Irish folk

And here's to you, Mrs Robinson.
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
Woah, woah, woah.
God bless you please, Mrs Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Hey hey hey. Hey hey hey.

Simon & Garfunkel

BREAKING NEWS: I knew I wouldn't be particularly original in associating the famous song by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel with today's tale of the Irish couple. In Ulster, over the last week, downloads of this song have apparently shot up by a factor of twelve. Other joyful fallout from this affair is the sudden fame of Mrs Robinson's 21-year-old friend Kirk McCambley, who has become a new gay icon in the UK. Gay, this youthful gigolo? No, not at all. The reasons for his fame are a little more subtle. Iris Robinson had become an arch-enemy of the gay community when she declared on the BBC in 2008 that homosexuality was an "abomination", and that she knew of gay men who had been successfully transformed into heteros through medical therapy. Today, the gay community sees poetic justice in the fact that Mrs Robinson has been metaphorically screwed by Pretty Boy Kirk.

Donkeys in the snow

With a thick blanket of snow covering the slopes for the last two days, my donkeys Moshé (right, with a beige head) and Mandrin (left, with a gray head) were no doubt starting to get a bit hungry. But they're perfectly capable of scraping away the snow with their hoofs and then burrowing in with their snouts to find good green grass.

They nevertheless appreciate a bit of hay. Here, they're standing with their hind legs on a sloped embankment, which distorts the shape of their bodies. Seen from behind, they're both about twice as fat as any self-respecting donkey should be... so, I'm not really worried about the possibility of their being undernourished because of the snow.

They're Provençal donkeys, which were used by shepherds during the seasonal migration of their sheep to summer pastures up on the slopes. Judging from their hairy mammoth look, I reckon that the ancestors of these delightful beasts knew a thing or two about wintry conditions.

In this photo, you can make out the dark cross on Moshé's back. When I purchased my six-months-old friend in 1994, the farmer who had bred him told me that my donkey was marked with this cross because he belonged to the same race as the animal that had carried Jesus into the Holy City on Palm Sunday. It's the donkey equivalent—you might say—of the stigmata. So, to respect the noble religious ancestry of my baby beast, I named him Moshé (Hebrew for Moses). Since then, I've discovered that all Provençal donkeys have a dark cross on their back. They form a vast ecclesiastic order, like the White Monks. But I don't know whether all these blessed donkeys have remained pious believers.

Cols

When you're talking about shirts and sweaters, the French noun col means collar. For a French bartender drawing beer from a tap, the col is the head that must appear at the top of the glass. For somebody serving wine, the col is the neck of the bottle. For a woman giving birth, the col of her uterus, through which her baby will encounter the world, is the narrow necklike part of her anatomy known in English as the cervix. So, col is a word that reappears in all kinds of contexts.

For people who live in mountainous regions, a col is a gap in the cliffs that can often be used as a pass enabling animals and humans to move from one valley to another. From my house, I can see two such mountain passes. To the north, the Col de Toutes Aures—literally, the "pass in several directions"—is an intersection of four roads on the territory of Choranche, one of which leads up from the vicinity of my house, while another takes you down into the valley at the delightful neighboring village (with a small castle) of St-André-en-Royans. To the east, on the other side of the Bourne, the Col de Mézelier separates the two mountains that I see from my house: the Cournouze and the Baret.

The reason I'm talking about nearby mountain passes is that the mayor of Choranche, Bernard Bourne, dropped in at Gamone a couple of days ago to give me news about the road down to Pont-en-Royans, which remains closed because of threatening rocks up on the slopes of Mount Baret. In particular, he informed me that certain people are contemplating a project for opening up a road that would enable the residents of Choranche and Châtelus to reach the valley through the Col de Mézelier. Now, that idea pleases me, not only for practical reasons, but because of the historical dimension of this itinerary. That was the route that enabled the Chartreux monks to travel to and from their vineyards at Choranche.

Their monastery of Val Sainte-Marie was located a dozen or so kilometers to the south of Choranche, at Bouvante in the Drôme, just beyond St-Jean-en-Royans. In 1543, they purchased a property at the Clos de Salomon (now known by two names: the Chartreux or Choranche-les-Bains), a few hundred meters away from Gamone. Their building is still standing today:

The track between le Val Sainte-Marie and their vineyards at the Clos de Salomon was known, for centuries, as the Path of the Chartreux, and it went over the Mézelier mountain pass. The following diagram indicates the general layout of this area:

In this diagram, I've only indicated the presence of the two most prominent mountains: Baret and the Cournouze. But readers must realize that most of the white area in this diagram (which is not drawn to scale) is a maze of cliffs and steep mountain slopes, with the two rivers flowing down from the right to the left. For the last century or so, a road has existed between Choranche and the region in which the Val Sainte-Marie monastery (now in ruins) was located. An observer, today, finds it difficult to understand why the monks didn't simply skirt Pont-en-Royans, to the left of the Baret, on their way to the Clos de Salomon. We are so accustomed to the modern road that we easily forget that this itinerary was unthinkable at the time of the monks. Arriving from the south, the monks would have had no problem in coaxing their mules across the Vernaison, a little further upstream from where today's road crosses that river. But, from that point, they would have found it impossible to climb up towards the Picard Bridge that leads out of Pont-en-Royans. Instead, they made their way up to the Col de Mézelier. After moving through the pass, it's quite likely that they crossed the shallow waters of the Bourne in the vicinity of the present-day Rouillard Bridge, before continuing their journey eastwards to the Clos de Salomon.

Today, this itinerary is once again "unthinkable", temporarily... because of the danger of rocks in the section of the road that lies between the two bridges over the Bourne. And that's why I'm thrilled by the idea that the Path of the Chartreux, through Mézelier, might be opened up for modern vehicles.

POST-SCRIPTUM: Readers in faraway lands such as the USA and Australia are likely to find the above details quite boring. I ask them to realize that I'm talking of primordial preoccupations for the residents of this secluded valley. So, please forgive me for being parochial.

Snow gauge

My marble-topped café tables make a perfect snow gauge for Gamone.

The thickness of the snow layer, this afternoon, was 30 centimeters.

Making a movie about a poet

For ages, I've imagined the idea of creating a movie adaptation of an enigmatic and beautiful book by Rainer Maria Rilke with a curious title: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. In my article of 19 June 2009 entitled Work in progress [display], I described my project in this domain. Since the end of summer, when I finally got around to completing a French-language movie script, I have imagined naively that I would rapidly encounter individuals who would be delighted to collaborate with me on this project, or to at least encourage me in various ways. Sadly, this has not been the case. Certainly, Christine has helped me greatly with the technical task of producing decent French, but she remains essentially opposed, I believe (for reasons that I can vaguely fathom), to the very idea that Rilke's novel should or could be brought to the screen.

I was reassured to learn that the New Zealand Academy Award winning cinéaste Jane Campion has created a movie about the English poet John Keats [1795-1821].

Here's the trailer:



Jane Campion explained to a journalist: "When I was blocked by such-and-such a situation, I asked my fifteen-year-old daughter Alice for advice. She is sensitive and intelligent, and she's not afraid of expressing her emotions and her sentiments. That spontaneity, that freshness and that naturalness were most useful for me."

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to develop my script on Malte in such a sympathetic environment. And yet I'm persuaded that Rilke and his hero Malte are vastly more interesting personages than Keats, particularly from a cinematographic viewpoint. I remain confident. We'll see...

French Lady Chatterley

I spent the evening of January 1 watching, on TV, the full-length version (2 hours 40 minutes) of a splendid French movie produced in 2006: Lady Chatterley and the Man in the Woods. It's a cinematographic adaptation, by the French director Pascale Ferran, of the second version of D H Lawrence's famous novel, whose third version is better known as Lady Chatterley's Lover.

The role of Lady Chatterley is played exquisitely by Marina Hands, daughter of the British stage director Terry Hands and the French actress Ludmila Mikaël.

A little-known French stage actor, Jean-Louis Coulloc'h, plays the role of Parkin, the virile man in the woods. His performance is perfectly solemn and low-key, as befits this solitary personage who says little but senses profoundly everything around him.

As soon as the relationship between the lady and the lord's employee started to warm up physically, I wondered how Pascale Ferran was going to handle the explicit sexual scenes and language that had once shocked prudish English society in Lawrence's notorious novel. Well, I soon discovered that everything has been handled superbly, in a style of Garden-of-Eden innocence. And, when heavy rain pours down upon Eden, Adam and Eve are not afraid of getting wet.

When the movie first came out, in 2006, a critic said: "Every frame of the film seems alive with a sensuality that is both wild and intelligent." For a movie based upon the work of an English novelist, I would say that Pascale Ferran's film is astoundingly French. But was D H Lawrence really a typical English novelist? Of course not. He was a sensitive author of the world in the style of James Joyce and Lawrence Durrell. Nevertheless, the harsh class-conscious sentiments expressed by Lord Chatterley reflect faithfully the political setting of early 20th-century Georgian England. But the first two versions of Lawrence's novel, entitled simply Lady Chatterley, are not as tediously oriented towards society and politics as the third version, entitled Lady Chatterley's Lover. Personally, as a reader, I've always preferred this excellent French translation of the initial version, prefaced by the author's widow, Frieda Lawrence.

Talking about D H Lawrence, I wonder if many of my compatriots are aware that, in 1922, this great writer actually spent a few months out in the New South Wales seaside suburb of Thirroul, near Wollongong. This experience resulted in a plausible political novel entitled Kangaroo, published in 1923... which, in spite of its title, has nothing to do with bush marsupials.

Funny catwalk, amused cats

One of the funniest aspect of this video is the way in which two males can split their sides laughing at the problems encountered by a female wearing high heels.

Would women get an equally good laugh out of watching a guy trip over the long pointed toes of his Santiago boots?

Newton's birthday

In my article of 21 September 2009 entitled Apple hit me on the head [display], I evoked the possibility that Isaac Newton might have been a close relative—maybe even a first cousin—of my 17th-century Lincolnshire ancestor Mary Ayscough.

Yesterday, Google displayed a birthday banner for Newton, born at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth (Lincolnshire) on 4 January 1643.

In this delightful banner, an animated apple (the one on the left) actually dropped from the tree, just a few seconds after its display. Consequently, I had to make several attempts to be quick enough to obtain an acceptable screen capture of the banner... before the falling apple hit the "ground" below Google's argument box.

Surplus flu vaccine

Roselyne Bachelot, the French minister of Health and Sport, is shown here receiving her shot of flu vaccine:

I, too, behaved as a good citizen in baring courageously my arm a few weeks ago. But there are still a hell of a lot of unused shots in France, and nasty critics are starting to suggest that Roselyne may have overestimated the requirements. What we need now is some creative thinking about ways and means of getting rid of all the surplus stuff in such a way that France doesn't lose too much money because of this fiasco. In the environmental domain, it would be an interesting idea to see if flu vaccine can be used as an additive to enhance the efficiency of new kinds of ecological fuel products for automobiles. We should investigate the possibility that flu vaccine might give rise to spectacular increases in productivity in agricultural domains such as wheat, soja and fruit and vegetables of all kinds. Then, we must not forget that the cycling season will be starting soon. That should be an excellent commercial outlet for a lot of this stuff... maybe mixed with other molecules to create an explosive cocktail. Last but not least, it's perfectly plausible that, with a bit of good marketing, male users of the Internet could be persuaded that a series of flu shots, spread out over a month or so, can result in an extra few centimeters at the level of their vital organ.

Once upon a time, French innovators patted themselves on the back with a popular slogan: "France has no oil fields, but we've got ideas." So, let's get together to see how we can help Roselyne to flog her junk.

Death of a writer

Half a century ago, on 4 January 1960, much of France was covered in snow... like today. A celebrated French writer, Albert Camus, was returning to Paris in a Facel Véga sports car driven by his editor, Michel Gallimard. On the rear seat of Gallimard's powerful automobile, his wife Janine and her daughter Anne were accompanied by their Skye terrier. They had left Lourmarin in Provence on the previous morning and stayed overnight in a small inn called the Chapon Fin at Thoissey, in the valley of the Saône, to the north of Villefranche. After Sens, the road was generally straight, and bordered by plane trees... like today, except that the road was narrower at that time, and there were trees on both sides.

Heading westward towards Fontainebleau on a damp road at about 150 km/hour, Michel Gallimard suddenly lost control of his automobile at a place called Petit-Villeblevin. It zigzagged, left the road and wrapped itself around a plane tree. Camus died instantly, and Michel Gallimard succumbed to his wounds six days later. The two women survived miraculously, but their dog Floc had disappeared.

The following three images of the wreckage have been extracted from a silent news film [display]:




At that time, I was a 19-year-old computer programmer with IBM in Sydney. I had read English translations of three or four books by Camus, including The Myth of Sisyphus (which I still have with me at Gamone), and I was totally under the charm of this writer... whom I imagined, fuzzily, as an existentialiste, like Jean-Paul Sartre. It's not an exaggeration to say that one of the principal motivations for my initial pilgrimage to France in 1962 was the lure of the spirit of Albert Camus.

Since then, of course, I have been able to carry on reading Camus in his native language... which is essential in the case of such an author.

In the carcass of the sports car, a black briefcase held the unfinished manuscript of Le premier homme, an autobiographical text that was not edited and published posthumously until 1994.




In France, I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting up by chance, in quite separate circumstances, with two of the closest friends of Albert Camus, both of whom were illustrious authors, now deceased: Louis Guilloux (a friend of Christine in her home town of St-Brieuc in Brittany) and Emmanuel Roblès (one of whose novels was published by Seuil at the same time as my book about artificial intelligence). Meanwhile, Camus lies buried in a simple grave at Lourmarin.

If Nicolas Sarkozy has his way, the remains of the writer will soon be transferred to the Panthéon in Paris... which is surely one of the silliest ideas that the president has ever imagined.

Sophia is back in her natural element

Last night, Tineke and Serge invited me along to their place for New Year's champagne and dinner: a delicious Alsatian sauerkraut prepared with the artistic skills of an extraordinary sculptress. When I left to drive home, shortly after midnight, snow was starting to fall. This morning, Gamone was once again all white... and Sophia was back in her natural element, as happy as a skier out on the Alpine slopes.

After burrowing into the snow with her snout, and rolling on her back, she shot off like a husky.

Admire the aerodynamic form of her ears, like the stabilizing fins of a Formula-1 racing car. Once she got up speed, she started to circle the yard like a greyhound in a racing stadium.

I have the impression that much of the pleasure, for Sophia, comes from the soft texture of the snow beneath her paws. At the seaside, too, she's thrilled by the possibility of racing across sandy beaches. The snow universe has the magical characteristic of wrapping itself softly around her paws, her snout and her body.

You know how we often wonder whether the red color that one person sees is the same as another person's sense of redness. Maybe your red is what I call green or yellow, and vice versa. I often imagine that Sophia sees a field of snow as a great expanse of blue sky. For me, the thing called "warmth" is what I obtain through wriggling my bare toes in front of the fireplace on chilly evenings. In the mind of Sophia, on the other hand, I've always been convinced that "warmth" is that marvelous sensation she experiences through her contact with snow.

The municipal snow plow cleared the road to Gamone in the middle of the morning, and Martine had no trouble in driving up here with the mail... including a huge cardboard box containing the hardware for a new Internet-based satellite TV connection.

The presence of the snow seems to augment the sense of isolation brought about by the fallen rocks and the blocked road to Pont-en-Royans. Martine—who knows everything that's happening in the neighborhood—tells me that the authorities will probably be opening up the road during the day, as of tomorrow, primarily so that the school bus can get through. Apparently, there are still quite a few rocks up on the slopes of the Baret that could come crashing down at any instant of the day or night. A few individuals (including our mayor, Bernard Bourne) are in favor of a so-called purge operation, which could even involve the use of explosives put in place by a helicopter. But that would be a highly delicate approach, which could even go completely wrong. (For example, an attempted purge might cause several rocks to pile up dangerously further down the slopes.) So, the preferred solution would consist of installing bigger and stronger nets, of the sturdy kind used in the vicinity of seaports to block enemy submarines. What an exotic idea: We're at war with the mountain!

Walker ancestors

Yesterday, I indicated the existence of a chapter from A Little Bit of Irish concerning my links with the Braidwood bushrangers. From that same monograph, here is the main chapter on my Walker ancestors:



This chapter ends with an expression of my doubts concerning the alleged Catholic Irishness of my great-great-grandfather Charles Walker [1807-1860], who was quite possibly a Scottish Protestant: a young brother of the whisky inventor John Walker [1805-1857].

I'm taking risks in evoking spiritual subjects such as Catholicism, Protestantism and whisky in a single superficial sentence. There might be vapors of archaic blasphemy in what I've just said. Incidentally, I wonder what theological authorities in modern Ireland think of the sex of angels, or the maximum number of tiny angels that you can fit onto a pinhead. I'm sure they have strong opinions on such fascinating questions.

Flag century

[Click the graphic to get a more readable view]

Concerning the flags identifying the origins of readers, the arrival of a visitor from Ghana has just enabled the Antipodes blog to hit the century mark.

Braidwood bushrangers

About a year and a half ago, I placed the following document in the Issuu system:



It's a chapter of the monograph entitled A Little Bit of Irish, which presents my maternal genealogy.

Yesterday, I was thrilled to receive a friendly comment from a woman in Australia named Kylie Clarke, whose great-great-uncles Thomas Clarke [1840-1867] and John Clarke [1844-1867] were prominent bushrangers in the Braidwood district, executed by hanging in Sydney on 25 June 1867. For a while, my great-great-uncle William Hickey [1818-1901] was a member of their gang.

Seeing one another

Please excuse me for borrowing a couple of terms from elementary mathematics:

— A relation is said to be reflexive if it works in both directions. For example, "can see" is reflexive in the sense that, if John can see Mary, then normally Mary can see John. But "loves" is not necessarily reflexive, because John can love Mary whereas the sentiment might not be reciprocal.

— A relation is said to be transitive when its effects are, as it were, cumulative. For example, "is greater than" is transitive. If X is greater than Y, and Y is greater than Z, then X is necessarily greater than Z.

A few days ago, while watching my daughter and my dog scampering over the slopes at Gamone, I found myself wondering, for a few instants, whether "can see" might be, not only a reflexive relation, but transitive too. For example, if I can see simultaneously both my daughter and my dog up on the hillside, does this mean that they can see one another? This, of course, is a stupid question. Clearly, the answer is no. For example, you might be able to see two individuals in adjacent rooms, whereas their mutual vision is blocked by a wall. In other words, "can see" is not a transitive relation.

Here's a view of the circus of Choranche, as seen from my house:

Of an evening, I often see a bright electric lamp at the far end of the valley, at the spot where I've put a red dot. This lamp has always intrigued me, for three reasons. First, it's the unique source of light in this entire direction. (In other words, as soon as the Sun goes down, when the lamp is unlit, the entire scene of the photo is plunged in darkness.) Second, I've never been able to determine with certainty the precise place where this light is located. Third, the lamp is only lit at certain short periods of the year, which don't necessarily seem to coincide with holiday dates.

Behind the red dot in the photo, the massive rock wall that fills in the horizon between the cliffs of Presles and the slopes of the Bournillon is called Chalimont. On the far side of their crest, the vast forest of Herbouilly stretches out over the Vercors plateau in the direction of Villard-de-Lans.

Just beneath the red dot in the photo, you can see a curved line of clifftops, lying above the River Bourne, which tumbles down from a break in the Chalimont (hidden, in the photo, by the cliffs of Presles). In the middle of this curved line, some seven kilometers from my house (as the crow flies), the lowest point is a pass (for experienced rock-climbers) known as the Devil's Doorway. A nearby hole in the cliff is referred to as the Gaul's Cave. Besides, it's perfectly possible that human Bronze-Age cavemen might have used this place, two or three thousand years ago, as a base camp for their summer hunting season. And somewhere between the red dot and the curved line of clifftops, there's a sizable village, St-Julien-en-Vercors, lying alongside a major road that runs from the Bourne across to the village of La-Chapelle-en-Vercors (located behind the Bournillon plateau).

At the end of my article of 26 December 2009 entitled More fallen rocks [display], I explained that, to escape from Choranche, I have to choose a route up over the surrounding mountains. The other day, I left early and headed up towards St-Julien-en-Vercors, while saying to myself that I might find time to finally elucidate the puzzle (which arose for the first time in May 2004) of the lamp at the end of the valley. By chance, the first villager I encountered happened to be (I learned later) the most informed person in existence concerning St-Julien and its surroundings. As soon as I told him I came from Choranche, he said "I've never liked that village. No charm whatsoever." I found this frankness reassuring. There was no chance that this fellow would tell me bullshit. In fact, within a few minutes, we had become firm friends, and he told me everything I needed to know about the mysterious lamp. So, here's a summary of the affair.

The light comes from a forestry hut, high up on the slopes of the Chalimont, several hundreds meters above the village of St-Julien. The hut and a surrounding forest zone belong to a retired member of the French merchant navy, who lives down at Cassis, near Marseille. He and his wife drive up to the Vercors and stay up in the hut (accessible only on foot, and surrounded by snow at present) whenever the owner has to handle various aspects of the management of his trees. Since I left my name and address, the fellow phoned me up yesterday, introducing himself with humor as my "next-door neighbor". This afternoon, I used a telephoto lens to take a photo of what I believe to be his log cabin:

[Click the photo to see an enlarged version.]

It sure looks icy up there. It seems to be so far away, and yet this Siberian scene lies just at the end of my long-focal lens.

Now, let me return to the definitions of mathematical relations at the start of this article. I said that the "can see" relation is reflexive. So, since I can see the lamp of this log cabin up on the slopes of the Chalimont, then the occupants should be able to see the lights of my house at Gamone. When I asked the owner what he could actually see from his log cabin when he looked in the direction of Choranche, I was surprised to learn that he can apparently see many interesting places. If I understand correctly, of an evening, he can see so many lights that he's not at all sure which one is my house at Gamone. Usually, he has a clear view of the autoroute that leads south in the direction of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, on clear days, he can often detect a celebrated mountain range in the south of France: the Cévennes.

That last detail set me thinking. If I can see my neighbor up on the slopes of the Chalimont, and he can see straight down to the south of France, then what a pity that the "can see" relationship is not transitive... otherwise I too should be able to gaze down at the south of France. This, of course, is totally unthinkable. From Gamone, I can't even see as far south as the first village in the Drôme, Saint-Eulalie, which is no more than a kilometer away.

During the first half of the 19th century, the French engineer Claude Chappe invented and installed a vast semaphore system throughout France, which concretized the transitive nature of the "communicate with" relation. During the Napoleonic Wars, for example, a series of Chappe towers could receive and retransmit information so rapidly that a message could be sent from one side of France to the other in a quarter of an hour. Now, that approach would in fact enable my Chalimont neighbor to inform me visually, every evening, what the weather had been like down in the south of France during the afternoon. He could use his powerful lamp to send me messages in Morse code. In fact, this won't be necessary, because I've already given him, not only my phone number, but my email address. Still, I get a thrill out of thinking that, at Gamone, I'm a mere hair's breadth away from being able to gaze down upon Provence.

Funny spam

It's rare to receive spam that's frankly funny. Here's a delightful specimen that reached me a couple of days ago:

Good Day, I am Fadhil Mohammad an accountant with Turk Ekonomi Bankasi A.S in Turkey. I want to ask your attention to receive Funds on my behalf, as you co-incidentally bears the same name with my late client. The purpose of my contacting you is because I need someone who can receive it for our mutual benefits. On your response, I will send you the full details and more information about myself and the funds. Yours sincerely, Fadhil Mohammad

As you can see, I'm about to become a wealthy man for a precise reason: namely, Fadhil Mohammad's "late client" was apparently named Skyvington. What an extraordinary surprise. I was totally unaware that I had a wealthy relative in Turkey. The funniest aspect of Fadhil's email is the header, which is particularly user-friendly:

He was smart enough to send off his shit email to a list of "undisclosed recipients". Nevertheless, Fadhil doesn't seem to have a firm grip on the English language. Somebody had apparently informed him that emails of this kind fall into a category known as spam. So, to make sure that his email is recognized as belonging to the correct category, Fadhil has inserted the word SPAM, explicitly, at the head of his subject line. That way, there's no way in the world that his email might be mistaken for something that it's not intended to be.

Fadhil sounds like a nice guy, and he has given me a good laugh. So, I plan to reward him with a sizable cash bonus for kindly informing me about this money left by my late relative in Turkey. In fact, my inherent generosity and highly-developed spirit of Christian charity persuade me to let Fadhil keep the whole bloody jackpot.

CORRECTION: The joke's on me. After examining more closely the header of Fadhil's email, I realize that the term SPAM was not actually used by the author of the email. It has beeen inserted, somewhere along the line, by a diligent spam filter. That's the first time I've ever seen such a warning, which probably indicates the exceptional purity of Fadhil's production. On second thoughts, I've decided to reduce the cash bonus I intend to give him. And I've been thinking of using this windfall money from my late relative in Turkey to buy a yacht and go sailing down along the coast of Somalia.

Irish law on blasphemy

On this first day of the new decade, Ireland's medieval law on blasphemy becomes operational.

My article of 26 November 2009 entitled Damnable Irish Catholic behavior [display] evoked a report on disgusting sexual crimes involving children committed by Catholic personnel in Ireland. Today, it's frankly preposterous that this same nation should be intent upon promulgating a law against blasphemy. This ugly law must be repealed as soon as possible!

People might react by claiming that Ireland is an independent nation and that the Irish have the right to outlaw blasphemy if they so desire. In other words, if Ireland wants to remain backward, it's none of my business. Well, I would reply that, since the creation of the entity known as Europe, everything that's decided in Europe in the way of new laws is the business of every European. But there's a stronger reason for worry. This kind of archaic law about blasphemy is wind in the sails of extremist Muslims who've been lobbying at a UN level for the drafting of new international laws designed to protect religion... which means, of course, their religion and religious customs.

Decade dog

I'm told that the most spectacular image on this first night of the new decade is the so-called Blue Moon. It isn't really blue at all, of course, but merely full... like countless New Year drinkers at the present moment. But I found a better photographic subject to symbolize this moment for me: the end of a decade in the constant company of Sophia, and the start of a new one.

Five minutes ago, when I took this photo in the kitchen, not even the flash disturbed the deep slumber of my darling dog. At the present moment, on the contrary, after suddenly waking up and demanding that I open the door, she's racing around and barking on the slopes. I've often said that it takes no more than a farting fox on the crest of a nearby mountain to cause Sophia to spring back into action.

Reality of revels

In about five minutes, the first decade of the 21st century will be drawing to a close in France. And festivities are under way.

I've just noticed a press article indicating that, throughout France this evening, some 45,000 police and gendarmes are deployed to make sure that peace prevails.

Ray of hope for our devils

For many years, the marsupial known as the Tasmanian devil has been the victim of a terrible form of facial cancer that is so contagious that it could well drive these precious creatures to extinction.

An article in The New York Times reveals the existence of a ray of hope [display]. It has always saddened my heart to hear that these fabulous beats have been suffering and dying, and it would be utterly marvelous if modern genetics could save them.

In another cancer domain, concerning human beings, scientists at the UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have catalogued the genetic maps of skin and lung cancer, and identified specific DNA mutations that can lead to malignant tumors.

There's something beautifully harmonious in the idea that we humans and the Tasmanian devils are all awaiting the magic benefits of scientific research. There's no sense in our praying, of course, since devils—like atheists—don't seek salvation from God.

Changed my Twitter name

I've noticed that hardly anybody uses an underscore character in their Twitter name. So, I've changed mine from William_Sky to Skyvington.

Within the system, this modification appears to be transparent. So, I don't have to notify anybody in any way whatsoever.

It might look a little pretentious of me to refer to myself by a simple surname... like Charlemagne. In fact, it's great to have a surname that is so rare (maybe due to a spelling error committed by an ancestor) that no other user of Twitter has ever seized it. Now, if some other Skyvington decides to use Twitter, I'm afraid that he or she might be obliged to decline their identity by adopting a precise name such as Emmanuelle_Skyvington or François_Skyvington, for example. Sorry about that. But, as they say in the Bible: First come, first served! Besides, I get a kick out of thinking of myself (once again, as they say in the Bible) as a patriarch... like, say, Mr Moses, Esquire.

Bertrand Russell on God

Throughout my younger years, the books of the English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] were no doubt my main non-fictional reading. Even today, my copy of Russell's big History of Western Philosophy (which I bought in Paris in 1962) is located permanently on a bookshelf just alongside my bed.

Whenever I stroll through London's Trafalgar Square, I recall this photo of the 87-year-old white-maned philosopher standing among the lions at the foot of Nelson's Column at a 1959 rally of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

This evening, it was a pleasure for me to discover this interview on the Dawkins website:



Naturally, I always imagined Russell first and foremost as a philosopher and a mathematician (whom I approached initially through his work in the domain of symbolic logic), and only then as an outspoken freethinker and a nuclear-disarmament campaigner. He impressed me greatly, of course, by describing himself explicitly as an atheist... at a time when this term was hardly fashionable. I tended to interpret this, however, as Russell's way of telling us that he simply didn't have the time or the inclination to be concerned about questions of divinity. That's to say, I imagined him rather as an agnostic, since I never really felt that Russell had provided us with convincing proofs that God did not exist... if indeed such proofs were thinkable.

Today, looking back upon my admiration of Russell, I see him retrospectively as a precursor of Richard Dawkins. Or, rather, I imagine Dawkins as an intellectual descendant of Russell. There is something similar in their elegant style, their power of inquiry and expression, and their profound humanism.

In God we don't trust

Theoretically, in the USA, the national legislative body has no power to deal with religion. That's to say, church and state are separated, as stipulated in a clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Nevertheless, the nation's official motto is "In God we trust".

Since 1978, an association of freethinkers named the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Wisconsin, has been striving to erode the grip of God's trustees. Among other things, they've got around to designing what look like stained-glass windows of a new kind. Here's their Dawkins model:

[Click the banner to display a humongous version]

The word "trust", with financial connotations, can be found in French dictionaries. The presence of this verb on US banknotes lends weight to the view that the power of the dollar is, in some mysterious way, divine. This money is backed by God, as it were. I used to feel the same way about the basic monetary unit of modern Israel, the shekel.

Here in Europe, we've got a lot of work to do before the euro shines divinely like a piece of silver warmed by the hand of God. The underlying problem, of course, is that the mythological pagan creature Europa was not exactly the kind of female who would be welcomed into the home of a normal God-fearing family. As for the idea of "In Zeus we trust", this just wouldn't sound convincing to a serious banker.

Letter from Polanski to French philosopher

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has received a letter from the cinéaste Roman Polanski, who authorized its publication.

[Click the portraits to display the letter]

An English translation of Lévy's initial reaction to the Polanski case was published on 27 October 2009 in the US liberal news website co-founded by the Greek-American author and syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington. [Click the banner to read this article]

Announcing blog posts via Twitter

For the moment, I'm definitely not an addicted user of Twitter. In fact, I've only ever sent out three "tweets" (I hope my use of jargon is correct), and I only follow one "tweeter": an interesting Parisian woman (working in the medical field) who once let me use her excellent photos taken inside the Hôtel Dieu hospital.

However, I'm thinking of using Twitter systematically to announce new blog posts. For the moment, I haven't made up my mind whether to make such announcements in English, in French or in both languages.

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.