Author: THE HOBBLEDEHOY

Michael Stevenson, aka Dai Bando, Johnny Foreigner, Monsieur Pas De Merde, is a blogger of French and British culture. His blogs "Pas De Merde" and "The Hobbledehoy" have been called "marvelous" by some, and "meh" by others.

Trudeau: Canada will pay recent college grads

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to the press about the latest coronavirus updates in Canada. Trudeau has announced a new fund called the Canada Emergency Student Benefit aimed at helping recent college graduates in Canada get into the workforce amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eligible students will receive $1,250 a month for four months, and students with disabilities will receive $1,750 a month. In his briefing yesterday, Trudeau acknowledged how many university students were not eligible for benefits under the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, and said that ‘right now, you might be worried about how to make ends meet. You probably can’t work your normal job, and that might be a big problem for rent or groceries… This benefit is designed for you.’

Rosemary Standley – the magnetic Mademoiselle Moriarty

Devoted to cultivating creativity & imagination. Dedicated to philosophers, pilgrims & punks.

ROSEMARY STANDLEY is the lushly imaginative Franco-American lead singer of the enormously creative band Moriarty. The instruments they play reads like a recipe list for the best possible musical feast: xylophone, thumb piano, spoons, tambourine, scotch-tape trumpet, double-bass, music box, suitcase drum, chromatic and diatonic harmonicas, kazoo, drilling machines, Jew’s harp.

 The band’s maverick spirit leads them to play incongruous venues such ‘a mental institution, a prison, a transatlantic ship, a ruined castle in Tuscany, the streets of Paris, and a night train’.  Being the bohemian vagabonds that they are, they tour extensively.

PLEASE SHARE A CHILDHOOD MEMORY THAT HAD AN IMPACT ON THE ARTIST YOU ARE TODAY:

When I was eight, my father taught me the Hank Williams’s song Jambalaya, and brought me with him to a square dance at the American Church of Paris. He had a gig there with his band and he asked me to sing the song in the middle of the set. The people were so pleased with the song that they asked for it 3 times. What a funny feeling! You just get addicted to it.

Continue reading “Rosemary Standley – the magnetic Mademoiselle Moriarty” →

Coronavirus found in Paris sewage points to early warning system 

Rising levels of SARS-CoV-2 detected in wastewater before corresponding spike in clinical cases

By sampling sewage across greater Paris for more than 1 month, researchers have detected a rise and fall in novel coronavirus concentrations that correspond to the shape of the COVID-19 outbreak in the region, where a lockdown is now suppressing spread of the disease. Although several research groups have reported detecting coronavirus in wastewater, the researchers say the new study is the first to show that the technique can pick up a sharp rise in viral concentrations in sewage before cases explode in the clinic. That points to its potential as a cheap, noninvasive tool to warn against outbreaks, they say.

“This visibility is also going to help us predict a second wave of outbreaks,” says Sébastien Wurtzer, a virologist at Eau de Paris, the city’s public water utility. Wurtzer and his colleagues posted the study, which has not been peer-reviewed, on the preprint repository medRxiv on 17 April. [ . . ]

Continue at SCIENCE: Coronavirus found in Paris sewage points to early warning system | Science | AAAS