Redevelopment of Paris riverbanks

The 61-year-old Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, seems to be succeeding in persuading citizens of the City of Light (so-called, primarily, because of the intellectual force of the Enlightenment), including elected city councilors, to accept and encourage a vast project aimed at redeveloping 15 hectares of the Seine riverbanks.

He is the man behind the rent-a-bike project named Vélib.

Delanoë is also the man behind the summer transformation of the banks of the Seine into an urban "beach": the Paris Plages operation.

Let us examine the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project. The Seine flows from the east to the west through Paris.

In this map, you can see the two islands that constitute the heart of Paris. The bigger one is the Ile de la Cité (with the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris), and the smaller one is the Ile St-Louis. The Arc de Triomphe is indicated by the blue dot in the upper left-hand corner, the Louvre is located in the middle of the map, whereas the Eiffel Tower is located in the lower left-hand zone of the map at the place labeled Champ de Mars. With respect to the direction of the river, the upper part of the map designates the Right Bank region of the city, and the lower part, the Left Bank. The riverbanks redevelopment project concerns 9 sites, 4 of which (in green) are located on the Right Bank, and 5 (in red) on the Left Bank.

A basic goal of the redevelopment project consists of reducing the presence of automobiles inside Paris, and transforming this precious Seine waterfront territory (Unesco World Heritage site) into an attractive environment to be appreciated by pedestrians and cyclists. On 4.5 hectares (30% of the global area of the project), automobile presence will in fact be reduced to zero, while the flow of automobiles will be channeled and controlled stringently in the remaining zones covered by the project. Needless to say, various professional bodies in Paris are already starting to complain about problems likely to be encountered when trying to use a private motor vehicle in the city.

The project will not be terribly costly: a basic investment of 35 million euros followed by yearly operational costs of some 5 millions euros. By comparison, the budget of the Barangaroo development project in Sydney, covering an area that's 50% greater, is 6 billion Australian dollars, which is over a hundred times the cost of the Paris riverbanks redevelopment project. Admittedly, no skyscrapers will be built in the middle of Paris!

The Paris municipality launched the project a year ago, in July 2010, and this was followed by an intensive four-month period of public presentations, debates and workshops. In-depth studies were carried out during the first half of 2011, and a vast public inquiry into the project is under way at present. Actual work on the project will be carried out during the first half of 2012, during which time Paris will inevitably be transformed into a vast construction site. And the new facilities will be opened up to the general public in the course of the second half of next year. So, if you happened to be visiting London for the Olympic Games, you might even be able to drop across the Channel to take a peek at the new face of Paris/Seine. (Clearly, I'm an optimist.)

Retrospectively, we can say that the riverbanks of Paris were largely sacrificed to the goddess Automobile during the presidency of Georges Pompidou, from June 1969 to April 1974. This gentleman from Auvergne—a former Rothschild banker—used to get around in a Porsche. I remember running into him in 1969, out in the village of Houdan, to the west of Paris, where Christine and I had rented a farmhouse. Pompidou, who had a property in nearby Orvilliers, was buying his weekend stock of cigarettes.

At that time, the French people in general were enchanted by automobiles, and they liked the idea of driving into the heart of Paris along a two-lane riverside highway.

It wasn't until much later, when environmental issues came to the forefront, that people started to think that maybe there were better things to do with a lovely river such as the Seine, on its way through a magnificent city such as Paris, than to cover its banks in macadam and transform them into an urban autoroute.

But the damage had been done. So, today, it's a matter of seeing whether it can be undone.

Since it's not yet easy to obtain English-language information concerning the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project, I thought it might be worthwhile if I were to devote the rest of this blog post to a kind of virtual visit of what we might discover in Paris in a year or so's time. So, let's imagine that we've come from Normandy or Brittany, and that we're driving into Paris from the west, along Pompidou's right-bank highway. I propose that we stick to the Right Bank, and that we visit the four sites numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the above map of Paris. Then we'll leave the Right Bank, cross over the eastern tip of the Ile St-Louis and drive back along the Left Bank, visiting the sites numbered 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. So, let's go! Incidentally, all the architects' images that you are about to see can be enlarged by clicking.

We're traveling on the Right Bank to the east, in the same direction as the white automobile. So, this first image points back to where we came from. We've already driven past the Eiffel Tower, located on the Left Bank, which can be seen in the background on the other side of the Seine. As of next year, if we stop here [site n° 1 on the map], we'll have access to several great museums, including the new modern-art space that will be opened in the Palais de Tokyo. The pedestrian Debilly Footbridge, built over a century ago, enables us to walk across to the Left Bank.

On the Left Bank, we can visit the recently-inaugurated museum of the Quai Branly, dear to the heart of former French president Jacques Chirac, concerning the civilizations of Africa, Asia and Oceania (including our Australian Aborigines). But let us return to the Right Bank and continue our journey towards the center of Paris.

Here [site n° 2 on the map], we are within walking distance of the world's most illustrious museum: the Louvre. But we only have to stroll across the Seine to meeet up with the Orsay Museum of painting and sculpture from the period 1848-1914. Let us continue eastwards.

At the level of the Paris city hall, the Hôtel de Ville [site n° 3 on the map], we encounter a couple of joyful barges, the first of which is designed for kids, while the second is a floating bistrot.

We move towards the final Right Bank redevelopment zone, which is in fact a riverboat station, named Célestins [site n° 4 on the map].

At that point, we cross over the Seine to the Left Bank, and head back in a westerly direction.

At the level of the Orsay Museum [site n° 5 on the map], we encounter what might be thought of as the spiritual center of the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project. Materially, it is a giant aerial staircase descending towards the sacred river. The architects label it a place of meditation… whereas the wary mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, has the pragmatic courage to admit that we still do not know if such a fabulous structure can indeed be built! Let's hope that solutions will be found, enabling us to visit this magic place of an evening.

Back at the level of the Concorde [site n° 6 on the map], but remaining on the Left Bank, we encounter a magic archipelago of floating islands.

Next, there's the illustrious Alexandre III Bridge linking the Place de la Concorde to the French parliament building [site n° 7 on the map].

Moving towards the Eiffel Tower, we meet up with a hitherto undistinguished place where barges deposited gravel, known quaintly as Big Stone [site n° 8 on the map].

Then we move into the Left Bank territory of the Pont d'Alma [site n° 9 on the map].

I hardly need to point out that, at the Right Bank extremity of this peaceful bridge, Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997.

Now, what must we think about this virtual journey through Paris/Seine riverbank places that will only become meaningful next year? Well, if I can speak as a former longtime resident of Paris, I would not hesitate in saying that it sounds fabulous… and I heartily congratulate Delanoë on his imagination and courage (because, as you might imagine, there are detractors).

Paris, of course, is priceless, beyond measure. And must be preserved. Bravo Bertrand!

My paper on symbolic arrows

I've finished a short article on the arrow symbol—comprising a copy of a personal letter from Sir Ernst Gombrich—which is now stored in the commentary section of the Gombrich Archive at the University of Birmingham [access]. I was happy to collaborate on this task with Richard Woodfield [Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Art History at the University of Birmingham], who built the Gombrich website.

Alternatively, you can click the image to download directly a PDF version of my paper from a personal webspace.

I never actually got around to completing my research in this fascinating domain, which would have involved months of investigations. As I suggest in my paper, things have changed greatly today because of the existence of the Internet, and I would be thrilled if a young researcher (maybe in the field of graphic design) were to take up the challenge of presenting a global story of symbolic arrows.

Jingle cash bells

Regular readers of my Antipodes blog will have noticed that I often go out of my way to give a friendly helping hand to needy causes that appear to be worthy of my patronage.

So, that's why I've decided to throw in this small plug for a time-honored department store in London. In using the adjective "needy", I must admit that I'm merely judging the present state of this prestigious shop on the basis of a somewhat disturbing news item… although I must add that I haven't had time to drop across to the other side of the English Channel to verify personally this news. Apparently they've decided to install, at the height of summer, their Christmas 2011 displays. My only guess is that they're desperate for cash, and that their dire straits force them to adopt this incongruous marketing solution.

I'm particularly enticed by a delightful article that is indeed presented on their Christmas 2011 web pages [display]. I'm talking of a deluxe version (a little less than 80 quid sterling) of Freddie, the Harrods 2011 Christmas Bear. I'm thinking of ordering a specimen in the next few days—before the store runs out of bears—so that I'll be able to send it out to my Australian family in December. I reckon that a Christmas bear that can be acquired in the Old World at the start of a sultry month of August will be just right for transportation to Australia during the sweltering Antipodean celebrations of the birth of Jesus.

Ireland finally attacks the pope

Enda Kenny is the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. On 20 July, in the Dáil Éireann (lower house) of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament), Kenny delivered an extraordinarily virulent speech motivated by the recently-published report concerning the failure of the Catholic diocese of Cloyne to handle cases of sexual abuse of children by 19 priests. He castigated explicitly the Vatican in a style that would have been unthinkable up until recently.

This amazing speech will surely go down in Irish history as marking the moment when the once almighty church was finally brought to reckoning.

Religions are failed sciences

That's a great slogan, and the US neuroscientist Sam Harris is a brilliant lecturer. Besides, his clean-cut charisma echoes that of his English friend Richard Dawkins.

Sam makes everything sound so totally obvious… which it is, of course.

In those days, even the Nasa wrote letters

I continue to talk about my past interest in symbolic arrows… which I've already evoked in three blog posts: in May, June and yesterday. The reason why I'm somewhat obsessed by this subject is that I've been working on a summary designed to clarify my brief exchange of letters about arrows with Ernst Gombrich, in 1976. This summary is almost completed, and I'll be announcing its existence shortly, in the form of a downloadable PDF file. Meanwhile, let me evoke briefly one of the most notorious symbolic arrows of all time: the curved trajectory that was engraved in the plaque aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes.

As you can see (at the bottom of the image), a curved line with an arrow-head at its right-hand extremity is intended to indicate the trajectory of the space vessel from its departure point, the planet Earth, to the vicinity of the orbit of Saturn. The question that springs into the mind of a skeptical earthbound observer is: Would extraterrestrial observers necessarily grasp the sense of this symbolic arrow? I sent a letter concerning my doubts to Nasa:

[Click to enlarge]

And I got a prompt and informative reply (curiously undated) from Charles Redmond, their public affairs officer in Washington.

[Click to enlarge]

Regardless of the objective content of our exchanges, I remain nostalgic today concerning that epoch, just a few decades ago (but before the Internet), when a simple individual such as myself could communicate directly with a fabulous organization such as the Nasa. At that time, needless to say, there were numerous indicators towards the future.

I often wonder retrospectively which (if any) of these paths towards the future I followed… leading to my solitary installation here at Gamone.

Back in the days when people wrote letters

In my May article entitled Voices from Vienna [display], I evoked my exchange of letters with the great Viennese art historian Ernst Gombrich. Then, in my June article entitled Symbolic arrows [display], I started to evoke the motivations behind my preoccupations with symbolic arrows.

Three decades ago, when I was eagerly pursuing this arrow subject, I tried to analyze every specimen I encountered. For Americans, the most famous bundle of symbolic arrows (exactly 13) is clenched in the left talon of a bald eagle, on the Great Seal.

That bundle of arrows symbolizes US military strength, whereas the olive branch in the eagle's right talon symbolizes cherished peace. I was intrigued by another illustrious blazon based upon a bundle of arrows.

These are the arms of the Rothschild family: the world's greatest and wealthiest dynasty of international bankers. Well, back in those days before personal computers and the Internet, I was curious to learn why the Rothschilds might have incorporated arrows in their coat of arms. So, I simply sent off a letter to the family in Paris.

I received a prompt and friendly reply from the chief himself: Baron Guy de Rothschild. At that time, he was the 72-year-old patriarch of a distinguished French family and the discouraged head of a great bank that had been nationalized by the socialist government of François Mitterrand. I've often wondered, since then, why Guy de Rothschild took time off from his tribulations to explain to a naive Australian why there were arrows in the family's coat of arms. My personal explanation might sound simplistic and corny, but I'll give it all the same. Guy de Rothschild sent me that personal letter [see below, click to enlarge] because... he was a gentleman.

This is a photo of the old man not long before his death, four years ago:

In his letter, he evoked the idea that the arrows represented the five sons of the patriarch Mayer Amschel Rothschild [1744-1812].

Today, this association between the bundle of five arrows and the sons is indicated explicitly in various web articles about Rothschild history. The prestigious US magazine Forbes considered Mayer Amschel Rothschild —who grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt—a "founding father of international finance", and ranked him 7th in their list of "the twenty most influential businessmen of all time". The Rothschild patriarch probably discovered his metaphorical sense of arrows, evoking down-to-earth advantages of sons, in Psalm 127:

Sons are a gift from the Lord
and children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the sons of one's youth.
Happy is he
who has his quiver full of them;
someone like that will not have to back down
when confronted by an enemy in court.

The following chart mentions individuals in the English and French branches of the family:

[Click to enlarge slightly]

The 48-year-old man whose name appears in the lower right-hand corner, Benjamin de Rothschild, is said to be the richest of the living Rothschilds.

Princely potion

Here in rural France, I buy groceries in plebeian places such as Leclerc and Intermarché supermarkets. On the other hand, if I were to settle down in England (which is not one of my current projects), I would make a point of residing in the vicinity of a Waitrose shop, because they have a reputation for offering top-quality foodstuffs. Besides, they have royal warrants to supply groceries and alcoholic beverages to both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles. And, as I've always said, what's good enough for the Royals is bloody good enough for me.


The Scottish economist Adam Smith [1723-1790] once claimed—long before Napoleon appeared on the world scene—that Britain was "a nation that is governed by shopkeepers". Well, even Kate Middleton's father-in-law seems to have got himself involved in retail business activities, under a most regal name and logo, which look as if they've come straight out of Burke's Peerage.

The branch of Duchy that markets herbal products proposes a nice little black bottle containing a mysterious potion named Detox Tincture, made from thistles and dandelions. For the moment, I haven't got around to trying it out, and discovering its health-inducing benefits. On the web page concerning this product [access], there's an inspiring description of Prince Charles, who "has always been an advocate of a requirement for fundamental reappraisal of the way we view health. He believes poor health does not exist in isolation, but is in fact a direct consequence of our lifestyles, cultures, communities and how we interact with our environments. He is passionate about adopting an integrated approach to health, as well as exploring how safe, proven complementary therapies can work in conjunction with mainstream medicine."

Not everybody in the kingdom is convinced that Charles is acting correctly from a medical and ethical viewpoint. An article in the Guardian in March used the ugly term "quackery" [display]. A more recent article in the same newspaper introduces an even more down-to-earth expression: "snake oil salesman" [display]. All I can say is that, if Charles or members of his family happened to read my blog, I would be most grateful if they were to ask the Duchy company to send me a few samples of their health-inducing products, and I promise to try them out rapidly, both on me and my dogs, and to describe the outcome for my readers.

Heritage aviation remains a dangerous affair

This unique modern replica of the airplane of the Wright brothers is referred to as the Wright "B" Flyer Silver Bird.


Its first test flight, which took place just 6 weeks ago in Ohio, is presented in this interesting video.

Last Saturday morning, the Silver Bird went down suddenly, killing its pilot and passenger.

I dedicate this blog post to the memory of my friend Adrian Lyons, 43, and his guest pilot David Sayers, 41, who were killed exactly 12 years ago—on August 1, 1999—when the Jet Provost trainer belonging to Adrian and his wife Patricia Tomkins crashed in a cornfield at Staverton, 20 miles from Gloucester Airport (UK).

Enough cash to buy the USA

When I was working with IBM Australia back in Sydney during the period 1957-1961, I remember being most impressed by an anecdote designed to reveal the fabulous prosperity of my US employer. Somebody told me that IBM was so wealthy that the corporation could simply pay cash for such-and-such a South American nation… in the "banana republic" category, if I remember rightly. At the time, I wouldn't have been capable of deciding whether or not this was rubbish talk, so I simply believed what I was told, and got on (proudly, no doubt) with my computer programming tasks.

These days, thanks to Internet, we're more cautious about tales of this kind, since people are more and more capable of verifying the degree of truth in what is being stated. We're no longer obliged to survive in the kind of informational vacuum that shrouded the planet up until recently… except, of course, if your antiquated beliefs, your inbuilt mental structure and your cultural conditioning force you (with or without Internet) to do so.

Today, we're told (and it's no doubt true) that the Apple corporation disposes of cash liquidities of 76 billion dollars, whereas those of the entity known as the USA amount to 73 billion dollars. The latter sum represents what the USA can actually spend before they hit their official national debt limit of well over 14 billion dollars, illustrated here:

It's said that, if the current US debt were to be materialized in 100-dollar banknotes, the stack of greenbacks would cover a football field up to the height of the left arm of the Statue of Liberty. This explains why a dynamic corporation such as Apple would never—in spite of having enough ready cash to do so—invest in such an unpromising financial affair as God's Own Country.

Our GP on overseas disaster mission

In my previous post [display], I mentioned our good fortune in having a resident GP, Xavier Limouzin, with many qualities, including that of being an officer and active member of the Sapeurs-Pompiers (fire brigade) of Pont-en-Royans. Here's a photo of Dr Limouzin in Haiti after last year's earthquake:

[Click for an enlarged view]

And here he is (on the right), with comrades, working at night alongside the rubble in Haiti:

With that kind of professional experience, Dr Limouzin was perfectly at ease in dealing with the trivial case of an old-timer at Gamone who happened to get pinned to the ground by a branch of a walnut tree.

Fool who thought he was a lumberjack

If this photo shocks my readers, then I ask you to believe that this silly accident certainly shocked me too. But I've now overcome the trauma.

My local doctor, Xavier Limouzin, is not only an excellent general practitioner and a cultivated gentleman—who is passionate, in the little spare time he has, about exotic motor cycles and rose-growing—but he's also a senior officer in the local fire brigade, and clearly a competent photographer. (That's not Limouzin in the photo, since he was actually taking the photo… at my request.) The accident occurred a month ago [see my blog post], but it was only yesterday that I dropped in for the first time for a medical visit, primarily for my three-monthly renewal of pills. I've more-or-less got back to normal, but Limouzin has prescribed both an ultrasound image and an MRI of my left knee, which might not be recovering (?) ideally. Personally, I'm reassured that everything's fine, but I've got into the habit of following strictly the orders of Xavier Limouzin (who detected my prostate problem several years ago). I wouldn't wish to be accused of publicizing the talents of a GP (which would be illegal in France), but I've often said to myself that one of the many basic reasons why I'm not particularly interested in moving to a more civilized corner of France is that my personal medical context in the vicinity of Pont-en-Royans is splendid. And Gamone—need I add?—is a magnificent place to live, in spite of its dangers.

Concerning the photo, I should explain that the victim is totally conscious and suffering no pain whatsoever. If he's lying on his back, in his underclothes, with his arms outstretched, that's because Xavier Limouzin ordered me to get into this position. And if the victim is wearing an oxygen mask, and receiving serum in his right arm, that's because Xavier Limouzin didn't want to take any risks concerning the possible nature of my wounds. I tried to tell the GP that I was perfectly capable of getting up onto my legs and walking away from the scene, but he preferred wisely to ignore my words. So I assumed completely my state as a wounded fellow who had imagined himself stupidly, for a few dramatic instants, as an alpine lumberjack capable of using a chainsaw to cut up giant logs on the slopes of the Vercors.

I must relate a trivial anecdote that would be amusing were it not perfectly serious and reassuring. In the confusion of the first few minutes when the local firemen's ambulance was racing up to Gamone, with its siren blaring, phone messages were exchanged concerning the exact setting in which I was located. Naturally, the first thought that flashes into the minds of alpine emergency crews in a place such as Choranche is the possibility that the victim might be located in an inaccessible zone, necessitating the intervention of a helicopter. I had actually written a blog post on this theme, entitled Helicopter territory [display], just a week before my accident. Well, it appears that the nature and the geographical circumstances of my predicament had been somewhat overstated by the excellent men and women (the group included two female fire officers) who were taking care of me. In any case, at the same moment that I allowed myself (I had no choice) to be handled like a gravely-injured blob of meat, and placed delicately in a rigid cradle on a stretcher, and carried up to the house, I glimpsed the famous red and yellow helicopter hovering above Gamone. I also heard one of the firemen yelling out, in embarrassed annoyance: "Hey, somebody forgot to phone the helico to say we don't need them." To be perfectly honest, I was almost disappointed to realize that I wouldn't be leaving Gamone in an aerial fashion. But I remained constantly relieved, above all (during the long slow journey to the hospital in Romans), that I wouldn't be leaving Gamone in a plastic bag. Once in the care of the excellent medical staff at Romans (where I spent the entire afternoon in my underwear), I realized that I was traumatized above all by the image of the rolling log, and I kept repeating to myself, in an audible voice: "William, oublie l'arbre !" (forget the tree trunk). During the fortnight that followed my accident, I took advantage of the terrible series of accidents in the Tour de France to convince myself that we're all constantly on the verge of being killed in one way or another. And I chased away all my dark thoughts and images by realizing that it's a wonderful privilege to live alongside individuals such as the neighbors who heard my cries for help, and the fine emergency personnel of Pont-en-Royans, guided by Xavier Limouzin. But a helicopter trip would have been nice...

PS: Perspicacious blog readers will have understood that my decision to publish this unpleasant photo is largely therapeutic.

Smart boss

At the start of a recent Dilbert strip, I was surprised, indeed intrigued, to find the Pointy-Haired Boss referring to the sophisticated phenomenon of telomeres, which are the repetitive DNA sequences found at both ends of our chromosomes. After all, it was only in 2009 that the Australian-born biologist Elizabeth Blackburn was awarded (along with two colleagues) the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the way in which telomeres "protect" a chromosome whenever it replicates.

The boss's allusion to "short telomeres" evokes an hypothesis that has become widespread (although not yet fully confirmed) at the level of afflictions such as cancer and aging. The general idea is that a fragment at the extremity of a telomere is "sacrificed" during cell replication, and this insignificant destruction means that relatively important fragments further down the line will not be damaged, as they would be if the protective telomere "cap" were not present. In a healthy individual, this partial destruction of one end of the telomere is harmless, since it can rebuild itself later on. On the other hand, if an individual's telomeres have been reduced to an abnormally short length, then that person is a likely candidate—according to the above-mentioned hypothesis—for cancer and senescence.

I was surprised by the boss's knowledge of modern genetics. I didn't know that a narrow-minded man of his kind would have heard of telemeres. Maybe, if I had the habit of reading popular-science magazines, or stuff about health, I would have realized that telomeres have indeed become a household word. Incidentally, in the remaining frames of the Dilbert strip, the boss informs the job candidate that short telomeres are a sign that the individual in question values work above physical well-being.

[Click the image to access an article that the boss may have read.]

Another thing that intrigues me in this affair is the question of how an ordinary individual might learn that his telomeres are abnormally short. I've had my Y-chromosomes analyzed in a genealogical context [see description], but that trivial operation taught me nothing whatsoever concerning the length of my telomeres. Maybe individuals who have had their DNA examined in a wider medical context end up acquiring information about the length of their telomeres. In any case, I intend to carry on reading Dilbert comics in the hope of broadening my awareness of the marvels of modern medicine.

Relativity

I've always been intrigued by manifestations of an everyday concept that can only be called relativity… although it has nothing to do with Einstein. I'm talking of the fact that an individual X might consider such-and-such a thing as important, whereas an individual Y might consider the same thing as trivial. That's to say, the thing is, or is not, important/trivial depending on the identity of its respective viewers. And that's why I suggest (rightly or wrongly, at a language level) that it's a case of relativity.

Ever since the inception of my Antipodes blog in December 2006 [display], its spirit has evolved constantly around the concept of an upside-down world in which certain folk seem to be walking on their heads… when viewed, that is, by folk on the other side of our conceptual planet.

I'm amazed whenever the ordinary universe reveals itself (above all, in the domain of quantum physics and cosmology) as extraordinary. Inversely, I'm amused when I see that dull phenomena (such as tourism in my native land) can be interpreted by their beholders as objects of planetary contemplation. I ask myself constantly: Why can't we all agree about what's important (and what's trivial), what's amazing (and what's run-of-the-mill), what's beautiful (and what's dull), what's precious (and what's cheap), etc.

Today, I'm convinced that this theme of everyday relativity is all-important, because it determines whether or not we're talking on the same wavelength, or even talking about the same issues. Back in 2006 in Sydney, I shall never forget the experience of describing with enthusiasm, to my uncle Peter and his wife Nancy Walker, the reasons why it was so fundamentally important for me to make this pilgrimage from France, back to Australia, to visit our ancestral Braidwood. After listening to my profound explanations, Peter said to me: "William, you must realize that nobody gives a screw about all that you've just been saying." I remember, above all, the term "screw", an euphemism for "fuck" (since Peter never used bad language). He was right, in his tiny narrow-minded way. But, in most ways, Peter was utterly wrong, for he had sadly misjudged (underestimated) what makes the world go round. In a nutshell: Our constant challenge of evaluating what went wrong in the past, and trying to improve things for the future. That, my dear ignorant uncle Peter, is what people have been giving countless literal fucks about for the last few billion years.

Sadly, I never saw Braidwood, because there was simply nobody to take me there. For me, this was a gigantic disappointment... which accounts for much of the distaste I now express for that silly sunburnt country and its people that I used to love.

This relativity theme is so huge that I've lost steam (in criticizing my uncle) before I even got started. I'll get back to it in later blog posts...

I've been talking on about anything and everything for years, in this Antipodes blog, designed to evoke interesting responses from those around me, particularly my genetic relatives. Well, in all that time, I continue to find it utterly amazing that this blog has never recorded a single instance of a significant reaction from any individuals in that "genetic relatives" category. It's as if they all signed off as soon as they saw the first words of Antipodes. In fact, I don't give a screw.

Why do we like the things we like?

The Yale psychologist Paul Bloom is interested in big fundamental questions of an aesthetic or moral kind, such as: Why do we like certain things, but dislike others? Why do we consider that one thing is right, whereas another is wrong? In this entertaining 16-minute video, Bloom provides us with fascinating and often amusing cases of human likes and dislikes.

In the great debate of nature v. nurture, I'm pleased to discover that Paul Bloom is an opponent—like Steven Pinker—of the infamous "blank slate" theory [display]. He says: "A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life."

Aussie meal

These are salt-water crocodiles in the Northern Territory.

The little fellow is about 2.5 meters in length. As for the big reptile, the photographer Lyn Minchin and her friends in a boat decided that it would be unwise to wait around until they could witness the beast's full length, which appeared to exceed that of their 5-meter boat. Clearly, the big crocodile was hungry, and he decided to chew into the nearest food available: one of his mates.

Talk about winning, not disappearing

This man is our main hope of defeating Sarkozy and bringing the French nation back onto a road towards the republican goal of liberté, égalité et fraternité. But the fellow's already evoking (in the Italian press) the eventuality of the Socialists being defeated.

François Hollande must pay attention to his language, and start acting and talking exclusively in a positive style!

Is this guy crazy?

It's not unlikely that the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik is in fact "crazy"—as his lawyer Geir Lippestad is starting to suggest—and that "he lives in a bubble" where he depends upon pharmaceutical products in order "to be strong, to be efficient, to be awake". OK, fine (yawn). Let's suppose, then, that he's a lethally dangerous former citizen of a finely civilized Scandinavian society. The next question is: What should be done with this creature?

As I stated clearly in a previous post [display], he must be examined profoundly, clinically, above all, for his case and condition might alert us to future risks. The concept of punishment is anathema… but Breivik must be sentenced to silence. Society neither wishes nor needs to listen to a syllable of anything that this nauseating blond Viking might vomit.

The rest of the civilized world will be awaiting Norway's honest analysis of what might have gone wrong in their harboring such an individual—apparently unknowingly—in their midst. Maybe we're all potential lunatics capable of destroying everything that's precious. Personally, I've never been anguished nor even intrigued by such an idea, which I look upon as totally false, indeed ridiculous. Whenever I touch the tender head of one of my dear dogs, Sophia or Fitzroy, I'm profoundly aware that they are precious but fragile treasures, who must never be harmed, who must be caressed forever, and that the potential violence of my giant human paws must be controlled, and intelligently restrained. My dogs are not mad animals, fit to be killed by a madman... and neither am I. If Breivik's sick brain thinks otherwise, then researchers in psychology and neurophysiology must try to determine what has happened. What was it that apparently transformed this Norwegian citizen into a monster?