Tag: france

European ignorance kills

Here’s one for all the anti-nuclear nuts in Europe. Your irrational behavior is killing people.

Coal is gaining traction in part due to the actions of Germany, which ditched nuclear power in favor of coal in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

2019-11-08: Germany Expensive Energy

France’s nuclear energy spending was 60% of what Germany spent on renewables. France gets 400 Terawatt hour per year from nuclear but Germany gets 226 Terawatt-hours each year. 45 Terawatt-hours of Germany’s renewable power comes from burning biomass which generates air pollution.

China has a more recent buildup of nuclear energy. China has spent less than $150b from 2000 to 2019 to develop 300 Terawatt-hours per year of nuclear energy.

Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years. The wind farms will need to be rebuilt every 20-25 years. Nuclear plants can last 40-80+ years.

2020-01-04: Nuclear Energy Saves Lives

Germany’s closing of nuclear power stations after Fukishima cost billions of $ and killed 1000s of people due to more air pollution

Guédelon

A medieval castle is being built in France. There’s also a Youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9Kti8oDm_wmbU7-yLRfog

2016-09-15: If you’re ever in this part of France, I highly recommend a visit to the slowest castle construction site in the history of the world.

Guédelon Castle is a project started in 1997 by Michel Guyot and Maryline Martin in the Burgundy region of France. The castle is styled on typical French medieval chateau-fort, modeled on designs from the 13th century, and is being built using techniques and materials available to masons and builders 800 years ago. The Guédelon project has now become a tourist destination, and employs dozens of workers. The castle is due to be completed in 2023.

Sarkozy goes off the rails

Sarkozy declared the death of the 35-hour week, suggested that large companies may have to 2x or 3x the part of their profit they are obliged to share with employees and vowed to replace gross domestic product with a more holistic indicator of economic welfare. He would put a state bank in charge of defending French industry against sovereign wealth funds and other financial predators.

So much for that guy. Same old, same old.

France Facebook President

He used that information and got some coverage with French media that started to report the news and really believed that a French man had become the new worldwide president of Facebook without event taking the time to validate the facts or understanding what this title implied.

looks like the “grandes ecoles” are producing morons, eh?

France fashion overreach

Paris has stopped H&M opening a store on the Champs-Elysees, as part of a bid to halt the “banalization” of the avenue. The report quotes 1 champagne-guzzling snob local shopkeeper as follows: “High-class Parisians don’t want to come to the Champs-Élysées,” said Serge Ghnassia, owner of the fur shop Milady, which opened on the Champs-Élysées in 1933. “It’s not prestigious; it’s not pleasant. The people who come are very common, very ordinary, very cheap. They come for a kebab sandwich and a 5-euro T-shirt.” But that doesn’t seem to be the whole story. According to the Times reporter: things [on the Champs Elysees] seem only to be getting more expensive. The opening of luxury showpieces like Cartier in 2003, Louis Vuitton’s 5-story flagship store in 2005 and the Fouquet’s Barrière hotel last year (the least expensive room is nearly $900 a night) have given the avenue new glitter So which is it? Needless to say, sitting in New York, I don’t know. And the Times isn’t telling (balanced reporting, I think). But the decision to exclude particular retailers, capriciously, by government intervention, opens up some policy questions. You can easily turn particular retailers away, but that restricts competition and amounts, in the end, to a tax on the freeholders (and a subsidy to the existing tenants). Same for a general rent cap.

the french are legislating what stores cannot be on champs elysees. why not force shops by law to open there? heh