A turd world country?

Example

- there are 200,000 dogs in Paris

- each day they leave ten tons of excrement behind them

- each year six hundred Parisians break a limb slipping on dog turds

- the city of Paris uses sixty green motorcrottes that streak through the streets trying to vacuum up the turds. The cost of these to the tax payer is £5million a year

From Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau & Julie Barlow

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Dare to be different

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Years ago when I was presenting on radio , the executive producer told me that my programme should dare to be different. Which was very wise advice. But sadly, in the intervening years there has been a massive shift away from difference and towards uniformity. This shift is driven by the ubiquitous media algorithms which dictate that if you like this crap, we will serve you an unvarying diet of very similar crap. And social media's friends, followers and likes are today's currency of uniformity. However, thankfully a few notable examples of daring to be different have crossed my path recently.  In the past I have argued that there is too much Mahler . And that is a view I still hold. But if we must have more Mahler, let's make it different. Which is what the Mahler Academy Orchestra conducted by Philipp von Steinaecker  have done. The Mahler Academy Orchestra is part of the Gustav Mahler Academy Bolzano-Bozen. This was founded by Claudio Abbado to provide mentoring for ...
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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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Variations on an Ukrainian Folksong

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A Brief History of Time

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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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New technology meets new music

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Wagner, Mahler and Shostakovich all sound like film music

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Boulez - Rituel In Memoriam Maderna

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At home with Benjamin Britten

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