way out. This pool actually has separate locker rooms (see they can exist, but hence my question has no answer). Still, I never saw the signage for which was which on the pool side. France sure keeps you on your toes!

Thankfully I didn't see any fellas on my way out, but it was ironic, given I always see men in the co-ed locker rooms! The lifeguards could have, and should have, said something on my way in and out of the men's room, but didn't. Life lesson: walk with complete confidence and no one will stop you. (Don't worry, we'll learn more about lifeguards and their cluelessness in future editions).

For now, I'll leave you with the diagram below ofPiscine Catherine Lagatu in the 10th arrondissement to ponder and get a better lay of the land (er, water).

P.S. For inquiring minds, the plumber mentioned in newsletter #1 FINALLY replaced my hot water tank ONE MONTH after the major leak started. He (and my landlord) made a point to complain throughout the entire process. Vive la France! 🇫🇷

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🏊 Why are French swimming pool locker rooms co-ed? 🏊

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Disclaimer: If you're hoping to have an answer to the question in the subject line I'm sorry to disappoint you, because I don't have the answer. But let's talk about it anyway, shall we? Let's "visit" Piscine Catherine Lagatu, where I swam this weekend.

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Post by FYSFreedomFries.

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Spend a few days in France and it's clear that life in the European country differs from life in America. There are pros and cons to both, but we think elements of France's rich culture and history are worth bringing back home to the U.S.

The nation was named 2014's most visited country in the world by the World Tourism Organization (84.7 million people traveled there last year!). Yes, France is known for cheese, wine, berets and romance. But the culture also prioritizes eating well, aging gracefully and relaxation as an integral part of life.

Here are seven takeaways from life in France that Americans should incorporate into their lives:
1. Treat every meal like a delicacy.
The French appreciate food like they do the arts. Meals can be hours long and include many courses, but the portions are significantly smaller. The French don't usually eat on-the-go -- in fact, they prefer to eat when they have lots of time to truly enjoy their meal. Even their desserts, which resemble works of art, are eaten delicately.
2. Take some time totally recharge and treat yourself.
Tourists might be surprised to find many stores closed on Sundays. A century-old trading law prohibited stores from opening on Sundays until early 2015, when the law was relaxed in city centers and shopping malls. Labor unions and Catholic lobbies have maintained that the French should have a day of rest, which might seem a bit outdated in the modern world. But they've got a point -- relaxing is good for us.

Besides working for companies that have terrible vacation policies, many Americans don't take their allotted days off. But taking a vacation (or even just a break from work) is not only good for you, it could make you perform better at your job. French citizens receive more paid vacation days than any workers in other countries. The average French worker gets 30 days per year. Many people, Parisians especially, take off the entire month of August while others take the month of July to vacation and recharge.
4. Make smart fashion investments.
French women tend to keep their style simple and chic with solids and basic patterns like stripes that flatter nearly everyone. They invest in ageless statement pieces that will last them years instead of buying into trends that pack their closets with clothes they won't wear the following year. They also prefer flats to heels, a decision that will pay off for their feet in the long run.

The French accept that sex and sensuality are parts of being human, and can teach Americans a thing or two. A 2008 report, Study of Sexuality in France, found that French women are "increasingly assertive in their sexual habits." The same study also found 90 percent of French women over the age of 50 were sexually active compared to an estimated 60 percent of American women. Oh la la, indeed.
6. Tell it like it is.
The French have a reputation for being curt and direct. But they simply say exactly what they're thinking. This approach can sometimes be a breath of fresh air. The French speak their mind, which can lead to deeper conversation and less small talk.
7. Focus on what you're passionate about.
The French live each day with joie de vivre and make sure to focus on what's important to them. They find ways to turn every event -- even enjoying a cappuccino -- into something meaningful. In conversations, they prefer to talk about lifelong dreams and passions, something we all should be doing more of on a daily basis.

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7 Things Americans Can Learn From The French

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Spend a few days in France and it's clear that life in the European country differs from life in America. There are pros and cons to both, but we think elements of France's rich culture and history are worth bringing back home to the U.S.

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The United States recently surpassed Spain to become the second-largest Spanish speaking country in the world, behind only Mexico. Yet in 2015, Vanessa Ruiz, a bilingual news anchor in Arizona, was loudly criticized for pronouncing Spanish words with a Spanish accent on English-language television. She defended herself by insisting that she said such words "the way they are meant to be pronounced." She added, "Change can be difficult."

With striking inconsistency, domestic English-language broadcasters-and some listeners-are making the change Ruiz recommends: attempting international place names with a local accent. Americans, famous for butchering foreign words (EYE-rak, EYE-ran), are trying to globalize their speech by saying words like Chile, Niger, and Pakistan with attempted Spanish, French, and Urdu accents.

Listening to the radio, non-Spanish speakers might need a moment to understand that CHEE-lay refers to a country. "Chili is the food, chili is c-h-i-l-i-it is incorrect," says Ximena Aliaga, of the Chilean Mission to the United Nations. "It sounds more sophisticated to pronounce it correctly." She explains that the switch to CHEE-lay was an unintended consequence of the highly publicized 2010 mine collapse in Chile, recently dramatized in the controversially English-language film The 33.

Changes in pronunciation often follow current events, according to Mark Memmott, National Public Radio standards and practices editor. When a location is in the spotlight, people reexamine how they say it. After correspondent Corey Flintoff weighed in while covering the Ukrainian revolution, NPR decided that Kiev was KEE-yev instead of Kee-YEV . That was December 9, 2013. A year later, when Scotland was voting for independence, NPR listeners heard a new pronunciation of another capital: ED-in-BURR-ah. Last year, someone from Argentina became AHR-gen-tyne instead of Ar-gen-TEEN when a staffer from that country weighed in.

"A subtle change to get it right is not going to confuse an American audience," Memmott says.

But can the average citizen be expected to speak properly accented Ukrainian, Scottish, or Spanish? Anatoly Liberman, a professor and linguist at the University of Minnesota, thinks not. "Most people do not know the correct pronunciation of foreign names, and if they did they wouldn't be able to imitate it because that would require mastery of foreign phonetics," he says. "When you begin to do it, you have to ask yourself how far you are going to pursue this path. Should Paris become Pair-EE?"

Adds Liberman, "I see absolutely no need to become foreign in one's own language."

It can be hard to keep up with the changes. Recently the Latin American mission priest Junipero Serra (that's hoo-NEE-pair-oh SEH-rah) merited his own updated pronunciation during coverage of his canonization. In a memo Memmott wrote, "We advise that folks pay particular attention to separating the 'NEE' and the 'pair' so that it doesn't sound like we're saying 'NEEP.'"

Many left-leaning, maybe college-educated Americans strive to be culturally sensitive, sympathetic, and aware. Sometimes it seems like they're willing to follow endless, even ridiculous, twists and turns of language and vocabulary to be "correct." This phenomenon was parodied by Saturday Night Live in 1990. In the skit, a Spanish-speaking news anchor tries in vain to get his Anglo coworkers to stop over-pronouncing. The character seems to discourage English-speakers from attempting a Spanish accent. Perhaps it is a testament to the ascendancy of Hispanophones in the US that twenty-five years later Ruiz essentially request s the opposite.

But Liberman, a native of Russia, feels that pronouncing a word from one language with the accent of another is not incorrect. "We cannot pronounce sounds the way they are pronounced by foreigners," he says. "You have to be consistent." The whole trend, he says, is "a product of conscious and conscientious effort to sound local, which means more politically correct. It's a matter of following fads."

In the world of public radio, Paris will keep its S-sound, and Rome will never become Roma, Memmott says. It's the less well known place names that could change. NPR guidelines encourage reporters to be sensitive to the native pronunciation, but to use "what is comfortable to the American ear." It is this subjective balancing act that yields new "correct" ways of saying things. The trouble comes when speaking correctly gets in the way of being understood.

Roughly a third of the US used to belong to France, another third to Spain or Mexico. The country west of the Mississippi is full of foreign-language names. Is it culturally insensitive, or "wrong," to use the centuries-old anglicized pronunciations of Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and everywhere in between? Ruiz would seems to say it is.

"When new words appear suddenly, there should be an attempt to pronounce them properly," says Liberman. "If they are established names," he says, "they should remain in the form in which they already exist." But he wouldn't be surprised if the changes continue. "If someone will tell us to say Koo-bah, we will say Koo-bah," he says. "We are obedient people. And so quick to be offended."

Considering the number of Spanish speakers and listeners in the United States, Memmott says he hopes Americans will improve their Spanish accents. He sees it as culturally sensitive, and won't rule out an eventual switch to KOO-bah.

Fifty years ago Canada created The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism to reckon with its long Francophone history. The commission's work led to the Official Languages Act of 1969, which effectively guarantees English and French equal status in all governmental usages. As of the 2011 census, 22% of Canadians considered French their "mother tongue." Today almost 17% of the US speaks Spanish, according to the Madrid-based Instituto Cervantes , and the Hispanophone population is growing. Choice of accent aside, these figures suggest that bilingualism in the United States is something to be reckoned with.

Change is possible, after all: Since the mine disaster, the Spanish-accented pronunciation of Chile has become almost universally accepted. But Aliaga, of the Chilean Mission to the UN, admits that sometimes "I say I'm from Chile, like chili pepper," just to help people understand what she's talking about.
We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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"Should Paris become Pair-EE?" The American media's pronounced struggle with foreign languages

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The United States recently surpassed Spain to become the second-largest Spanish speaking country in the world, behind only Mexico. Yet in 2015, Vanessa Ruiz, a bilingual news anchor in Arizona, was loudly criticized for pronouncing Spanish words with a Spanish accent on English-language television. She defended herself by insisting that she said such words "the...

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This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.
T here's a fun game I like to play in a group of trusted friends called "Controversial Opinion." The rules are simple: Don't talk about what was shared during Controversial Opinion afterward and you aren't allowed to "argue" - only to ask questions about why that person feels that way. Opinions can range from, "I think James Bond movies are overrated," to, "I think Donald Trump would make an excellent president."

Usually, someone responds to an opinion with, "Oh my god! I had no idea you were one of those people!" Which is really another way of saying "I thought you were on my team!"

Illustration: Tom Gauld/TwitterSource

In psychology, the idea that everyone is like us is called the "false-consensus bias." This bias often manifests itself when we see TV ratings ("Who the hell are all these people that watch NCIS?") or in politics ("Everyone I know is for stricter gun control! Who are these backward rubes who disagree?!") or polls ("Who are these people voting for Ben Carson?").

Online it means we can be blindsided by the opinions of our friends or, more broadly, America. Over time, this morphs into a subconscious belief that we and our friends are the sane ones and that there's a crazy "Other Side" that must be laughed at - an Other Side that just doesn't "get it," and is clearly not as intelligent as "us." But this holier-than-thou social media behavior is counterproductive, it's self-aggrandizement at the cost of actual nuanced discourse and if we want to consider online discourse productive, we need to move past this.

What is emerging is the worst kind of echo chamber, one where those inside are increasingly convinced that everyone shares their worldview, that their ranks are growing when they aren't. It's like clockwork: An event happens and then your social media circle is shocked when a non-social media peer group public reacts to news in an unexpected way. They then mock the Other Side for being "out of touch" or "dumb."

Fredrik deBoer, one of my favorite writers around, touched on this in his Essay " Getting Past the Coalition of the Cool." He writes:

Illustration: Esquire/NBC News poll

[The Internet] encourages people to collapse any distinction between their work life, their social life, and their political life. "Hey, that person who tweets about the TV shows I likealso dislikes injustice," which over time becomes "I can identify an ally by the TV shows they like." The fact that you can mine a Rihanna video for political content becomes, in that vague internety way, the sense that people who don't see political content in Rihanna's music aren't on your side.

When someone communicates that they are not "on our side" our first reaction is to run away or dismiss them as stupid. To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire. I'm instead referencing those who actually believe in an opposing viewpoint of a complicated issue, and do so for genuine, considered reasons. Or at least, for reasons just as good as yours.

This is not a "political correctness" issue. It's a fundamental rejection of the possibility to consider that the people who don't feel the same way you do might be right. It's a preference to see the Other Side as a cardboard cut out, and not the complicated individual human beings that they actually are.

What happens instead of genuine intellectual curiosity is the sharing of Slate or Daily Kos or Fox News or Red State links. Sites that exist almost solely to produce content to be shared so friends can pat each other on the back and mock the Other Side. Look at the Other Side! So dumb and unable to see this the way I do!

It's a preference to see the Other Side as a cardboard cut out, and not the complicated individual human beings that they actually are.

Sharing links that mock a caricature of the Other Side isn't signaling that we're somehow more informed. It signals that we'd rather be smug assholes than consider alternative views. It signals that we'd much rather show our friends that we're like them than try to understand those who are not.

It's impossible to consider yourself a curious person and participate in social media in this way. We cannot consider ourselves "empathetic" only to turn around and belittle those who don't agree with us.

On Twitter and Facebook, this means we prioritize by sharing stuff that will garner the approval of our peers over stuff that's actually, you know, true. We share stuff that ignores wider realities, selectively shares information, or is just an outright falsehood. The misinformation is so rampant that the Washington Post stopped publishing its internet fact-checking column because people didn't seem to care if stuff was true.

Where debunking an Internet fake once involved some research, it's now often as simple as clicking around for an "about" or "disclaimer" page. And where a willingness to believe hoaxes once seemed to come from a place of honest ignorance or misunderstanding, that's frequently no longer the case. Headlines like " Casey Anthony found dismembered in truck " go viral via old-fashioned schadenfreude - even hate.

...

Institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views - even when it's demonstrably fake.

The solution is, as deBoer says, "You have to be willing to sacrifice your carefully curated social performance and be willing to work with people who are not like you. " In other words, you have to recognize that the Other Side is made of actual people.

But I'd like to go a step further. We should all enter every issue with the very real possibility that we might be wrong this time.

Isn't it possible that you, reader of Medium and Twitter power user, like me, suffer from this from time to time? Isn't it possible that we're not right about everything? That those who live in places not where you live, watch shows that you don't watch and read books that you don't read, have opinions and belief systems just as valid as yours? That maybe you don't see the entire picture?

Think political correctness has gotten out of control? Follow the many great social activists on Twitter. Think America's stance on guns is puzzling? Read the stories of the 31% of Americans that own a firearm. This is not to say the Other Side is "right" but that they likely have real reasons to feel that way. And only after understanding those reasons can a real discussion take place.

Isn't it possible that you, reader of Medium and Twitter power user, like me, suffer from this from time to time? Isn't it possible that we're not right about everything?

As any debate club veteran knows, if you can't make your opponent's point for them, you don't truly grasp the issue. We can bemoan political gridlock and a divisive media all we want. But we won't truly progress as individuals until we make an honest effort to understand those that are not like us. And you won't convince anyone to feel the way you do if you don't respect their position and opinions.

A dare for the next time you're in discussion with someone you disagree with: Don't try to "win." Don't try to "convince" anyone of your viewpoint. Don't score points by mocking them to your peers. Instead, try to "lose." Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it. No one is going to tell your environmentalist friends that you merely asked follow-up questions after your brother made his pro-fracking case.

Or, the next time you feel compelled to share a link on social media about current events, ask yourself why you are doing it. Is it because that link brings to light information you hadn't considered? Or does it confirm your world view, reminding your circle of intellectual teammates that you're not on the Other Side?

I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite "facts" that don't support your viewpoint don't think "that can't be true!" Instead consider, "Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this."

Because refusing to truly understand those who disagree with you is intellectual laziness and worse, is usually worse than what you're accusing the Other Side of doing.

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This story is part of the Internet Time Machine , a collection about life online in the 2010s. T here's a fun game I like to play in a group of trusted friends called "Controversial Opinion."

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One of the most common New Year's resolutions people make is to lose weight by dieting. The idea is that restricting the pleasures of tasty foods will lead to greater fitness and a finer physique. But if these rewards are so valuable, why is it so hard for us to stick to our resolution? Maybe the problem is that when we try to lose weight, we also lose the pleasure of eating.

What if we could have it all? Keep the pleasure and stick to our resolution? In the US, we tend to compartmentalize pleasure, separating it from our daily chores and relegating it to special times. We have happy hours, not happy days. We have guilty pleasures, as if enjoying chocolate or a favorite movie is a moral failing.

In France, pleasure, or "plaisir," is not a dirty word. It's not considered hedonistic to pursue pleasure. Perhaps a better translation of the word is "enjoyment" or even "delight." Pleasure, in fact, takes the weight of a moral value, because according to the French, pleasure serves as a compass guiding people in their actions. And parents begin teaching their children from very early childhood in a process called the education of taste, or "l'éducation du gout."

Taste as a gateway to understanding pleasure

Yohann Legrand, CC BY-SA

The education of taste means teaching children to appreciate and savor the wide variety of flavors in the world and to eat properly at the table. In my eight months conducting research on French parenting in Paris, I found that the education of taste begins very early in families and is reinforced in daycare centers, where even two-year-olds are served formal, yet relaxed, four-course lunches with an appetizer, main course, cheese plate and dessert.

But taste education goes beyond cultivating your children's palate. It's about awakening and stimulating all the senses as well as the mind and emotions. On a survey listing 50 parenting practices with infants and toddlers, 455 French mothers and fathers in my study rated what we called "stimulating practices" as more important than responding to basic needs and teaching manners. Stimulating practices included reading to children, playing music and giving them massages. The ultimate goal of stimulating children is to develop their understanding of what gives them pleasure.

Restrictions that actually open up the world

The moment that tied it all together for me was when I asked a mother in my research study why it was important to train her children to behave properly in public. She simply replied, "Because if they know how to behave properly, they will know how to adapt and get along with people. And that will give them pleasure." Adhering to social rules is a means to greater pleasure. You have to give up something to gain something greater.

As Americans, we are taught to deny pleasure and venerate self-sacrifice and hard work. And when we finally take time off to have fun, we often do things in excess. We party hard. We eat and drink too much. And then we feel guilty. When we enjoy food too much, we say we've been "bad." Maybe if we didn't deprive ourselves of simple pleasures all day every day, we wouldn't feel so compelled to overdo it on weekends.

A comparative study found that when American parents talked to their children at the dinner table, they talked about what children should eat in nutritional and moral terms. When the Italians talked at the table, they talked about what their children wanted to eat, and encouraged them to develop their individual tastes.

One of the most surprising things that French mothers shared with me in my research was their belief that stimulating children's appetites for a wide variety of life's pleasures can actually deter them from becoming addicted to drugs!

Those moms may have been on to something.

Family image via www.shutterstock.com.

Focused family meals

According to a recent national survey in the US by CASAColumbia, teens who have more frequent family meals have better relationships with their parents, and are less likely to smoke or use drugs and alcohol. Sitting around the table talking with your teenagers at least five times a week, even for just 20 minutes, has positive, lasting effects on their health and on family relationships.

But having regular family dinners can be a challenge. Children and adolescents have busy afterschool schedules, and for some parents juggling jobs, working long hours or not having a partner make it virtually impossible to find a moment when everyone is home. But research suggests that making even a little time to have those conversations around the table can have big payoffs down the road.

When you do sit down at the table, leave the television and the phones off until the meal is over. In a recent study, researchers had two groups of families share a meal in a lab made to look like a dining room. One group had no distractions, and the other group heard a continuous loud noise coming from a room adjacent to theirs. The researchers found that the distracted group consumed more cookies. The harder it was to focus on the meal, the more they were tempted to overeat.

The French idea of education of taste has much in common with the notion of mindfulness. Both traditions focus on giving yourself over to the moment and living it fully. If you are going to enjoy your favorite food, really enjoy it and don't feel guilty. Notice the subtlety or the intensity of the flavors and savor each morsel. Lose yourself in the pleasure. As we start a new year, if we must deprive ourselves for a distant goal, why not at least find and enjoy the many small pleasures along the way?

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Pleasure is good: How French children acquire a taste for life

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One of the most common New Year's resolutions people make is to lose weight by dieting. The idea is that restricting the pleasures of tasty foods will lead to greater fitness and a finer physique. But if these rewards are so valuable, why is it so hard for us to stick to our resolution?

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Basée à New York depuis 2012, Jessica Gourdon collabore à French Morning depuis son arrivée dans la Grosse Pomme. Elle suit de près l'actualité du business franco-américain, ce qui la conduit aussi bien à parler de Mimolette bloquée à la frontière que de start ups fraîchement débarquée à Silicon Alley.

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Glacons, yaourts, french kiss: vos questions bêtes préférées de 2015 - French Morning

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Basée à New York depuis 2012, Jessica Gourdon collabore à French Morning depuis son arrivée dans la Grosse Pomme. Elle suit de près l'actualité du business franco-américain, ce qui la conduit aussi bien à parler de Mimolette bloquée à la frontière que de start ups fraîchement débarquée à Silicon Alley.

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FYS: Exploring Stereotypes in Society. 22 likes. First Year Seminar at Elmhurst College on Franco-American Relations

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Post by FYSFreedomFries.

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COP21/CMP11 official video (English subtitles)

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In 2015, France will be hosting and presiding the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21/CMP11), otherwise known as "Paris 2015" which will take place in Paris-Le Bourget from 30th of November to 11th of December 2015. www.cop21.gouv.fr/en

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Le dictionnaire Larousse définit l'intégration comme la "fusion d'une minorité dans l'ensemble national" et le Merriam-Webster, comme "l'incorporation d'individus de différents groupes comme égaux au sein de la société". Si les Etats sont d'accord sur la définition, les conceptions divergent quant à sa mise en application. La France prône l'assimilation. Les Etats-Unis, eux, prônent le multiculturalisme. Un modèle est-il meilleur que l'autre ? Réunis dans le cadre d'une conférence au Consulat de France à New York, trois universitaire franco-américains se sont posé la question.

Le modèle français d'intégration repose sur "l'absorbation" des immigrants au sein de la société dominante, explique Patrick Simon, directeur de recherche à l'Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques (INED) et spécialiste des questions de discrimination ethnique en France. Le droit du sol attribue la nationalité aux enfants d'immigrants nés en France, chaque famille se voit "intégrée" en l'espace de deux générations. Or, ce modèle a atteint ses limites à partir des années 1980 et est aujourd'hui "clairement en crise".
Nationalité et intégration sont deux choses différentes, montrent les recherches de Patrick Simon. "On pense que la seconde génération d'immigrants [6,7 millions d'individus en 2012, soit 10% de la population totale en France] ne se sent pas française ; c'est faux." Selon les études, une large majorité d'enfants d'immigrants répondent que "oui", ils se "sentent français". Sur ce point, le modèle d'intégration fonctionne. Il existe toutefois une dissonance entre la manière dont se perçoivent les descendants d'immigrants ("français") et la manière dont ils sont perçus par le reste de la société ("arabes", "noirs", "asiatiques"). La seconde génération fait de son mieux pour s'intégrer, conclut Patrick Simon, mais ses efforts sont freinés par le reste de la population.
Comparaison point par point
Pour Richard Alba, professeur de sociologie au CUNY Graduate Center de New York et auteur du livre The Next Generation: Immigrant Youth in a Comparative Perspective (2011), comparer intégration en France et aux Etats-Unis est dérisoire. D'une part, le discours sur l'immigration est souvent inscrit au sein d'un narratif national-Républicanisme en France, culture du colon aux Etats-Unis-qui biaise toute étude comparative. Afin d'analyser un modèle d'intégration, d'autre part, il est nécessaire de se pencher sur des facteurs extra-locaux comme le système éducatif, le marché de l'emploi ou encore le processus d'accès au logement, qui diffèrent d'un pays à l'autre.
Le chercheur, en revanche, propose de relever les points, positifs comme négatifs, du modèle d'intégration de chaque pays. Les Etats-Unis, par exemple, sont en avance pour leur reconnaissance des "cultures à trait d'union" ( African-American, Italian-American, French-American, etc.) et se distinguent par une seconde génération d'immigrants en moyenne plus patriotique et plus encline à s'engager dans l'armée que le reste de la population. Le pays, par contre, n'est que "très moyen" lorsqu'il s'agit d'offrir aux descendants d'immigrants de réelles opportunités socio-économiques et des chances égales sur le marché de l'emploi. En termes d'accomplissements scolaires, observe Richard Alba, les Mexicains américains devancent les Turcs allemands, sont ex-aequo avec les Marocains français, mais restent derrière les Indiens et Pakistanais britanniques.
Les Etats-Unis, enfin, sont "mauvais" en terme de parité économique entre "natifs" et immigrants. Les conditions de vie des immigrants aux Etats-Unis sont un autre point négatif du modèle d'intégration, conclut Richard Alba. "Aucun endroit en Europe n'arrive au niveau de dénuement du South Bronx", où 40% des résidents vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté.
Des politiques "plus progressistes" aux Etats-Unis
Les Etats-Unis sont très prompts à étendre l'identité nationale aux nouveaux immigrants et à les englober dans le groupe des " Américains à trait d'union ", concède Nancy Foner, professeure de sociologie à Hunter College et l'auteure avec Ricard Alba de Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe (2015). Toutefois, elle nuance, il existe d'énormes disparités au sein des " Américains à trait d'union ", entre les Irish-Americans et les Cambodian-Americans par exemple.
Même nuance pour la religion, "bien moins problématique" pour les immigrants et leurs enfants aux Etats-Unis qu'en France. Le débat sur l'immigration n'a pas été aussi "islamisé" aux Etats-Unis qu'en Europe, explique Nancy Foner. Historiquement, par ailleurs, la société américaine est moins "férocement laïque" et plus acceptante des religions que la France. Ainsi, deux fêtes musulmanes ont été ajoutées au calendrier des jours fériés dans les écoles new-yorkaises.
La race, en revanche, constitue une "barrière plus sévère" à l'intégration des immigrants américains. L'esclavagisme pèse encore très lourd sur la conscience du pays. Le mouvement de réforme initié dans les années 1950 avec les droits civiques, toutefois, a permis d'aboutir aux Etats-Unis à une série de politiques-programmes de diversité, discrimination positive, etc.-plus progressistes que celles patiquées en Europe aujourd'hui.

En France comme aux Etats-Unis, conclut Richard Alba, "il est important de rester nuancé et tolérant" dans son approche de l'intégration et de "maintenir un discours entre les cultures" au lendemain de tragédies nationales comme les attentats de Paris ou la tuerie de San Bernardino.

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Intégration : un modèle idéal en France ou aux Etats-Unis ?

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Le dictionnaire Larousse définit l'intégration comme la "fusion d'une minorité dans l'ensemble national" et le Merriam-Webster, comme "l'incorporation d'individus de différents groupes comme égaux au sein de la société". Si les Etats sont d'accord sur la définition, les conceptions divergent quant à sa mise en application. La France prône l'assimilation.