PARIS, Oct 16 (AFP) - The Romanian film "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu", depicting the fate of an elderly man living alone, on Sunday won top prize at the film festival of Essonne near Paris.
Directed by Cristi Puiu, it follows the struggle of an isolated 63 year-old man, who suddenly takes ill one evening and calls an ambulance, while desperately trying to hang on till help comes.
The film came first against competition from eleven other full-length movies in this annual festival of European cinema.
It also took the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year.
Reported Sunday, 16 October 2005 in The Tocqueville Connection.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Longevity
Only two men in U.S. baseball history 
have ever hit homeruns as teenagers and when they were in their forties: Ty Cobb and Rusty Staub.
As a teenaged Detroit Tiger, Cobb hit two homers; then later he had six with the Philadelphia A's after he'd turned 40. Staub had six as a teen with the Houston Astros and two as an over-40 New York Met.
From "Who Hit That Home Run?" in Parade, October 16, 2005.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
It's Tradition
Two students confessed to stealing the hands of Healy Hall's westward-facing clock, bringing a two-week investigation to a close.
One of the confessors' roommates turned in the hands the day before they admitted their involvement in the incident. The hands were undamaged and can be reattached to the clock.
The two students had used temporary scaffolding erected on the west side of Healy Hall to access the building. Additional enhancements have been made to the building to prevent such incidents in the future.
The identification of the students responsible for the theft concluded an intensive investigation and a period of heightened campus interest in the incident, which the two admit said was an attempt to revive an old Georgetown tradition. Students have attempted to climb the Healy clock tower and take the hands for several decades, although the hands have only been stolen on two other occasions in the past 11 years.
His fellow participant also said he wanted to take the hands as part of a prank, not a criminal act.
The roommate, who lives with one of the two but was not involved in the theft, said he decided to turn in the hands after learning that the students were trying to find a way to return them anonymously.
One of the confessors' roommates turned in the hands the day before they admitted their involvement in the incident. The hands were undamaged and can be reattached to the clock.
The two students had used temporary scaffolding erected on the west side of Healy Hall to access the building. Additional enhancements have been made to the building to prevent such incidents in the future.
The identification of the students responsible for the theft concluded an intensive investigation and a period of heightened campus interest in the incident, which the two admit said was an attempt to revive an old Georgetown tradition. Students have attempted to climb the Healy clock tower and take the hands for several decades, although the hands have only been stolen on two other occasions in the past 11 years.
It was just two buddies, it wasn't malicious at all", one of the students said. "We had no intention of keeping the hands."
His fellow participant also said he wanted to take the hands as part of a prank, not a criminal act.
"When I learned of the tradition of stealing the Healy clock hands freshman year, and reading various publications about the history associated with the tower, I decided that I eventually wanted to contribute to the survival of the tradition before I graduated," he said. "I intended no destruction or ill-will to the university in taking the hands, simply to contribute to one aspect of what makes this a special place."
The roommate, who lives with one of the two but was not involved in the theft, said he decided to turn in the hands after learning that the students were trying to find a way to return them anonymously.
Adapted from an article in The Hoya, October 14, 2005.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Where to Put the Body
MOSCOW, October 4 - Time has been unkind to Vladimir Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi, and whose ideology and party long ago fell to ruins. Now the inevitable question has returned. Should his body be moved?
Revisiting a proposal that thwarted Boris N. Yeltsin, who faced down tanks but in his time as president could not persuade Russians to remove the Soviet Union's founder from his place of honor, a senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin raised the matter last week, saying it was time to bury the man.
"Our country has been shaken by strife, but only a few people were held accountable for that in our lifetime," said the aide, Georgi Poltavchenko. "I do not think it is fair that those who initiated the strife remain in the center of our state near the Kremlin."
Lenin, who led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, died in 1924 at the age of 53. A near theology rose around him in the ensuing decades. But not all agree with the religion . .
"Vast funds are being squandered on a pagan show," says Nikita Mikhalkov, a prominent film director and chairman of the Russian Cultural Foundation, adding that Lenin himself wished to be buried beside his mother in St. Petersburg. "If we advocate Christian ideals, we must fulfill the will of the deceased."
Others describe an opportunist who ushered vicious cronies to power, resulting in a totalitarian police state.
"It is time to get rid of this horrible mummy," said Valeriya Novodvorskaya, head of the Democratic Union, a small reform party. "One cannot talk about any kind of democracy or civilization in Russia when Lenin is still in the country's main square." She added: "I would not care even if he were thrown on a garbage heap."
Informal polls conducted Monday by the radio station Ekho Moskvy found that 65 percent of people who called in, and 75 percent of people who contacted the station via the Internet, said that not just Lenin but all of the Soviet figures should be evicted from Red Square.
But the youngest Russian adults barely recall the Communist times, and some show little interest in looking back.
"Lenin," mused Natasha Zakharova, 23, as she walked off Red Square on Tuesday, admitting that she was not quite sure whose body she had just seen. "Was he a Communist?"
Adapted from an article appearing in The New York Times, October 5, 2005.
Wedding Rings Cause Impotence
A wedding ring, which many men constantly wear on the fourth finger, may initiate a variety of sexual disorders and eventually end up with partial or even complete impotence. A recent research work conducted by Belarussian scientists revealed that widespread beliefs of losing strong virility after many years of wearing the wedding ring on the ring finger are based on certain scientific reasons.
A well-known bio-therapist, healer Sergei Gagarin, comments on the latest scientific discovery . .
"The Slavs used to wear wedding rings for not more than four hours a day. Their sexual powers were rather strong, which can be seen in ancient Slavic tales. Slavic families traditionally had a lot of children."
He goes on to say . .
"If a man takes his wedding ring off periodically, the positive effect of the energy current on the sexual sphere manifests itself explicitly. However, if a man wears the ring all the time, the situation may change for the worse. . . On the whole, one may come to the following conclusion: those who do not wear wedding rings 24/7 may have a lot fewer problems in their sex lives."
Adapted from Pravda online, October 10, 2005.
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