Exotic pilgrimage

In a book I've been reading over the last few days, I was delighted to come upon an outline of an activity that used to interest me greatly (and still does, as an aficionado): Macintosh programming.

The Mac has a toolbox of routines stored in ROM (Read Only Memory) or in System files permanently loaded at start-up time. There are thousands of these toolbox routines, each one doing a particular operation, which is likely to be needed, over and over again, in slightly different ways, in different programs. [...] If you look at the text of a Mac program, whoever wrote it, in whatever programming language and for whatever purpose, the main thing you'll notice is that it consists largely of invocations of familiar, built-in toolbox routines. The same repertoire of routines is available to all programmers. Different programs string calls of these routines together in different combinations and sequences.

Jargon such as that last sentence suggests that the writer is more than a mere user of computer products. Clearly, this didactic author is not in the same basic ballpark as the countless millions of lucky folk who perform their daily work with the help of a Macintosh. The writer would appear to have gone a big step further, and actually gotten his hands dirty in writing Mac software. In an earlier paragraph, he had explained in modest terms his relationship with this machine:

The computer I happen to be familiar with is the Macintosh, and it is some years since I did any programming so I am certainly out of date with the details.

Who is this former adept of Macintosh programming? And why is he is writing about his technical experience in this domain?

In The Ancestor's Tale, published in 2004, Richard Dawkins calls upon the paradigm of Mac software to demonstrate the functioning of a genome. More precisely, he's trying to explain why we should not be alarmed to learn that the human genome is no bigger than that of a mouse: some 30,000 genes. If you were to compare the architectural blueprints of an Olympic edifice at Beijing with a rough drawing I once made of the future shed at Gamone for my donkey Moshé, you would see immediately which of the two construction processes was designed by a planetary people capable of generating artificial fireworks, and which one was sketched by an Aussie hillbilly. In the same spirit, why shouldn't a human genome and a mouse genome, placed side by side, be vastly unalike?

The answer is simple. Genomes aren't blueprints; they're computer-like programs. Over the last day or so, front-page news stories have described Apple's ire at discovering that a proposed iPhone program is pure bullshit. Expensive to acquire, this iPhone application does nothing more than display ostentatiously the fact that the purchaser is apparently wealthy. [This kind of second-degree gag amuses me immensely.] Well, if you were to take out some kind of magic magnifying glass and examine this bullshit program, you would probably find that it "looks" more or less the same, in terms of digital volume, as any of the more brilliant iPhone applications. The difference is not in the vulgar quantity of bits, but in the way they are organized to form a complex computational entity capable of performing big things.

I could ramble on for ages about this brilliant book by Dawkins, but the best thing, dear reader, is that you should buy it and absorb it slowly and languidly, as if you were seated at a table of rare venison and unworldly wines, served by medieval Botticelli maidens against a sonorous background of Monteverdi... or something like that. The brilliant idea of Dawkins consists of leading us on an exotic backwards pilgrimage towards the dawn of creation, in which we meet up with all our genealogical cousins: chimpanzees, gorillas, etc... right back to the origins of life on the planet Earth. This magnum opus by Dawkins is yet another specimen of beautiful writing, fabulous literature and magnificent science. His literary style was inspired, of course, by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Replacing vast phylogenetic trees of Earth's animals by my own humble genealogy, I think of my father. He went through life burdened by a pair of ridiculous Christian names: King Mepham. I explained the first element in last year's article entitled November 11 [display]. As for the second name, it all gets back to Kentish ancestors at a village named Meopham [website], associated with an ancestral Simon Mepham who was an early archbishop of Canterbury [1328-33].

In the cosmic Dawkins saga, the intrinsic "value" of a Mepham forefather on the ancient road back through Canterbury might be likened to that of our concestor [a Dawkinsean neologism for "common ancestor"] who witnessed the disappearance of the dinosaurs. None of these creatures [including probably the archbishop] was the kind of clear-cut individual you might have invited back home to meet up with Mother, let alone Father. They were tiny inconsequential but lovable minuses, like all of us. We can't even imagine what they might have looked like. But we know they existed. Meanwhile, I've spent hours trying to determine what an ancestor of me and my dear cousin Sophia—a descendant of wolves—might have looked like. I have my ideas...

MacMissionary

As I watched last night's US/China basketball match, I felt confused. On the surface, it looked like yet another conventional Olympic ball game between two nations. But I soon sensed that there was more to it than that. It seemed more like some kind of a weird religious process in which zealous missionaries were teaching a company of recently-ordained converts how to conduct the sacred rituals of a sect. As befits this kind of ceremony, enhanced with subtle symbols, the ancient priests wore white. Even their names were written in white letters on a white background, as if they weren't really meant to be read, but merely imagined... like the pronunciation of the holy name of Yahveh. The Chinese spectators encouraged their players by crying out the English word China. This same word appeared on their ritual garments.

In the congregation, George W Bush and his wife watched the proceedings. Earlier in the day, they had attended a protestant church near Beijing's Forbidden City, where the Chinese worshipers sang Amazing Grace in English and Chinese. Afterwards, the US president declared: "Laura and I just had the great joy and privilege of worshiping here in Beijing. You know, it just goes to show that God is universal, and God is love, and no state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion." The preceding day, he had already taped a message on this same theme: "This trip has reaffirmed my belief that men and women who aspire to speak their conscience and worship their God are no threat to the future of China. They are the people who will make China a great nation in the 21st century."

It goes without saying that these people will need to learn how to play basketball, eat hamburgers, drink certain ritual beverages, go to church on Sundays and express themselves in English.

Unwarranted anguish and misunderstandings

It's four days since my last news concerning our charming little black neighbor Pif, seen here this morning (with an elegant silver chain around his slender neck) in the company of Sophia.

I'm aware that people all over the planet will soon be crying out for an update on events. But first, a little French joke, whose relevance will soon become apparent. Although it's not exactly a politically-correct joke, it's quite innocent. Nothing to do with mindless insinuations about an arriviste lad, say, thinking of changing his religion with a view to becoming rich.

Little Mustapha lives in the Maghreb quarter of town, but the educational administration sends him to a nearby school, on the other side of the river, in a posh Catholic neighborhood. The diplomatic school mistress introduces Mustapha to his new friends.

School mistress: Mustapha comes from across the river, and you might be tempted to imagine that he's different from us. But this is wrong. To prove that Mustapha is a little child who's no different to all of you, I suggest that we change his name. We'll christen him Michael.

That evening, back home in the Maghreb quarter, Mustapha informs his parents, excitedly, of his first day in the Catholic school.

Mustapha: I'm no longer Mustapha. My new name is Michael.

Father, slapping his son in the face: Stop your bullshit. We called you Mustapha when you were born, and that's your name forever.

Mustapha: No, I assure you, Father. I've become Michael.

Mother, slapping her son in the face: Your father told you to stop this bullshit. Your name's Mustapha.

Mustapha receives a few more blows from his parents, for good measure, to remind him that his name is not Michael. The next morning, at school, his face is covered in bruises, as if he had been boxing.

School mistress, alarmed: My poor little Michael, whatever happened to you?

Mustapha: Nothing unusual, Miss. Last night, back home in the Maghreb quarter, I got beaten up by a couple of crazy Arabs.

Yesterday morning, when Pif turned up stealthily in my kitchen, something was wrong. The little dog's face was disfigured by swollen lips, and he was unusually lethargic. I was alarmed, wondering immediately if Alison might have whacked her dog too hard, to punish his recent disobedience. I didn't know how to react best. I phoned up Bob, to ask him whether it was possible that his daughter might have been excessively violent with Pif. Bob assured me that this was unthinkable. So, I got around to imagining that maybe Sophia had bitten Pif's snout in a sudden fight, during my short absence the day before yesterday. Finally, I wandered up to Alison's place, on the off-chance that she might be at home.

She was. As soon as I drew her attention to Pif's disfigured mouth, Alison understood immediately what had happened: "He has been bitten, maybe by insects or a snake! " This was a good analysis of the situation. We've noticed that Pif likes to go off onto the slopes on his own, where he's liable to meet up with bees or wasps, not to mention snakes. Alison added that she had noticed that something was wrong with Pif, the previous evening, when he had disappeared into a nearby field, as if he wanted to be alone. She reassured me that she was going to keep Pif at home all afternoon, and look after him, ready to take him along to the veterinarian if any more troubling signs appeared.

Today, the crisis is over. Pif is in perfect form. As usual, he has moved back down here and immediately dragged Sophia's rugs out of her wicker basket and onto the lawn. Clearly, Pif's a survivor. It's less clear whether he intends to survive up at his place, with Alison, or down here at Gamone with Sophia and me.

Memorable day

I'm not likely to forget the opening day of the Beijing games. It's the day I picked up my new French identity card.

I hope the data is blurred enough to discourage forgers and fraudsters. [UPDATE October 11, 2011: Intrigued by frequent visits to this blog post, and worried that somebody might be trying to steal my identity, I've blurred the image even more.]

If only I'd thought of it earlier, I would have made arrangements to get married today, like countless couples in China. Apparently all the 8s in today's date are a happy omen for people in love. [story] With my new French identity card, it goes without saying that I'm empowered to whisk away a bride in less time than it took for the Aussie rugby man Sonny Bill Williams to abandon his Bulldog mates in Sydney and join the Toulon club in France. But I was faced with a few obstacles:

• I had no way of knowing beforehand that the French authorities would enable me to pick up my identity card today, 8 August 2008, at the mayor's office in Choranche.

• I'm not really sure I want to get married.

• Surprisingly, there's no waiting list of female candidates.

This afternoon, therefore, instead of curling up on the couch with a new wife, I'll curl up all alone in front of the TV and watch the opening ceremony at Beijing.

Nice guy with an infectious smile

Many years ago, when I took my son to New York for a short vacation, we were greatly amused by the way in which a sordid crime had become the non-stop theme of TV news during the first day or so of our stay. A Mexican resident, Tony Gonzalez, had murdered several innocent people in a brutal fashion, and none of his former friends could figure out what might have made him act that way. Journalists succeeded in tracking down all kinds of people who knew Gonzalez well, and their comments were unanimous: "Tony's such a nice guy. I can't understand what came over him, to make him commit those murders. He's always so kind to his mother and sister, and all his friends saw him as a happy guy who was incapable of hurting anybody. Tony always speaks with such a lovely quiet voice. Etc. Etc." My son and I found this stuff hilarious. We felt that Gonzalez should be released immediately from police custody and awarded a certificate for fine citizenship and good-neighborly conduct.

I'm reminded of Tony Gonzalez when I see the way in which the US anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins has been presented by various colleagues since his suicide. He was described as a churchgoer with a friendly disposition, who did a juggling act at community get-togethers, composed humorous songs that he performed on guitar or piano to farewell colleagues, and never seemed to have "any particular grudges or idiosyncrasies".

Alas, it's only today that we learn from hearsay that a psychiatrist had described Ivins as "homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions". To go to the trouble of posting envelopes containing powdered anthrax spores through the mail, the perpetrator would indeed need to be sociopathic with clear intentions.

Today, we can finally read the emails of Ivins. It's a little too late, of course, since the nice guy with an infectious smile has committed suicide. I can't help thinking, rightly or wrongly, that any run-of-the-mill computerized spy should have been able to intercept these emails, which are poems of evil pulsations.

Verily, I say unto ye that Americans are fabulous fools (whom I often admire enormously, nevertheless, in the domains of science and technology). They proclaim the existence of an evil axis on the other side of the planet, but they can't necessarily detect the smelly crap exuded by their own assholes.

Risky valley of the Bourne

I'm about to talk about a geographical entity, the valley of the River Bourne, which runs below my home place, Gamone. I assume you're at ease using browser keys to move forwards/backwards with respect to my blog. You might click the following photo of a typical corner in our road to see a local map of places I'm about to mention.

As you can see, Gamone lies between Pont-en-Royans and the village of Choranche. Just to the south of these three places, you see the road (in yellow) that leads eastwards to the winter ski resort of Villard-de-Lans. And a thin blue line indicates the River Bourne, which flows just below the road, in an east/west direction. That's to say, Choranche, Gamone and Pont-en-Royans are located on the right bank of the Bourne. As the crow flies, I'm quite close to Villard: some 20 km. It's a delightful little town, with good restaurants and bars. I rarely set foot there, however, because I'm daunted by the narrow mountain road that runs through the Gorges of the Bourne.

During the ski season, particularly of a weekend, hordes of vehicles from the Valence region and the Ardèche department use this itinerary. It's a magnificent scenic road, but there are many places where vehicles have to halt to allow the passage of those traveling in the opposite direction. For me, driving in such circumstances is strictly unpleasant... no doubt because I never got accustomed to this kind of environment when I was younger. So, I stay at home.

For many years, we've been aware that we live alongside a rickety road that's often disturbed by fallen rocks. When I purchased Gamone, in 1993, I proudly informed my family and friends that I had found a rare place devoid of rocks that might fall onto our heads. And that state of affairs remains perfectly true today... as long as I stay at home. If I go out driving, that's another kettle of stonefish.

This morning, we received a surprising publication from the local authorities, revealing the results of a recent study of risky places along the road up to Villard-de-Lans. You might click the photo of work at the level of the home of my great friends Tineke Bot and Serge Bellier to see a graphical outline of these dangerous places, marked in orange or red.

I learn with delight but stupefaction [even though I'm not bothered unduly at a personal level] that the Isère departmental authorities have decided to invest in a huge 14-year project, costing 15 million euros, aimed at saving our roadway along the valley of the Bourne. The only problem is that this road will be closed for five months every year. So, I'm less and less likely to spend sunny afternoons and balmy evenings soaking up the Vercors atmosphere of Villard-de-Lans. What the hell. My Gamone descendants will...

Ads you won't see

From time to time, we hear of publicity campaigns that get totally screwed up by current events even before they're launched... as distinct from the achievement of the John McCain crew, who needed to actually launch their latest anti-Obama campaign in order to get it screwed up.

In France, a creative genius in an ad agency had a brilliant idea for a campaign concerning a new automobile. The idea is that Dad has just purchased this vehicle, and he's driving his kids to school. But he's so infatuated by his new car that he simply forgets the kids on the back seat and just carries on driving for hours, absentmindedly. The planned tag lines were:

7.42 am: Your kids are on the back seat, ready to be driven to school.
3.37 pm: Your kids are still on the back seat.

What a great idea for an amusing ad. The only trouble is that, over the last few weeks, there were two separate cases of a French parent simply forgetting their child in a parked automobile. And the kids in question died as a result of the suffocating heat.

More recently, in Canada, the Greyhound bus company was about to lunch a campaign centered upon the relaxed atmosphere of overland bus travel. [I agree with their good intentions. Around 1985, I had the thrill of crossing Australia in this way on two occasions.] Sadly, their planned tag line evoking the absence of "bus rage" was ruined at the last minute by a crazy guy with a big knife and a taste for human flesh. So, I guess we'll never know the exact nature of the "reason" that the Greyhound folk had in mind.

ADDENDUM

Talking about things that might not be brought to the attention of readers, I'm wondering whether my compatriots in Australia have heard about a 39-year-old psychopathic Frenchman who's accused of having murdered, apparently in a fit of insanity, an 11-year-old boy. Here are police drawings of the accused fellow and his 49-year-old female companion:

At the time they were captured, a couple of days ago, they were trying to spread the message that they were "Australian pilgrims" who had come to France on a mysterious mission of destruction. My neighbor Madeleine, who doesn't necessarily bother to digest news stuff she picks up on TV, asked me yesterday: "Did you see that story about an evil Australian couple who murdered a child not far from here? " I had trouble convincing Madeleine that the suspected murderer and his lady friend are untraveled natives of France, with no links whatsoever to Australia, except maybe as hallucinations in their distorted minds.

It's a little spooky that diabolical fuckwits of this kind [caught out by a DNA analysis] might imagine Australia—which, most probably, they totally ignore—as a plausible origin. Where could they have picked up the idea that Australia is a likely place from which "pilgrims" might decide to set out on a satanic mission to France? One guess is that this association might be based upon recent Catholic Youth ballyhoo they glimpsed on TV when the pope was visiting Sydney. Or maybe they've been watching too many exotic Aussie travelogues.

Backfired

In the wake of Barack Obama's precisely-planned trip to Europe and his speech to a vast crowd on Kennedy territory in Berlin, were John McCain's campaign people really dumb enough to believe they could get away with referring to the dynamic presidential candidate as a celebrity, and compare him for an instant with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears? We see today that the whole thing has blown up beautifully in the face of McCain. Not only have the parents of Paris Hilton complained about how their Republican favorite has used his financial resources (which include a donation from the senior Hiltons), but their daughter—for once in her life—has done something that's both funny and intelligent: she has made a delightful parody video.

[Click the photo to see it.]

Meanwhile, Barack Obama must be getting a kick out of all this negative noise surrounding McCain.

Crossing the Rubicon

Pif is basic dog... in the same sense that the celebrated 2-horsepower Citroën used to be described as basic car. You get your money's worth, but there are no extras. Canine critics might say that his ears are too floppy, his tail too massive, and that he's too high on his rear legs. His rectangular snout and wide mouth remind me of a dredge used to remove mud from a river. As for his education, let's just forget about it. In spite of all these faults, or maybe because of them, I find Pif adorable. It's a pleasure, every morning around nine, when I hear the tinkle of his paws on the wooden stairs leading up to my computer. He darts into my lap, and licks my face rapidly, then he scrambles down to the ground floor to initiate a new day of intense and profound bodily and mental contact with Pif's guru goddess: my dear Sancta Sophia.

All this would be nice and orderly except for the fact that Pif started acting yesterday, in the late afternoon, as if he might be contemplating a kind of crossing of the Rubicon. To put it bluntly, Pif indicated explicitly to his mistress, Alison, that he was quite happy down at my place, with Sophia, and that he didn't particularly wish to go home.

This evening, the same thing happened. Alison bowled in on her scooter, as usual, and ordered her dog to follow her back up the hill, to their home. But Pif didn't agree. He stayed put at Gamone. I suggested to Alison that, if she were to accept the idea of Pif wearing the red collar I gave him a fortnight ago, she might be able to lead him calmly back home. But it was Alison who started to get hot around the collar, declaring sillily that it was intolerable that her dog didn't obey her. The truth of the matter, of course, is that Pif is perfectly happy here, on our soft clover lawn, in the company of a wise and adept female [Sophia], not to mention a kind meat-eating friend [me, the alpha dog], and that he's smart enough to figure out that little can be gained by trotting back up to the stark house from which his mistress Alison is usually absent.

Finally, I told Alison that I would try to "launch" Pif on the homeward journey. She would start off back home on her scooter while I would race alongside with Pif in my arms. Then her dog would run alongside us, attached to a lead. Finally, in mid-action, I gave the lead to Alison and the two of them went trotting off home together, successfully.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm aware that the scenario is likely to be similar. Be you Caesar, or be you Pif, once you've decided to go beyond a point of no return, you don't look backwards. What I'm hoping is that Alison might be smart enough to park her bloody scooter, walk down here, take up Pif in her arms, kiss him fondly, carry him back up to her place and treat him to a nice welcome-home dish of raw meat.

Now, there might be Freudians in the audience who imagine that I see myself in the role of Pif. No way. Through her skills with horses and her behavior, Alison is indeed a splendid specimen of what we used to call a tomboy back in rural Australia. Amused readers who knew me as an adolescent might well imagine superficial associations with my marvelous Graftonian friends Anne F [a celebrated horsewoman, deceased in 2006] and Alison G [my first female object of adoration and desire]. No, sadly, Pif and I, not to mention my neighbor Alison, are truly not in the same ballpark as these mythical female creatures of my youth, of another age.

Ultimate travel

It was particularly hot yesterday. Towards the end of the afternoon, when Pif had reluctantly gone home (after ten minutes of persuasion from his mistress Alison, who wasn't happy with her dog's new behavior), I took Sophia down to Pont-en-Royans for a swim in the Bourne. Lots of people had gathered there for the annual Wood Festival... which is not very exciting. Hearing the sound of a lawnmower above my head, I looked up and saw a fellow flying a paraglider above the village.

An engine was attached to his back, with a propeller housed in what looked like a big silver bicycle wheel. In this way, he was able to fly/glide at a constant low altitude. He made it look as easy to get around in the sky as riding a bike. You could almost imagine him using this contraption to fly down to St-Jean-en-Royans to buy his groceries.

Entertaining information

As I've pointed out already, French people can be intrigued when they hear me talk. I've got a slightly strange accent, which people can rarely pin down, whereas my French grammar is fine and I use a good vocabulary. So, I'm often asked, politely, where I'm from. As soon as I say Australia, people are more intrigued than ever. First, there aren't many of us here in France, so we're rare birds. Second, there has been so much hype over the years about Australia being an exotic earthly paradise that French people are frankly surprised that any Australian citizen would decide to dwell in such an everyday place as France.

Last night, on prime-time TV, I watched a two-hour documentary about Australia. I make a point of watching such stuff because it's generally entertaining. Besides, the next time I'm called upon to tell a French person where I come from, he or she is likely to enhance the conversation with facts from this latest TV documentary about Australia. So, it's a good idea for me to keep abreast of such background information.

What amused me, yesterday evening, was that the French producer used a simple recipe that tricked viewers (and even the Télérama critic) into thinking that we were watching an original travelogue. He had simply unearthed half a dozen more or less exotic video sequences in remote corners of the continent. Then he concocted a map in which we see an animated kangaroo hopping from one place to the next, while the human presenter talked as if he and his camera crew were actually traveling along the same itinerary as the kangaroo, in a vaguely east-to-west journey across Australia. To make it look like an authentic travelogue, the presenter did in fact get himself filmed, two or three times, against a conventional Australian background. For example, there was a short conversation between the presenter and an old Aborigine seated on the ground alongside Uluru, doing his TV duties, who trotted out all the standard banalities: legends from tribal elders, the sacred rocks, the Dream Time, etc. In reality, I had already seen most of the video sequences in this allegedly new production, since some of them were four or five years old.

The show opened with shots of the boxing troupe of Fred Brophy in Queensland.

When I was a kid in Grafton, that was a popular attraction during the three-day agricultural show. I liked to watch the presentation of the boxers outside the tent, and the manager's call for challengers, enticing them with the promise of monetary gains. The proceedings were accompanied by the clanging of a brass bell and the pounding of a bass drum, which combined to produce a kind of martial music. Inside the tent, once the show actually got under way, the atmosphere was sweaty and spartan, almost sordid, since there was nothing like a real ring.

The TV kangaroo then hopped towards a remote place where we were able to see the Outback postal service in action.

Curiously, the aircraft was carrying three paying passengers: tourists doing the round trip with the postman. At one stop, as they waited in the shade of a tree, brushing flies from their faces, these one-day visitors expressed their astonishment that people could actually live permanently in the places they were discovering.

The next sequence was frankly surrealistic. It showed preparations for an open-air desert ball at a spot named Curdimurka. You might think of it as the Outback equivalent of an opera weekend at Glyndebourne in England, or maybe a small-scale reincarnation of a remote Woodstock. Since this get-together was taking place in Australia, where distances are vast, the future dancers arrived in private aircraft, with their ball attire in suitcases. All the images were dominated by signs of heat, dust and wind, with the promise of showers under punctured food cans wired to overhead taps. TV viewers might well wonder whether these people were really having a ball, as the saying goes... but let's suppose so. At the scheduled time for the ball to get under way, a terrible sand storm blew up. The TV documentary didn't really tell viewers what happened after that unexpected intrusion of the elements. By searching on the Internet, I learned that the sand storm stopped the dancing in the desert back in 2004, and the concept of the Curdimurka Ball, imagined as a regular two-yearly event, died too on that hot windy evening.

Next, the documentary skipped to a presentation of the Aboriginal star David Gulpilil, first on stage for his one-man show at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 2004, and then at his home place in the Northern Territory.

Seeing this charming fellow [looking much younger than in the above photo] strutting around behind the jawbones of a crocodile or the skull and horns of a buffalo has much the same effect upon me as watching Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin in filmed action. A little bit goes a long way.

At one point in the documentary, we saw this celebrated pub on the Oodnadatta Track. The guy in charge looked a little like a wanted Serbian war criminal in disguise.

It must be bloody uncomfortable to have a big beard like that, in the dust and heat, particularly when you've also got into the habit of wearing a hat indoors... but maybe it plays a positive role in keeping the flies away. And you can drink beer non-stop to keep cool.

There were countless other exotic anecdotes in the two-hour documentary. We saw an Aboriginal chef collecting witchetty grubs in the bush and cooking them for customers of his fashionable city restaurant. We saw fellows wading through a crocodile-infested swamp to obtain eggs for a local farm that breeds salt-water crocodiles for leather. We saw helicopters being used to round up cattle and camels. Etc, etc.

All in all, it was a worthwhile evening of entertainment for me. The next time French people, hearing my accent, ask me where I'm from, I'm determined to spin a hell of a good yarn. I'll tell them that, while flying on a Qantas plane from my camel ranch near Darwin for a weekend opera outing in Sydney, my seat dropped out through a big hole in the floor of the Boeing, whereupon I landed in a swamp full of crocodiles, with dingoes roaming around on the shore. I've still got to work out how I got safely from there up to Paris, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Maybe, for inspiration, I need to watch a few more good Aussie travelogues of the "made in France" kind.

China's promises

People who are about to fall into a state of TV enthrallment during the Olympic Games might take a few minutes off to reflect upon what has happened in China since 2001, when Beijing was designated as the host city for 2008. I'm thinking, not of air pollution, but of the promises of a political nature made by the Chinese government.

Concerning access to the Internet, Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC [International Olympic Commitee], claimed recently that there would be no Internet censure in China during the Games.

Today, on the contrary, the IOC admitted that it had always known that China would never remove Internet restrictions for foreign journalists covering the Games. Even the websites of the celebrated Falun Gong spiritual movement, with millions of adepts in China and throughout the world, are outlawed. [Click the logo to visit their information center... unless you happen to be located in China.]

Concerning Tibet, the current situation is hard to analyze. On the one hand, it's a fact that China recently sent two senior Communist officials to meet up with Tibetan negotiators. On the other hand, reports from the exiled Tibetan government in India claim that over 200 people have been killed in violence in Tibet over the last four months.

Finally, in the domain of human rights, there is no more eloquent statement of China's broken promises than the Amnesty International report on this subject. [Once again, unless you happen to be located in China, you can access the Amnesty website simply by clicking the following banner.]

We read, on the first page of this report: Regrettably, since the publication of Amnesty International’s last Olympics Countdown report on 1 April 2008, there has been no progress towards fulfilling these promises, only continued deterioration. Unless the authorities make a swift change of direction, the legacy of the Beijing Olympics will not be positive for human rights in China.

New kind of news tool

No sooner had I informed my friend Corina [the cultivated young lady who signs her perspicacious Antipodes comments as cm] that I was contemplating the creation of the French Leaves blog than she told me, by return email, that she was working in a similar domain, with a rather different approach.

[Click the banner to access her new website.]

In examining Corina's approach, I realize that we're all looking for ways of assimilating, organizing and digesting the stream of challenging messages we receive every day through the Internet.

Incidentally, in case you're wondering why there's a bat in the banner, I'll give you a hint. Corina is Romanian. In fact, I would be happy if Corina were to realize that her notorious 15th-century compatriot is no longer the most batty vampire-oriented personage who has ever existed. In chapter 2 of his brilliant book The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins describes these delightful animals in such a lovable in-depth way that I've developed an intense admiration for these tiny creatures, who are my constant friends at Gamone.

New blog

For a long time, I've been aware of the fact that my Antipodes blog is a relatively personal affair, which tackles a broad and heterogeneous range of topics, often in an undisciplined style. The Antipodean notion is bipolar. For Europeans, the Antipodes is Australia and New Zealand. For an Australian like me, when I was a youth, my exciting vision of the Antipodes was an unknown land named France on the other side of the planet Earth. In my blog, no doubt, there are traces of these two complementary attitudes. If so, I would like it to stay that way.

On the other hand, I've often been tempted to concentrate on a more precise objective: namely, an English-language presentation of various French themes in domains such as politics, culture, science and technology, sport, etc. So, I've finally decided to launch a second blog, with that aim in mind.

[Click the banner to access a prototype version of the new blog.]

The web address of this new blog is http://skyvington.com

Normally, my articles should be more objective and less personal than those in Antipodes. Also, the rhythm will be considerably slower: maybe a new article every three or four days. You won't, of course, find anything in this new blog about Gamone, Sophia, my donkeys Moshé and Mandrin, my billy-goat Gavroche, Richard Dawkins, etc. And there probably won't be many references to my native land, Australia.

For readers who might be interested in this kind of French-oriented blog, I beg you to be patient. For the moment, I'm trying to master the new software tool, called WordPress, which is a total do-it-yourself thing. So, I'll need some time to get accustomed to this new challenge that I've set myself.

POST SCRIPTUM

I've made a Blogger-based version of this new blog at http://frenchleaves.blogspot.com

Between the WordPress and Blogger versions, which is better? As far as I'm concerned, it was a thrill to build my own WordPress system, but I suspect it's more efficient and rapid to stick to the Blogger environment. I'll have to think about it...

New search engine

Today is the launch date for a new search engine named Cuil, pronounced cool, built by former Google employees.
[Click the image to access the tool.]

For people accustomed, like me, to using Google, Cuil is a little weird, primarily because it churns out astronomical quantities of links. In the case of an author of a book, for example, Guil indicates every imaginable website that mentions the book. My first impression is that this might be overkill. But it's preferable to play around with Cuil for a while, and give it time to eliminate any teething problems, before forming a judgment.

Lily-white cyclists

No, I'm not talking about dope, but rather about their skin color. In an interesting article in the newspaper Le Monde, a journalist has drawn attention to the fact that the colorful peloton of Tour de France riders includes not a single Black, Arab or Asian. How can this be explained? In France, it's mainly a rural sport, rather than a suburban activity. Becoming a competitive cyclist requires a significant financial investment, and you need room to store your bike and associated tools and equipment. By comparison, it's cheaper for a youth to spend his spare time kicking a soccer ball. Consequently, boys of immigrant background who grow up in a low-income suburban environment of high-rise flats are unlikely to get involved in cycling. But I would imagine that the phenomenon of a lily-white peloton is likely to evolve considerably in forthcoming years.

Another journalist was intrigued by the fact that this year's winner, the 33-year-old Spaniard Carlos Sastre, appears to be such an unobtrusive fellow, whom people would probably not recognize if they bumped into him on the street. This is a reflection of the ingrained idea that Tour de France champions are necessarily forceful characters: attackers who exude power and authority, like Bernard Hinault or Lance Armstrong. This attitude is no doubt a remnant of the epoch when Tour champions such as Fausto Coppi [1919-1960] and Jacques Anquetil [1934-1987] generated a mythical and almost divine aura.

Gamone roe deer

Half an hour ago, I spotted this female roe deer and her two fawns on the other side of Gamone Creek. Earlier this afternoon, I heard a male deer barking in the nearby woods. So, there's a nice little family installed there.

Gamone dogs

Yesterday morning, I went out early to buy some food for the weekend, leaving Sophia inside the cool kitchen. When I returned to Gamone, I was amused to find Alison's dog Pif seated on a mound of earth alongside my mailbox, like the proverbial dog near Gundagai [display], calmly awaiting my return. Descending from my car, I was welcomed by joyous barking by both dogs, for I was literally the key figure who could open the kitchen door and enable the dogs to get engaged in their everyday jousting.

Pif has a size and weight disadvantage, so he tries constantly to imagine the optimal angle of attack.

As for Sophia, she knows that her best strategy is to remain firmly planted on her front paws, with her large jaws wide open. It's a bit like bull-fighting, with Sophia in the role of the matador, while Pif is a tiny black bull.

Pif discovered this efficient attack angle at the very beginning of his contacts with Sophia. By placing his body up against Sophia's bulky frame, Pif can try to get a grip on the furry fat of Sophia's neck, while remaining at a safe distance from Sophia's jaws. It's a tactic that works for a while... up until Sophia simply spins around to meet Pif head-on.

Pif loves the loose dirt on this mound where my old wood shed used to be located. He's capable of scrambling up an almost vertical embankment, such as those alongside the road above my house.

We see here the technique employed by Alison in an attempt to prevent her horses from strolling back down to my place. She has simply blocked the public road by means of a makeshift string "gate", attached on one side to a rubber hose. Apparently the horses imagine that the string is electrified. So do tourists. Yesterday, a middle-aged couple from Marseille, in a small brand-new automobile, were blocked by Alison's gate, and started to back down. But there's a problem in backing down an urban vehicle along a sloped road such as this: The driver simply cannot see the macadam in the rear-vision mirror, which can be quite unnerving! Consequently, fearing that the vehicle might be heading towards the gorge that he detects vaguely through the passenger's window (in the case of the road from my place up towards Bob's house), the driver tends to steer his vehicle into the embankment. This was exactly what was happening when I raced up to help the confused tourists yesterday. Finally, I helped them back down safely into the flat zone alongside my house.

My sunbathed mountain

During the years from 1882 until 1885, the painter Paul Cézanne [1839-1906] produced some 80 images of the giant Sainte-Victoire mountain near Aix-en-Provence, trying to capture it in every imaginable context of weather, luminosity and hues.

In a hugely more modest fashion, I find myself behaving similarly, using a Nikon instead of watercolors, with respect to "my" mountain, the Cournouze.

I captured this twilight image late yesterday afternoon, when a final broad shaft of sunshine from the valley of the Bourne above Pont-en-Royans was hitting the tiny white church of Châtelus and the wooded slopes to the south.

Endgame

For fifteen years, TV viewers have glimpsed the devil, El Diablo, participating regularly, in a roadside fashion, in the Tour de France.

This role is played by a nice German guy, Didi Senft [click the photo].

In spite of this diabolical presence, the starting order for time trials in the Tour de France is inspired by the Gospels [Matthew 20, 16]:

So the last will be first, and the first last.

That's to say, the first rider to take off this afternoon for the 53-km time trial between the village of Cérilly in Auvergne and the city of Saint-Amand-Montrond in Berry, in the middle of France, will be the Austrian Bernhard Eisel of Team Columbia, in 145th and last position in the present overall ratings, some 3 hours and 47 minutes behind the leaders. This last position in the Tour, the so-called red lantern, is in fact coveted in an offbeat way, and riders often fight to retain this honor. Meanwhile, the action this afternoon will be out front, between Carlos Sastre and Cadel Evans.

While there's little point in my making a prognostic, I refuse to imagine for an instant that the Australian can be beaten, because he's so solidly dependable in this kind of solitary situation.

BREAKING NEWS

OK, I'm a lousy cycling forecaster. And Cadel Evans is a tired finisher, forever incapable of the extra punch that might have made him a winner. It's sad, in a way, because Cadel got so close to the glorious goal... like last year. For the moment, disenchanted by this humbling defeat, I don't even wish to hear Cadel's "explanations" on TV, in primitive French. Clearly, something has always been missing in the behavior, style and performance of this cyclist, as if he weren't really designed for a n° 1 role. In any case, it's not today that Australia will be wearing yellow in the world road cycling domain.

Powerful talk

Randy Pausch, a 47-year-old professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, died yesterday of complications from pancreatic cancer. Among other things, he was a great teacher in the domain of virtual reality. If you haven't yet seen his celebrated Last Lecture, delivered un September 2007, I strongly recommend that you set aside everything for an hour or so and sit down calmly in front of your computer, maybe with friends and drinks (for a private wake: a kind of Pausch party), while you watch this extraordinary video:



This video is indeed an amazing statement about vitality, and a rebuttal of the numbing effects of imminent death. Randy Pausch has provided his children—and us spectators, too—with a profound heritage.

Things that never happen

Everybody knows that certain theoretically-imaginable events simply never occur in reality. In modern computer-oriented jargon, they might be described as nightmares of a purely virtual nature. Often, in the middle of a long flight, I've wondered—while standing up in the toilets, say, and calmly peeing—how events might unfold if the floor were to give way. Other passengers might complain that somebody's spending a hell of a long time in the toilets, but it's possible that I wouldn't be seriously missed until the plane touched down. And then the experts would start trying to determine the place where I might have fallen. Finally, the investigating committee would announce solemnly that I had simply disappeared down a hole in the toilets, and that my body was no doubt lost forever. A jet set disappearance. In fact, when you think about it, not such a bad way to die.

On flights between Europe and Australia, I've always preferred to travel with Qantas, because Australia's national Flying Kangaroo airline has always had an excellent reputation. I liked the style of their personnel, who seemed to care genuinely about the comfort and well-being of their passengers. I'll never forget the case of a Qantas cabin steward, long ago, who took pleasure in describing, over the aircraft's audio system, the various places in the Australian wilderness over which we were flying. It was like being driven along in a tourist coach with a competent guide.

In any case, concerning my archaic anguish about falling through the bottom of the plane, everybody knows that such things do not happen, neither on Qantas aircraft nor anywhere else.

Correction! Unlikely events of this kind can in fact happen from time to time... such as this morning, over the Philippines, when a hole suddenly appeared in the right wing fuselage of a Qantas Boeing 747 carrying 350 passengers and 19 crew members. The aircraft nosedived through an altitude gap of some six kilometers, with everybody aboard breathing through oxygen masks, before landing safely at Manila. Although many were scared, nobody was hurt.



As I said, Qantas is a great airline, and nothing bad can ever happen to passengers in the cozy warm pouch of the flying kangaroo. Well, almost nothing...

BREAKING NEWS [no pun intended]:

A short well-written article on the BBC News website [display] reveals that the presence of corrosion had been detected in this 17-year-old aircraft back in February. A Qantas spokeswoman reacted by saying: "There was nothing out of the ordinary in these checks." There are, of course, several different kinds of hypotheses concerning the sudden appearance of a gaping hole in such a position of the fuselage... which, incidentally, may have resulted in passenger luggage falling to earth like bombs of a novel kind. An interesting feature of the above-mentioned BBC site is that they've set up a reader-feedback device designed to receive testimony from passengers aboard the Boeing with a hole in its belly. I hope, though, that the website management verifies the authenticity of input, otherwise we're likely to find tales from imaginary travelers on that ill-fated flight.

Nice promotional video

I like the cloudy graphics (probably Flash artwork) and drowsy musical tone of the French Olympic promotional video.

Click the above image to access their website, skip the introduction and then click the link marked LE FILM in the upper right corner.

It's highly possible, of course, that French sporting results at Beijing will also be cloudy and drowsy... at least in the athletics domain. But, as Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, might have said (but didn't, apparently): The important thing is, not to win, but to participate.

Danger scale

I've been reading Steven Pinker's bestseller about language, published back in 1994, entitled The Language Instinct. It is indeed an excellent and refreshing book, which insists upon the fact that humans are not really taught to communicate by language, even though many parents surely imagine that their children would never have learned to speak were it not for the teaching efforts of their parents... who've often made a huge effort to become experts in "baby talk", believing naively that this was the only way of being understood by their toddlers. No, as Pinker's title suggests, the basic capacity to use language is a human instinct shared by every individual. The proof that our linguistic ability is instinctive is the fact that we say many things that have probably never been said before. So, how could we have been taught to make such statements?

Anecdote. Many years ago, I encountered briefly an exceptional woman: the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, a world authority on the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951], whose mysterious and celebrated Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had fascinated me when I was a student back in Sydney. Anscombe, closely linked to friends in Brittany who shared her Catholic faith, told us a weird story about one of her sons who had never uttered a single sound up until the age of four. One day, unexpectedly, he proclaimed loudly in perfect English: "Mother, you must punish my brother, for he just tried to lock me up in a wardrobe." Stupefaction! From then on, he spoke normally, as if some kind of a mental dam had been unclogged. This trivial anecdote would have probably never impressed me so much were it not for the associations between Anscombe and Wittgenstein.

Recently, I was fascinated by a TV documentary concerning the amazing story of the Israeli crooner Moshe Brand, who was a French celebrity under the name of Mike Brant, up until he jumped to his death from the balcony of a building in Paris. He too, as a child in Israel, never pronounced a single word. Then, at the age of four, he suddenly started to speak in Hebrew, revealing an exceptionally powerful and beautiful vocal tone that would contribute later to his international success as a singer.

Getting back to Pinker's book, I'm amused by his debunking of the silly myth about Eskimos having a huge variety of words for snow. The truth of the matter is that Eskimos probably use fewer words than a run-of-the-mill Alpine skier to talk about various kinds of snow.

When I arrived in France, I was intrigued by cases of a single English word being replaced by two or more French terms. For example, whenever an English-speaking person talks about finding bones [in French: os] in his fish dish, French observers are greatly amused. They imagine, say, a humble trout with a huge thigh bone. The correct French word for the bony things you find in a fish skeleton is arête.

Another stumbling block was the word scale. In a measurement context—for example, in maps—the French equivalent is échelle, which is also the word for ladder. But in music, when referring, say, to the scale of C major, a quite different word appears in French: gamme. Apparently, this new word has something to do with the Greek letter gamma. So, back at the time I was taking guitar lessons in Brussels, not only did I have to replace C, D, E by do, ré, mi, etc, but I had to force myself to refrain from speaking, say, of the échelle de do majeur.

The subject I wanted to evoke today (after taking quite some time to get around to it) is danger scales for potentially catastrophic events. To start the fireball rolling, let's say that everybody has heard of the famous Richter scale for earthquakes. As strange as it might appear, this logarithmic scale has no upper limit. Consequently, we could never refer to an earthquake of "the greatest possible magnitude", because there would be always be room at the top of the scale for an even more disastrous earthquake. That's nice scientific rigor, but I wouldn't feel like buying a used car from an earthquake scientist who told me that the vehicle required no more than a couple of minor repairs.

I wonder how many people are aware of a similar scale for accidents in the domain of peaceful nuclear energy, known as the INES. Now Ines, pronounced een-ess, happens to be an elegant French female Christian name of Greek etymology, meaning "pure and virginal", which I've encountered once or twice. But the INES that concerns me today is an acronym for the International Nuclear Event Scale, whose eight degrees extend upwards from zero to seven, from green to red.

As I pointed out in my articles of 17 June 2007 entitled Nice TV spot [display] and 27 December 2007 entitled Nuclear energy [display], France is covered with a relatively dense system of nuclear reactors run by a state-owned corporation named Areva, whose president is Anne Lauvergeon. Well, over the last fortnight, several minor accidents have occurred. The first was at the Tricastan site on the Rhône.

Many years ago, Christine and I spent some time there, when it was still thought of as the Pierrelatte center for refining the stuff with which you make atomic bombs. I was participating as a computing instructor in a job skills recycling program aimed at transforming nuclear energy technicians into computerists. I remember, above all, that we were housed in a VIP lodge in the woods, and that the notorious Mistral wind, blowing through the Rhône Valley, drove me mad during my entire stay at Pierrelatte. Indeed, these days, whenever my friends Natacha and Alain extoll the splendors of Provence, I still think to myself: Provence, yes... but Mistral, no!

Over the last fortnight, there have been no less than four accidents in nuclear installations operated by the French electricity authority, EDF. One occurred in the nearby city of Romans, and another in my home département, Isère. We're informed that they were all trivial events on the INES scale... which is nice to know. The latest accident, resulting in the irradiation of a hundred Tricastin employees, was of level zero on the INES scale. A French journalist, not accustomed to the habit (derived from computing) of starting to count with zero, asked rhetorically whether the nuclear authorities might end up trying to convince us that we're faced with negative dangers from their reactors!

There is, in fact, a competent French government agency, called ASN [Nuclear Safety Authority], in charge of safety and security in the nuclear energy domain. [Click their logo to access English-language documentation.]

Funnily enough, we're faced with a similar situation to the doping affairs in cycling, as sketched in my article of 18 July 2008 entitled Half empty or half full? [display]. If we seem to be hit suddenly by an avalanche of nuclear incidents, this doesn't necessarily mean that the whole engineering infrastructure is deteriorating. On the contrary, these danger alerts stem no doubt from the fact the security and detection processes are becoming more and more refined and intense. So, let's be optimistic.