Scottish Kangoo from my sister Susan

When my sister Susan Skyvington dropped in rapidly at Gamone last year, she met up with my Renault Kangoo automobile. In this morning's mail, I received a nice gift from Susan, who offered me a Scottish Walkers version of my Kangoo.

And it's full of my favorite Scottish shortbread biscuits!

Thank you so much, Susan, for that delightful little gift.

Old octopus stories in the Antipodes

Click to enlarge slightly

Trump on Tonight Show, not very laughable

Here are two old Donald Trump spoofs from the Tonight Show:

When I compare these US political specimens with typical spoofs created here in France, I find them totally trivial, and devoid of any kind of in-depth humor. They don't really make me laugh. In the course of a typical evening of French TV, I would normally discover several times more stuff that's far funnier. In any case, I have the impression that US authors of political humor have simply lost their touch. In the above specimens, they have gone to a lot of trouble in their attempt to simply imitate Trump, whereas authentic humor would attempt to magnify reality and make it more absurd. For example, the authors are surely proud to have dressed their would-be Trumps in exactly the same necktie as the real-life Trump, and given him an identical hairdo. Their Trumps remind me of characters in typical US "historical" movies. Why don't they try to twist the real-life necktie and hairdo to make them outlandish and truly funny? Their necktie might, for example, have been knitted in mauve wool by one of Trump's admirers. His hairdo might be composed of a barely visible nylon net surrounding a hilarious mess of pink knots (including a mislaid hairclip).

I believe that the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy would shudder in boredom if they were to watch the Tonight Show.

Crater of dinosaur doom

This is an artist’s impression of the Chicxlub crater, buried beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, whose rings are located at a depth of some 20 km beneath the surface of the sea.

(D van Ravenswaay/Science Photo Library)

The following video provides us with an idea of the possible appearance of the site, after the impact:

Events triggered off by this impact may have been responsible for the disappearance of dinosaurs.

Later this month, a scientific vessel will arrive in the vicinity of the Yucatán Peninsula, sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, with the aim of building an exploration platform at a depth of 17 metres. This should enable geologists to study the formation of the ancient peak rings, which remain hidden beneath half-a-kilometre of limestone rubble.

If all goes well, this research might provide us with a better idea of the circumstances in which the dinosaurs left the stage forever... leaving room for the evolution of alternative animals (much later on, of course) such as me and my dog Fitzroy.

God's dull clowns

At both extremities of my personal Antipodes (Australia and France), God's dull clowns seem to be playing their roles by using comparable scripts. Dignitaries of the Church bend over backwards to protect randy members of their clergy who got caught dipping their wicks into the oil of youth. And the protectors' performances are similarly sickening. The latest dignitary to be embroiled in such a situation is the archbishop of Lyon, cardinal Philippe Barbarin.

Whenever such noble fellows are caught up in dubious protection rackets, they're probably convinced personally that they're behaving correctly, at least in the eyes of God. But perspicacious observers tend to see them, when they fail to denounce sexual offenders, as advocates of the Devil. And, when the victims are innocent youth, society labels the weakness of these dignitaries as "failure to protect young people in grave danger".

Cryptography

The Turing Award, organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, is often described as the Nobel Prize for computer specialists. Its early winners included two pioneers of artificial intelligence: Marvin Minsky (1969) and John McCarthy (1971). The most recent winners were Whitfield Diffie, former Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems and Martin Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. In 1976, they invented the fascinating subject of public-key cryptography, which enables users of the commercial World Wide Web to communicate in total safety. This subject is not easy to understand, but it concerns us in such an everyday fashion that it's worthwhile making an effort to see how it works. I therefore recommend that you study carefully the following excellent video:

Click the YouTube icon

You might need to watch this video several times, while taking notes, in order to understand clearly the principles of public-key cryptography.

Beautiful penguin story

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As they say in French, the carrots are cooked

That nice old-fashioned French saying designates a situation in which failure is just around the corner. And that's the current situation of the Korean Go player Lee Sedol in his match against an AI (artificial intelligence) known as AlphaGo. In the following photo, Lee is on the right, whereas the fellow in front of him has the job of carrying out the moves requested by the AI opponent.

Well, after two matches, the AI has defeated Lee Sedol in both games. So, the AI only needs to clinch one more game to win the tournament.

Needless to say (although I insist upon making this point, without attempting to go into details), this man/machine competition is more exciting and intellectually meaningful than the recent competitions involving a question-answering AI from IBM known as Watson.

If Trump wins, the human species will be in very deep trouble

Those words come from the US intellectual Noam Chomsky.

Click here to access a short article on this scary warning.

French president communicates with the god of rain

Ever since François Hollande arrived at the Elysées Palace, observers have been impressed by his apparent contacts with a mysterious deity: the God of Rain.

It's difficult to identify this deity, and learn his exact name, because there are many possible candidates, in several theological domains. But we have witnessed numerous situations when the president was in a profound state of communication with his deity.

Many French citizens do not seem to realize that we could be taking bad weather risks when we imagine the possible refusal to usher in a second presidential term for Hollande. If ever the God of Rain were offended by our vote, the land might be smitten by his wrath. There could be terrible droughts, and the rivers of France might run dry.

Here at Gamone, since the start of winter, there have been so many days and nights of chilly rain that I've often felt we were being inundated with warnings. Maybe the god is becoming angry. We should take heed... or maybe pray.