Oxford, Paris, and other things

 The Days , an account of the nuclear disaster that happened in Fukushima , is a series worth watching. " IAEA Experts at Fukushima (02813336) " by IAEA Imagebank is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 . You cannot stop comparing it to Chernobyl, but what a joke that was Chernobyl, with English speakers trying to speak with a Russian accent, well some of them anyway - how insulting that was. And yes, I know I know, some of the actors were great actors, but still... it reminded me of The Reader with great Kate Winslet otherwise, but the accent? No, it will not replace German. Funny that so many in the Anglo-Saxon world care so much about gender, fight against racism and cultural appropriation, and I agree with them, but nothing about true, in-depth cultural appropriation... the colonialism of English everywhere.  Is the film or series set in Germany? Oh well speak with a German accent. In France? And like in Chocolat get a French actress, with her slight accent, she's speaking...

 Listening to a sonata by Scarlatti, I'm struck by its strangeness, it even goes completely wild and you wonder if a small animal has not landed on the harpsichord.                                            Jean Rondeau plays Scarlatti sonata K175 in A minor And always still the little cells repeating themselves - I learned today, thanks to that wonderful programme on Scarlatti on the BBC, that Scarlatti liked to gamble. There is some madness in gambling, some obsession, some intensity. Composer of the week: Scarlatti, BBC programme with Kate Molleson Ceci explique peut-être cela, as we would say in French, this maybe explains the wildness in the music. Added to that, living for the remaining 25 years of his life in a dark palace, the Escorial with a King suffering from Melancholia, Philip V of Spain probably did not help. This is a connection though, not a causality. An...

 I won't say much about it, because it's all in there. A wonderful podcast.  Not long ago a Guardian journalist was asking her followers on Twitter about their favourite 'esoteric' internet gems. Well that's it! (And I was a bit surprised that some other 'gems' mentioned by others on Twitter are funny sites it seems but more time wasters than anything else... having said that I do waste my time on silly series often... Anyway... my point is... this is not a 'gosh I've wasted my time' sort of experience). It's called Preternatural Investigations by Sharron Kraus, worth listening to! " Sharon Krauss " by Goodnight London is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .