Word: frenchness
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...Fitoussi were both members of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, a 20-person committee called together by French President Nicholas Sarkozy at the beginning of 2008 to determine a better technique to gauge the economic health of a nation...
This past Saturday was a night of firsts for guests of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In an all-French program, acclaimed Italian conductor, Fabio Luisi, and French pianistic upstart, Lise de la Salle, made their BSO debuts. While the concert did not feature the careful artistic consideration the BSO lends to its usual program of heavier masterworks, Luisi and de la Salle substituted a delightful helping of flair for the conventional dose of substance—a move that was quite appropriate for the lighter musical fare these particular pieces offered...
...evening opened with Swiss-French composer Arthur Honegger’s symphonic poem “Pastorale d’été.” Though this work does not promise much in the way of dynamic variety or musical progression, Luisi did what he could with a compositionally-constrained piece. Honegger, one of six composers loosely identified as leaders of the musical avant-garde movement in the 1920s, employed languid horns and murmuring strings to capture the flavor of first light in a pastoral setting...
...write about aviation in more detail than almost anyone in the country. Did anything about this event really surprise you as you conducted your research? I was deeply impressed by the Airbus 320 and its flight-control system. What Bernard Ziegler did is still surprising to me. [Ziegler, a French engineer, developed the plane's fly-by-wire technology that uses computers to help stabilize and guide the aircraft.] I don't want to imply that the pilots would not have been able to land successfully if the plane didn't have [that technology.] They probably would have pulled...
...Some bloggers have wondered if it isn't simply in the French blood to root for an underdog taking on authority figures. Generations of French children have been enamored with traditional Guignol puppet shows, in which the protagonist, Guignol, fights with a rotten, bumbling policeman. The nation is also obsessed with the comic-book hero Asterix, a puny but cunning Gaul warrior who always gets the best of Julius Caesar's Roman armies despite being overmatched and outnumbered. (Read "Asterix at 50: A French Comic Hero Conquers the World...