Associative thinking

Most serious individuals concentrate upon one thing at a time. I'm not suggesting that they have what might be called "one-track minds". I'm merely saying that, when they decide to talk about X, they deliberately leave Y locked up in the wardrobe... which makes for nice easy-to-follow conversation. As for me, I'm not like that. Whenever I'm talking about X, I find myself searching constantly for associated pretexts that might enable me to liberate Y from the wardrobe. This makes me an impossible conversationalist, because my listeners find it hard to pin down what I'm talking about. In polite terms, one might say that I practice associative thinking.

Over the last few days (since the death of my uncle Ken Walker), I've been browsing through old family photos.

The bikes leaning against the fence of the Walker home in Waterview (South Grafton) are Malvern Star track machines, manufactured down in Melbourne. And, in the late '30s, one of the most famous members of the Malvern Star team in Australia was the French champion Charles Rampelberg.

This postcard was pasted in my childhood bible: "Cyclone" Johnny Walker's big brown-paper scrapbook of press cuttings. A native of northern France, Rampelberg was racing out in Australia when World War II erupted. His name appears in records of the six-day races at Sydney in 1938 and 1941. Seriously injured in a fall when his head struck a wing-nut of his front wheel, Rampelberg was obliged to end his cycling career. Unable to envisage a return to his war-stricken homeland, he decided to get into business in Australia as a delicatessen. Later, having made a fortune through this activity, Charles returned to Paris and worked as a marketing representative for his brother Emile Rampelberg, who was renowned as a graphic designer in the textile field, with family links to the great house of Boussac from northern France.

Prior to his career in Australia, Charles Rampelberg had won a bronze medal in the kilometer time trial at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Back in France, this celebrated track cyclist had surely raced at times (although I've found no records that substantiate this speculation) in an indoor cycling stadium in Paris known as the Vélodrome d'hiver (winter velodrome), located near the Eiffel Tower. I've attended fabulous six-day track-cycling events in both Paris Bercy and Grenoble. The following photo (unidentified) gives you an idea of the hallucinating atmosphere of such places.

Today, we have no authentic images of the Paris velodrome, known familiarly as the Vel d'Hiv.

It was located not far from the spot where Australia's embassy now stands. In fact, while the champion cyclist Rampelberg was recovering from head wounds out in the Antipodes, and setting up his delicatessen business, horrific events were taking place back in the cycling stadium in Paris. On 16-17 July 1942, this place was the focal point of a horrendous roundup of Parisian Jews, destined for extermination in the Nazi camps of Poland. And the most amazing aspect of this terrible affair was that it was carried out, not by German Nazis, but by Frenchmen!

On TV last Tuesday evening, there was much talk about this terrible site and this ignominious event, known now in French, for all Eternity, as the rafle du Vel' d'Hiv (roundup of the winter velodrome). This page of modern French history is darker, even, than the notorious Armistice signed by a fuddy-duddy Philippe Pétain. One of the frightening items of fallout concerning this disgusting affair is the fact that one of its prominent French instigators, René Bousquet, remained a personal friend of François Mitterrand.

These days, countless Francophiles such as myself have been striving to fathom these events. In a sense, we've succeeded, as demonstrated by the immense pride with which I shout out on the rooftops my unbounded admiration and love for the fabulous Fifth Republic of Charles de Gaulle. But don't think of us as dupes. We know that there were dark days... which will continue to take a lot of explaining. That's what I mean by associative thinking.

Scandinavian nuts and bolts

A recent article by Florence Williams in Slate [display] reveals apparent differences between Danish and Swedish males concerning the respective volumes of their genital resources.

Should the world at large be fascinated by this Swedish victory in the Prick and Balls Olympic event? The answer is no doubt yes. If things can shrivel up to such an extent between two neighboring nations, then we should try to understand what has happened... because the same sort of thing might just be happening in our own backyard, maybe even between neighbors with differing lifestyles. There's no smoke without a fire. So, there must be some set of underlying reasons why Swedes would appear to be getting it up better than Danes. It can't be the ambient climate, because it's much of a muchness. And it would be hard to imagine that cultural and lifestyle factors might account for this difference. There's no way in the world that you'll convince me that reading the delightful tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and eating Danish pastry, might have stealthily diminished the size of my John Thomas... and that the only way of getting things back to normal would consist of a strenuous acquaintance with the plays of August Swinberg and the films of Ingmar Bergman, combined with a massive daily intake of crisp bread and fermented fish, consumed in an Ikea environment.

Seriously: What exactly is it that might have influenced the respective qualities of the procreative devices of Danes and Swedes? That's an interesting question, but we don't yet know the answer. As they say in the classics, there will surely be a next episode...

More snow

On Saturday, the annual lunch for senior citizens of Choranche and Châtelus took place up in the restaurant at the entrance to the famous limestone caves of Choranche.

There you see some of my neighbors. The fellow on the left is Gilles Rey, mayor of Châtelus. Then there's my neighbor Madeleine. The woman in red is Bernadette Huillier, alongside her husband André, whose property is located on the opposite side of the Bourne with respect to my place. Finally, at the end of the table, there's Georges Belle, who resides in the old dilapidated building that was once the residence of the Chartreux monks who made wine at Choranche.

This man in a red pullover is Bernard Bourne, a farmer: the mayor of Choranche. The woman is Monique Rancoud-Guilhon, whose late father was once the mayor of Choranche. These are the two oldest families in Choranche. Their Bourne and Rancoud-Guilhon ancestors have lived here since before the French Revolution. Every time I see Monique, she asks me to send her all the most recent printed results of my research into the history of the commune. As for Bernard, when he saw me taking these photos, he asked me to send a few of them to the local newspaper... which I did, this morning. The journalist at Pont-en-Royans was happy, because I'd done his work for him.

After this lunch, snow started to fall again. It continued throughout the night. Early Sunday morning, the donkeys managed to burst through the damp electric fence, and I found them knocking on my kitchen door. I gave them a generous supply of oats. Besides, the snow was so powdery that the donkeys had no trouble brushing it aside and devouring the grass on my lawn. Then they took advantage of their relative freedom (since I couldn't patch up the fence in such conditions) and wandered all around the property... which meant that I had to install rapidly a barrier to prevent them from going down into my future rose and peony garden.


The next thing I knew, they had discovered the seeds for wild birds, just below my bedroom window. I was surprised to see that, within reasonable limits, the presence of the donkeys didn't deter the finches and tits from dropping in to get seeds. Later, I noticed that the three suspended balls of fat had disappeared. By that time, the donkeys had strolled down to the former sheep shed, to settle in for the night. And this morning, I was finally able to get them back into their paddock and fix up the electric fence. So, everything is back in order.

Cheese power

Whenever my lovely friend Corina decides to put up a video on her blog, I'm inevitably delighted, and tempted to steal her suggestions. [I've spent the last few weeks trying vainly to liberate myself from the haunting tenor voice of the Scorpions' vocalist.] I think Corina and I share the same sort of appreciation of humor, music and other things. Here's her latest delightful choice:



This video is all the more relevant in that Corina tells me that she's thinking of settling down in this cheese territory.

Bye Bargy

My uncle Isaac Kennedy Walker—known variously as "Farmer", "Ken" or "Bargy" (baby talk for the word baby)—was the last male of the branch of the Braidwood Walkers who settled on the Clarence River in northern New South Wales.

I was in regular phone contact with him over the last few years, but his degraded hearing made it hard to communicate.

I received from my dear uncle Bargy, a few years ago, a signet ring that belonged to our Irish ancestor Isaac Kennedy [1844-1934]. On that occasion, I promised my uncle that I would do my best to perpetuate the memory of our Irish ancestors named Kennedy. Today, I repeat solemnly that pledge.

See my blog and website concerning my maternal ancestors.

I'm sad that Bargy has left us (at an advanced age), because he was one of my primary links with the past, and I had imagined that I might meet up with him again, one of these days, out in Australia.

Bye Bargy...

Revised top ten

This is excellent Hitchens:

Autosuggestion

This seemed to be the word I was looking for, but maybe it isn't. I'm thinking of the process by which an individual attempts to bring about a certain situation simply by wishing intensely that it should arise. My Swedish friend Eric M Nilsson is, without a doubt, an individual to whom all sorts of fascinating and less enchanting things have happened in the course of his existence. Funnily enough, Eric has told me that, whenever he would like such-and-such a situation to come about, the best approach is to refrain completely from hoping explicitly that it will happen. The best example of this situation occurred long ago when Eric (a filmmaker) would have liked to shoot some kind of particularly spectacular event in Stockholm. But, the more he hoped to come across a spectacular event, the more he found himself faced with totally boring situations. So, in a fit of apparent craziness, he decided to abandon all his conscious desire to find an interesting scene. In concrete terms, he achieved this absence of intentionality by getting up very early in the morning, at a time when almost nothing could possibly be happening in the city, and simply pointing his movie camera at an empty square. The video camera had been recording nothingness for a few minutes when, all of a sudden, a little man in an overcoat emerged from a hole in the ground (a subway exit), looked around stealthily to make sure that nobody was watching him (he hardly noticed the presence of Eric and his camera), then took out a can of aerosol paint and sprayed a message on the wall: something along the lines of Screw all cops! Then he disappeared back down into the subway, and Eric shut down his camera. In refusing to search intentionally for an event, Eric had simply found one. Or was it rather the event that had found Eric?

Over the last few days, I've been involved in informal conversations about homeopathy and its corollary, the so-called placebo effect. This morning, on the phone, Christine pointed out (if I understood her correctly) that the tiny white pills of homeopathy serve as a focus for an act of intense autosuggestion, and that this situation is vastly superior to the alternative solution of consuming authentic pharmaceutical products whose effects are not necessarily totally positive. I think that Merisi [click here to visit the beautiful blog of this Viennese photographer] was saying much the same thing. Although I dislike all forms of quackery, I'm obliged to realize that there are intelligent observers who disagree with the combat against homeopathy that is being fought by outspoken scientists belonging to what we might call the Dawkins School.

To my mind, things such as prayer, astrology and homeopathy work most efficiently, if not exclusively, when the autosuggestion process is based upon a solid thick layer of impenetrable ignorance.

For example, Bernadette Soubirous probably needed to be exceptionally simple-minded and unschooled in order to persuade herself that she had encountered a lovely lady in blue who just happened to be the virgin mother of Jesus. And today, I would imagine that sick pilgrims who flock to Lourdes with hopes of being cured miraculously also need to be endowed with a profound gift of ignorance and gullibility. I hope that readers understand what I'm trying to say. I don't claim that "miracles" never happen. But I'm saying that their existence necessitates a process of autosuggestion founded upon an ample layer of simplicity and cluelessness. The smarter and more informed you are, the less chance there is that you'll give your powers of autosuggestion sufficient liberty enabling you to pull yourself up into the air by tugging on your shoelaces.

The thing I find difficult to understand is how intelligent and educated individuals, knowing full well that homeopathic substances are practically devoid of active molecules, could nevertheless assemble within themselves a sufficiently intense field of autosuggestive forces to instigate a self-healing process. Maybe such individuals have a kind of poetic vision of the notion of the absence of active molecules. That's why I referred recently to the anecdote about a French scientist who had claimed, a few years ago, that ordinary water might be capable of retaining memories of past events. Maybe, their imagination is so vivid that they can succeed in convincing themselves that infinitesimal quantities of an active substance can remain concealed in the interstices of the diluted product. Maybe, they end up believing that the more you dilute the product, the more these tiny gremlins of active substances are obliged to become defiant, hiding ever more deeply within the obscure matrix in order to save their tiny souls from getting washed away. And the more defiant they are, the more powerful they become. Finally, when there's only a single gremlin left, he's as proud and defiant as hell, and he's sufficiently powerful to cure people of their ills. In any case, if certain individuals are capable of thinking that way, then maybe they're in an excellent state of mind to unfold their personal forces of autosuggestion. Honestly, I don't know if that's how things work, because I've never been capable of believing truly in minuscule gremlins or sprites.

Alternatively, maybe some people have the vague feeling that the active molecules in a homeopathic product have been transformed mysteriously into some kind of bacteria. After all, it's not so long ago that people believed in the spontaneous creation of living organisms. When I was a child, I seem to recall that somebody tried to make me believe that tadpoles came into existence miraculously, out of pure moisture, up in the clouds. Insofar as the microscopic world is indeed mysterious, and infinitely more so if you care to soak up a few notions of modern chemistry, then people might well be prepared to believe that their homeopathic pills do indeed contain infinitesimal organisms, of a mysterious kind, that are capable of doing them a lot of good. And, once they believe that, they're in an ideal state to set the autosuggestion ball rolling.

What I've just been saying is very much like religious belief. Since nobody can ever prove that God or the Great Spaghetti Monster don't exist, many people carry on leaving a tiny place open in their mind, ready to welcome a friendly divinity if ever he came along looking for a warm bed for the night. We become incapable of accepting the idea that nothing means nothing. Instead, nothing (like the quantity of active molecules in a homeopathic preparation) is interpreted as meaning "extremely small" but possibly "extremely powerful".

In my recent article entitled Health-giving drugs [display], the word "placebo" made an appearance, but I believe that my article and this term have generated confusion. So, I'll make a rapid attempt here to rectify the situation. The experimental situation in which I found myself is described as a double-blind trial. That means that the guinea pigs are divided into two groups, known as the experimental group (receiving the active molecules) and the control group (receiving a trivial substance that I would refer to, not as a placebo, but simply as powder). The expression "double-blind" means that neither the experimenters nor the guinea pigs know in which group each guinea pig is located. Why do they do this? That's where the word "placebo" enters with its correct usage. If a guinea pig knew that he was in the experimental group, receiving the active molecule, then he might become like a believer taking homeopathic pills, or praying at Lourdes. That's to say, his health might improve through autosuggestion, regardless of whether or not the active molecule was in fact efficient. So, to discourage guinea pigs from becoming over-confident in the positive effects of the active molecule, everybody is kept in the dark, right up until the end of the experiment.

I wrote the above-mentioned article as a kind of joke. (I even included the keyword "offbeat" at the end of the article.) So, much of what I said was in mirth: a case of my slightly weird sense of humor. For example, it's not true at all that the length of my penis increased through my confidence in a mythical molecule, and it's not true that I was struck by nausea when I forgot to take the tablets. I think my readers realized that the article was basically a joke. To be perfectly truthful, I was constantly aware of an almost comical aspect of this kind of double-blind test: namely, the fact that, for the needs of scientific objectivity, certain guinea pigs were obliged to consume inert powder, assiduously, every day for several years. I find this situation highly amusing, and this brought out a kind of playful but evil streak in me. The experimenters were constantly asking us whether it was boring to take the tablets every day. Then, towards the end, they even asked each one of us whether we had imagined that we were taking the active molecule or inert powder. In telling a lie and pretending that I was utterly convinced that I was being cured by a miracle product, I was viciously aware that I was being a bad boy, as it were. For, if it had turned out that I had in fact been receiving the active molecules, the experimenters would have had lingering doubts about what had actually kept me alive. Was it because of the authentic power of the molecules, or because of a placebo effect (my autosuggestive self-healing)? In a similarly playful spirit, I used to amuse myself during their annual medical visit. It included an Alzheimer test in which you're asked to give the names of animals for twenty seconds. A normal person will reply, say: lion, tiger, elephant, giraffe, camel, etc. An Alzheimer candidate will reply: horse, cow, horse, calf, cow, etc. I liked to give them my special list of animals (all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small): cockroach, toad, worm, wasp, eel, flea, rat, jellyfish, louse, etc. It amused me to glimpse the startled expression on the face of the nurse.

In fact, the metaphor that often came into my mind when I thought about the experiment was the notorious bet imagined by Blaise Pascal. He said that since you've got nothing to lose by believing in God (even though he might not exist), and everything to lose by not believing in him (if he did in fact exist), then it's a sound gambling approach to decide to believe in him. Incidentally, I was amused by the disgusted reaction of Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great [display], who declares that Pascal's "theology is not far short of sordid". Hitchens says that, if he were to find himself face-to-face with God, he would say: "Imponderable Sir, I presume from some if not all of your many reputations that you might prefer honest and convinced unbelief to the hypocritical and self-interested affectation of faith or the smoking tributes of bloody altars." I'm inclined to agree with Hitchens. God has always appeared to me as a kind of gentlemanly chap, no doubt brought up in refined circles and educated in a good school for boys.

My Pascalian gamble in the case of the alleged tablets of omega 3 and vitamins was that I had nothing to lose by thinking of them as miracle molecules (even though they might be inert powder), whereas I would have egg on my face if I said they were powder and then discovered that these powerful little tablets had in fact saved my life. So, like a Christian who goes to church solely as a good bet on eternal bliss, I pretended at times (when I had nothing better to do, or when I took pleasure in making fun of the experimenters) that my tablets were indeed the body and blood of my Savior.

Aussie espionage downs an Israeli bike

A few hours after their arrival in Tel-Aviv to investigate the use of Australian passports in the recent assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Australian federal police agents in a silver Toyota four-wheel drive vehicle apparently ran over a female cyclist and failed to stop. For the moment, there are no indications that the Mossad might have played a role in this incident. And no innocent lives were lost... although the woman claims that one of her bike wheels is totally fucked up beyond repair. Could this be a disguised and disgruntled act of Australian retaliation against the Hebrew nation? No diplomats were on hand to answer that troubling question.

Pathetic Palin

America is a sick nation.



Let me rephrase my opening line. Some of America's would-be leaders are silly, sad and sick creatures. Seriously, can you imagine for a nightmarish instant that this dumb female jerk might be put in charge of the USA?

Health-giving drugs

Here's the gist of a trivial personal health problem that arose almost five years ago, which I've often described. My huge ram had escaped from Gamone. A neighbor phoned to inform me that the animal had apparently fallen down an embankment alongside the Rouillard bridge over the Bourne, and was now stranded, in a state of shock, on a narrow ledge about three meters above the surface of the river. I finally decided to walk into the water, throw a rope around the ram, and simply make him topple down into the water. Once he was next to me in the running river, I attached the rope securely, then we half-scrambled and half-swum to a spot some twenty meters downstream, where I made a superhuman effort (the sort of thing you can do in emergency situations) to drag him up onto dry earth. Unfortunately, the ram had apparently received internal wounds, maybe through being hit by a motor vehicle, and he died at Gamone a week later. Meanwhile, I woke up the next morning with a strange numbness at the tips of my right-hand thumb and index finger. A few weeks later, a brain scan revealed the presence of a tiny white dot, sign of a vascular accident. The brain specialist with eyes sharp enough to detect the spot told me that the national health research institute would be thrilled if I were to help them as a guinea pig in their testing of a new treatment based upon a mixture of omega 3 (fish oil) and vitamins (folates and vitamins B6 and B12). I agreed to join up. This meant taking two tablets a day for a period of several years, and having a detailed checkup, once a year, with a visiting nurse.

I took this stuff assiduously, even when I went out to Australia for a month in 2006. Their dietetic advice was always sound, and vaguely helpful, and their annual checkups confirmed that I was in perfect shape. The only thing I regretted concerning this entire experience was that I forgot to ask for the name and phone number of the splendid African girl who received me for the first visit at the hospital in Romans. (She was replaced by a dull guy.) In my mind, there was no doubt whatsoever that all this omega 3 and vitamins was truly doing me a hell of a lot of good. It made me feel in fine form. Inversely, if ever I forgot to take the tablets in the morning, I would soon be overcome by an unpleasant sensation of nausea, and the only solution was to rush into my bathroom and gulp down the precious tablets, whereupon I would perk up almost instantly. Not long after starting the treatment, I decided to create this blog, and I'm convinced that the omega 3 and vitamins actually affected me positively at a cerebral level, and were indirectly responsible for many of my best blog articles. There's no doubt whatsoever that these miracle drugs provided me with the energy enabling me to build my rose pergola and prepare the garden (which is now emerging cautiously but splendidly from winter). Although I can't actually swear to it, I have the impression that the daily dose of omega 3 and vitamins has produced another unexpected consequence (which the research institute never mentioned): they've increased the length of my penis by two or three centimeters.

Well, the experiment is now terminated, and I'm left with a small stock of unconsumed tablets.

People who know me are aware that I'm a good Christian, oozing with altruism and constantly trying to imagine charitable deeds that would render the lives of my fellow men more happy, or at least less horrible. I said to myself that I've received my fair share of these wonder drugs, and there's no reason why I shouldn't offer the left-over tablets to a less fortunate soul than me. Normally, they should be kept in a refrigerator. So, it might not be a good idea to send them to a distant land such as Australia. I was thinking that, maybe, among my blog readers, there's somebody who's planning a trip to the North Pole. There would be no problem about keeping the tablets cold. At the normal rate of two tablets a day, the available stock would be more than ample to provide the necessary energy supplement for reaching the North Pole and then getting back home again.

This morning, I received a final letter from the research institute. It's in French, but you'll recognize the Latin name of the miracle molecule upon which this treatment is based.


If you click the above image, you can see the entire letter. The female director of the laboratory was kind enough to point out in this letter that, if I want to receive a genuine dose of vitamins and omega 3, then I should eat cereals, fruit, vegetables and fish such as salmon, mackerels and sardines. Truly, those folk just can't stop doing me good.

Australia's choice of fighter planes

I started my professional life in France, in 1965, as a technical writer concerned with the Cyrano radar system of Thomson-CSF for fighter aircraft. Later on, I worked in audiovisual production with my friend François de Rivals, former Dassault test pilot.

Last Thursday, February 25, 2010, a surprising article appeared in The Australian, signed by Cameron Stewart: Scientists warned defence department against Joint Strike Fighter [display]. The gist of this fascinating scoop is that a study carried out ten years ago by the internal group known as the DSTO [Defence Science and Technology Organisation] warned the federal government of the risks that would be incurred through a choice of the US aircraft known as the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter]. In spite of these warnings, the government of John Howard signed an order in 2002 to purchase a hundred JSFs for $16 billion: the biggest Australian defense purchase in history.

Today, I would not be particularly dismayed, retrospectively, by this secretive Aussie style of doing defense business were it not for the fact that the DSTO study contains scathing criticism of the other available options if Australia were to reject the JSF choice. These options included, in particular, the US F-15E and the French Rafale. According to the article in The Australian, the study concluded that the French aircraft had weaknesses described as follows:

— "France's Rafale had an unreliable and weak engine."

— "Rafale has short-term shortfalls in engine and radar performance."

Insofar as the virtual JSF product, at that time, existed only on paper, it can be said retrospectively that Australia plunged blindly into the US program, inspired primarily by Howard's attachments to his time-honored protector. Today, it's too late to change things, but the publication of last week's revelations in Australia demands an informal French reaction concerning the unjust criticism of the illustrious Rafale fighter, which is a proven masterpiece produced by Dassault Aviation.

Last December, during a giant international encounter organized by the United Arab Emirates, the Dassault Rafale, in spite of its "unreliable and weak engine" and its "shortfalls in engine and radar performance", proved itself a superior killer. Today, the only aircraft that is in fact technologically superior to the Dassault Rafale is the American F-22. But it costs three times the price of a Rafale, and it's not a polyvalent aircraft capable of air/ground and air/sea actions.

Meanwhile, the American JSF project seems to be moving head-first into a brick wall of technical and financial problems... whose consequences will be felt inevitably, sooner or later, by Australia.

Believe me (or rather, believe Dassault and the facts):
There's nothing wrong with the Rafale!

Adjani

I've always imagined naively that the great Isabelle Adjani would be the ideal French actress to play the role of Abelone in my recently-completed movie adaptation of a celebrated novel of Rainer Maria Rilke: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. That's to say, I've been duped deliciously into thinking that this 54-year-old lady could indeed play the role of an Abelone who's more like half that age. That's the magic of Adjani: she's ageless... like the Germanic nymph Ondine in the play by Jean Giraudoux, in which the presence of Adjani mesmerized me back in 1974.

A year ago, I started a second blog, French Leaves, focussed upon French literary themes. Lazily, I got no further than an article about Adjani playing the role of a distraught school teacher [display]. This role has just earned her the César award for best actress.

Great Viking god

As I've often pointed out, Y-chromosome tests have revealed that my haplogroup is R1b1b2a1b5, which means that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool European. Unless there was an adoption somewhere up the track, my Skyvington surname surely takes me back to a Norman companion of the Conqueror, whereas my grandmother's Pickering surname takes me back with a high degree of certainty to the Conqueror himself, in person. Although I've always enjoyed reading about the fabulous myths of Egypt and Greece and the profound legends of Judaism and Christianity (and still enjoy this recreation), I've never really "felt"—at a gut level, you might say—that my elders belonged to the tribes who produced such stuff. Never was this feeling stronger than when I used to visit Israel regularly, in the late '80s and early '90s. With respect to all the various peoples and cultures on the edge of the Mediterranean, there's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I'm a total outsider. I've devoted a lot of energy to studying both Modern Greek and Hebrew, and I would love to imagine that one of my ancestors might have been a Sephardic Jew who studied algebra in the great library of Alexandria, before moving across to teach the Kabbala in Thessaloniki. But I know that such thoughts are fairy tales. Noel Coward used to sing that "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun". Seeing the way my skin turns crimson on such occasions, it's obvious that none of my ancestors used to hang around the Mediterranean or the deserts of Arabia and Northern Africa. As people in France might say: Billy and the Bedouins are two distinct entities.

Now, I've only navigated for a year or so in a wooden sailing boat (the Zygeuner, out in Fremantle), and I've never got around to plundering villages and raping maidens. Still, I often feel as if I have a Viking soul (if ever these fellows had such things). And a corollary of this feeling is my spontaneous admiration of the exploits of a good old Norse god such as Thor.

So, you'll understand why I was so thrilled to come across an excellent article on this subject written by a bright Scottish lass named Muriel Gray [display]. Insofar as my pagan heart still stirs to the soothing roars of thunder, maybe it's a mistake for me to describe myself as an atheist. I'll have to check whether there's maybe some kind of church in America that worships these archaic gods. I'm sure there must be. On the other hand, when I was working on the typescript of a novel about Master Bruno (founder of the Carthusian monastic order), I once tried to acquire a basic understanding of the legends of the Germanic Nibelungen (in which young Bruno, in medieval Cologne, was no doubt bathed), which strike me as the most confused shit I've ever encountered. So, maybe it would be wiser if I were to remain a pious old-fashioned atheist, devoid of fancy ribbons and bows.

Free Tilikom!

The most fitting operation that could be performed as a tribute to celebrate the life and marine loves of the veteran Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau, drowned by a captive orca on February 24, would consist of releasing the huge animal into the ocean. An interesting article entitled How to free a killer whale written by Naomi Rose, a US marine mammal scientist, explains how this complex operation could be carried out [display].

Cassoulet update

In my article of 7 November 2009 entitled Memorable cassoulet [display], I mentioned my enthusiasm for the preparation of this traditional dish from south-west France. Then, in an article of 24 January 2010 entitled Handmade French ovenware [display], I described my discovery of a pottery firm that produces the traditional ovenware for cassoulet. All that was missing was a typical photo of my own cassoulet preparation served up in a handmade Digoin dish. Here, at last, is the missing photo:

You might ask: What persuaded me to prepare a cassoulet dinner? Well, last Friday evening, French TV offered us a live transmission from Cardiff of the rugby match between France and Wales. Since I've always associated cassoulet with rugby, I decided that this match provided me with an excellent pretext for inaugurating my ovenware. It was also the first time I tasted my home-cooked duck confit... which is excellent.

Gamone spring

[This article, intended for a small subset of my readers, concerns a technical problem at Gamone.]

In my article of 23 October 2009 entitled Waiting for water [display], I described the overflow pipe I had attached to my spring, up above the house at Gamone. As I said, I would have to wait until there was a sufficient quantity of water in the pool before knowing whether or not the installation was totally successful.

Well, a week or so ago, after all the snow on the slopes above Gamone had finally melted, I was able to get a clear picture of the situation. Water has continued to flow nonstop through the overflow hole:

And it emerges from the red tube as a strong and steady stream:

However, an equally strong and steady stream flows along the U-shaped steel gutter that crosses the road:

Clearly, the diameter of the overflow hole is not nearly large enough to empty out all the water that is backed up in the pool, seen here:

The following photo shows both the surface of the pool and the start of the red tube that takes water away from the overflow hole:

The pool and the red tube are separated by a dam wall, a meter high, made out of thick limestone blocks. The rectangular steel lid can be lifted to provide access to the overflow pipe. As you can gather from these two views of the pool, a huge mass of water needs to be evacuated. And some of this water is seeping out over the upper edges of the pool and giving rise to the stream that crosses the road.

Solution? Next summer, when the pool is once again almost dry, I'll have to widen considerably the diameter of the overflow hole in the limestone wall, so that a greater volume of water flows into the red tube. To do this, I'll need to rent a powerful electric jackhammer of the following kind:

Since the drilling will be horizontal, I'll need to rig up some kind of overhead support with a chain capable of bearing the weight of the jackhammer. I can sense already that this is going to be a heavyweight task, but it's the only way of solving the problem.

Building for the birds

When the sun is shining at Gamone, I love to work outside at manual tasks. Think of it, in musical terms, as a counterpoint melody with respect to the hours I spend in front of my computer. My everyday Gamone fugue is 50 percent intellectual, 50 percent manual.

Judging from the quantity of tools, this job looks like a big project.

By chance, I received a visit from one of the fellows who recently restored a corner of the roof of my house. When he saw my sturdy style of construction of a nest box for mésanges (great tits), he burst out laughing. "There's no way in the world that the birds are going to kick that box apart... not even if they turn out to be ostrich eggs." I explained that I was simply following construction principles that I had discovered on the web. I agree: I've probably used twice as many screws as are really necessary. On the other, it's not the thigh muscles of the baby tits that worry me, but rather the combined effects of rain, wind and sun. I can't even paint the nest box, because wild birds don't like painted surfaces. In any case, here's the finished object:

The diameter of the entrance, 30 mm, corresponds theoretically to giant tits. I'm proud of the genuine slate roof (half of a single slate tile purchased at Castorama for 4 euros), which I've glued to a hinged plywood lid. This roof can be opened for annual cleaning. The interior "balcony" will be used by the parents as a convenient platform when entering or exiting the nest box. As for the nest itself, to be built by the birds, it will be located down in the depths of my box. The final object is quite heavy (because of the slate), and shouldn't normally be blown apart by the first tempest at Gamone.

I've anchored it firmly against a stout vertical branch of one of my linden trees. In April, by which time the box will have merged into the setting, the moment of truth will arrive. Will Monsieur et Madame Mésange decide to move in and procreate in my nest box? We'll see...

Detectors

French drivers have grown accustomed to the ubiquitous presence of automatic radar devices that catch speeders.

Road-users have reacted by perfecting ways and means of not getting caught by such machines. The most obvious method consists of simply slowing down at the approach of the device... and then speeding up again as soon as it's behind you. When I say "behind you", I should add that some devices, placed on the far side of the road, are designed to flash speeders from behind... which makes it possible to catch motor-cyclists (whose unique number-plate is located at the rear). The latest evolution imagined by the authorities consists of a pair of devices capable of calculating the average speed of a driver over a distance of several dozen kilometers. Meanwhile, some road-users in France are installing illegal hi-tech instruments that start beeping as soon as the presence of a nearby radar device is detected.

This cat-and-mouse process reminds me of a situation in nature that is presented in detail by Richard Dawkins on pages 382-390 of The Greatest Show on Earth. He speaks metaphorically of "arms races" between species that have an unfriendly attitude to one another, such as predators and prey, or parasites and hosts. Each evolutionary improvement to one creature provokes a counteractive improvement on the opposite side. The combined developments produce a spiraling effect as in the context of man-made weapons and defense systems.

We've just heard about a new French law that will make it obligatory to install a smoke detector in every home. This is weird, because I believe that people still have the right to smoke in private homes. With smoke detectors installed, young people in the following situation—a much-maligned poster imagined recently by the association Droits des non fumeurs (rights of non-smokers)—would bring about the arrival of the fire brigade.

Indeed, the world is becoming such a complex place, for ordinary folk like you and me, that we'll soon be needing clear labels à la Magritte in order to distinguish between old-fashioned good and evil.

Here at Gamone, if there were a smoke detector in my living-room, it would be ringing alarm bells and flashing its red lights every winter evening when I light up a log fire. And this would upset, not only me (in front of my beloved TV), but Sophia too... who would be instantly convinced that the terrifying dinosaurs and mammoths of Choranche are attacking us once again.

The device I would dearly love to purchase, if ever I could find one, is a bullshit detector. I would install it on my desk, just alongside the Macintosh, so that it could be beamed down permanently upon everything that comes up on the screen. Naturally, I would probably get a little upset whenever the device started to beep at some of my own stuff, but you can't have it both ways.

Grass dog

I end up thinking that my dog Sophia likes to plant her backside in the scope of my Nikon. Maybe (a more objective observation) my Nikon simply follows Sophia. Be that as it may, Sophia has always been my photographic star. Here, she's showing off the winter grass at Gamone.

In this photo, you get a glimpse of Bob's house, a hundred meters or so up along Gamone Creek.

US vision of the future

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, President George W Bush instigated a process aimed at overhauling the US intelligence system. In 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who took over some of the government and intelligence functions that had previously been handled by the time-honored CIA. As of a month ago, the DNI is Dennis Blair, appointed by Barack Obama.

I was gladly surprised to discover that we can obtain, for free, a 120-page document entitled Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, presenting the profound thoughts of this office concerning the future of our world. Just click this image and follow instructions:

Before starting to read this fascinating report, make sure you've understood the significance of the acronym BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China], which reappears constantly.

The report is good reading in that it highlights the fragility of US thinking. We've always known that the giant has feet of clay. But it's alarming to discover that maybe his brain, too—his so-called "intelligence"—is made out of porcelain.

In the vulgar verbiage of the authors of this futuristic fairy story, Europeans will be "losing clout" in 2025. I feel like giving a sharp clout on the snout of the dumb Yank who wrote such rubbish. The notorious CIA (which reports henceforth to the DNI) has made so many blunders, however, that we might expect a certain amount of US intelligence drivel for some time to come. It's not tomorrow that we'll be removing the inverted commas from "US intelligence". But I insist upon the fact that this nice bedtime reading can be freely downloaded. It won't even cost you what it's worth: peanuts.

Forgotten mountain

I've been meaning for ages to correct an injustice. I've put up pictures on my blog of all the imaginable mountains and cliffs that surround me at Gamone. But I'm not sure I've ever included a full photo of the great bald peak up behind my house, to the west.

The reason for this negligence is that I have to move at least several hundred meters away from my house, to the east, in order to get a good view of this mountain, named Les Trois-Châteaux (the three castles). My stray sheep have been living on the lower slopes of this mountain for over three years. There are a few wild mountain goats up there, too.

On the righthand side of the photo, you can glimpse a corner of my house sticking out behind a low hill in the foreground. The road to my house runs up alongside Gamone Creek, which flows in the hollow between that low hill and my property.

This mountain is located entirely on the territory of the commune of Choranche. On its lower slopes to the left, a much lower mass of rock, located on the territory of Pont-en-Royans, bears the same name, indicating that three ancient castles down on the nearby plains could be observed from these vantage points.

Not only have I never climbed up onto this mountain, but I've never seen or even heard of anybody doing so. The rock appears to be rather flaky and crumbly, making it a relatively dangerous place for casual visitors. On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time sliding around on its lower slopes (in the adjacent valley that belongs to my neighbor Gérard Magnat) trying to catch up with my stray sheep... who no longer consider me—if ever they did so—as their good shepherd.

Visited by an ancestral spirit

In yesterday's article entitled Seafarers [display], I introduced readers to my CF-haplogroup ancestor named Dreamtimer, who lived in southwest Asia with his wife and family during the Old Stone Age. As I explained, besides being my ancestor, Dreamtimer was also an ancestor of today's Aborigines in Australia. Well, during the early hours of the morning, I was awoken by weird noises, like musique concrète. It was a mysterious mix of Indian tablas and sitars, Balinese bamboo xylophones and Buddhist gongs. And above the throbbing percussion, I could detect clearly the eerie drones of a didgeridoo. My dog Sophia was awoken by the clammer, and she started to bark furiously, as she always does whenever our sleep is interrupted in the middle of the night by frightening sounds such as the shrieks of dinosaurs up on the slopes of Choranche, or the grunts of mammoths down in the valley of the Bourne. Then a voice boomed out: "Billy..."

I knew immediately who it must be, because there are only three individuals who call me Billy. The first is Natacha, who would never dream of waking me up in the night in a cacophony of xylophones and didgeridoos. The second is my 94-year-old uncle Isaac Kennedy Walker, who's prevented from contacting me through his deafness. And the third, of course, was... my tribal ancestor Dreamtimer.

"First of all, Billy, I just want to tell you that I'm furious about you showing everybody that picture of my descendant Mungo Man. Your Aborigine cousins have known for ages that this is not correct. So, why did you do such a thing?"

I tried to tell Dreamtimer that it was simply a photo I had found on the web, but it was pointless trying to defend myself. How do you talk about Internet stuff with a guy who's been dead for 60 thousand years?

"Billy, if I decided to drop in on you this evening, it's not because of Mungo Man. It's because of that fucking Russki couple, who have offended us immensely. Billy, go grab a few boomerangs and run across to Canada right now. And strike 'em dead!"

I had no idea what my ancestor Dreamtimer could possibly be talking about. I was about to tell him that I didn't have any boomerangs with me at Gamone, and that it was out of the question for me to go walkabout to an overseas place such as Canada. Meanwhile, Dreamtimer had faded back into his never-never land. Before taking leave of me, he had switched on my TV. In an instant, the images from Vancouver informed me of the cause of Dreamtimer's furious visit.





If ridicule could kill, then the corpses of Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalinon, attired in their crazy "Aboriginal" costumes, would have been spread out on the ice. The next time that Dreamtimer calls me, I'll have to tell him however that I can't strike down the Russian skaters, no matter how greatly they've offended him. After all, the Russians are my genetic cousins. We're all one big Earth family.

Mythical beasts, tough sex

This amazing sex video appeared on the excellent Pharyngula blog by the US atheistic biologist PZ Myers [access]:



This National Geographic video provides us with new insight into the difficulties of being a hyena. Among humans, these animals have acquired a particularly negative reputation, which they surely do not deserve. They're depicted as cruel, treacherous, greedy, "piggish", laughing devilishly and obsessed with kinky sex. Even in Africa, where people should know better, hyenas were thought of as the steeds on which sorcerers and witches traveled around. It's true, however, that it might not be a great idea to bring home a pair of hyena pups with a view to bringing them up as pets. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if a reader were to inform me that my judgment on this question of household hyenas is wrong. In any case, the criterion of evaluating wild animals by their potential as pets is ridiculous.

Socialist overseer of the nation's spending

Didier Migaud, a 57-year-old Socialist, has just been appointed to the prestigious position of first president of the Cour des comptes ("court of accounts"), which is the national institution that examines constantly the spending habits of the République.

Migaud is a local politician: a député (member of parliament) for an electorate regrouping the southern part of Grenoble and the Oisans mountain range. It's not bad at all that Nicolas Sarkozy has called upon a political opponent to fill this important position, previously occupied by the Gaullist Philippe Séguin who died last month.

I like the cluttered look of Migaud's desk. How could anybody seriously claim to be a competent bookkeeper (or even a blogger, for that matter) without a good bit of clutter around him? The Linux penguin sitting on a bookshelf is a positive sign, too. Anybody who appreciates Socialism, Grenoble and Linux can't possibly be a fool.

North-west corner of my house

I'm trying to get a feeling for the newly-acquired visual aspect of the north-west corner of my house, so that I'll know how to best handle the various operations that will be facing me as soon as the warm weather arrives. Here's a rough sketch of the basic ideas I have in mind:

That's to say, I would build a carport, 3 meters wide and 6 meters long. The roof of this carport would join up with a new roof over the small stone structure (a former pigpen) that juts out from the façade on the left. The empty inside space at the far end of the carport would be used to store my firewood, and a staircase would lead down from there into the main house.

To take the following photo, which looks down onto the start of the new ramp, I climbed up the slopes behind the house:

Here's a side view of the old pigpen as it exists today:

And here's a view of the place under the present roof that I'll be using to store my firewood:

The total surface of the new ramp is quite large, and only the upper half of that area will be used for the carport. The total area of the ramp will be covered in pale gravel.

Finally, here's an unexpected feature of this corner of the house: an intriguing hole into the hill!

In fact, it's the entrance of a horizontal tunnel, about 20 meters long, which ends abruptly in a vertical wall of earth. It appears to be an ancient construction, and I've never found any obvious traces of the place where all the excavated earth might have been placed. Most people who try to imagine the reason why this tunnel was dug evoke the idea of a farmer (winegrower?) hoping to find water. But that idea doesn't add up, because there has always been an ample supply of spring water a hundred yards further up the road. Besides, at the place where the tunnel has been dug, there are no visible indications whatsoever suggesting the presence of subterranean water. The interior of the tunnel is perfectly tidy, and devoid of vegetation, as if it were dug quite recently. I prefer to imagine that the tunnel was dug as a hiding-place for wine-making tools and equipment, or maybe for stocks of wine in small casks or bottles. When would the owner of Gamone have wanted to hide such stuff? And from whom? I believe that a plausible answer is provided by events that took place long ago at Choranche. One of the rare books mentioning the history of Choranche, written by the Abbé Jean Morin, states that Carthusian monks acquired their first vineyard in this commune in the year 1381. Then, in the 16th century, the Royans region was the scene of bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. Here is my translation of a paragraph from the book by Abbé Morin:

At the end of the wars of religion, in 1593, a former prior of our Chartreux monastery wrote that "the grapevines of Choranche have been cut down and ruined, and the cellars demolished, by the adepts of the reformed religion who lodged their garrison here".

I have always imagined—without being able to prove my beliefs in this domain—that the wine cellar at the heart of my house was built during that century of the so-called Wars of Religion, because it resembles a similar construction of that epoch that still exists today in the ruins of the Carthusian monastery at Bouvantes. So, I believe that the mysterious hole behind my house could have been a hiding-place for the possessions of the vineyard, which was dug rapidly at some time during the devastating Protestant raids of the 16th century.