Phone spam

In France, we often receive phone messages from crooks who leave a fake phone number (which generally starts with 0899 or 0892) and ask us to phone back. This has been the case, for example, since a new law about compulsory smoke detectors came into existence.

Citizens in France can complain about this costly rubbish by calling

0 811 02 02 17

or by contacting the French government website at

internet-signalement.gouv.fr

Click here for a short article on this subject.

Darwin Day

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809.

It's wonderful that this birthday of one of the greatest scientists falls just one day after one of humanity's greatest scientific discoveries.

What counts above all is belief

The day before yesterday, this nice-looking American cattle rancher named Cliven Bundy was arrested in Portland (Oregon). The Federal criminal charges against him were contained in a 32-page summary. It’s all a very American story, so I’ll let my readers use the Internet to look up the facts for themselves. In any case, I would imagine that Bundy will be protected and brought to salvation by a guardian angel of one kind or another, for he's a Mormon and he surely has God on one side… along with arms on the other.

Busy intellectual might calm down a little

I often have the feeling that our hero Richard Dawkins works too much. Why doesn't he set aside some of his multifarious preoccupations (for example, atheism) and simply calm down a little? Of course he surely knows personally what he's doing, and why.

This morning's news indicates that Dawkins suffered a mild stroke, last Saturday, leading to the cancelation of his planned trip to Australia and New Zealand. Readers might have noticed that Dawkins is already back on the Internet, suggesting that his stroke was fortunately quite minor.

Biggest declaration ever of big science

This afternoon (in France), we were told that the gravitational waves imagined long ago by Albert Einstein were indeed a reality.

I watched the press conference of representatives from the European team.

Birth of a black hole...

All the data concerning this gigantic discovery is amazingly complex and largely incomprehensible for ordinary people. We do however realize that our universe, an incredibly astounding entity, can be grasped by the minds of scientists. By the brains of godless human beings. And that alone is a thought that makes me proud to be an atheistic specimen of Homo sapiens.

French military liquor

That document was made available through the Gallica website (owned and operated by the national library in France). The alcohol-inflamed declaration dates surely from the end of World War I. Here's my attempt at translation:

Strong liquor, victory liquor

Anti-alcoholic weepers, with fake philanthropy and make-believe pity, have nothing to do with the opinions of our new France, victorious and ready to allow her armies to suffer inevitable revenge from the defeated.

Pinard and Gnôle are military liquors, ideal for French armies facing conflicts that will emerge inevitably from the rigorous application of peace treaties.

If the money owed to us by our former enemy is not in fact paid, then we shall never be moving towards peace. Liquor flasks from the military mess must not be filled with water.

Something got screwed up at the end of the jewellery holdup

Something went seriously wrong with a jewellery holdup in Paris. Click here to watch the video. Instead of taking French leave with the sack of treasures they had just unearthed, the two bandits got locked up in the cylindrical glass doorway. And this little problem drove them as mad as a couple of cut snakes. (Aussie slang, hard to explain.)

Let's hope they took advantage of the comedy, for they're unlikely to have an opportunity of participating in this kind of fun for the next 20 years or so, from inside their prison.

Year of the Monkey

I feel reassured (God knows why) by the fact that Chinese astrologers consider that we're moving into the year of the Monkey. Better still (although I'm not sure what it means), the year of the Fire Monkey.

Hydrangeas in Brittany

I've already written briefly [here] about the glorious hydrangea-covered seaside slopes in Brittany.  Here's a photo of the German horticulturalist Bernhard Meyer about to set off from Brittany in his truck loaded with freshly-cut hydrangeas:

My sister Anne Skyvington, who admired these colorful fields when she visited us last year, has pointed out that the differing colors (blue, pink, mauve, etc) depend upon specific chemical elements that each hydrangea plant finds in the surrounding soil.

Click here to visit the website (available in English) of a colorful nursery in another corner of Brittany.

The degree of acidity of the soil influences the colors of many hydrangea varieties.

• In a strictly neutral soil (pH 7), varieties of plants that are naturally reddish will produce either pink or crimson flowers, whereas bluish varieties will turn mauve.

• Varieties of plants that are naturally bluish will express themselves most vividly in a slightly acidic soil (pH between 4.5 and 6.5).

Apparently changing the colors is easier said than done, and gardeners might need to experiment, and maybe use a dose of chemicals containing aluminium.

To be honest, I must admit that I failed dismally in my early attempts to introduce hydrangeas in the alkaline limestone soils of Gamone (pH often greater than 8.5). As everybody knows, if Brittany is indeed Brittany, it's for sound scientific reasons.

Google self-driving car

What a fabulous idea: Google's plans to develop and test a small driverless car.

Click to enlarge

For the moment, Google has been testing its prototype at Mountain View (California) where the company's headquarters are located, and also at Austin (Texas). Further testing will be carried out soon in the rainy weather of Kirkland (Washington). Apparently there are "active discussions" between British authorities and Google in a the hope of starting trials of driverless cars in the UK.

As far as the current results of Google's testing are concerned, I would imagine that most of the data remains a protected secret, because the company is tackling a fabulous money-making challenge, and they're not going to let the cat out of the bag.

One of the most friendly aspects of these future cars is the obvious fact that they run purely on electricity. So, the sooner they dominate our highways, the sooner they'll enable us to abandon the gluttony of fossil fuels.

Another fabulous possibility will be the probable reduction of road deaths through the elimination of human errors and stupidity. In this domain, it's inevitable that many people will inevitably be anguished, at the beginning, by the idea of placing their personal safety in the hands of robotic devices. Funnily enough, many of these fearful passengers would not hesitate before stepping into a conventional vehicle whose driver has just downed a few glasses of alcohol.