Fabulous fig story

I'm intrigued by the power of Richard Dawkins as a writer, and I've often tried to determine the ingredients of his amazing artistry.

First, of course, this erudite Oxford professor has a profound mastery, not only of zoology (his basic field), but of neighboring sciences such as biology and paleontology. Besides, Dawkins is quite at ease in fields such as games theory and statistics, and he's even a competent computer programmer. The second obvious ingredient of Dawkins' success as a writer is his virtuosity in the domain of the English language, which he handles constantly with the sensitivity of a poet. His scientific and literary achievements are reflected in the fact that Dawkins, in Britain, is both a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. When appropriate, he can fall deliberately into the casual vernacular of a journalist writing in a popular magazine, just as he can switch on instantly, if need be, the didactic language of a schoolmaster. He can throw a tender personal anecdote into the middle of pages of scientific explanations:

I was driving through the English countryside with my daughter Juliet, then aged six, and she pointed out some flowers by the wayside. I asked her what she thought wildflowers were for. She gave a rather thoughtful answer. "Two things," she said. "To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us." I was touched by this and sorry I had to tell her that it wasn't true.

Ever since 1976, through ten splendid books, Dawkins has been explaining that many commonly-held beliefs are simply not true. But above all, he has been telling us, more importantly, what is true, especially in the Darwinian domain of evolution.

The first Dawkins book I read was The Blind Watchmaker, which stunned me instantly. That was the first time I had ever heard of the possibility (today, I would say the certainty) that, on the early inanimate planet Earth, a crude mineral self-copying entity composed solely of clay or crystal had evolved into the fabulous DNA replicator that has since become the unique basis of all life on the planet.

Dawkins comes through as a great animal-lover. I'm not talking of the ordinary kind of person who gets carried away (like me) by dogs, donkeys, squirrels, hawks and so forth. No, the love expressed by Dawkins would be better described as awe when confronted with the inbuilt technology found in countless creatures. In the Blind Watchmaker book, he devoted an entire opening chapter to the amazing design of the navigational system of bats.

Several of these delightful creatures are lodged here at Gamone, where they offer me aeronautical shows in the twilight on late summer afternoons... like the fruit bats in my native Grafton.

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins expresses his utter amazement concerning another creature of which there are ample specimens here at Gamone: the spider. Their web-building operations, as explained by Dawkins, are fantastic.

Towards the end of the same book, we are presented with an even more amazing story: that of the common fig.





Now, insofar as I'm particularly fond of figs (receiving fruit from Madeleine and Dédé, as well as from Bob's tree... while waiting for my own—given to me by Natacha and Alain—to become productive), I had imagined that I probably knew at least a thing or two about this fruit. Well, it turns out that, before reading Dawkins, I was totally and dismally ignorant on the subject of figs. First, what we imagine as the so-called "fruit" is not at all a true fruit. It's rather a strange garden of countless delicate fig flowers. What we see as the fig's skin might be thought of as the "earth" in which these flowers are growing. And the garden has curved, over evolutionary time, into a concave bulb that hides the flowers. Furthermore, inside this closed garden, the fig flowers live and procreate thanks to the complex services rendered by a community of devoted little male and female wasps, whose entire existence and survival are inextricably linked to the fig tree in question. In order to understand what happens in this mysterious garden, I started to draw a few diagrams like this one, which indicates the four principal actors: male and female fig flowers, female wasps and wingless male wasps.

The female wasps (made pregnant prior to their actual birth) stuff pollen from male flowers into their breasts and escape from the fig garden through holes in the "earth" burrowed by males. As soon as a female wasp locates another "garden" with female flowers waiting to be pollinated, she crawls in through the tiny hole at the extremity of the fig, maybe tearing off her wings in the process. Apparently we crunch such microscopic Agaondae wasps every time we bite into a fig, but they can do us no harm. Within the confines of this blog, I certainly don't intend to try to delve more deeply into the fabulous fig story. In any case, Dawkins has already told this story fully and splendidly. I recommend his book to everybody who's sensitive to all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.

Planting peonies

Near Crest, a half-hour drive to the south of Choranche, a reputed nursery named Rivière specializes in peonies (pivoines in French).

[Click the photo to visit their website.]

At this time of the year, bare-roots peonies can be purchased for planting. You have to order them by phone or Internet, indicating the precise varieties that you want, and there's a delay of a few days before the packages are ready. I ordered eight different peonies: four tree plants and four herbaceous plants.

Each plant is packaged individually in a sealed cellophane bag crammed with natural moss. This packaging enabled me to wait for the snow to melt at Gamone before starting to plant the peonies. Finally, I carried out the planting last Tuesday morning, in unpleasant cold and muddy conditions. But the pleasure of opening up each package and taking care of the precious plants compensated for the discomfort. Here's an unopened package:

When you slit open the cellophane, the contents emit a wonderful aroma of damp moss and wood.

Once the moss is shaken off, the moist bare peoney roots have such a delightful wine-hued aspect and vegetal aroma that you might feel like eating them. (Well, that's what I felt.)

I'll wait until spring before describing exactly what I've now planted at Gamone in the way of roses and peonies.

More fallen rocks

Last Monday morning, I set out early to drive into town. Half a kilometer down the road, a roadblock had been set up just before the Pont Picard (which marks the entry into Pont-en-Royans) due to rocks that had tumbled down from Mount Baret during the night. This sight is becoming familiar.

The employee told me that several rocks had fallen, reaching the roadway at distinct spots over a distance of fifty meters. There seemed to be four separate rocks.

The "footprints" of rock #1, before it terminated its itinerary in the middle of the road, can be seen in the macadam. Rock #2 must have bounced off the slopes at a certain height and landed directly like a bomb on the edge of the roadway, where the violence of the impact shattered it into fragments of creamy limestone.

Rock #3 was halted by the protective net, whereas rock #4 smashed a wooden post, broke through the netting and left a telltale hole in the roadside earth where it bounced before ending its trajectory down on the edge of the Bourne.

An hour later, a civil-security helicopter was flying over the scene, taking a close look at the spot on the top of the mountain where the rocks had been dislodged. Their verdict: Bigger rocks were poised, ready to roll down the slopes. So, the road was immediately closed... probably for several weeks. To escape from Gamone without going through Pont-en-Royans, there are several solutions, all of which involve roundabout routes up over the surrounding mountains. You might say that this is the price I pay for living in such an exotic setting as Choranche.

Sophia's latest larder

I put a bag of old walnuts onto the compost heap, because some of them had been attacked by insects.

Not surprisingly, Sophia saw this as wasteful behavior, which she's not prepared to tolerate. So, on wintry afternoons, whenever Sophia feels that she hasn't consumed a sufficient quantity of calories to keep out the cold, she'll have a handy larder.

Time-honored season's greetings

A French website offers marvelous specimens of the season's greetings over the years.


A thought enters my mind, but I have trouble expressing it: Has the Internet replaced the Xmas season... as it were ?

Sophia recycling

Maybe you've got a surplus wad of insulation material in your attic, and you don't know what to do with it. Well, Sophia can give you an idea for recycling it... as an excellent dog mattress!

Normally, this kind of stuff shouldn't be lying on my kitchen floor. I had taken this wad out of the attic with the intention of stuffing a few strands into a crack on top of an outside door frame. Then, when the tempest started to blow up yesterday, I rapidly collected everything that was scattered around outside. So, overnight, the wad remained on my kitchen floor. This morning, returning from a trip into the village, I found my Sophia stretched out comfortably on top of it. I believe that both cats and dogs have a remarkable intuition for detecting cozy places to lie down. They're surely equipped, in their chromosomes, with some kind of a soft-mattress-detector gene.

Gérard dislikes automobiles

Mounted on his old horse, Don Quixote attacked windmills with nothing more than his knight's lance.

France's celebrated actor Gérard Depardieu is suspected (but not yet formally accused) of having attacked an innocent automobile parked in a Paris street in the vicinity of Gérard's apartment. He operated almost barehanded, so it appears. The damages are brutal: a broken windshield and doors kicked in.

Observers are wondering what might have motivated such an assault. It has been suggested that this act of destruction might be interpreted as fallout from Copenhagen's failure to achieve what had been expected in rules stipulating cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. It's a fact that the automobile is looked upon as a major culprit in this domain, along with farting cows. So, maybe the actor's behavior was a symbolic personal expression of his profound desire that our children might inherit a cleaner planet. In that case, though, why did he perform this noble act in the middle of the night, in a somewhat stealthy manner, instead of operating in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of environmental activists and joyous spectators?

If indeed this hypothesis of an aversion to automobiles turned out to be correct, then it would be nice if Gérard were to go along to the police station, when he is summoned, on horseback, like Don Quixote. This would make a huge positive impact upon global-warming protagonists throughout the world... and might even persuade the municipal authorities in Paris—who have already reintroduced bicycles with much success—to examine the possibility of reverting massively to horses for transport inside the City of Light.

Realistically, we must not exclude the possibility that alcohol and aggressiveness might have played a role in this act of violence. If that were the case, then the lucky car-owner should look forward to the pleasure of soon being able to drive around Paris in a famous pristine vehicle. He could put photographic banners on his brand-new doors to thank publicly the benefactor... referred to affectionately as Gégé.

This automobile—the Gégémobile—could rapidly become a unique and highly-priced collector's item.

Sun's trajectory will not vary for a while

Today, December 21, is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It's called the Winter Solstice (where solstice means "standing still") because the trajectory of the Sun, low in the south-eastern sky, remains fixed—as it were—for several days. For me, alas, it's not easy to witness this standing-still phenomenon, because the sun rises behind one mountain, and sets behind another. At around 9.45 in the morning, the Sun makes its appearance from behind the cliff on the right-hand side of the Cournouze.

Then it spends the day moving towards Pont-en-Royans (as it were, to the right of the photo), and finally disappears below the crest of the Baret (seen, in the following photo, from my bedroom window).

Soon, the Sun will be appearing, not to the right of the Cournouze, but further to the left, above the mountain. And, since it needs extra time to "climb" to the top of the mountain, this means that, for me, the Sun will in fact appear in the sky of Châtelus later than at present. But, as of today, the days will, of course, be growing longer. As you can see, understanding what's happening in the heavens is complicated when you live in a place such as Gamone, surrounded by mountains. But I've grown accustomed to this environment, and I would surely be unhappy if I had to wake up every morning in the middle of a plain.

The Cournouze and the Baret are located a mere kilometer from each other. The saddle-shaped neck of land between them is called the Col de Mézelier, and this was the mountain pass used by the Chartreux monks on the 15-kilometer journey (no doubt astride donkeys) between their monastery of Val du Sainte-Marie down in Bouvantes and their vineyards in Choranche.

POST SCRIPTUM: I've often discovered with dismay that it's not easy to behave as an efficient amateur astronomer at Gamone, since the sky's covered inevitably in an opaque veil of clouds. If Galileo had been a Gamonian, he wouldn't have been bothered unduly by the Inquisition.

Instead of going down in History because of his "Eppur si muove", he would be remembered through a prosaic mea culpa: "My thinking was screwed up by the haze above the Cournouze."

This morning (22 December 2009), I waited vainly to see the point at which the Sun would appear in the sky above Châtelus. Let's simply say, in non-astronomical terms, that it didn't...

Personally, I'm most unanimous

And what—you might ask—am I unanimous about? I'm totally unanimous in my belief that the concept of unanimity is ideal, say, for a couple deciding whether or not to get married... but it's utter nonsense in most other real-world decision-making situations. What I mean to say is, even those silly old guys in red don't insist upon making a unanimous decision when they're electing a new pope. And jeez, that's an awesome decision, because the selected fellow becomes the chief representative of God himself on our planet. Sure, a priest is not supposed to go ahead with a marriage unless there's unanimous approval from the congregation. This means that an old boyfriend of the bride or a disgruntled parent or even a loudmouthed fuckwit could theoretically veto the ceremony by yelling out no. But I think that, unless he or she had highly pertinent breaking news to reveal, the naysayer would run the risk of getting thrown out through a side door of the church. [My example has a distinctly Christian flavor. That's because I have no idea how other religions handle the concept of nuptial unanimity... and, as they say in certain spiritual circles, I really don't give a shit.]

In any case, I'm unanimous in considering that it's outrageous to use the United Nations approach, based upon unanimous decisions, when it comes to making plans to save the planet Earth. Something will have to change fundamentally in the decision-making process to avoid the risk, in the future, of wasting the time and energy of heads of state and environmental experts from all the nations of the globe. While they're at it, maybe it would be a good idea to take a close look at the logic (or lack of logic) that enables a tiny country such as Tuvalu, say, to speak with the same weight as a great nation. You will have guessed that I've never been wildly enthusiastic about the concept of democracy... although it's difficult to imagine a sound system to replace it.

One of my ancestors was a bastard

I can imagined being admonished by a relative: "William, that's no way to talk about our ancestors!" Well, it's the literal truth. The ancestor in question is referred to technically—whether we like it or not—as a royal bastard. The story starts with King John.

In my article of 3 September 2009 entitled Genealogical breakthrough [display], I indicated that this monarch was one of my countless great(x22)-grandfathers. As every English-speaking schoolchild knows, one of the only positive acts of this appalling king consisted of his being forced to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215. If you read his biography, you'll see that John married twice, to two women named Isabelle, the second of whom was the French matriarch of the Plantagenêt dynasty of English kings. But who was this alleged offspring of John named Richard FitzRoy, born in 1187, who was an ancestor of mine? Well, he was an illegitimate son of the 20-year-old future king and his cousin Suzanne de Warenne.

It's interesting to examine the names by which this bastard son is known. Sometimes he is given the Chilham surname, simply because he was born at Chilham Castle in Kent. (By coincidence, centuries later, this castle happened to be the residence of the late John Skeffington, 13th Viscount Massereene, with whom I once exchanged a series of letters about Skeffington genealogy.) I've seen him referred to as Richard Fitzjohn Chilham. Most often, though, he's known simply as Richard FitzRoy. Now, the elements of this apparent surname, FitzRoy, are synonymous with the French words fils (son) and roi (king). A FitzRoy is therefore a son—generally illegitimate—of a king, and this surname has always been a commonly-used generic title for royal bastards. After my ancestor Richard Fitzroy, there were two other famous FitzRoys:

— Henry FitzRoy [1519–1536], 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, was the bastard son of King Henry VIII and his mistress Elizabeth Blount.

— A century later, another Henry FitzRoy [1663-1690], 1st Duke of Grafton, was the bastard son of King Charles II and Barbara Villiers.

I insist upon the fact that all the three Fitzroys I've mentioned carried this false "surname", not because they were related, but simply because they were bastard sons of a king.

A descendant of the Duke of Grafton, Charles Augustus FitzRoy [1796-1858], was the governor-general of Australia, and he named the New South Wales town of Grafton in honor of his grandfather Augustus FitzRoy [1735-1811], 3rd Duke of Grafton. And that's where I happened to be born (funnily enough, in a maternity clinic named Runnymede) in 1940.

For French readers interested in genealogy, I might point out that my ancestral line back up through King John and then William the Conqueror runs into a brick wall (maybe I should speak rather of a stone wall, or a wooden palisade) at the level of a fine 10th-century fellow named Conan I de Bretagne. (I assume he was a fine fellow, and I imagine that he might have been an ancestor of my ex-wife Christine, but the truth of the matter is that I know nothing whatsoever about him.) Besides, nobody will be surprised to hear that, at the level of King John, we're exactly 14 generations down from Charlemagne.

POST-SCRIPTUM: Here's a photo I took in August 2006 of the maternity clinic where I was born:

The former verandahs of the original building have been closed by insipid weatherboard walls with modern windows, and the base of the façades has been bricked in, producing the global effect of a dull cube. All the old-world architectural charm of the original edifice—which used to be of a greenish-gray color—has disappeared.

Having learned a few months ago that I descend from a royal bastard named Fitzroy—son of the future monarch who would sign reluctantly the Great Charter of Freedoms at Runnymede on 16 June 1215, laying the foundations of constitutional law as it still exists today—I'm amused to discover allusions to these events (of a strictly fortuitous and superficial nature) at the spot in the Antipodes where my peephole opened on 24 September 1940.

White weather

Sophia is a Labrador, and her ancestors came from the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (marked here by a red pin), up in the vicinity of Greenland:

This means that she has snow in her genes. For Sophia, whenever Gamone is all white, she considers that the weather has returned to its normal state, as it should be all year round.

She rolls in the snow with bliss, as if she were floating in a bath. Motionless, with closed eyes, soaking in the "warmth" of the snow, she looks like a frozen Arctic beast dug up out of the ice.

Then she jumps up and slides down the slopes as if she were skiing.

Meanwhile, Moshé looks down at us with a puzzled expression, as if to ask: "Where has all the green grass gone?"

As for me, I'm wondering whether friends might happen to drop in unexpectedly for tea and biscuits out on the lawn. Funnily, the outside temperature is quite mild, and there's not even the slightest cool breeze.

It's unlikely, because no ordinary vehicle could ever drive up here today. [BREAKING NEWS: At the moment I was writing that last sentence, the village snow plow went by, and Gamone is now perfectly accessible.] Inside the house, of course, a fire is burning non-stop in the living room.

Along with the all-embracing whiteness, the most magical aspects of a Gamone snow scene are the luminosity and the silence.

Sleep problems

Fortunately, I've never been affected by insomnia or sleep problems of any kind. Admittedly, I have early-morning dreams of a vivid and often disturbing nature, on precise subjects that I generally recognize. I often have the impression that I would be less anguished and generally happier during the day if only I were to cease having lugubrious dreams during the night... but that's no doubt bad psychology. Still, I mention that silly possibility because I'm in good company. Shakespeare, after all, suggested (in Hamlet's famous To be or not to be speech) that even death would lose its sting if only we could be certain beforehand that we won't have bad dreams. Consequently, if researchers were to inform us that they've located a tiny organ, or maybe a gene, that causes us to dream, I would gladly think about having it removed surgically. For the moment, though, it's a little too early to start looking around for such a medical specialist... and I'm not at all certain that the otherwise-generous French medical-benefits infrastructure would reimburse the costs of such an intervention.

But I'm getting sidetracked (railroad metaphor). Let me return to the case of people with insomnia and sleep problems. I would recommend that such individuals attempt to get in contact immediately with a 19-year-old French student in Brittany who surely deserves the title of the world champion sleeper. Maybe he could be coaxed into revealing his secret solution for sound sleep. In fact, I think I can already say that the quality of his sleep resulted from a powerful sedative of alcohol and cannabis. But let me describe the exploit for which he deserves some kind of survival award. Everybody has heard of those fantastic high-speed French trains called TGV.

Well, at the end of a September evening of copious drinking and smoking, our hero wandered off on foot, in a dazed state, into the misty Breton countryside. Feeling a little drowsy, he decided to bed down for the night between the rails of the TGV line between Paris and Quimper. Not unexpectedly, a few hours later on, a TGV happened to pass by, at a speed of a few hundred kilometers an hour. The train driver had the visual impression that he had run over a human being. He promptly stopped his train, 800 meters further down the track, and walked back to inspect the situation. He came upon our hero, apparently unharmed, and fast asleep. Finding it impossible to wake him, the train-driver phoned the local gendarmes, who soon arrived on the scene. With all these intruders gazing down on him, and trying to shake him out of his deep slumber, our hero was disturbed, indeed rightly annoyed. He sat up, yawned, half-opened his eyes, discovered the gendarmes, and promptly made a meaningful greeting sign with his extended middle finger, of the following kind:

He would have liked to get back to sleep, but the gendarmes insisted upon taking him to a cozy spot down at their barracks. Yesterday, a judge ordered him to pay 3,000 euros to the French railway authorities, to cover the expenses incurred by stopping the TGV and arriving late in Quimper. The wise judge said: "It's rare for a judge to tell an offender that he's lucky to be brought to trial. But you're a miracle case." Hearing this boring admonition from a wide-awake judge, our hero no doubt yawned and resisted with difficulty the desire to fall asleep.

PS: Do you know how we refer to wooden railroad ties in Australian English? They're called sleepers.

Balls and holes

Friends assure me that, when you get addicted to golf, you can't get it out of your system, and you can't get enough of it. Come rain, sleet, snow, hail or high winds, all you can think about is getting it into the hole. It? I'm talking of balls, of course, rock-hard balls. When I was a kid in South Grafton, I recall that serious golfers hired a person referred to as a caddie to talk care of their sporting equipment. This US guy named Tiger appears to have got together a whole harem to handle his sporting equipment.

Wow, what a drive he must have! A hole-in-one every day he hits off. Surely a great mattress-putter, too. In any case, a splendid role model for horny youths who yearn to become top players, indeed champions.

Cute religion

When referring to religious beliefs, people generally use adjectives such as "ancient", "sacred", "profound", etc. To my mind, the fabulous American belief system known as Mormonism is simply cute. There's no better adjective to describe it. Compared to old religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Mormonism is cute in the same way that babies are cute, in the same way that this old Kodak poster is cute:

And here's a terribly cute video presentation of Mormonism that I found on the web:



I ignore the origins of this video. Was it really produced by the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? If so, they're dauntless folk. There's a French proverb: "Ridicule kills." What it means is that, once somebody has acquired a reputation as an object of ridicule, he's basically dead. It's almost impossible to recover his status as a person to be taken seriously. So, from that point of view, it could be said that the Mormons don't seem to fear death.

I've had two kinds of personal contacts with Mormons. Whenever I visited Jerusalem, back in the '80s and '90s, I invariably ran into small groups of cute Mormon girls from Utah, who were exceptionally friendly. Later, in Grenoble, LDS church members helped me enormously in my genealogical research by lending me precious microfilms of English census data. These days, I continue to use constantly their splendid Family Search website:

If ever a miracle were to occur and the voice of God were to boom out from the heavens above Gamone, informing me that it was time for me to choose a religion and pay up my church membership fees, I think I would become a Mormon. To borrow the language of Some Grey Bloke in my earlier article entitled Nasty stuff, should be censured [display], I like their options. I mean, those laid-back Utah spirit-chicks in Jerusalem were really angelic, in a cute way. Besides, at a deeper spiritual level, if you were to ask me to sum up my impressions of the fabulous theology of Mormonism in a single word, I would not hesitate in saying that it's truly... cute.

Clearly, if I'm going to spend Eternity in nice company, while pursuing my favorite hobby of computer-assisted family-history research, then the Mormons sound like the right people to get mixed up with.

Flag counter

At the end of this blog, I recently installed a gadget that purports to determine and count the national flags of visitors to this website. Here are the current results:

[Click on the image to display a larger version.]

To all these anonymous citizens of the planet Earth, who are surely just as concerned as I am about what might or might not emerge from Copenhagen today and tomorrow, I transmit my best wishes for the survival of our children's future world.

Nasty stuff, should be censored

The list of nations intent upon censoring the Internet is not very long: China, Iran, Egypt... and, soon, Australia. Nice company! Think of it as a select little club, with visionary guides such as Stephen Conroy, and well-tested high-tech means to impose the desired censorship.

This hilarious guy is known as "Some Grey Bloke":

Click the picture to visit his website, where you can appreciate his broad and profound wisdom on many subjects. If you happen to be Australian, you should hurry. One never knows. Progress is such that you might not be allowed to watch this fellow in the near future.

Here's an encounter between Some Grey Bloke and a Man of God:



Members of the new generation (?) of Aussie Christian pollies are likely to be moved by these videos.

Have suitcase, will travel

A long time ago, a TV ad for a detergent for washers demonstrated how you could squirt tomato ketchup onto a dish towel, then tie it in knots before putting it into the machine, and it would emerge spotless thanks to the power of this powder. Coluche, the much-loved French comic who was killed on the French Riviera in 1986 when his motor-cycle collided with a truck, used to point out that it was time-consuming and wearisome to tie knots in all your dirty clothes, and then have to untie them after they're washed clean.

For reasons of a similar kind, I would be reluctant to invest in the suitcases shown in the following ad:



I've grown accustomed to suitcases on tiny wheels that you can drag along behind you in train stations and airports. Besides, I'm getting on in years. For me, it would be a rather strenuous burden if I now had to master this amazing new way of moving around with a suitcase.

Awaiting the outcome of Copenhagen

For the moment, it's impossible to guess what might or might not happen between now and the end of the conference in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, this four-minute video from Climate Interactive presents a so-called climate-change scoreboard:



And here—for what it's worth—is an ugly photo of an acidified lagoon alongside the once-great Murray River in my native land:

Things to see in St-Marcellin

If ever you imagined that the only thing to be seen at St-Marcellin is their famous cheese, then the information I'm about to reveal will surely surprise you. First, there's an exotic intersection in the middle of the town.

There wasn't much light, and my photo is not very good. Besides, I was making an effort to avoid being run over by vehicles on the busy road where I was standing to take the photo. In the foreground, on a landscaped island at the center of the intersection, you can just make out the presence of a makeshift sun-shelter, erected with wooden poles, with a straw roof. Beneath it, there's an elegant wicker garden chair. If you didn't mind the busy traffic, you could sit there in the cool shade and contemplate the flowers and the shrub planted by council gardeners.

The façade behind the oasis is interesting. The owner of a flat on an upper floor has stuck her collection of toy animals out in the cool air, giving them an opportunity to gaze down upon the oasis and the road traffic. Here are closeup views:

The first time I discovered this balcony zoo, a month or so ago, there was a huge felt gorilla in the left-hand group, but he probably got blown away in a recent tempest and crushed by a truck.

The black and white cow in the right-hand window reminds me of a trivial anecdote yesterday at the local supermarket. A little girl, jumping around alongside her mother, was carrying a huge gray felt cow in her arms. At the place where you weigh your fruit and vegetables, the child had decided to place her animal upside-down on the scales, and she pressed randomly on a button that informed her immediately of the weight of her cow, and the animal's price if it had been a bag of tomatoes. Seeing me waiting for the scales, the child glanced up at me with a cheeky grin, as if to say: "Why shouldn't I weigh my cow?" I said to her, in a serious tone of voice: "Give me a carton of milk and a kilo of beef, please." The puzzled expression on the little girl's face suggested that she was analyzing my request. Her mother, on the other hand, must have thought it was a great joke, for she burst out laughing.

Back in the domain of sights to see at St-Marcellin, there's an affair that has amused me for ages. You can well imagine a businessman with a fleet of utility vehicles who decides to publicize his activities through an Internet website. Well, in St-Marcellin, there's a young entrepreneur who's handling his affairs the other way round. He has built an Internet site, designed to display small ads, and he uses his fleet of stationary vehicles to publicize his website.

When I say "fleet", I'm exaggerating a little, since he only seems to have a pair of little yellow vans, which are parked constantly at strategic spots in the town.

The fellow often turns up at the weekly market in St-Marcellin, where he has a small stand that publicizes his website... which is rather dull. [Click the photos to visit it.] He even has a scrapbook with photos of pages in his website.

Long ago, somebody asked me: "William, we want to sell our house through the Internet. Do they have a phone number, or maybe an office in the city? How much do they charge, roughly, for a house-for-sale ad?" Readers will have understood that, in this person's questions, her use of the word "they" represented the staff of the mythical company that owns and operates the Internet. At the time, I wasn't quite sure how to reply. Today, if she were to ask me the same questions, I would tell her that the ideal way of moving into the vast new Internet world is to go along to the St-Marcellin market on a Saturday morning and browse through the scrapbook of the fellow with the two yellow vans.

Intrusive views of my street

The Google Maps squad arrived in town. Apparently in the first week of April 2009. They've worked through my street—that's to say, the D531 road—from Choranche down through Pont-en-Royans, and the results are spectacular and surprising. Google's street-view approach produces a shock when you see it applied in a sparsely-populated rural zone, and I have the impression that certain local residents are likely to be somewhat scandalized by this invasion of privacy. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that the French authorities would have given Google the green light to carry out such an operation, of an intimate village nature.

[CORRECTION: As explained in a comment, Google's visit actually took place on Friday, 13 March 2009.]

To see the images on your computer, start up Google maps and type Choranche, France. Here are some specimens of what you'll find, with my comments:

I start out with the image that shocked me most of all: the patio of the Jorjane hotel-restaurant in the village of Choranche. The photo gives the impression that the place is in a sad state of abandon. Now, it's a fact that my friend George Pontvianne often puts his business into hibernation for short periods. Besides, he has been trying to sell the Jorjane for some time. But it's quite unfair that Google should display this particularly dismal image for anybody and everybody, in the future, who might happen to look up the Jorjane for one reason or another. It's the static and permanent nature of the fallout of Google's intervention that shocks me. What I'm trying to say is that, a few days later, a photo taken at the same spot would have shown a patio thronged with joyful bikers. So, the Google photo is wrong, in that it's not at all a typical vision of the Jorjane. In any case, I've just phoned up George and suggested that he should ask Google to delete their images of the Jorjane.

About a kilometer to the east of the village (a few clicks on Google maps), this is a view of the house of my great friends Tineke Bot and Serge Bellier, who are clearly recognizable in this Google image. Their two visitors are probably recognizable, too, for professional viewers. Here again, it's unacceptable that the entire planet should be offered the image of Serge and Tineke accompanied by X and Y. And, for reasons of security (Tineke is a famous sculptor), it's equally unacceptable that roadside views should indicate precisely the fenced edges of their Rochemuse domain. Clearly, Google is going too far. And I wouldn't be surprised if Serge and Tineke were to raise their voices at this level...

Much further to the west, Google lets you explore the roadside house of my neighbors Dédé and Madeleine. As for my place, Gamone, up on the slopes, you can't see too much. Google has not yet provided me with justifications for updating my existing old-fashioned resources in the way of self-defensive firearms. (I'm joking!)

I'll let you follow Google Map down along the D531 into Pont-en-Royans... where there are other surprises. I've just been sitting in on an Internet session on this subject in the home of neighbors in Chatelus. Their kids were thrilled to find perfectly-recognizable images of themselves on a sporting arena in the village. Is this good? Sure, the kids in question are going to astound their school friends with the revelation: "We're all on the Internet!" But that raises an obvious delicate question: Is it right that a giant US corporation should be able to move into our French villages and then display recognizable images of school kids at play? The answer, I think, is a resounding no.

I conclude by a quiz question: How have my neighbors and I been able to determine the exact date at which these images were obtained?

Australian climate muddle

The word "muddle" seems right to me. It evokes mud. Dry mud.

On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, the behavior of Australia's federal opposition has been alarming, to an extent that nobody could have imagined. Australia's Liberal Party was having trouble deciding how to play its federal opposition role on the all-important subject of climate change. In a huge ego confrontation, the leader Malcolm Turnbull let himself get replaced by Tony Abbott.

At a grave moment, when a bipartisan approach to planetary problems would be expected, it's a pity that this game of musical chairs should still be going on in the party of former prime minister John Howard.

Here in France, the fact that the climate-change project of Kevin Rudd has been rejected, and the idea that Australia will be turning up at Copenhagen with empty hands, have given rise to interesting comments in the national press.

A prestigious French think tank named IRIS [Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques] studies questions of a strategic and international nature. [Click on the banner to access their website.] Their governing board includes individuals such as Pascal Lamy (director-general of the World Trade Organization), Hubert Védrine (former minister of Foreign Affairs under Mitterrand), Michel Barnier (Europe's recently-appointed internal markets commissioner) and Philippe Séguin (president of the Cour des comptes). There are younger board members such as the leftist politician Manuel Valls and even the professional soccer-player Lilian Thuram.

IRIS has reacted immediately to political events in Australia through an interview of Sylvie Matelly, a research director at the institute, published in the great daily Le Monde. I find this short interview excellent, since it summarizes well-informed French reactions to Australia's role on the international stage.

Funnily enough, this French analysis of the situation in Australia is less alarmist than the opening lines of the present blog article!

Click the banner to access the French-language article. The journalist who conducted the interview was Audrey Garric. Here is my translation of the entire interview:

LE MONDE: How do you explain the rejection of the government's climate project by the Australian senate?

SYLVIE MATELLY: To Australian political parties, this plan appeared to be too ambitious. Its goal was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by the year 2020, by 25% with respect to the year 2000. Well, Australian emissions increased by 30% between 1990 and 2007. And they continue to rise because of the country's strong economic activity. Politicians therefore feared that the nation would not succeed with respect to that goal. Besides, the year 2020 seemed to be too close for a nation that had only ratified the Kyoto protocol in December 2007, with the election of the Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.

LE MONDE: What has brought about that lukewarm attitude of Australian politicians towards environmental issues?

SYLVIE MATELLY: Australians have been divided for a long time by climate-change questions. On the one hand, ecological awareness is quite developed at a public-opinion level. Australians are conscious of the fact that their land is one of the countries most highly affected by global warming. For example, Australians were the first people in the world to banish old-fashioned lightbulbs. The Australian press highlights regularly the consequences of climatic warming upon the desertification of the land, and the tragedy of animals dying of thirst. On the other hand, Australia's economy is highly pollutant. On a per capita basis, it's the world's second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gas. It's a very wealthy nation, with a high standard of living, and its economic growth is dynamic. So, it's a major energy consumer. Above all, its energy is almost totally coal-based. Industrialists and the energy sector have no desire to see their activities curtailed.

LE MONDE: The government intends to resubmit its law project to senators in February. If the text were to be rejected for the second time, what would be the consequences as far as global warming is concerned?

SYLVIE MATELLY: There is little chance that this controversial project, rejected twice by the senate, could be adopted in February, especially if an early federal election is announced, as expected, in the beginning of 2010. In any case, the recent rejection of the present climate-change project cannot possibly influence adversely the Copenhagen summit, since Australia does not have a major role to play in the combat against global warming. Australia may well be the second per-capita producer of CO2, but the nation is down in the 15th position when judged in terms of the gross quantity of emitted gas. The major problems to be handled are more concerned with emissions from the USA, China, the EU and oil-producing nations. So, the rejection of the government's project should not aggravate Australia's problems of desertification and water shortage. In other words, Australians suffer from the consequences of global warming without being in a position to act upon the causes. Nevertheless, the adoption of a climate-change project would have enabled the nation to think about redesigning its economic model and increasing its investments in new forms of energy. Australia might end up lagging in the ecological arena.