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Submitted by Ellen Wallace on April 13, 2007 - 20:47.
This is surely the most puzzling "road" sign I've ever seen. Be humble? Beware low-flying aircraft? Beware the bends; you're in a deep tunnel? Daily exercise is good for you? This is one of a series of great photos travelicando has done at Cern, where he is one of the hundreds of workers who come from abroad to contribute to the projects there. One of these appears in the GenevaLunch Flickr collection (check out the gallery).
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Submitted by Ellen Wallace on April 13, 2007 - 14:19.
Much as I love my children - I hope they are listening - there are some things you eventually want to be too old to do, and having children at age 100 is one of them. National Geographic just sent an e-mail with a photo of this old gal of a pregnant fish. They know that I and many other subscribers love to stack our copies of the magazine without actually reading it, so we probably all missed the death of this female shortraker rockfish last week. They seemed to think the startling fact was that she was 100 years old.
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Submitted by Ellen Wallace on April 5, 2007 - 18:46.
The hope of pushing yourself high into the sky: rewarded at last.
A couple days ago I noticed the visiting father of a neighbor who is from Northern Ireland. I had no idea what side of that political fence he was on, but I congratulated him on the breakthrough in Irish politics. I said I hoped this was really peace, at last. "Oh, I think it is. We think this time it really is," he said firmly.
This is that rare week in a year of news when all of a sudden hope seems to outweigh despair on the grand scale: pockets of despair are certainly easy enough to find if you're looking. I have to thank the Irish Times for reminding me that Easter is the season of hope and this is one year when the label seems to fit.
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Submitted by Ellen Wallace on April 3, 2007 - 11:14.
Switzerland has its head in the sand when it comes to work, and it is high time to look up and shake the sand out of our eyes. I have just published an article on GL about how well Switzerland comes out on a European survey of work conditions that includes 31 countries. Clearly, things could be worse, and for some people it is - the boss from hell or crazy hours. For the most part, though, the picture looks pretty good, with 91% of workers saying they are satisfied or very satisfied with work conditions. So far, so good, I think.
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Submitted by Ellen Wallace on April 2, 2007 - 18:13.
There is an old tradition in Switzerland that newspapers, radio and TV play April Fools jokes. Like most jokes, they're pretty funny if you're not in the firing line.
WRG ran a nice lineup this morning of the stories the local media did Sunday, for 1 April. Among them were a story on Swiss milk being turned to laitenol (milking the climate change trend, I'd say) and Swiss wives being invited to "Desperate Housewives," who would probably have to clean up their act (oh, that old Swiss cleanliness routine!).
I wasn't aware of this media trickery my first year in Switzerland and I was convinced by colleagues at Time magazine that a story in one of the top newspapers about the Saleve in Geneva being destroyed, or something similar, was true. I was a little fuzzy on what and where that cliff was anyway - I lived in Etoy, down the lake. They conned me into phoning the staid, humorless Swiss editor to ask for details and a local contact. He's still around and I've never had the nerve to speak to the man since - he clearly thought I was a fool. He's strongly anti-American, so I probably confirmed his prejudices.
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