Quackery

You may have heard of the kid who told his teacher that the equator was "an imaginary lion running around the Earth".

As far as imaginary lines are concerned, a famous system was invented by the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes. He suggested that a flat surface could be crisscrossed by a set of evenly-spaced vertical and horizontal lines, enabling us to indicate the exact location of any point on the surface by a pair of so-called Cartesian coordinates.

Before the time of Descartes, geographic coordinate systems had been applied to the surface of the globe, materialized by circles of latitude and longitude forming a grid.

The Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator [1512-1594] had even invented a handy trick for projecting these circles onto the surface of a cylinder, which could then be flattened out to give the illusion that the surface of our globe could be thought of as a big rectangle. And all that remained was for perspicacious Australians, located at the center of the world, to point out the sense in which this rectangle is to be viewed.

Now why—you might be wondering—have I got carried away with this pedantic talk about coordinate systems? Well, it appears that some people are even dumber than the above-mentioned school kid, because they seem to forget that a grid enclosing the globe is necessarily an abstract entity, which might be described as virtual, rather than a material structure on which you might bump your head. That aspect of the global grid would seem to be so obvious that it's hardly necessary to mention it… were it not for the fact that, some fifty years ago, a German physician named Ernst Hartmann posited the existence of a real grid, above our heads, composed of "naturally-occurring charged lines, running North-South and East-West". Today, naturopaths (individuals who believe in alternative systems of medicine) speak of the invisible Hartmann Net, and they are prepared to indicate the exact dimensions of this grid. I don't intend to pursue this subject in greater depth… for the simple reason that I have no idea whatsoever of what the hell these naturopaths are talking about.

I'm not sure why I seem to be targeted as a possible patient by a few French naturopaths. I once built an aviation-oriented website for a fellow who now works as a naturopath, and I created another website in an attempt to sell the ancient house in the village of St-Antoine belonging to a female naturopath. Those could well be the associations that led to my receiving a spam email this morning from a French naturopath who has apparently been operating in the small Swiss city of Yverdon-les-Bains, at the southern extremity of Lake Neuchâtel.

It so happens that Yverdon has a fascinating tourist attraction: a park of 45 prehistoric standing-stones, known as menhirs in French. Well, I'll let you imagine the excitement of our naturopath when he dishes up an exotic salad whose ingredients are the Hartmann Net at Yverdon and the "geobiological" effects of the standing-stones. Apparently, some of the menhirs happen to be located at "geopathogenic nodes" of the Hartmann grid, whereas others stand at "positive Hartmann nodes". Now, don't forget that the alleged goal of all this tripe is to provide patients with health treatment.

Funnily enough, the naturopath forgot to mention the origin of these menhirs. They were dragged there by a legendary beast, in the remote past, and installed at precise points on the Hartmann grid. Dragged there by what archaic animal, you ask? By the imaginary lion that spends its time running around the globe...

Earthshock

Back in 1980, when Christine was engaged in book layout at the Seuil publishing house in Paris, she gave me a work copy of their translation of the recent bestseller Earthshock by the British geologists Basil Booth and Frank Fitch, on the theme of colossal natural cataclysms such as the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Curiously, this well-written text depicting extreme terrestrial violence has always remained, for me, a friendly and soothing bedside book. The inherent devastating power of our planet belittles the frequent inhumanity and stupidity of its human occupants.

The Big One, however, is likely to arrive, not from the bowels of the planet Earth, but from the sky. This little video—which I found on the excellent Pharyngula blog of PZ Myers [display]—says it nicely:



Here again, there's something strangely soothing in the thought that such a calamity could occur. In any case, I hope that Google keeps copies of blogs in their vast databases, so that my Antipodes posts are not likely to be wiped out stupidly in one fell swoop, in the first cataclysm that strikes us. Besides, I really must distribute a few extra copies of my genealogical research, for "eternal" safekeeping. Maybe the soundest security strategy would be to beam up copies of all my stuff, by laser, to a handful of neighboring stars, judged to be safe. As my great-aunt used to warn me: These days, you can't be too careful…

Apple developer

These days, if somebody were to ask me what I do to while away the time in my mountain abode, I have a new and prestigious answer: I'm an Apple developer! This doesn't mean a great deal. In my personal case, it's hardly a professional activity, and certainly not a regular paid job (because I'm officially retired). It's more like a pastime… which might or might not give rise to pecuniary benefits, depending on how I go about things. Only one thing is certain: It's hard work to master the art of Apple software development! But I love this kind of intellectual challenge, because it keeps my neurons in good shape… and it's more fun (to my mind) than playing games.

In more precise terms, I've become a paid-up member of the Apple Developers group (more satisfying and worthwhile, after all, than joining the Australian Labor Party or even the French Socialist Party) in the hope of creating applications for the iPad.

The first and last time I envisaged Macintosh development was in 1987, when I was out in Western Australia working as a lecturer in computing at the Curtin University of Technology. I used the Pascal language to dash off a small software tool, which I named AC-DC [America's Cup, Data for Challengers], designed to help me predict the foreign yacht that would win the right to challenge Australia's famous Kookaburra for the America's Cup. I programmed my Macintosh program (running on the primitive box-shaped machine I had brought with me from France) to print out, for each of the twelve contenders, a scenario of the following kind:

Using these scenarios (which had simply "digested" the results of all the earlier match races), I quickly figured out that the victorious contender would be Dennis Conner on Stars and Stripes. The media center had organized a competition among journalists for the best predictions of the outcome of the challenger rounds. There were prizes (champagne and Louis Vuitton bags) for the top three results. Thanks to my Mac tool, I was awarded all three prizes! This meant that, for the remainder of my stay in Fremantle, I guzzled the finest French champagne like lemonade. As for the ugly Louis Vuitton bags, in red plastic, they're still stuck away, almost untouched, in a wardrobe at Gamone. But I'm becoming waylaid by nostalgia…

Today, what are my iPad projects? There are three zones of activity:

1 -- I've imagined a kind of "business card" concept for succinct identity apps (applications) declined for individuals, urban entities (French villages) and firms. I would like to make it so simple for me to design and build such a card that I could offer them dirt cheap.

2 -- An unfinished French version of my Tarot fortune-telling thing at

http://nutopia.free.fr/tarot

lets you find answers to all your questions about human existence. Maybe I'll produce an English-language version of this gadget for the iPhone/iPad.

3 -- I'm envisaging an iPhone/iPad version of my Accessor tool at

http://blogstuff.free.fr

designed to enable easy access to the archives of my Antipodes blog.

For the moment, I'm printing out the various relevant manuals, and I've bought a big plastic box to house them.

Little by little, of course, I'll need to get around to actually reading and mastering all this documentation.

Moshé's future companion

My donkey Moshé has been upset (disoriented ) by the recent disappearance of his old companion Mandrin.

It's a well-known fact that donkeys don't like to lead a solitary existence, so I immediately started looking around for an animal to keep him company. As of today, I'm happy to have found an ideal solution: a baby female donkey named Fanette who'll be available (that is, weaned) by the middle of October. This afternoon, Fanette's breeder, a young woman from Presles named Sylvie Rozand, introduced me to the beautiful little donkey.

In October, to get Fanette down to Gamone, Sylvie and I plan to walk down the slopes from Presles to Choranche. The road starts with a short but difficult section comprising a tunnel. Normally, donkeys refuse to enter tunnels, just as they refuse to cross streams. Sylvie has done this journey already. She tells me that Margot can be coaxed into entering this tunnel, while Nina and her daughter can be roped up behind and led along by Margot.

Fanette's father is a Provençal donkey owned by my Châtelus neighbor Jean-Marie Huillier (in fact, Sylvie's cousin), whose farm is located just across the Bourne from Gamone. By chance, I've been saying hello to this male donkey for ages, every time I drive across to Châtelus.

After leaving the donkeys, Sylvie invited me for a drink with her parents, in front of their old farmhouse in the village of Presles. My daughter Manya and I have known this couple for ages.

They're natives of Presles and traditional farmers, members of a race that has almost disappeared. Sylvie's companion happens to be a Welshman named William, whom I've not yet met. He's a professional shepherd, stationed for the moment in an Alpine context with a huge flock of sheep. In French, the operation that consists of a shepherd and his dogs leading their flock up to high-altitude pastures for the summer months is referred to as alpage. Then they all come down again to the valley as soon as the first snow appears.

This afternoon, I received an open invitation from William and Sylvie to drive up to spend a couple of days in their Alpine cabin, some three hours away from here by car. I hope I'll be able to accept this invitation, along with my dog Sophia. If so, a surprise awaits us. We'll be returning to Gamone with another companion, for Sophia: a pure-bred Border Collie pup.

Much older than we had imagined

Several Australians have become notorious for their Creationist beliefs. First and foremost, of course, there's the Queenslander Ken Ham, who went to the USA and founded a museum with exhibits that show our ancestors frolicking around with dinosaurs.

If you're a bit masochistic, and you would like to hear the voice of the Holy Ham in an auto-tuning context, then click here. Clearly, if this guy gets any loonier, he'll end up getting put away… or maybe elected by Creationist supporters as Aussie of the Year.

Another remarkably dumb Aussie is now well-known on the web. In March, when Richard Dawkins was out in Australia for the Atheist Convention, he found himself seated alongside a senator, Steve Fielding, whose utterances revealed that he was a so-called "young-Earth Creationist". That's to say, this elected pollie really believes that our planet was created less than 10,000 years ago. The amusing encounter of Dawkins and Fielding can be seen in the following video:



Apparently Dawkins said jokingly, later on, that the intelligence of Steve Fielding was surely akin to that of an earthworm…

Yesterday, a delightful anecdote was aired on the Pharyngula blog of PZ Myers in an article entitled Australians are learning what it means to have creationists in the classroom [display]. During a scripture lesson in a Queensland school, when the religious instructor evoked Adam and Eve as the ancestors of all humans, a student complained that such a narrow stock of original DNA would have led to catastrophic inbreeding. The instructor replied that, at the time of Adam and Eve, "DNA wasn't yet invented". Hilarious commentators were quick to point out the magical power of this kind of argument. One might imagine that all kinds of marvelous things took place, for example, before the "invention" of the laws of science, or even the "invention" of good old common sense!

At the same time that these specimens of brainless tripe are giving us a laugh, amazing progress is being made in the dating of animal life on Earth. The following photo shows us a small fossil that was found recently in Gabon by a French geologist, Abderrazak El Albani, attached to the university of Poitiers.

For many years, paleontologists have considered that the first multicellular animals of this kind appeared in the ocean some 600 million years ago. Well, that date will have to be readjusted greatly, because the above fossil was found in a rocky site whose age is 2.1 billion years!

Yesterday, French people were thrilled to learn that the fine city of Albi in south-west France—where the medieval Christian sect of Catharism came into being—has just become a Unesco world-heritage site.

The geologist El Albani, who has found that multicellular life is 1.5 billion years older than what we had previously thought, is intent upon getting the home of his fossil in Gabon honored as a Unesco world-heritage site. I find that a splendid idea, in the sense that it emphasizes the fact that scientific knowledge is a basic part of our cultural heritage.

Much ado about nothing

In catastrophic dreams, at moments, the entire universe becomes unstuck, turned upside-down. Then, a moment later, everything is back in place, as it has always been. At present, our DNaydreams seem to be a bit like that.

For ages, at a homely level, I've been jumping up and down and shouting about the promises of DNA-testing in the genealogical domain. Well, the truth of the matter is that nothing much at all has happened lately in this domain. Not a single male named Skeffington or Skyvington (or something like that) has responded to my appeals for DNA collaboration. You can't get genealogical blood out of a stone of apathy. So, there we are. I don't even seem to be able to persuade Pickering and Walker relatives to participate in this kind of research. Consequently, the global results are zero. This lack of collaboration doesn't disturb me unduly, in the sense that it doesn't impinge upon my knowledge of the history of my ancestors. At most, it casts a veil upon the quality of my communications with genetic cousins and fellow-researchers.

At a more profound level, it's interesting to learn that a brilliant individual can herald in an amazing new age by having his genome analyzed and published… only to find that this potentially-awesome revelation fizzles out into nothingness. The world feared that Craig Venter, in publishing his personal genome, might be selling his soul to the Devil. Well, the least that might be said is that the Devil is taking his time in pinning down the possible weaknesses of Craig Venter. If indeed it was the Devil who invested in this kind of research, then his ROI (return on investment) would appear to be dismal for the moment. Not enough to call out the troops of the Vatican. Not enough to send Venter to Hell… or even to Heaven, for that matter.

Click the portrait of Venter to access a fascinating English-language interview by Der Spiegel. You'll learn exactly how and why nothing has really happened. In fact, this absence of spectacular fallout is convenient. There are exciting and indeed awesome times when the best thing that could possibly happen is… nothing.

The answer is a lemon

My ex-wife Christine, who reads Antipodes regularly, seems to imagine that I've built up some kind of diabolical hate-system against my native land, Australia, as if obscure psychological urges were forcing me to rage at my motherland in the style of a psychotic offspring intent upon eliminating his/her genitors. This cursory analysis of my relationship with Australia is ridiculous, and Christine should know better than to talk that way. After all, she has had a ringside seat in all my dealings with Australia, she has known for ages that Australia is a shallow nation, and she should also know a little about the nature of my profound Francophile motivations. Now, having said this, I hasten to add that Christine's criticisms will continue to merit my attention, but they won't stop me from saying anything and everything that I wish to say about my land of birth. What have I to gain from being falsely and insipidly polite?

At present, there have been major political upheavals in Australia (about which Christine, like most French people, knows almost nothing). I have the impression that many Australians have the impression that the entire world has the impression that, somehow or other, a handful of mediocre individuals—named Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, Keneally, etc—would appear to be exerting a meaningful influence upon the destiny of mankind. I am not of that opinion. To my mind, individuals of the caliber of those I've just mentioned are trivial pawns whose only aptitude consists of trying systematically (as they say in French) to fart higher than their arsehole. They are not statesmen, stateswomen, merely egoistic puppets, with limited power to impress us. Lemons? Why not?



The thing about my native land that irks me most (and Christine is totally incapable of detecting this facet of my concern) is that I'm convinced that little is likely to evolve there. The rich will grow richer, and the poor, poorer. And the apathetic hordes in the middle will remain firmly in place. Politicians will remain just as superficial and ineffectual as they've always been. The infrastructure (roads, railways, defense) will remain just as lousy as it has always been. The Australian environment will continue to degrade disastrously. Culture will remain eternally just as narcissist (admiration of one's belly button) as it has always been.

I would jubilate instantly if ever I saw reasons to believe in a bright future for my motherland. Honestly (forgive me, Christine, and others), I don't. I find it less and less possible to take Australia seriously as a role model for the 21st century.

I should add that many of the negative "waves" behind the present article were propagated by a trivial article in the French press, this evening, about planned investments for a future French airport on the Atlantic coast, near Nantes. The airport won't become a reality before 2017, but all the investment discussions are being conducted seriously, of course, at present. I ask myself rhetorically: What infrastructure investments for the horizon 2017 are being discussed today in my native land?

BREAKING NEWS: A startling article in The Sydney Morning Herald entitled Parties bet they will lose [display] reveals that Australian punters (including some senior party members) are starting to gamble massively on the outcome of the forthcoming election, even if this means betting on the defeat of their own party. They're encouraged by the dominant role of voter-intention polls in the Australian political domain. To my mind, non-stop polling and gambling create a really weird and unhealthy (indeed insane) slant on democracy… but I've become an old-fashioned French citizen.

Do people really eat it?

On the chic website of the French weekly L'Express, I found a curious Marmite video, which I don't really understand. Did the British manufacturer of Marmite actually pay money to produce this publicity, and get it displayed by the French weekly? If so, the company should immediately sack their advertising chief, because there's no way in the world that such a video is going to augment sales of Marmite in France. Maybe it's simply a video creator at L'Express who's having fun. In any case, you don't even need to understand the French language to see that this video is treating Marmite as if it were some kind of exotic English shit (well, it is, isn't it?), which no self-respecting French gourmet would ever touch.

At one stage, the video evokes Australia's Vegemite as "a pale copy" of England's Marmite. Them's fightin' words... but maybe we Australians shouldn't squabble about that way of presenting things. Personally, in any case, I don't give a damn, because I've never swallowed a mouthful of either Marmite or Vegemite. As I indicated in my recent article entitled Staple Aussie food [display], I'm basically a specimen of the peanut-butter category. Adult Down-Under folk don't usually move from one category to another. It's a bit like religion. If you were brought up on Vegemite, you're not going to give in to evangelists who might try to convert you to peanut butter, and vice versa.

As for French people who've never been tempted by peanut butter, golden syrup and treacle, Vegemite, Marmite or any of that stuff, they can only be considered, from an Aussie sandwich viewpoint, as the equivalent of atheists.

POST-SCRIPTUM: On the L'Express website, a commentator has used a splendid French adjective to designate politely his disgust when faced with products such as Marmite and Vegemite. This marvelous old adjective, immonde, has its roots in 13th-century Latin: immundus, the contrary of mundus, "clean". Basically, it means "dirty", very dirty. In the Marmite video itself, the final participant uses the interesting French adjective dégueulasse, made famous by the US actress Jean Seberg in the film Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard.

Only a talented Anglo-French poet could explain all the delicate shades of disgust conveyed by this everyday French adjective.

Warming world

Last winter, at Gamone, snow seemed to be falling almost ceaselessly.

In the context of today's hot weather, that photo of beige Moshé [right] and gray Mandrin [left, no longer alive], taken in March, seems to depict a prehistoric Ice Age. But it would be a stupid mistake to generalize about the state of the planet on the basis of a charming photo of a pair of donkeys in the winter snow.

It would appear that there are still a few educated idiots scattered across the globe who refuse to admit that our tired planet is warming dangerously as a result of the acts of Man… as distinct from those said to be "of God". Well, these naysayers would do well to take a look at a report, just published by two highly-reputed organizations, which confirms all our fears about global warming.

In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a federal agency that has been monitoring constantly the nation's oceanic and atmospheric environment for over two centuries.

In the UK, the Met Office might be thought of as the British equivalent of the NOAA. These two institutions exploit scientific methods that can hardly be contested… except by enlightened fools.

Their report states that the planet has just experienced the warmest decade of the last half-century. Global warming is a reality, says the report, and its presence can be sensed by ordinary individuals in their everyday existence. In other words, regardless of whether they appear to be using good or bad science, the idiots who seek to deny the reality of global warming are dangerous fools, whom we must combat fiercely.

Fast food fibs

There are so many things to worry about in the modern world that I don't know whether there are folk who still wonder why the burgers in ads look so much better than those you actually buy and eat. In any case, the present post is dedicated to such seekers after MacTruth.

In certain exceptional circumstances, I've been coaxed into feeding myself momentarily in fast-food outlets. See, for example, my article of August 2009 entitled Good timing for bad communications [display]. So, I've had rare opportunities of discovering that the relationship between hamburger images in ads and the real stuff is akin, say, to the differences between Julia Gillard on the cover of Australia's time-honored Women's Weekly and less extraordinary photos of the Aussie leader.

I have no information concerning the technical tricks that enabled photographer Grant Matthews to create the above pinup (I'm talking of the portrait on the left), but here's a video showing how they operate with hamburgers:



Don't get me wrong. I'm not likening Julia Gillard to fast food. Besides, you only have to listen to her drawn-out Aussie drawl to realize that she's too slow for that…

Busy days at Gamone

If I haven't blogged much over the last week, it's because I was busy tidying up the house for the arrival of Manya and Hakeem.

I rarely behave in the manner of a conscientious Chartreux monk who keeps his abode spick and span for the simple reason (so he thinks) that God is observing him non-stop. Why should I act that way? I tend to clean up the house only when I'm expecting a visit from somebody who ain't the Almighty. Otherwise, I don't bother too much about unmade beds, dusty floors and furniture, and a backlog of dirty dishes. Whenever I think about housekeeping tasks, I've inevitably got something more urgent to do. Consequently, the countdown to a forthcoming visit is always an exceptionally busy period, during which I clean up the mess.

In these circumstances, last Monday, Henri-Jacques Sentis, the ex-mayor of Choranche, dropped in unexpectedly to ask me if I would be prepared to participate in a documentary movie that was about to be shot at Choranche. Why not? The following afternoon, two members of the movie team turned up at Gamone to talk with me and get a feeling about what I might be able to contribute to their future movie. At that moment, I had no idea whatsoever concerning the intended theme of their future film, nor did I know who—besides myself—would be participating in it.

Late on Thursday afternoon (following a brief and violent rainstorm), the movie crew turned up at Gamone… where I was still preoccupied by last-minute cleaning-up in view of the arrival of my daughter on Friday evening. I discovered that the camera-man was an experienced Moroccan filmmaker named Mohamed Chrif Tribak, who had been invited to the Vercors by a French movie association in order to organize a workshop. And he was calling upon workshop participants (local individuals) to perform the various production tasks.

Most of the interview with me was shot in my living room. But I talked so much about my computers and the Internet that Mohamed suggested that it would be a good idea if they were to create some footage in my upstairs bedroom. Everything worked out fine… except that I still couldn't guess the intended theme of the movie they wanted to make. At one moment, I had the impression that they wanted to create some kind of a cultural document aimed at promoting the lovely idea that, in the Vercors, we're all a bunch of jolly neighbors. Unfortunately, I had already squashed that concept by explaining at length that the Vercors is an abode of solitary "fools on the hill".



On Saturday afternoon, my daughter and her friend (both of whom are media professionals) accompanied me to a viewing of the final result: a short documentary entitled Three Voices of the Vercors. Why three? Well, Mohamed and his crew had in fact shot interviews with seven local individuals, but they concluded that it was preferable to exploit only three. I think everybody agreed that the video is a tiny gem, of an unpretentious kind. In a nutshell, the three of us seemed to be saying, in very different ways, that the Vercors is indeed a haven for loners who are determined to live as such, and to remain that way. Inversely, the Vercors is not exactly an environment for friendly house parties and neighborhood barbecues. Well, we've all known that, all along… but it was nice to see it said so succinctly in the movie.

Funnily enough, the screening of this austere video summary took place in a splendid bucolic atmosphere, at the homestead of lovely Angélique Doucet, who's a goat-cheese producer on the slopes of the Cournouze at Châtelus. At the foot of the magnificent limestone cliffs, the sun was shining, and everybody sat around chatting with one another in such a friendly manner that one might have considered that the three "voices" in the movie were exaggerating when they suggested that this was a harsh land for loners. The truth, I think, is that the Vercors is both: a mixture of soft and hard, sweet and sour, cultural togetherness and solitary extremists. It's not a land that can be described by any single adjective.

Carl Sagan and our human conceit

The Pharyngula blog of PZ Myers led me to this video, based upon a profound text by the US cosmologist Carl Sagan [1934-1996]:

Carmes convent

This convent was founded at Beauvoir-en-Royans in 1343, in the grounds of the magnificent castle of the Dauphin Humbert II [1312-1355], just a few years before all his lands and possessions (the vast territory known since then as the Dauphiné) were donated to the monarchy of France.

In a typical medieval religious spirit, the extravagant 31-year-old feudal lord created this male convent, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Saint Catherine, in the hope—as the Regeste Dauphinois of the erudite local historian Ulysse Chevalier [1841-1923] put it—of "repairing his errors and those of his predecessors". The community, composed of 50 priests belonging to the order of the Brethren of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was referred to as the Carmes.

A few years ago, the dilapidated property was acquired by the associated municipalities of the Bourne (including Pont-en-Royans and Choranche), and the buildings have been expertly restored and transformed into a museum. On Bastille Day, Natacha and Alain invited me there for lunch. These video sequences, taken by my friends, show me inside the museum and then out in the gardens.



I've added the trivial sound effects, first, in order to hide the rumbling noise of the wind, and second, because I've been fiddling around with the iMovie software tool, learning how to get it to do tricks.

Solar lamps in the garden

On Bastille Day, Natacha and Alain came to visit me at Gamone. Knowing that I'd created a garden, they gave me a set of solar lamps.



These gadgets remind me of the aircraft I mentioned in my recent article entitled Taking to the sky [display]. That's to say, the lamps soak in energy throughout the day, then, as soon as it's dark, they start to emit an eerie blue glow, which continues to the end of the night.

This is my first-ever attempt at putting a movie on YouTube and then displaying it in my blog. Meanwhile, I'm still investigating the video approach of HTML5. For example, if you happen to have the Chrome browser, you can see this movie on my website at www.skyvington.com. But I haven't succeeded yet in getting it to work with other browsers.

Mandrin no longer with us

Theoretically, the old donkey Mandrin belonged to my former neighbor Béatrice, the ex-wife of Bob. But Beatrice was more interested in horses than in this aging donkey… which she had received from a lady who loved the animal, but could no longer care for him. So, Mandrin was often left to his own resources, and he spent his time wandering around on the crest up above my house, on the edge of Moshé's paddock. In the beginning, I was reluctant to invite Mandrin into the same paddock as Moshé, because I imagined that the two males might fight with one another. On the contrary, from the moment they found themselves together in the same paddock, the two donkeys got along perfectly well together.

Based upon the Drôme locality in which the two donkeys were born, the lady who had reared Mandrin reckoned that he might even be Moshé's father.

Recently, I noticed that Mandrin was weakening, and I feared that he might be approaching the end of his life. The day before yesterday, while working in the garden, I was alarmed to see Moshé racing madly across the paddock and braying fearfully. A moment later, I discovered Mandrin's dead body in the shed, in a position suggesting that he had simply toppled over and died, with no signs of agitation. In the case of a farmyard animal, it's often difficult to determine the precise cause of death. I imagined immediately that Mandrin might have succombed to the present heat wave. While the high temperatures might have played a role, I believe that Mandrin simply died of old age… although I've never known his exact year of birth.

From that moment on, I was faced immediately with two problems: getting rid of Mandrin's dead body, and taking care of Moshé (suddenly deprived of his constant companion). Solving the first problem involved the rapid creation of a path behind the house, so that a tractor could access the donkey shed on the far edge of my property. Having been informed that the width of my neighbor's tractor is 2.1 meters, I started out by attacking the embankment behind the house with a pick and a hoe to widen the narrow pathway.

Then I used my powerful grinder and my chain saw to demolish rapidly my decrepit hen house, which happened to be located (through an error in judgment, which I made many years ago) right in the middle of the path from my house to the donkey shed. Incidentally, Christine will surely be happy to learn that the obligatory demolition of this Gamone eyesore has followed in the wake of the death of Mandrin.

My friendly and efficient neighbor Gérard Magnat succeeded in extracting rapidly the donkey's body, and dragging it down the road below my house. In the heat of the action (that's a literal description of our collaboration yesterday morning), I told Gérard that I would call in on him in the next day or so, to pay him for his efforts. Gérard: "William, you don't owe me a cent. This operation has not entailed work for which I might expect to be paid. It was simply a neighbor-to-neighbor service." I sensed with gratitude and respect the profound meaning of Gérard's words. The sentiments he expressed were surely a precious manifestation of the moral and social heritage of countless generations of Alpine farmers. As of tomorrow, I shall think up some kind of elementary gesture aimed at thanking him.

Afterwards, I set to work covering the donkey's body with quicklime, thick layers of straw and a plastic tarpaulin. Because of the Bastille Day holiday, the service that removes dead animals won't be turning up here before tomorrow.

While I'm saddened immensely by the departure of the old donkey Mandrin, I like to think that Moshé and I welcomed him here, at Gamone, for the final few years of his existence, which were surely spent in the donkey equivalent of peace and contentment.

Taking to the sky

The aspect of the flight of Solar Impulse that fascinated everybody was its simple two-phase schedule. First, during the day, the solar-powered aircraft would climb to 8,500 meters and then float around at that altitude for twelve hours, in order store a maximum quantity of the sun's energy. Then, as soon as the sun went down, the aircraft would descend to an altitude of 1,500 meters and fly around in the dark for the entire night, until its batteries were flat. To designate this second phase, many French observers borrowed the title of a famous novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline [1894-1961]: Journey to the End of the Night.



Meanwhile, 50 noisy passengers—described as rabbis and Jewish mystics—took to the sky in Israel with a noble goal: putting an end to the threat of the H1N1 flu virus.

Personally, I would put my money on the solar-powered aircraft rather than the prayer-chanting and shofar-blowing plane-load of kooks.

Staple Aussie food

Emmanuelle, my daughter, has the impression that there exists a characteristic Australian cuisine. I have no idea where she got this strange idea. She often asks me whether, apart from steak and kidney pie, and crumbed lamb cutlets, etc, I can recollect any other typical Aussie dishes. I often tell her that my staple diet, as a lad in South Grafton, was peanut butter sandwiches. A few days ago, for the first time ever since I've been in France, I bought a jar of Nicaraguan peanut butter at the local supermarket.

With my home-made walnut bread and Norman butter, the sandwiches are as good as (probably better than) anything from my childhood.

Meanwhile, if Australian readers were to supply my daughter with the recipes of authentic Australian dishes, I'm sure she would be delighted (since I believe she's putting together some kind of a document in this domain). Following my last visit to Australia, I've attempted to obtain the recipe of traditional meat pies of the so-called "humble pie" variety (this could well be a trademark), but nobody has ever replied to my inquiries.

Exotic visitor

I've seen this glorious butterfly at Gamone in previous years, whenever I've had flowering lavender.

It's a Zebra Swallowtail [Eurytides marcellus]. It flits constantly from one lavender stalk to another, and appears to be uninterested in roses or other flowers.

This specimen has a big gap in his starboard wing, as if a predator took a bite out of him. Maybe he simply had a mid-air collision with another butterfly. In any case, this flaw doesn't seem to have an adverse effect upon his flight.

Fabulous Armstrong

I believe that this is my 1500th Antipodes post.

Many Tour de France cyclists (who provide France with a welcome breath of fresh air after the disastrous soccer events) deserve to be thought of as fabulous. I might have applied this term to Mark Cavendish (what an emotional "bad boy" in tears), to Sylvain Chavanel (the French rider who has just won a second stage, after recuperating from an accident), or to Cadel Evans (whom we're all admiring and inspecting closely). The cyclists of the Tour de France are participating in a unique sporting event. The landscapes and architectural heritage of France, displayed constantly by the helicopter cameras, are equally fabulous.

In this context, Lance Armstrong has just flashed the following moving image on Twitter:

Always, Lance gets to the essential...

BREAKING NEWS: After Sunday's stage, disastrous for Lance (he hit the macadam three times), he sent out a despondent twitter:

When it rains it pours I guess.. Today was not my day needless to say. Quite banged but gonna hang in here and enjoy my last 2 weeks.

In a way, I find it preferable to see him knocked out by sheer bad luck rather than succumbing to a duel with Contador. As for Evans, the French press is talking of a feeling of déjà vu.

Published by an aggregator

A few weeks ago, I'd never even heard of this newfangled word "aggregator". It sounds like a good chemical name for the kind of product that thickens soups and sauces (such as potato starch, which I use constantly). Apparently, modern usage has hit upon this excellent term to designate websites that bring together, for a specific reason, data from a multiplicity of other Internet sources. For example, Apple is using this word to designate a handful of selected websites whose role consists of channeling in all kinds of budding authors who would like to see their work published as iBooks to be read on the iPad. Today, in the case of my novel All the Earth is Mine, I find myself collaborating with such an aggregator… whose name has an American sledgehammer charm:

I wrote the final version of my novel using the sturdy Pages word-processing tool… which doesn't do much, but does it well. (That's the same friendly software I use for my genealogical monographs.) I tried vainly for years years to find an Anglo-American publishing house or literary agency that would deign to read my novel. I still don't understand why these tentatives were doomed to failure (it had nothing to do with the quality of my writing, which nobody ever got around to examining), but I've noticed that there's some kind of a Berlin Wall between the Anglo-American book-publishing world and our homely French maisons d'édition (publishing houses). For example, as recently as yesterday, I was amazed and furious to discover that it's impossible for a French resident such as me to buy Apple iBooks from England or America. Once again, I don't understand why… but it surely has something to do with a book-based cultural conflict between the New World and France. In any case, in the context of such a crazy war, I have no intention of enlisting as a soldier and donning proudly a uniform, as I would surely be mowed down stupidly in the trenches by the first blast of shrapnel.

I finally decided that so-called electronic self-publishing might be the best (indeed, only) approach for getting my novel into print. Last year, for months on end, I tried to urge readers of this blog to download (free) and evaluate a PDF version of my novel. Curiously, that tentative earned me zero feedback… which simply means, I imagine, that readers of Antipodes prefer blogs to novel, which is understandable.

At the beginning of June, I posted the following question in an Apple forum dedicated to the Pages tool:

Please point me to explanations concerning the transformation
of a Pages document (a novel) into ePub format for the iPad.

There were few reactions, and even fewer useful replies. There was even a massive dose of unadulterated twaddle from kind individuals who've made it their personal mission to reply rapidly, summarily and superficially to anything and everything that appears on the forum. [Hi Peter, Chris and Tom.] I had the impression that people who write stuff using Pages don't really intend to get themselves published. On the other hand, I became aware of the existence of a community of talented individuals (mostly women), specialists in page design and typesetting, who use the sophisticated Adobe InDesign product (which I know and adore; it's the page creator's Ferrari). But that's not really my kettle of fish. I have simple novelistic words waiting to get published. I'm not faced with the challenge of designing ads or magazine pages. So, I rapidly put a personal cross on that approach. (Do English-speaking people use that metaphor about putting a cross on something, or am I using Frenglish?)

Meanwhile, I discovered that it was not at all arduous to transform manually my novel into the celebrated Epub format fit for publication by iBooks. (The adverb "manually" doesn't really mean manually. It indicates merely that, instead of calling upon a hypothetically magic conversion tool, I carried out all the nitty-gritty conversion stuff myself, based upon my understanding of the various ePub/iBooks technical specifications, protocols and constraints… which I now master ideally.)

My attempts at creation of an ePub version of my novel were highly positive. The final product exists, and it looks good when viewed either on the Adobe simulator [download] or on a real-life iPad. Besides, I offer Antipodes readers a free copy of Earth.epub. Just give me your email address.

For the moment, I'm awaiting developments in the relationship between me and my aggregator. From an aesthetic design and typesetting point of view, the present state of my novel at Smashwords is frankly catastrophic. The book looks as if it has been typeset by a low-IQ monkey or an "intelligent " robot. Naturally, I've expressed my alarm to SmashWords. And I've volunteered to help out, if necessary. Normally, SmashWords people should know more about ePub and iBooks than I do. But the major question remains: Is SmashWords prepared to correct and beautify their ugly robotic version of my novel before (and if) they propose it to Apple? Let's see what happens…

Staircase finished

My garden staircase at Gamone is finished.

Eight steps in all. Here's a closeup view of the upper half:

There's no way in the world that the crumbly earth on either side of the staircase might be persuaded to align itself magically, in the immediate future, with the stone steps. Only the growth of vegetation can play a slow role (no less magically) in filling in the gaps between the staircase and its immediate surroundings. To initiate the process of stabilizing this soil, I've started to plant herbs and shrubs.

In the two photos of the staircase, don't be misled by the perspective distortion. I assure you that all the eight steps are perfectly horizontal. On the other hand, I've noticed a trivial anomaly that had escaped me. Between the 4th and 5th steps, the small riser (vertical slab) in the middle has its ripples running the wrong way. I might have tried to tell you that I made this mistake deliberately, to create an instance of the concept known in Japanese as wabi-sabi, which is defined by an expert as follows:

From an engineering or design point of view, "wabi" may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations in design and construction/manufacture especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage conditions; then "sabi" could be interpreted as the aspect of imperfect reliability, or limited mortality of any object, hence the etymological connection with the Japanese word "sabi", to rust.

The French potter Maurice Crignon (a friend of Christine) once explained to me that, in the universe of ceramics, the wabi-sabi is often materialized by an intentional crack in an otherwise perfect pot.

The French movie director/scriptwriter Michel Audiard [1920-1985] said (my translation):

Crackpots are lucky.
The light can get into their skulls.

The Canadian poet/singer Leonard Cohen said much the same thing:

There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

In the garden at Gamone, light gets in through that wrongly-oriented slab in the middle of the staircase.

A universe not made for us

I found this short video on the website of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. The montage is based upon a text by Carl Sagan.



The creator of this YouTube video, who calls himself callumCGLP, describes his fine work as follows:

Excerpts from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. More specifically, from the chapter titled A Universe Not Made For Us. I edited together the audio from the audio-book, and added the video from Stephen Hawking's Into the Universe and Brian Cox's Wonders of the Solar System. The music is Jack's Theme from the Lost soundtrack.

Second thoughts on a skeleton

WARNING: Technical genealogical stuff.

Two months ago, in my article entitled Family-history shock [display], I revealed that I had just stumbled upon a skeleton in the family closet: a Skyvington record on the website of the Old Bailey (London's 19th-century criminal court).

I had the immediate impression that the 26-year-old condemned fraudster, referred to as William Skyvington, was surely the father of young Ernest, my future grandfather whom we called Pop. I explained that it was hard to imagine that Pop would have deliberately concealed such information from us. I preferred another explanation. Ernest's father would have been released from the notorious Newgate prison in the spring of 1899, and his wife Eliza Mepham died of tuberculosis just six months later. Maybe, in this tragic context, Pop's father had decided to build himself a new life, elsewhere in England, while leaving his son in the cozy cocoon of the Mepham family in Islington (northern suburb of London). So we might imagine that, if Pop failed to tell us what had happened to his father, this was simply because he himself was totally unaware of these events.

Over the last few days, in the spirit of my recent article entitled Painted myself into a genealogical corner [display], I have started to tidy up my Skyvington genealogical archives. Among other things, I was determined to unravel the elements of the new identity assumed (in my imagination) by Pop's father. Well, as of yesterday afternoon, I was forced to admit that my reasoning was erroneous. I still have no facts whatsoever concerning the destiny of Pop's father, who was mentioned for the last on his wife's death certificate, where he is described as a commercial traveler. But I've now examined sufficiently the archives to know that our William Skyvington cannot possibly be confused with any of the individuals I had in mind when I suggested that he might have taken on a new identity.

I'm now inclined to consider that I made a mistake in thinking that the William Skyvington condemned at the Old Bailey for fraud was indeed Pop's father. First, there's the age discrepancy. At the date of the Old Bailey trial, in October 1898, our William Skyvington was 29, as attested explicitly by a birth certificate established at Plymouth. So, the 26-year-old man at the Old Bailey was almost certainly another individual, because it's hard to imagine that an age discrepancy of that magnitude would slip through. It's easy to make an arithmetic error of a year, in either direction, but an error of three years is unlikely in administrative circles. Besides, I see that Pop's father is designated on his birth certificate as William Jones Skyvington and, on his marriage certificate, as William Henry Jones Skyvington. If he were the individual condemned at the Old Bailey, then why is there no mention of a second given name?

If the fraudster named William Skyvington were not in fact my great-grandfather, then what was his identity? We need to find a Skyvington male born in 1872. Such an individual exists: a certain Albert William Skyvington, about whom I know little for the moment. He was probably one of the 17 offspring of Oliver Skyvington [1847-1925], the Bournemouth milkman, married three times, whose descendants live today in Canada. This Oliver was indeed raised (along with his brothers John and Atwell) in the Dorset context of my ancestors at Iwerne Courtney, but I've never yet set out to determine their exact links to us. I had imagined that this task would surely be taken up by their New World descendants. Motivated by the Old Bailey anecdote, I now intend to examine these questions…

Sky droppings

The French Libération website has published an amusing story about mysterious stuff that has been falling from the sky onto the village of Saint-Pandelon, down in the south-west corner of France, near Dax. The mysterious substance, rapidly identified as some kind of excrement, has been falling onto automobiles and rooftops, and polluting local parks and gardens. For a moment, some people suggested that this disgusting stuff might have fallen from airliners… in much the same way that human excrement used to be dropped between the rails from trains. Aircraft experts were obliged to point out that this is not the way that WCs function inside a giant pressurized fuselage, where pressing the button alongside the toilets does not create a momentary orifice in the plane's skin. (On the contrary, shit completes the voyage to the aircraft's destination... along with the crew, the passengers and their luggage.) The culprits, above this French village of 750 inhabitants, were flocks of swifts.

I often see the Alpine variety of this bird in the skies of Gamone. People mistake them for swallows, but swifts are much bigger than ordinary farmyard swallows, and more sophisticated from an aeronautical point of view. Unlike swallows, they remain almost permanently in the air, where they feed on insects. Besides, if a swift were to land on the ground, its large wings are so heavy that the bird might not be able to take off again.

I've always been fascinated by the symbol of this perpetually airborne creature. Heavenly clouds end up coming down to the ground in the form of rain, and even the wind makes contact with us when it ruffles our hair. But the only messages sent to the surface of the Earth by swifts are little balls of shit. Next spring, I'm convinced that the parks and gardens of Saint-Pandelon will be graced with exotic wildflowers of an angelic splendor.

Another cover design

Friends have pointed out various small but annoying problems of interpretation (which I hadn't suspected) with the cover projects I presented in my recent post entitled Cover for All the Earth is Mine [display]. Here's another simple idea, based upon a fragment of one of the wonderful paintings of the Holy Land by David Roberts, showing Jerusalem's Turkish minaret known as the Tower of David.

On the iPad, the novel will be displayed in double-page format. So, what you see here is the cover and the title page, side by side.