Ring-ins

In Aussie slang, a ring-in is a black sheep in the family, the opposite of a fair dinkum offspring. And that reminds me of a joke.

The Reverend McKenzie (meaning "the fair one" in ancient Scottish) was a missionary in a remote settlement in the heart of the jungle. With his pale complexion and thick curly red hair, he stood out among all the black-skinned folk whose souls he was intent upon saving.

Outside the makeshift missionary church, McKenzie was engaged in a serious discussion with a local farmer, Jimmy Bongo, who appeared to be somewhat upset.

JIMMY BONGO: I tell you, Reverend, all our other children are pure black, like me. Then, a few days ago, my wife gave birth to a funny little fellow with a pale face and curly red hair. How can I explain this to neighbors in the village?

REVEREND MCKENZIE: God works in mysterious ways, Jimmy, and you have nothing whatsoever to say to the villagers in the way of explanations. Simply show them your herd of goats. They were all pure white. Then, not so long ago, when I happened to be visiting your farm on missionary duties, I noticed that your latest baby goat was jet black. We must not question God's decision to bring about the birth of a black goat in your white herd. Similarly, we must not question God's decision to provide you and your wife with a fair-skinned red-haired baby.

JIMMY BONGO: OK, Reverend, fair enough. Let's make a deal. I'll keep quiet about our red-haired baby as long as you promise to say nothing about that black goat.

Recently, I sent an email to a distinguished US scientist whose surname is similar to mine, suggesting that he might be prepared to get involved in genetic genealogy. I'm impatient to have opportunities of comparing my Y-chromosomes with those of various males with surnames such as Skyvington, Skivington, Skevington, etc. Well, this fellow explained to me frankly that he wasn't enthusiastic about genealogical research, because he considered that the frequency of cases of "ring-ins" is so high that genuine paternal lines rarely exist for more than a few generations. In other words, he was suggesting that, even though I might imagine that my Y-chromosomes have come down to me through a long and ancient line of males with surnames like mine, there were almost certainly countless points at which this Y-chromosome line was broken, when the latest genitor happened to be an outsider. On such occasions, most family members (except, say, the future mother) might have continued to believe that the most recent procreation was indeed the act of an authentic tribal male. How could they know otherwise?

For genealogical research and Y-chromosome testing to be serious preoccupations, I would need to be to be convinced that each of my male predecessors, for centuries on end, was a noble-minded gentlemen who never dreamed of jumping into bed with any female other than his lawful wedded wife. That's to say, my highly moralistic forefathers, prior to their marriages, would have shuddered at the evil thought of having sex with unmarried village maidens, or the wives of other males in the village. Once they were married, they produced offspring exclusively with their legal wives. And these sensuous ladies, no less moralistic than their husbands, would have resisted scrupulously any temptation whatsoever to welcome the warm caresses of lusty males who didn't happen to be their husbands.

It's because all my Skyvington ancestors were like that (n'est-ce pas ?), since the epoch of the Norman invasion in 1066, that genealogical research remains, for lucky me, a meaningful preoccupation. Indeed, I've often been somewhat ashamed to realize that I myself am no doubt the first Skyvington male since antiquity to have been capable of behaving loosely, at times, from a sexual viewpoint. But don't jump to false conclusions. I've always made a gigantic attempt to respect the Tenth Commandment:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's. [Exodus 20:17]

Maybe I don't fully understand what the Good Lord was trying to say through his use of the curious verb "to covet", but I can vouch for the fact that I've never coveted my neighbor's manservants, nor his ox. And I paid cash for the two donkeys I've purchased since residing at Gamone. Back in Paris, it's true that things could waver somewhat, and evolve in unexpected directions, at the level of wives and maidservants (designated, these days, as au pair girls). But I honestly don't recall ever brooding glumly, for any length of time, in a frustrating state of sin that might be designated as coveting. In those days, we were more pragmatic...

Over the last month or so, I've been examining closely my Dorset ancestors towards the middle of the 19th century, at the time that England had developed the procedure of issuing official birth certificates. Well, all I can say is that the phenomenon of ring-ins among my Skyvington ancestors of that epoch was most prolific: almost to the point of turning a naive family-history researcher off genealogy… not for moralistic reasons, of course, but simply because, to make family-history headway, we're obliged to get involved in a constant puzzle of "Who slept with whom?"

I won't go into all the details here. You'll be able to find them soon in the Dorset chapter of They Sought the Last of Lands. Let me simply describe one outstanding case, in which the presence of a particular ring-in was handled in such a subtle way that I had to employ all the brain-power of a Sherlock Holmes (aided by a bit of luck) in order to concoct a plausible theory on who he was, and what might have happened.

Here's the 1851 census data for the 15 occupants of a household in the Dorset village of Iwerne Courtney:

This is a typical specimen of the kind of stuff I need to examine regularly, as a family-history researcher. It's an interesting sample which, incidentally, reveals the origins of various disparate Skyvington families throughout the world today… but I don't intend to discuss those questions here.  This was the household of John Skivington [1780-1858] and his wife Grace Pethen [1788-1861]: my paternal great-great-great-great-grandparents (at the same ancestral level as the vicar of Woodhorn, the subject of my previous blog post).

Observe line #9 of the census data, which indicates the presence of a 3-months-old baby boy named Atwill Isaac, designated as a grandson (of John Skivington and Grace). For a long time, I wondered who were the parents of this child, and why he had been given such a weird name. Normally, since that census had been carried out on 30 March 1851, we might suppose that this baby was born around Christmas 1850. I had the impression that the child's given name should be spelt as Atwell (which exists as a surname), but I could find neither a parish christening record nor a UK birth certificate for an Atwell Isaac Skivington, born at Iwerne Courtney in 1850.

A decade later, in 1851, the male head of the household had died, and only three occupants remained, as indicated by the census data:

The aging Grace, whose married name was now spelt Skyvington (with a "y"), had been left to look after two grandsons, no doubt ring-ins whose parents (known or unknown) were now residing elsewhere… if indeed they were still alive. And the younger boy's name was now spelt as Etwell.

Much later, in 1875, a marriage certificate reveals that Atwell Skivington (with an "i") married Mary Anne Langford in the seaside town of Christchurch in Dorset. Then, in the 1881 UK census, we find the small family of Atwell Skivington, a bricklayer, residing in the nearby village of Holdenhurst.

Notice that Atwell's birthplace is indicated as Shroton, which is the nickname for Iwerne Courtney used by local folk.

I remained curious concerning the identity of Atwell's parents. A fortnight ago, on the off-chance that I might find something interesting, I ordered a copy of a birth certificate for an unidentified William Skivington born in the small village of Iwerne Courtney in the final quarter of 1850. I was surprised to discover that it was an out-of-wedlock baby whose mother was Elizabeth Skivington, the 21-year-old daughter of my ancestors John Skivington and Grace Pethen, whose name appears in line #5 of the census data for 1851, shown earlier on in this blog post.

So, here are three dates in the existence of this child:

— 4 December 1850: Elizabeth Skivington gave birth to an out-of-wedlock baby in Iwerne Courtney.

— 17 December 1850: Elizabeth registered the birth of this son under the name of William Skivington.

— 30 March 1851: Somebody in the house of Elizabeth's parents informed the census officer that the baby's name was Atwill Isaac.

Then, as an adult, he became known as Atwell Isaac Skivington. Still intrigued by this unusual given name, I continued to wonder why Elizabeth would have registered rapidly her out-of-wedlock baby under the name of William Skivington, and then allowed him to be referred to as Atwell Isaac Skivington. Funnily enough, I was reminded of an affair that took place here, not far from where I live, many years ago. There's a fellow who has a quite ordinary name, which gives the impression that he belongs to one of the ancient rural families in this corner of the Dauphiné region. Well, I've often been intrigued to discover that certain local folk, when they're referring to this fellow, use an unexpected nickname, something in the style of "Gascon". (I'm refraining from indicating his true identity.) If I understand correctly, these neighbors are aware of the fact that the fellow in question was a ring-in,  and they prefer to refer to him through the geographical origin of his father, from a remote region of France, rather than through the ordinary name that was given to him, in an official manner, by the local girl who was the unwed mother of "Gascon".

With the help of my recently-acquired collection of Dorset census CDs, I started looking around for the existence, in the vicinity of Iwerne Courtney in 1850, of a young gentleman whose surname was Atwell, who might have become Elizabeth Skivington's lover, and the genitor of her baby boy. Lo and behold, I had no trouble finding him, because there was only one plausible candidate in Elizabeth's geographical zone.

John Atwell, in his early twenties (25 according to the census data, 22 according to his baptismal record), was an unmarried agricultural laborer from nearby Langton Long, just south-east of Blandford Forum. He was residing in the town of Blandford Forum with a widowed 70-year-old agricultural worker, John Painter, in narrow East Street Lane… which looks like a fine place for a bit of discreet warm cuddling with a village maiden on a wintry March afternoon in 1850, when it was impossible to work out in the snow-covered fields.

John Samuel Atwell was christened on 9 March 1829 at the All Saints church in Langton Long, which still stands today:

Here is his baptismal record, delivered by the Reverend J H Ridout:

In the village of Langton Long, judging from the number of christenings, there appear to have been quite a few folk named Atwell.

POST SCRIPTUM: It goes without saying that I would be thrilled if living descendants of Atwell Skivington were to come upon the present blog post. If so, I hope they'll contact me.

BREAKING NEWS: I was mistaken in believing that there was no parish baptismal record for Atwell Skivington. No sooner had I published this blog post than I discovered the following entry in the new version of the Mormons' excellent FamilySearch website [access]:

Up until now, I had been obtaining data from the Iwerne Courtney website [access], which apparently hasn't yet put all its parish records online.

Notice that the spelling of Atwell's name is still screwed up there, in the church record. In such a context, it's not surprising that the time-honored Skivington spelling (with an "i") was transformed into Skyvington (with a ridiculous "y"). Ah, I still weep inwardly with remorse whenever I recall that my dear father had to go through life with a name such as King Mepham Skyvington.

Marvelous family-history encounter

A few days ago, a South African gentleman named Richard Frost from Tarkastad (Eastern Cape) contacted me spontaneously concerning one of my English ancestors: Henry Latton [1737-1798], the Anglican vicar of Woodhorn (Northumberland). This chart indicates how I descend from this clergyman:

The next day, Richard Frost sent me a portrait of my great-great-great-great-grandfather:

Richard Frost told me that his own great-grandfather, Sir John Frost [1828-1918], had represented South Africa at the opening of Australia's first parliament on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne, and was the minister of Agriculture in the government of Cecil Rhodes.

My unexpected contact with Richard Frost was the kind of amazing event that family-historians dream about. Today, we discovered that there's even an additional dimension to our encounter. You see, Richard was aware that this portrait had entered his family household through a female ancestor whose married name was Hannah Friend (the surname of Richard's mother). Besides, he was certain that this woman was a granddaughter of the vicar of Woodhorn. Well, it soon emerged that this woman's maiden name was Hannah Pickering. She was an elder sister of my great-great-grandfather John Pickering. So, Richard and I are in fact relatively-close genetic cousins of a kind.

Unbaptism ceremony

Bill Maher is in great form here:

Nonsense

I'm almost certain (unless my memory is playing me tricks) that my dear father, who was particularly fond of my young sister Anne Skyvington (a few years younger than Don and me), used to refer to her in cuddly terms as "my little Angie Divey" (spelling?) as if he were referring to his divine Angela. Dad was earwashed (radiophonic variant of "brainwashed") by the refrain of a silly song, composed in 1943, which sounded like this:

    Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
    A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

While hoping that my sister was in fact named for more noble reasons than this (which my genealogical research hasn't yet suggested, since there seem to be no Annes—or Donalds or Susans or Jillians, for that matter—among our recent ancestors), here's a plausible English transcription of these largely nonsensical words:

Mares [female horses] eat oats
And does [female deers] eat oats
And little ants eat ivy
A kid [baby goat] will eat ivy too
Wouldn't a ewe [baby sheep] (also eat ivy)?

That final line, of my invention, is highly conjectural. Maybe the poet was simply referring, in fact, to human kids. Was "ivy" maybe a US military slang term for something I haven't grasped? Here's a recent interpretation of this curious affair:

This morning, when I was pouring out doses of oats for my donkeys, and rejoicing in the fact that my dear Fitzroy seem to have got over a nasty four-day bout of diarrhea, I saw my dog diving into stuff I'd just thrown out as decomposable organic rubbish… and I found myself humming a crazy new stanza to the melody brought into my memory by the "donkey zotes":

Dogsey shit…

Meanwhile, I'm enlightened by a Google revelation concerning the existence of an old English nursery rhyme:

Cowzy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters

Nonsense—as our dear Mr Dodgson made clear—is good for you.

Antipodes activity and readership

My Antipodes blog is not a particularly gossipy place. I'm a rather reserved kind of individual, and I don't go out of my way (as other bloggers do) to encourage superficial chatting in the comments section. On the other hand, I'm thrilled to receive momentous feedback (through personal e-mails from friends) about subject that have been introduced into Antipodes, such as this fuzzy copy of a letter to the Australian engineer John Dickenson announcing a major US award, which establishes officially his role as a pioneer inventor in the marvelous domain of hang gliding.

My initial blog post on this fascinating theme, entitled Grafton in aeronautical history books, appeared in Antipodes on 16 October 2007 [display]. Since then, the subject has been taken up expertly and profoundly by dedicated researchers such as Graeme Henderson and my French neighbor Stéphane Malbos. To find my various observations on this subject (inevitably superficial, since I've never actually practiced this fabulous activity), put dickenson in the search box up in the left-hand corner.

Is my native Grafton likely to accept fully this amazing role in aviation history? Probably not. It's a silly city, a dull-minded spot on the map of northern New South Wales, which has failed all recent attempts to identify itself as a significant place… even to the point of no longer existing officially as a city.

Today, my Antipodes blog has moved into cruising speed. I've appended a readership counter, whose contents remain private. Funnily enough, I often discover that Antipodes is never better than when I don't write anything new whatsoever ! The readership keeps pouring in, as it were, on many different (and often unsuspected) old subjects.

All kinds of subjects bring readers to Antipodes. For example, crowds of readers from all over the planet have been intrigued by my comments on the fake videos of New Guinea natives seeing white folk for the first time ever. This has certainly been the most "successful" Antipodes blog post ever. But, as I tried to point out explicitly,  this subject was totally screwed up in my Antipodes blog, for all kinds of reasons, and I was no longer capable of joining in all the social-network fun on this theme. In a nutshell, I discovered that a French law court had condemned somebody who had alleged that this stuff was fake. As soon as I heard that, I dropped the subject immediately, like a smelly hot potato. (Maybe "nasty hot turd" would be a more appropriate comparison, except that nobody usually picks up turds. Any better literary suggestions? Anne...) I didn't want to be a hero in a domain that I didn't necessarily master.

Another readership success was a blog post on the theme of so-called "professional bias" [display], which has attracted many US readers. Other great favorites were my blog posts on Lawrence Durrell [display] and those on the Ephrussi family in Austria [display].

Recently, a kind friend (in fact, my ex-wife) noticed that I hadn't written anything new for at least a week, and she may have imagined that my everyday existential despair had brought me to the verge of abandoning all further activities of self-expression. Well, not exactly. It goes without saying that I'll let all my readers know as soon as my existential despair has reached such a point…

Let me tell you a secret. I evaluate regularly but discreetly, day by day (even—indeed above all—when I don't write anything whatsoever), the readership of Antipodes, simply because it's my personal "business". So, I know what's happening globally… and I also watch the statistics of similar blogs by Aussie expatriates in Europe. If ever I were to detect that my daily readership was dwindling, or inferior to the above-mentioned blogs, I would be saddened, if not alarmed. But this has not yet occurred. Antipodes rules the waves, as it were.

Now, if ever you happened to be reading Antipodes primarily because you're interested in me and my dogs (which is surely the finest motivation of all), let me say that we're all fine. Sophia is aging in the style of a noble old lady, and Fitzroy is a noble young descendant... not of Sophia, of course, but of archaic wolves and dogdom in general. (What a splendid genealogical concept!) As for me, my ceaseless contemplation and meditations (of a non-Buddhistic and non-religious pantheistic kind, maybe "spiritual" if you're prepared to stretch the meaning of such silly words to breaking point... in the style of my former friend and neighbor Franz-Olivier Guisbert, my former wife and neighbor Christine, and countless other superiorly-intelligent folk) are surely more "noble" (a great adjective for dogs) than I as an individual could ever be. Meanwhile, in the proverbial nutshell, I carry on living happily, in good health and spirits, here at Gamone...

Covered in snow

Snow hit us massively during the night. Nobody can say we weren't warned. TV weather reports have become amazingly precise.

Yesterday, the visiting goldfinches were basking in the sun on the tiled roof of the bird house. Today, they would need to wear snowshoes.

In the middle of the morning, just after the passage of the municipal snow plow, I ran into my neighbor Jackie walking down the road on his way to Pont-en-Royans.

In fact, I had already discovered why Jackie was unlikely to do much driving, today, on the slopes of Choranche. Early this morning, I was taking my dogs out so that Sophia could "do her business". She only defecates at a fixed place, a hundred meters up above the house, and prefers to be accompanied for the occasion.

Continuing up the road a little, I was alarmed to find Jackie's little white vehicle in the middle of a snow-covered field.

I was relieved to find footprints leading from the stranded vehicle back up to Jackie's house. So I rushed up there to find out what had happened. Jackie told me that he had an appointment this morning with his GP up in Grenoble. Having heard that driving conditions might be difficult, he decided to set out early, at 6 am, in the dark. But, before he had done 50 meters, his journey ended abruptly. The vehicle started to slide on the very first slope, and refused to stay on the road. It continued to slide in a straight line, and that line lead into the field, where the vehicle only stopped sliding because of a conveniently-placed big bump in the grassy ground.

He was lucky in that the rough terrain prevented the vehicle from gathering speed, overturning and sliding into Gamone Creek.

As for me, I simply rule out any attempt whatsoever at using my old automobile whenever Gamone is covered in ice or snow.

New unidentified birds at Gamone

Yesterday, a new group of tiny colorful birds arrived at Gamone. The following poor-quality photo (with my telephoto lens, there's not enough depth of field) gives you an idea of the bird's appearance:

Instead of darting into the bird house and flying out with sunflower seeds in their beaks, like the mésanges [tits], these newcomers simply hang around as a group on the roof of the bird house, and dine calmly on the seeds I placed there.

Meanwhile, on the ground, where I've also spread several kinds of seeds, finches chase each other around, as if there weren't enough seeds to go around. The little creatures give the impression, viewed from my bedroom window, that they're competing aggressively in some kind of rough soccer match.

For the moment, I haven't been able to identify these new visitors.

BREAKING NEWS: Christine just phoned to inform me that these birds are European goldfinches [chardonnerets in French].

French Rafale fighter plane

In my blog post of 1 March 2010 entitled Australia's choice of fighter planes [display], I suggested that, instead of waiting for the US Joint Strike Fighters ordered by former prime minister John Howard, the French Rafale would be an excellent choice.

Dassault Aviation has just announced its first foreign sales contract for this aircraft: 126 planes for India, an affair of some 12 billion dollars.

That kind of economic news is welcome in France at the present moment. One of the key arguments of the Socialist contender for the presidency, François Hollande, is that France needs to reassert rapidly and dynamically her high-tech industrial prowess on the international marketing scene.

Rivers never flow uphill

As a youth in my native Grafton, I didn't think of myself as somebody who might be particularly interested in the flow of rivers. That's because I happened to be living alongside the great Clarence River, which I used to see so regularly (usually from afar) that I finished by no longer noticing it. I had grown up in the aftermath of the tragic December 1943 drowning of 13 boys, junior (cub) members of the local troop of Boy Scouts. As a child of ten or so, I had witnessed the damage waged by the waters of the Clarence in a disastrous flood. Later, I rowed in school races (in "fours") in the shadow of the antique double-decker bridge, over which I used to ride my bicycle regularly.

To paraphrase the well-known forest/trees saying, I simply didn't see the river because of the water. Much later, in Paris, I learned that a river has a left bank and a right bank.

The common-sense adjectives "left" and "right" are so much more tangible, for people living alongside a great river, than the theoretical notions of north and south. So, I had passed my childhood in right-bank Waterview (South Grafton) before moving across to our new left-bank residence in Kent Street (Grafton).

Since arriving here at Choranche, on the edge of the French Alps, I've come to appreciate the sense of the adjectives upstream and downstream. The Bourne flows down from Villard-de-Lans.  Choranche is located on the right bank, and Châtelus on the left. And Pont-en-Royans is a little further downstream. It's a bit like seasons. Back in Australia, I hardly knew what they were all about. These days, at Gamone, they determine my daily existence.

There's another realm, of a theoretical kind, in which we must be aware of the direction of flow. I'm referring to the flow of information and scientific knowledge. Just as rivers never flow in an upstream direction, information and knowledge always flow in a unique direction: downwards from X to Y, say, but never upwards from Y to X.

This was one of the great lessons taught by Karl Popper when he demolished the time-honored but absurd notion that an understanding of the laws of the natural universe can be acquired miraculously when knowledge flows spontaneously, indeed magically, from the natural phenomena being examined by a researcher up into the scientist's mind. This mysterious process, referred to as induction, was a part of established science back in my student days. Since Popper, we realize that a new understanding of the ways in which various natural phenomena unfold can arise in the mind of a brilliant scientist. This knowledge then flows down into other human minds, enabling the newly-imagined explanations to be applied to the natural phenomena that inspired the creative scientist, for verification (best possible case) or for rejection (worst-case scenario).

Two centuries ago, in the domain of the evolution of living organisms, a great and ancient "river" of a physiological kind was thought of as capable, from time to time, of flowing uphill.

 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck considered that a living creature could transmit to its offspring various characteristics acquired during the parent's earthly existence. Take the case of a primitive giraffe, many millennia ago, at a time when giraffes still had relatively short necks, since they could find all the leaves they needed quite close to the ground. Let's suppose that a couple of giraffes were having a serious discussion about the idea of having a baby.

Mr Giraffe: There's only one thing that worries me, dear. Due to global warming, there's no longer any grass around. So, we're forced to eat leaves. But there are fewer and fewer leaves at a low level. Soon, to reach the high leaves and survive, giraffes will need to have longer and longer necks.

Mrs Giraffe: My dear husband, I agree with you entirely. But, if our future baby needs an exceptionally long neck to find food, then we must make sure that he's born with such a neck. There are no two ways about it.

Mr Giraffe: OK, but how can we make sure that his neck will be long enough for him to survive?

Mrs Giraffe: We must pray, my dear husband, and implore our Good Giraffe God to perform a miraculous intervention of genetic engineering.

So, that's what they did. And, soon after, biological information from the parched earth flowed up through the tree trunks, past the bare branches at the bottom of the trees, until it reached the level of the luscious greenery. And, from there, this precious information—dealing primarily with the complex procreative question of how to produce giraffe embryos with long necks—was consumed and digested by Mrs Giraffe… who suddenly felt a glowing long-necked warmth in her womb. The miracle was taking place!

We now know that Lamarckism was totally wrong, but it was never, at any stage, a completely crazy belief. Even today, when tourists halt for a moment alongside the lovely old thatched house in Pont-en-Royans [display], and chat with the village blacksmith and his son, they are invariably impressed by their giant strong hands, which have been  photographed in closeup on countless mobile phones.

Blacksmith: My ancestors have been blacksmiths here at Pont-en-Royans for countless generations, and the blacksmiths' sons and daughters have always married the offspring of other blacksmiths in neighboring villages. And the gnarled hands of our kids, today, reveal the traces of all those centuries of hard work at the forge.

Who could possibly doubt the truth of the good man's words? His strong hands have been shaped, over the centuries, by a mysterious process of divinely-ordained genetic engineering that seems to "understand" that future blacksmiths need to inherit the hands, not merely of their forefathers, but of their forefathers' trade! This knowledge has flowed up from the forge to the uterus of every young lady chosen to become the mother of a future blacksmith. It's all a bit like the Nazarene carpenter's wife, who had received knowledge informing her that she would be giving birth to the Lord.

The only flaw in these nice and convincing tales is that knowledge about a future offspring never needs to flow into an embryo, because the zygote formed from the pair of gametes provided by the parents of a future member of the blacksmith dynasty contains all the information that it is required to forge a new human being. And, if the baby blacksmith looks as if he has inherited gnarled hands, that merely means that at least one of his parents had gnarled hands. And that characteristic had nothing to do with their daily occupations. Even if the latest generations of the baby's ancestors had all decided to transform their ancient forges into tourist boutiques, they would still have been born with gnarled hands. Inheritance specifications never flow upwards from a blacksmith's forge to human parents and their babies. They are transmitted, through chromosomes, from parents down to their offspring. Rivers never flow uphill.

This metaphor of information flow applied both to Karl Popper's views on induction and to Lamarck's views on inheritance was developed at length by David Deutsch, of Oxford.

His article Selfish Genes and Information Flow appeared in the collection entitled Richard Dawkins, How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Dear old birdman

Something has changed in the eating habits of my winter colony of mésanges [Great Tits]. Up until now, there hasn't been much snow at Gamone, and it hasn't even been really cold yet. So, normally, the tiny birds should be able to move around easily and find food. Instead of that, they've got into the habit of lining up to enter the bird house, for sunflower seeds, or pecking at the suspended cages of fatty stuff.

Their food consumption has increased to such an extent that I decided to purchase a 15 kg bag of seeds.

It's not as if the tiny creatures scoop up mouthfuls of sunflower seeds. On the contrary, a bird picks up a single seed, then it flies up into the linden tree, a fruit tree, or maybe the dense branches of my rose pergola, where it thrashes the seed patiently, for anything up to a minute, in order to remove the husk and get at its tasty interior. A visitor to Gamone might well wonder what has caused my small pear and plum trees to be surrounded by pale husks. As soon as it has finished its seed, the bird darts back immediately to the store to obtain another seed.

I would imagine that there's a good reason for this eating surge. Many of the birds that are visiting Gamone at present were probably born here either last year or the year before, following the installation of my custom-built nesting house.

When I used to watch a couple of birds flitting around to feed and guard their precious progeny, hidden inside the box, I used to say to myself that it was a pity that these native creatures of Gamone would simply disappear in the middle of spring, without my ever actually seeing them. Well, I'm now convinced that I'm seeing and feeding these birds today. And I'm happy to find that they have healthy appetites. As the lady at the agricultural cooperative said to me: "The birds know when they've found a good address."

I decided to purchase a couple of dense cylinders of bird food made in the USA.

The one in the photo is composed of a mixture of dried fruit and crushed earthworms. Sounds delicious.

When I told the lady at the agricultural cooperative about the appetite of my birds, she looked at me with a kind expression, as if she were listening to the innocent complaints of a dear old birdman, and said: "Ah, I'm sure they keep you occupied." And she asked me if I needed help to carry the 15-kg bag of seeds out to my car. I said: "No, I think I can handle it." Then I asked myself in horror: "Jeez, am I really starting to look like a decrepit old birdman, who has nothing better to do than complain about the fact that the birds are eating him out of house and home?"

I guess so. I was wearing a round woollen bonnet pulled down over my forehead, which makes the best of men look stupid. And I've got into the habit of wearing a recently-purchased snow parka, which is ideal at this time of the year, but which has the disadvantage of making me look like a plump aging Eskimo. (And I haven't even got around yet to donning the fabulous black rabbit-fur chapka that I purchased recently, made in Russia or China, which would only makes sense if Gamone were to be hit by freezing temperatures or a snow blizzard.) But I won't squabble about the impressions of people who see me. Yes, I've become an aging birdman from the slopes of the Vercors. In fact, I had got around to thinking of myself essentially as a dogman. Maybe I'm both...

Steven Spielberg of molecular animation

American-born Drew Berry has achieved fame as a creator of amazing animated biological videos in a celebrated scientific environment in Australia: the Walter and Eliza Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Here's his recent presentation for TED [Technology Entertainment and Design]:

After watching that, I can almost sense the presence inside me of all those marvelously-efficient little molecular factories, working around the clock to churn out new strands of DNA. Thank God I didn't have to finance the construction of these factories, or pay out salaries to the employees. Maybe I should look into the idea of transforming some of their production into something more tangible: automobiles, say, or maybe even crisp new banknotes.

Drew Berry has also collaborated recently on the Biophilia album of the exotic Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk.

It's weird and wonderful that we have to depend now upon the artistry of graphic poets to show us the workings of marvels such as molecules.

POST SCRIPTUM: In the Biophilia video, did you notice the fleeting presence of this strange set of molecules?

Psychology of a novel kind

I hastened to read Thinking, fast and slow by the Israeli-born Daniel Kahneman after coming upon a description of the Princeton professor by Steven Pinker:

Daniel Kahneman is among the most influential psychologists in history and certainly the most important psychologist alive today. He has a gift for uncovering remarkable features of the human mind.

Another enthusiastic reviewer described Kahneman's book as "a big slice of sober pie". Today, having completed a first reading of the book, I'm intrigued by Pinker's appraisal. Admittedly, Kahneman's book often aroused my curiosity, but many parts of it bored and indeed irritated me. In any case, I remain convinced that if any individual deserved to be thought of as "the most important psychologist alive today" (an excessive description whose fuzziness also troubles me), it would surely be Pinker himself rather than Kahneman. But I prefer to avoid unnecessary evaluations of that kind.

The basic theme of Thinking, fast and slow is trivially simple. When humans are thinking—for example, when they're faced with questions or problems—they actually behave at two complementary levels. First, they "think fast", immediately, automatically and instinctively. Then they "think slow", calling explicitly upon reasoning processes. At the start of his explanations, Kahneman (who seems to get a thrill out of of coining new expressions) has introduced a terminological gimmick, which also annoys me. He designates "fast thinking" as System 1, and "slow thinking" as System 2. OK, fair enough. But was it necessary to write an entire book on the basis of this obvious hierarchy, which has been been a constant preoccupation of researchers for ages in fields such as cognitive science, artificial intelligence and brain research?

At times, I had the impression that the subject of Kahneman's book was closer to elementary statistics, decision-making (as in business) and games theory than to psychology. Many of his explanations are based upon personal anecdotes in various professional and academic environments, where Kahneman often seemed to arrive on the scene like Zorro, eager to correct all the mistakes perpetrated by the numbskulls who had been there prior to him. For example, there's a chapter entitled "Regression to the mean" which starts out by explaining that the author had "one of the most satisfying eureka experiences of [his] career while teaching flight instructors in the Israeli Air Force about the psychology of effective training". A seasoned instructor pointed out that praising an exceptionally high-quality flight performance served no useful purpose, because the pilot would inevitably fly much worse the following day. On the other hand, this instructor considered that it was a good idea to scream at a pilot who had flown exceptionally poorly, because he would inevitably improve his performance the following day. Now, on the surface, that situation might appear to have something to do with the question of rewards and punishment in the domain of human psychology. But Kahneman's "eureka experience" consisted of his realizing a very banal fact that has nothing to do with psychology. If a pilot flies exceptionally well one day, then he's likely (for purely statistical reasons) to fly less well the next day. And if a pilot flies exceptionally badly one day, then he's likely (for the same statistical reasons) to fly a little better the next day. So, what else is new? Kahneman is so excited about this personal revelation that he introduces another example, summed up in the following sentence:

Highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent than they are.

Is this banal observation a pretext for getting involved in reflections about the reasons that might push a bright girl into wedding a dumb guy? No, there is no reason whatsoever to tackle the question at that level. The elementary theory of probability provides a total explanation of the situation. There are only so many highly intelligent women looking for husbands, whereas there are hordes of numbskulls ready to be chosen. So, it's inevitable, statistically, that most bright girls end up marrying relatively dumb guys.

I was a 17-year-old student back in Australia when I heard about regression analysis (the name of the approach that started out as "regression to the mean") and correlation. Admittedly, Kahneman introduces these cases of regression as counter-examples, which have nothing to do with genuine human psychology, but I find it amazing that a Nobel laureate in economics could get excited today about such everyday stuff.

Something about Kahneman's style makes me consider his book as a specimen of popular psychology of the kind you often meet up with in magazines and training seminars. He reminds me of Edward de Bono and his thinking hats, or Nassim Taleb and his black swans. In any case, one of these days I promise to reread Kahneman's book, to see if I maybe missed out on something during my initial reading.

Virtual house in Pont-en-Royans

I've been pursuing my investigations into the possibility that a thatched house drawn in 1870 might have actually existed in Pont-en-Royans, in the vicinity of Blackbird Street [rue du Merle].

If this were indeed an ancient scene at Pont-en-Royans (as I firmly believe), then the main structure in the foreground would have been located on the lower slopes of Mount Barret, on the left bank of the Bourne, whereas the line of buildings in the background would have been located on the other side of the river, in the center of the village of Pont-en-Royans, on the lower slopes of the mountain (vaguely visible in the background) called Les Trois Châteaux. If we don't actually see the Bourne in the drawing, that's because it was hidden behind lots of trees and vegetation that lie between Blackbird House and the river.

Notice the presence of part of a second building behind the main house:

I shall refer to the main house as Blackbird 1, and to the second building (whose roof appears to be tiled, not thatched) as Blackbird 2. Both structures have ample balconies, supported by hefty wooden beams and diagonal props. This is an architectural feature of the so-called "hanging houses" (maisons suspendues) that have made Pont-en-Royans famous.

Clearly, there was no water beneath the balconies of Blackbird 1. But the balconies of Blackbird 2, as well as those attached to the line of buildings in the background, probably all jutted out over the Bourne, like the balconies and lofts that we find on today's hanging houses.

Residents and shopkeepers have always been preoccupied by the challenge of finding as much usable space as possible (both for living and for storing wares) on the precious real estate in the vicinity of the bridge linking the Vercors mountains to the plains.

To ascertain the likely locations of Blackbird 1 and 2, I was guided above all by the angles of the background buildings in the drawing.

Today, to be able to see the façades and the side walls at that angle, you have to move to an observation point quite close to the Picard Bridge. Finally, when I take account of all relevant factors, I'm convinced that Blackbird 1 was located on allotment #127 of the Napoleonic Cadastre.

Blackbird 2 would have been located on allotment #128, quite close to the edge of the Bourne, and the woman and child were seated on the grassy slopes of allotment #126. The stone wall in the drawing corresponds to the curved path leading down towards the river, which still exists today. Here's a view of the Picard Bridge from an upstream vantage point:

Blackbird Street rises behind the car on the left, at the place where a blacksmith's forge was located for ages, and up until only a few decades ago. (My neighbor Madeleine told me that, from her grocery shop at the other extremity of the Picard Bridge, she looked out over the blacksmith's place for 30 years!)  The pair of buildings, Blackbird 1 and Blackbird 2, would have been located (preceded by a short row of hanging houses on the allotments #102, #103 and #104) within the empty space that I've encircled.

There have been several fine illustrations of the blacksmith's workshop, at the southern extremity of the Picard Bridge.

The following nice illustration in color is no doubt a relatively recent copy of the monochrome engraving:

Notice that the central part of the building forming a portal over Blackbird Street has disappeared by the time the Napoleonic Cadastre was drawn, leaving only a narrow fragment overhanging the Bourne.

Normally we should be able to find representations of the Blackbird Street buildings in other old drawings. That's to say, we need to find drawings done from roughly the spot, in the following photo, where Sophia's tail is located.

Here is such a drawing:

I would say that the building in the upper right-hand corner is probably Blackbird 2. Notice, too, beneath the arch of the bridge, on the left bank of the Bourne, the presence of hanging houses that have long since disappeared. In the following engraving by General Bacler d'Albe [1761-1824], we've moved our vantage point a little further downstream:

In the upper right-hand corner, we're still looking up (I think) at Blackbird 2, with the balcony of a hanging house a little further back. The stone arch in the wall supporting Blackbird 2 can still be seen, in the photo of Sophia's tail, above the fisherman. The following elegant illustration was possibly inspired by the Bacler d'Albe engraving:

Finally, I have to admit that there seem to be no other illustrations in which I can clearly distinguish a house that would appear to be Blackbird 1. In a way, this is a positive conclusion, in that it suggests that my drawing of 1870 might in fact be a unique document.

Here's a montage in which I've tried to place the drawing in a modern photographic context:

My attempt to insert a distorted version of the drawing is rather clumsy (the image would need to be transformed magically into a three-dimensional representation, and then rotated in an anticlockwise sense through a third of a circle), but it gives you a rough idea of the location of the old house.