Paul from Paris

Catherine Kokoszka was scheduled to begin a meeting at 10:00 am. Kokoszka, age 52, is the Paris director of judicial youth protection (in French, Protection judiciaire de la jeunesse, responsible for endangered minors, juvenile delinquents, and some troubled young adults); on October 1, she'll be awarded the Order of Merit.

Kokoszka didn't want to go through with the 10:00 am meeting last Tuesday. So she didn't. She instead jumped out the fourth-floor conference room window. (She survived the fall, and her life is not in danger today.)

We tend to ask too much of meetings but accomplish too little with them. Why not frame them by written documents: specific agendas and prompt summaries? Why not announce news in a memo, then hold the meeting to discuss implementation (but not to debate the news)?

Marketing guru Seth Godin offered some great ideas to get more out of meetings. My favorite: remove the chairs from the conference room.

A sign caught my eye when I parked my bike this morning. It was a flyer, stuck on the back of a mailbox. Being on the route of the Techno Parade, one or two hundred thousand people could have seen it Saturday afternoon.

The flyer talks about critical mass and some kind of event at the Arc de Triomphe on 22 September at 6:30 pm. A rally for the triumph of urban cyclists over cars and motorcycles. There’s a web site, which I check out.

The site has one page and is dedicated to the 22 September event. This used to be the “car-free day”, when motorists were asked to take public transit (or walk or cycle or skate). The goal is to cycle en masse around the Arc de Triomphe. The unstated goal is to concentrate a large number of cyclists in one place, and thereby to raise awareness about urban cyclists.

Will this cause a traffic jam? Yes, it might. The organizers have anticipated this. If automobile traffic is completely blocked, the site officially counsels cyclists to leave the traffic circle.

The flyer is clever because of its hints to something covert. It’s an invitation to reach critical mass. The goal is triumph. The web site is in revolutionary red. By hinting at coincidence and an undeclared demonstration, the organizers want to appeal to a spirit of protest. But they have also prepared a defense to purposefully blocking traffic, and offer to demonstrators better prospects than being arrested: cycling way.

I like the graphic look of the site. As on the flyer, stick-figure cyclists, human and innocent and fun. Information is presented at the middle of turning circles, which brings to mind both cycling (turning wheels, turning chains) and the Arc de Triomphe traffic circle (where vehicles turn around the monument).

Fraudulent transactions have cost Air France Flying Blue frequent flyer miles. An Air France memo from last summer reportedly points to 63 million miles used fraudulently. Investigators from the French Brigade to combat clever crime (the BRDA, Brigade de répression de la délinquance astucieuse) are actively pursuing sophisticated operators who pilfer and resell frequent flyer miles.

One such scheme led to indictments this week.

In May 2007, a frequent flier discovered that his account had been debited for a business class New York-Paris flight; the beneficiary was Thomas Mayer, an utter stranger to the client. Air France investigated and called in the authorities.

Since last November, investigating magistrate Anne-Julie Paschal has been on the case. Flying Blue miles turned out to have been fraudulently siphoned from the accounts of 13 Air France clients, including:

• Marc Jacobs, a clothing designer (355 000 miles);
• Pape Diouf, former president of the Marseille football club (520 000 miles);
• Jean-Louis Triaud, head of the Bordeaux football club (315 000 miles);
• Lilian Thuram, a football star (425 000 miles);
• David Trezeguet, a football star (60 000 miles).

The common element in all the transactions: reservations were made from a single mobile phone.

That mobile phone belongs to Sandrine F. Along with Khaled H. and Laila M, both Air France employees, Sandrine F. and her husband were indicted this week.

Sandrine F.’s husband, Pierre Moustapha Diouf (better known as Mouss Diouf), is famous in France as co-star of a long-running television series.

The series, Julie Lescaut, showcases the eventful professional and personal life of a female police chief, Julie Lescaut; Diouf co-stars as Inspector Justin N’Guma, who works under Lescaut.

According to detailed reporting in Le Point, Diouf thought he saw familiar police tactics when questioned: “They did a ‘good cop, bad cop’ number on me. I know that because I’ve played in crime dramas. That couldn’t work on me.”

No more recent reaction has been forthcoming from Diouf, because he’s been in a coma.

Just hours after being questioned by police, Diouf suffered a serious cerebral hemorrhage, his second this year. Since this summer, Diouf has been hospitalized in intensive care, with a respirator. The actress who plays Julie Lescaut recently posted on the series’ web site news of Diouf’s medical condition, with reserved optimism.

Everyday life has changed in small but meaningful ways in the few years since I was born. Here are some examples that come to mind:

1. Microwave ovens. I remember the first ones as very boxy. They took the place of the toaster oven.
2. Automatic teller machines. I have trouble imagining life without them. I remember checks as more common, and the practice (in the USA) of customers rounding up checks at the supermarket, which would hand over a few dollars in change.
3. Telephones. When I was a child, customers leased telephones from the monopoly operator. (You could not buy a telephone.) The phones were beige; they had rotary dials and actual bells. Outside of the home, people placed calls from public phone booths. I also remember answering machines that recorded messages on cassettes. I have witnessed: touch-tone keyboards; the end of telephone monopolies; the development of voicemail (to such a point of complexity that I'm loathe to use it today); and the flourishing of mobile phones. Having a phone that looks like a Star Trek communicator is neat, but even the idea of the iPhone is, I suspect, too outlandish to have been imagined 50 years ago.
4. Typewriters. Mine is the last generation that learned to type. I typed on manual typewriters, and on electric flywheel or ball typewriters. I have actually handled carbon paper and made carbon copies. Typewriters used to be everywhere, but they seem to have become extinct. In my daily life, they've been replaced by ink-jet printers that generate documents, graphics, and photographs. My ink-jet printer also doubles as a scanner and copier (black-and-white or color). My printer cost me under $100. Again, I suspect the leap from typewriter to ink-jet printer would be hard to explain to a visitor from 1960.
5. Digital cameras. I grew up in a world where you could run out of film. Film came in different kinds: black-and-white or color; transparency or print; ASA 100, 200, 400; exotic films such as infrared. Once exposed, film needed to be developed, at home or commercially. I lived in the world of 35-mm, but there were also instamatic or polaroid films, or mid-size cameras (such as the Hasselblad) for professionals. I was partial to transparencies (slides) that were stored in carousels and projected on a screen.
6. Multiplex cinemas. I remember large, boxy movie theaters. Many were subsequently subdivided into two or three smaller theaters. I remember the first real multiplex in the neighborhood: I think that there were, initially, six theaters; it was subsequently expanded. Today, I frequent theaters with three or six or eighteen theaters. When you go to the movies, you have to choose what you see, among offerings on several screens. (I can also remember cinemas that closed, so am not sure whether the total number of screens has grown; I suspect that it has not.)
7. VCRs/DVDs. I remember, as a child, feeling distress at the prospect of "missing my program". Television was broadcast on four networks. I remember the first tape recorders, that used a sort of reel-to-reel tape. Then came the VCR, followed by the DVD. Today, set-top boxes offer storage or time-shifting options.
8. Remote controls. Changing the television channel once involved standing up and turning a dial; the same was true for changing a radio frequency. Like most families, we today have three or four remote controls.
9. CDs/MP3s. As for typewriters, I'm probably part of the last generation to understand what a "broken record" is. Vinyl disks still exist today. But I saw the rise and fall of magnetic tape. And the displacement of the CD by the MP3 and other digital formats.
10. Power windows. Most automobiles today come with automatic, powered windows. In the United States, it's nearly impossible to find a car that doesn't have air conditioning. I grew up in a world of windows that passengers lowered by hand, in order to have fresh air and a breeze.
11. Card catalogs. Here's something that you don't buy or use in your home. When I learned to use the library, the collections were cataloguedon cardboard cards (usually written with a typewriter). I continued to use card catalogs throughout my university studies. Starting when I was still a child, computerized catalogs entered the libraries. Over time, they displaced or replaced catalogs on cards. On this point more than any other, I'm a Luddite: I have always preferred card catalogs over computer catalogs, and I suspect that I always will.

As a bonus, I'd add GPS positioning devices, that I suspect have not yet entered into their prime.

I've deliberately left off my list:

• Medicine (IRMs, for example);
• Computing (I used punch cards to program in BASIC); and
• Environmental issues (I remember smog and asbestos insulation and pull caps on soda cans).

The European Parliament today re-elected Juan Manuel Barroso as president of the European Commission. Barroso, the former prime minister of Portugal and the outgoing Commission president, received 382 out of 736 possible votes, or 51.9% of possible votes. Barroso ran unopposed.

The re-election reportedly brought stability or continuity to EU institutions. That’s a bit premature. After the defeat of the European Constitution in 2005 –at the beginning of Barroso’s first term– European leaders drafted a lighter, consensual convention, the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland voted it down once, and will vote on it again October 2. The Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany still have to ratify it. The conclusion: viewed from mid-September, institutional stability still seems conditional and just over the horizon.

Barroso has not yet shown himself up to the challenges faced by Europe’s economy. He’s muddled through, but hasn’t drawn economic thinkers into his orbit or proposed bold visions for the future. (Or, if he has, he hasn’t brought them to public attention.) Barroso hasn’t yet shown himself capable of presenting alternatives proposed by various member states, in order to seek consensus or debate from which a common approach could emerge.

The European Union’s economic situation is troubled. The European Commission, earlier this week, released a forecast on economic growth, expected to be – 4%. (In other words, the economy will shrink, not grow, in 2009.) And the latest figures, for the month of July, show unemployment in the Eurozone at 9.5%, with more than 15 million Europeans jobless.