the bemused blog

The Israel Lobby

One of the things about living in France is being somewhat cut off from the english media, and having to resort to BBC world for english news in the television. Its a good channel with lots of interesting programmes, but like any 24 hour news channel, things can get a bit repetitive after a while.

Despite this, I periodically find myself drawn back to it, and last week I happened to see the programme ‘Hard Talk‘. Stephen Wait was talking about his book, the Israel Lobby, and the information he came up with was fascinating. The book is based on an essay he wrote last year for the London review of Books, called The Israel Lobby. Its a bit long, but I reccomend you read it if you have a few spare minutes.

is this page in france?

This is of no interest for anyone except me, check out this HanhonZendcomlane

Bacon Salt or why we are all doomed

Bacon Salt is one of those things that makes you despair for humanity, but at the same time I’m finding it hard to resist buying some. What would vegetarian, kosher bacon taste like? must resist…

Berlin Restaurants

I just found this cool site, if you’re looking for a Berlin Restaurant, then this is the place to look. My favourite restaurant in berlin is Zur Letzten Instanz, a traditional restaurant, serving sourkraut and great beer!

SEO gafoogteseitans

so I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but only just got round to it. If you’re looking for a gafoogteseitans, try here or here.

PS. thanks to WordConstructor

Daniel Glet

Daniel is a pianist and composer (as well as being a friend of mine). He has recently created a website to try and promote his work. he is currently playing in Chance at the Théâtre du Méry in the 17th in Paris.

Moving Mail from Mail.app to Thunderbird on OS X

I finally decided to switch from OS X default Mail.app to thunderbird. apparently the Mail.app in 10.4 is going to be amazing, but I cant wait that long, and I’m fed up with using a basic email client, especially when I’m more used to mutt.

I found this page, which was helpful, but I have dozens of mailboxes that I wanted to import, so I needed an automated solution.

Try the following at your own risk, I’m not responsable for any lost mail. You do backup, don’t you ?

1. in Mail.app, select all your folders, ctrl click and select “Remove deleted messages” (or whatever it is in English – I see “Eliminer les messages suprimés”)

2. Close Mail.app

3. Make a copy of your mailbox :

$ cp -r ~/Library/Mail ~/mail-bak

4. Make a list of all mailboxes you want to copy :

$ cd ~/mail-bak
$ find . -name mbox | grep -v Deleted > mbox.list
$ find . -name Incoming_Mail >> mbox.list
(Incoming_Mail is the name of the inbox where IMAP mail is stored)

5. Copy the mail over to Thunderbird’s mail directory

$ cat mbox.list | while read line ; do newfile=`echo $line | sed 's/ /_/g' | sed 's/^\.\///g' | sed 's/\//-/g'`; cp "$line" /Users/gareth/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/Local\ Folders/$newfile ; done

this will create a folder with the name equal to the path where the mbox file was found. Its a bit messy, but at least you know which folder is which, and you can rename after.

After this, start Thunderbird, and you should see all your new folders in the ‘Local Folders’ subfolder

good luck

UK Election Date Set

So Tony has decided to call an election. And it seems like the polls arent giving labour as big a lead as last week.

Jordan

Just got back from Jordan

Cobbled Streets of Paris

My alarm went off at 7am on sunday morning. Opening the window, looking at the snow on the trees and the wet icy ground, I decide I must be mad to venture out at this time in the morning. 2 hours later however, I’m glad I made it. Its a glorious, if cold, winter morning, and as we meet at Porte de la Villette, I’m glad that I made the effort.

I’ve been living in Paris for 8 years now, but there are still parts of the city that I don’t know. This months Two Feet walk traversed the city from La Villette in the north, to parc montsouris in the south, following the FFRP “Paris a Pied” guide, the route traversed Paris from north to south, passing from narrow alleys to the widest Boulevards, visiting parks, famous and less well known monuments. I thought I knew Paris fairly well, but it seems there is still a lot to discover.