From the nimble fingers of lcs@... (lcs@...)
(20/10/2001 6:12 PM) came...

> Lavoisier it was in fact, the French chemist who (like
> Sheele and Priestly) recognised oxygen as an atomic
> chemical element.  Robespierre wasn't bluffing; he really
> did have Lavoisier beheaded, 4th in a wagonload of 28 --
> sometime in 1794.  Cuvier, on the contrary, prospered
> and became perpetual secretary of the Acad. Sci. in 1803.

There's a lesson in there for anyone who has an inclination toward getting
to the essential truth of something.
> 
>> isn't it rather "l'etat n'a pas besoin de savants"?
> 
> In "etat" the e is acute but accents often die in email,
> so a majority of Frenchmen (real and adoptive) omit them
> in email correspondence. ted, your Anglo-Canadian accent
> must grate on -j's ears!

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the accent is the least grating
of my manifold failures.

In my defense, I must point out that whatever French accent I possess was
adopted from two sources: a mining town in the north of Canada, way back
when, and RFI. The two but rarely intersect.
-- 
Ted Spencer; ted@...
--
Schrödinger's Cat is 66 this year. Or not.