WhiteRabbit's Braindump

Everyone is doing it, so I don't see why I couldn't poke fun at Sarkozy too. He recently declared himself against a full-out smoking ban, saying that "it would be strange to forbid smoking in places where tobacco is sold".

Oh yes, so I want the right to drink alcohol in the supermarket (where alcohol is sold) and to have sex in pub toilets (where condoms are sold). Sounds like a light (ah!) argument to me.

When 70% to 80% of the French are in favour of a ban, isn't going against it sort of like ignoring democracy?

EDIT: You know how smoking lobbies always tell you that banning smoking from restaurants will be the end of the world for them? Well they're just talking crap: Scotland banned smoking from pubs (that's right, pub, where people go to drink) and restaurants, and a large chain found they're actually making more profit. A theory I've often defended (I know many people who don't go out at all in France because of the sorry lack of atmosphere of our restaurants), with no actual figures unfortunately.

A colleague of mine pointed me to an article on BBC where it is argued that the upcoming ban on smoking threatens the very identity of the French. I guess we frogs can only exist in a cloud of Goldo smoke, at least in some British reporter's stereotypical views. Let's go quickly through the most stupid points of the article:

Because it seems that almost everybody here smokes.

Fair enough. Coming from Britain or Oz, we also get that impression every time. Although I have to wonder whether the difference is so much in the numbers ( It actually seems to be about the same in France and in Britain) or the behaviours: French smokers tend to smoke anywhere in public places, while walking and so on, while British smokers seem to only smoke in pubs.

It's a sort of intellectual initiation rite - at 16, you get your first scooter, briefly become a communist and roll your first cigarette - and only then do you really merit the title "French Student".

That's just crap. Of course, to the British untrained eye, anyone vaguely leftist is a commie, but that's just not true. You're just as likely to meet a briefly anarchist, a briefly socialist, a briefly fascist, a briefly confused, and just as many who just don't give a toss.

As for the smoking part, students actually tend to smoke less than their elders.

Visit any cafe in any big university town in France and through a cloying haze of smoke you will always see large groups of youths drinking their black coffee and drawing pensively on their Gitanes.

Rubbish. The young tend to go more for Marlboro, Camel and other milder-tasting brands. Gitanes and Gauloise (which is actually disappearing) have always been something from the "previous generation", meaning people who are aged 50 or more today.

The cafe and cigarette culture here isn't just about being sociable, it has an intellectual aspect too. The more brainy you are, the more you smoke.

Also rubbish: The more brainy you are, the more likely you are to go into "grandes ecoles", which has the lowest rate of smokers amoung the youths.

The article then goes on showing that every famous Frenchman living 40 years ago was an admitted smokers, which is as useful as saying that all Brits have bad teeth because they did 40 years ago: 40 years ago, smoking was displayed everywhere. I guess "Breakfast at Tiffany's" didn't make it to Britain.

So there we go, most of this article is mostly stereotype and unresearched gossip. I held BBC in higher esteem. My hope is that the smoking ban will be actually enforced (as opposed to ignored like today's Evin law) and that France will be more French: when stepping in a restaurant, hopefully we'll salivate from the smells of frying garlic and steak, as opposed to bracing ourselves to enter into a gas chamber.

Finally, let me recommand Thank you for smoking, a funny film about tobacco public relations in the new century.

I don't remember if I have already mentionned that, but it is my life's goal to get rid of rats, mice and other rodents. For most everyday usage, mouse operation is at best impractical and cumbersome, and at worst totally braindamaged. Before you start flaming me, let me say that:

• Yes, graphic applications that require 2D positionning are a valid use of the mouse (I'm thinking picture editing, PCB layout, stuff like that),
• Paging through the drop-down menus of your favourite application does not make the mouse useful, it just makes drop-down menus brain damaged.

So, one of the last things I didn't know how to do only with my keyboard was cutting and pasting, mostly between Vim and Firefox's URL bar. I have to concede to the Windows people, X11's cutting and pasting is a mess. Here's how to do it.

First thing to understand is that X has 2 different buffers: the primary selection buffer (which corresponds directly to the text that is selected right now on the screen) and the clipboard, which is filled through active action (so to speak). Now the really fun part is that each application seems to have its own idea of how to handle the buffers, well in line with X's founding principle of providing mechanism and no policy.

Xterm only uses the selection buffer. You copy the buffer to Xterm with shift-insert (that's right).

Vim uses a register name for each: "* is the selection buffer, "+ is the clipboard.

Firefox is a bit confused: ctrl-L ctrl-C copies to the clipboard, while ctrl-L home shift-end ctrl-C copies to the primary selection (which seems just stupid).

So there. We just need to keep in mind what we're copying into, and we no longer need the mouse. That makes me happy.