Europa

Europa, in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', sold to us as essential reading for anyone studying Renaissance French, was raped by Jupiter or Zeus disguised as a bull. In spite of this, someone saw fit to name a continent and one of Jupiter's moons after the poor woman. This story has really nothing going for it although Europa went on to have three lovely children, doesn't seem to have been too traumatised by it and married a Cretan. Ok, it was the King of Crete and he wasn't a Cretin. It was probably even a great honour to be raped by the chief god.

A rather sorry attempt at a lead-in with no particular sequitur to talking about some cool stuff going on in Europe right now. By cool read, 'stuff that might go on in the mind of someone who has been raped by a bull'.

Der Spiegel reported the day before yesterday, although I cannot now find the article to link it, that Prinz Henrik of Denmark, likes to eat dog. Why he would announce such a thing, let alone actually do it when there are so many other animals you can eat that don't necessarily sniff each others' bums is beyond me, but let's not judge. No let's, Prinz Henrik is apparently the president of the dachshund society, which the German newspaper found rather distasteful, but they were able to square it away by pointing out that Henrik was originally from France.

Yesterday in der Spiegel's video feed, we saw the longest bra in the world being put together for Breast Cancer awareness. It looked like quite a merry jape although everyone was taking it seriously. I imagine that no second hand store in the whole world any longer contains bras. The German for bra is Bustenhalter, or BH for short. Seems like a surprisingly appropriate word.

Dominique de Villepin, premier of France and with whom I have come to feel a certain kinship since he is daily tormented by a mad French person (Chirac), has refused to resign after allegations that he tried to damage his rival Sarkozy by telling lies about him. Well duh, like that was ever going to happen. I'm surprised it even made the news in France. Poor Dominique though, his hair is less perky these days, the stress is telling.

In Britain, a huge new study has revealed that British people are half as likely to suffer certain illnesses and indicators of poor health as their American counterparts. The researchers tried very hard to match living conditions, even race, financial resources, smoking and drinking habits. The scientists seem a little nonplussed by the data they have. They tentatively suggest it might be as a result of the 'footprint of childhood obesity' in which case, hold on to them horses, this is going to be a wild ride downhill for Brits.

And back to France, now that the French have done a study and concluded that male fertility also declines with age, and congenital risks increase, they are squawking about it and may start to believe similar British and American ones that have gone before and come to the same conclusions. The Guardian article does make some comments about this having implications for how women are perceived, and I certainly think those are worth noting.

Finally, far away from Europa, British Columbia's own bald eagles have made it to the pages of the Graun, but things are not looking too rosy, sadly, it seems as though whilst a watched kettle never boils, a watched eagle's nest may just not hatch at all. It's all gone a bit Pete Tong for the eagles, maybe we should turn the cams off.