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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Rue Cler



Hey,

Sorry about not posting too much right now, but it's finals; so I have very little time.

Today, we discovered a very cool new place in downtown Durham, called Rue Cler. You've read me well a French restaurant, Downtown Durham! I mean: not in Southpoint Mall.
It's a low key cool French restaurant with the same kind of food you would find in a French Bistro. We loved it. We had a croque-madame, some moules frites and crepe for desert plus a nice rose to celebrate our food.

The place is really cool. The restaurant setting is pleasant and I was fun to be able to eat some cool French food at a very reasonable price.

Apparently, the restaurant opened less than a year ago and is already a big success.
What is nice is that there is a lot of parking available around it. That makes life easy and it follows one of my mogos: no parking, no shopping!

Long live Rue Cler!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Virginia Tech Massacre




The story coming out of Virginia Tech is just too sad. What a waste! What was on the mind of this young guy when he decided to get his gun and kill his fellow students.

I cannot imagine what the parents of the dead students must feel at this time.
Of course, the debate or better say the controversy around the necessity of a stricter gun control will start again. It is true that if guns were not so easily accessible here, events like these ones might be avoided. Anderson Cooper mentions on his blog that the suicide killer went to a local gun shop to buy the revolver and the ammunitions.
So easy isn't it?


Photo from nytimes.com

Ryanair comes to America


With the ink on the new Open Skies agreement between the EU and the US still wet, Ryanair's CEO, Michael O'Leary announced that the airline will launch low fare, no-frills flights between its European bases and the US.
The opening fare would be around $12. Amazing!
I am sure that a lot of people would be interested in this. I am!

The market is dominated by the legacy carriers (American and British Airways in particular), the prices are always too high and the service is pretty bad (although I have to say that we went to France for Christmas, flew Air France and enjoyed an excellent in-flight service).
For sure, there is room for Ryanair. I am confident that this will be a success story.

The company plans to imitate what it does in Europe: fly to secondary airports in order to avoid high taxes and reduce costs.
For example, Michael O'Leary revealed that he would fly the planes to Baltimore instead of DC, Long Island instead of NYC and Providence, RI instead of Boston Logan airport.

It will be funny to be on a Charleroix- Baltimore or on a Girona-Providence flight!


I can't wait for this day to happen and maybe my family will have the opportunity to see Europe in the summer! (dixit Sheila)

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Foster's Market

 
One of the very cool places to visit in Durham is Foster's Market. The place was created by Sarah Foster, a former associate of Martha Stewart. Not only the food is excellent but the place is also very cool. There are adirondack chairs to sit in the front porch, exotic and gourmet products to buy. It's extremelly pleasant to go there to spend a couple of hours sipping a cup of coffee. I recommend the key lime pie.

Sarah Foster has published several cookbooks and is a frequently invited on numerous cooking shows in the US.

If you come visit us, we'll very likely take you to Foster's.
 
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Global Warming


We just saw the Al Gore's documentary about Global Warming. It is unbelievable. The documentary is very well set up and presents the issue in a very clear way.

Of course, I was startled when I realized how bad the situation is. I knew, of course that the earth was warming up but I had no idea that It was warming up so fast!

Human activities are clearly the source of it. As I said, It is just unbelievable. The ice is melting at the poles, but extremely quickly. Soon Greenland will have lost all the ice cap that covers it. The risk is of course the impact on the sea levels (a probable elevation of 40 feet) and the effect of the ocean currents that currently regulate the weather and the climate around the earth.

The statistic that really impressed me was the following one: If the ice reverberates around 90% of the heat coming from the sun, once it is melted the ocean absorbs 90 % of it. So there is clearly a very negative path there because not only the ice prevents the warming, but the ocean accelerates it.

What is amazing and as Al Gore puts it in his documentary, the technologies exists to limit our emissions. Of course, the US are behind everyone else in terms of limiting their emissions of green house gazes. I hope that there will be a change with the next administration.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Innocent


Good news for the Duke community! The charges against three lacrosse players were dropped today. That 's a great relief for them I am sure, but also for the School and the city of Durham. This case got a national media coverage and of course the story of that black student at NCCU ( another Durham University) who alleged she was raped by three white athletes of the Duke Lacrosse team lead to a negative campaign which affected everybody here.

In the end, after the plaintiff changed her story and some DNA tests exonerated the players, the final charges against the player were finally dropped.

Anyway, I feel sorry for this woman. Apparently, nothing happened in this house but this case brought to light some dysfunctions in the undergrad programs.
The University of course took some actions to prevent underage drinking etc... and I really hope that such a story will never happen again.

I hope that the two players that have not graduated yet will come back to Duke and challenge themselves.


Photo from CNN.COM

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Obama


Obama was yesterday on the David Letterman's Late Night Show. He announced that he is not interested to run as a Vice President with Hillary Clinton as the main candidate.

Kind of funny because as Letterman said that would be a pretty strong ticket. One of the problems with Obama is that he has only been Senator for 2 years. It is not even sure that he could win his reelection. He therefore does not know very well how does Washington function. Having Clinton as the leader of the ticket could be an advantage. She has a lot more experience than him.

On the other hand, the fact that he has not been "polluted" by being for too long in Washington might help him. A lot of people might think that he might be in a better position to get something done because of that.
He does not have a lot of political friends, he does not have a long time relationship with lobbyists etc...
In any case, Obama is pretty optimistic about his chance of being the next US president. I love the sentence "I don't run for seconds." That's pretty powerful.


Photo from CNN.com

Friday, April 6, 2007

Macao forever



An interesting article was published today in Le Monde. More money was collected in the Macao's casinos than in the Vegas ones.
$7.2 Billions for Macao versus $6.6 for Vegas. What the article does not mention is how many tourists visited Vegas last year compared to the ones than went to Macao.
Today, Vegas is trying to become a more upscale destination, also a family destination.
I wonder if that may not have affected the sales.
However, the money ends up in the same pockets. The new casino developers are the same than the Vegas one. In fact, they are building replicas of the Vegas Casinos like the Venetian.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

More $$$$


Exactly, Obama raised at least $25 millions. This is amazing but with Clinton that makes $50 millions dollars going to democratic candidates. This is way more that the amount of money that is available to the republican candidates. Are the big pockets of this country feeling the "wind of change"?

Anyhow, it shows that a lot of influential people are betting on a democratic president . We'll see.

The battle will be tough on the democratic side.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

$$$$$$$$


This is just amazing. The numbers are just going crazy. $26 millions for Clinton and almost just as much for Romney, this campaign is really becoming crazy. I am stunned. If I remember correctly last time, Bush had raised 7 Million dollars at this time and that was already an all time high.

I am not sure what I am supposed to think when I see these figures except that It is too much. Too much money is needed to be a presidential candidate nowadays. I can't believe that we could do a better use of this money.