Tales of Learned Helplessness

Le Monde seems befuddled by the reality that they have been trying to convince themselves doesn't exist, and Germany's SZ is suddenly not obsessed with something that they used to love to pretend to rub in people's faces, especially the US - the quality of public education:

«But for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung [leftist holding hands...], the debate generated by the study, based on an assessment tool known as Pisa, has become a "national fetish".
"Forget PISA!" the paper urges.

"What kind of absurd ambition, what kind of crazy, swot-like attitude is it to wish to move to the top ranks at any cost?" it asks in exasperation.»

To the european media's old guard, helplessness, disappointed surprise, and passive agression knows no bounds.

In the meantime the basics of human comfort and air conditioning continue to be lost on l'hexagon. Never mind the fact that all it does is transfer ambient heat, separating heat from cold, and reseving the colder part for human comfort and to prevent heat stroke, heart attacks, etc...

They're even fooling around with something Americans have been using for 50 years in dryer parts of the country - evaporative cooling or "jungle coolers". There's one problem - they just don't have much of an effect in environments as humid as France's. In fact from that perspective it's an awful choice of technology. So ineffectual that it's a WASTE of energy to achieve a mere, stinkin' 2 degrees celcius.

Amazingly, they continue to live with the planned meagerness Americans persuaded themselves out of 30 years ago. It comes from artificially propped up energy prices which reduces the quality of life for the entire population, but especially on people with the least. It manages to conserve VERY little since consumption of energy is less, but isn't significantly less than North America especially as it relates to cost. In fact all it does is make it cost a great deal for no clear reason.

Congratulations. They've done a fabulous job of proving themselves to be the idiots of the engineering world. If they keep this up, they'll be living in mud huts - sorry... "pisé".