Immediately following a five-day spectacle that many thought humiliating for France — the visit of Libyan dictator and "Brother Guide" Muammar al-Gaddafi to France to sign contracts amounting to 10 billion euros and lecture the French about the meaning of human rights — recently divorced French President Nicolas Sarkozy changed the subject in short order by visiting Disneyworld on Sat., Dec. 15, in the company of Carla Bruni, the heiress, former model, and pop star whose "Quelqu'un m'a dit" (2002) received air play even on American radio stations usually closed to French-language popular music.  --  The moment, ripe for satire and parody, was seized by the Voyoucrates, whose well crafted music video parodying Carla Bruni's hit song has been posted on YouTube.[1]  --  A slightly bowdlerized translation is posted below.[2]  --  The original French is also posted.[3]  --  This satire expresses the exasperation felt by many in France because of the hyper-mediatization of Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency....

The imminent arrival of the equinox at 9:51 a.m. GMT on Sun., Sept. 23, which by our calculations is 2:51 a.m. PDT Sunday morning here in Pierce County, Washington, was the occasion for some reflections on the politics of time in the Financial Times of London on Saturday.[1]  --  Matthew Engel, a veteran British journalist who about a decade ago left the Guardian after nearly twenty-five years there and who now writes a cosmopolitan and often light-hearted column for the Financial Times (see, for example, his recent reflections on swimming pool regulations around the world), observed that while "[d]espite all the world's other injustices, everywhere gets the same amount of light over the course of a year" and "this is something mankind has not yet screwed up," it is nevertheless true that "time is highly politicized.  In theory, the planet has 24 time zones.  Actually, there are about 39, and they are still hotly debated."  --  "India is currently the most significant part of the world with a half-hourly time zone — five hours behind Greenwich," Engel wrote.  "This has a curious advantage for British journalists there worrying about deadlines, because you can get GMT by the simple trick of turning your watch upside down (trust me, it works).  Nepal and the Chatham Islands actually have quarter-hour zones, which is really confusing." ...