Say cheese, Mr. President

That'd be French president Jacques Chirac, who apparently cracked jokes to German and Russian leaders about British food during a meeting in Kaliningrad leading up to the G8 summit, saying "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad."

"The only thing they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease," Mr Chirac said, according to the newspaper's report.

"After Finland, it is the country with the worst food."

One wonders what Mr. Chirac's excuse is for that pallid, bland white pap that the French have the effrontery to call Cheddar cheese....

(Though to be fair, half the so-called "cheddar" cheese sold in US supermarkets is as bad or worse, rushed to market as soon as it's firm enough to package in plastic wrap, with as little as a few weeks' aging.)

In related news, President Chirac is reported to have "given verbal support to farmers who wrecked a new McDonald's hamburger restaurant being built in south-west France."

President Chirac - in a speech to farmers in eastern France - said that the farmers' anger arose from a just concern, though he described the form of the protest as unacceptable.

"It would be in nobody's interests to allow one single power, albeit a respectable and friendly one, to rule undivided over the planet's food markets."

It was understandable that French farmers were angered, he said, "when sales did not even cover production costs."

You have to admit he has a point there.  However, having been in the UK when the European Common Market was created, I find it necessary to view this comment in light of the massive protests at the time among British farmers against having to compete with French farmers who received huge government subsidies, basically because the French farming system had never made the climb out of the Middle Ages and was the most inefficient in Europe.  One wonders whether French farmers' sales would better cover their production costs if they updated to at least a 19th-century standard of farming.

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Also in European news, Sven Jaschen, the cracker responsible for the Sasser worm, has gone on trial in Verden, Germany, on charges of computer sabotage, disrupting public services, and illegally altering data.  He has also reportedly confessed responsibility for some versions of the Netsky virus; Sophos estimates 70% of all virus infections in the first half of 2004 were Jaschen's work.  He now works for a German security company called Securepoint.

What's 30,000 years between friends?

Depends.  As the age of the Earth goes, it's an eyeblink.  But when it means humans have been in the Americas almost four times as long as previously believed -- almost four times as long as human recorded history, in fact -- it can be a pretty big deal.

Of particular interest to tech geeks in this article is the final comment (emphasis mine):

The footprints remain where they were found.  The team has used laser scans and rapid prototyping equipment to create highly accurate three-dimensional copies, accurate to a fraction of a millimetre, which can be viewed at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition in London, UK, which ends on 7 July.

Now there's applied tech for you.  I bet the inventors of rapid prototyping never thought the devices they were building would be used for THAT purpose....

Getting off lightly

cymrullewes was just rear-ended, driving my Mercedes, on the Rte 3 overpass from I-495 in Massachusetts.  She was hit while stopped at a red light by a newly-licensed Canadian driver.  The other driver was insured, neither person was injured, and damage to the car sounds minor, though we'll want to get it properly inspected to be sure.

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Update:  Visible damage is restricted to the bumper skin and the rear corner of the left fender panel.  Should be easily repaired, probably without having to pull any body panels.