My favorite pages of scripture

Christine gave me this rare copy of a French-language edition, dated 1848, of the apocryphal scriptures.

It includes, above all, the marvelous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, whose naive simplicity stunned and amused me as soon as I read it.

This amazing document is now available on the web in French and in English. The background of these fabulous pages of Christian scripture is outlined here.

The story I like most presents the child Jesus as a sculptor of miraculous sparrows:

When the boy Jesus was five years old, he was playing at the ford of a rushing stream. And he gathered the disturbed water into pools and made them pure and excellent, commanding them by the character of his word alone and not by means of a deed.

Then, taking soft clay from the mud, he formed twelve sparrows. It was the Sabbath when he did these things, and many children were with him.

And a certain Jew, seeing the boy Jesus with the other children doing these things, went to his father Joseph and falsely accused the boy Jesus, saying that, on the Sabbath he made clay, which is not lawful, and fashioned twelve sparrows.

And Joseph came and rebuked him, saying, “Why are you doing these things on the Sabbath?” But Jesus, clapping his hands, commanded the birds with a shout in front of everyone and said, “Go, take flight, and remember me, living ones.” And the sparrows, taking flight, went away squawking.

More recently, Christianity got back in intimate contact with birds through Saint Francis of Assisi, who was said to have preached regularly to congregations of winged creatures.

Getting back to the Infancy Gospel, I suppose that most people would agree with me that the sparrows affair in the childhood of Jesus was frankly miraculous, and must therefore be judged according to the famous criterion of David Hume that I presented in my article of 20 August 2012 entitled A little knowledge [display]. We have to decide which was the more likely happening:

— Possibility #1: The lovely child Jesus made sparrows out of clay and then transformed them into living creatures that flew off into the heavens.

— Possibility #2: The fellow who penned the delightful Infancy Gospel of Thomas was an inveterate fabulator, liar, etc.

All this wouldn't be so bad if sophisticated Christians, today, had simply written off the affair of young Jesus and the sparrows as an antiquated non-event, due to the zeal of an anonymous latter-day evangelist who had gone out of his way to make things look really stupendous for Jesus. Unfortunately, there's an Islamic fly in the ointment. In a nutshell, these folk are stuck with their Koran. In this first extract, Jesus is talking:

I have come to you, with a sign from your Lord, in that I make for you of clay the figure of a bird, and breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by God's permission. And I heal the blind, and the lepers, and I bring the dead to life by God's permission. [Koran 3:49]

A second extract presents the words of God, addressed to Jesus on the Day of Judgment:

You make out of the clay the figure of a bird, by my permission. And you breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by my permission. [Koran 5:110]

The bottom line in the Koran occurs a little later:

I restrained the children of Israel from violence to you, when you showed them the clear signs. And the unbelievers among them said: "This is nothing but evident magic."

Concerning Jesus and his sparrows, and all the delightfully silly rest of the Infancy Gospel, that Koranic statement about unbelievers suits me fine: This is nothing but evident magic.

François Skyvington's moped road movie #2

Episode #2 of François Skyvington's road movie was presented yesterday afternoon on the Arte channel.

The opening theme was the magnificent Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, about 20 km to the west of Avignon.

After chatting with a local fellow who sketches the structure regularly (in the manner of Paul Cézanne painting and repainting the Mont Sainte-Victoire), François took to the air as a passenger in an ultralight aircraft, enabling him to obtain an extraordinary view of the aqueduct. This sequence finished with a trivial but amusing stunt: François on his moped, on an airfield, racing against the aircraft as it took off.

An interesting didactic sequence took us to the nearby stone quarry that has been in operation ever since the Romans cut out the stones for their fantastic aqueduct. In the vicinity, a sculptor works the same beige stone. Then we met up with a beautiful stone guest-house (an ancient sheepfold) where François bedded down for the night... hopefully in the company of the members of the film crew. A big Labrador enabled the owner of the guest-house to dig up truffles, while his wife prepared an evening dinner of beef and olives cooked in wine.

The next day, François took to the waters of the Gard in a canoe. Then he visited a secluded ancient hermitage that is being restored... and we were informed of the techniques for building stone walls without mortar, so that rainwater escapes without deteriorating the walls.

All in all, this was a fine Provençal touristic documentary. But François has the knack of transforming his excursions, through his friendly personality and easy style of contacts, into a series of happy events. And his happiness (perfectly genuine) rubs off onto viewers.

My tastes in French words

Certain words and expressions in the glorious French language correspond, in my mind, to opposite extremes on the scale of beauty and ugliness. Let me start with the latter.

• I'm annoyed by the French adjective moelleux, which might be translated as "mushy". It's a texture reference to the slushy matter inside our spinal cord. This adjective, in French, is a favorite of distributors of foodstuffs such as yoghurt, cheese, etc.

• I detest the French expression baume au cœur. Theoretically, this means "heart ointment". Metaphorically, it designates soothing effects of all kinds. Each time I hear this expression, my auditive system records the nonsense expression beau moqueur ("handsome mocker").

• I react unfavorably every time I hear of an alleged ville d'étape. This means a town for an overnight stop. But what makes one town more favorable than another to be stopped in for an evening and night?

• An old-fashioned word I adore in French is sapience, which exists also in English. It means wisdom, like Sophia: the name of my deceased dog.

Once upon a time, there was a weird German medieval mystic named Heinrich Seuse (in English: Henry Suso).

He was an adept of practices known as mortification, designed to promote personal pain conducive to an assimilation with the sufferings of the Lord. He wore underclothes studded with nails. Like a Hindu fakir, he slept on a bed of nails, even at the height of winter. And it is said that he never washed himself for a quarter of a century. Still, he succeeded in producing a fabulous illustrated masterpiece, Horologium Sapientiae (Clock of Sapience).

Its general theme, in a nutshell, was that the acquisition of philosophical wisdom is rhythmed by the metronomic ticks of a clock, which remind us constantly of our imminent encounter with death.

François Skyvington's TV series

This evening at 18 h 30 on the Franco-German TV Arte channel, I watched with enthusiasm the start of the travelogue series starring François Skyvington.

Well, people who have phoned me all agree with me that it was wonderful TV. The on-screen presence of François was excellent, faultless. Above all, viewers really had an opportunity of learning something about the territory at the heart of this first episode: the Camargue region in Provence.

Christine has just told me on the phone that her 91-year-old Provençal mother Yanou—whose father came from Trinquetaille, near Arles, on the northern edge of the Camargue—was able to admire the TV debut of her great-grandson, in the company of her children Christine and Alain, from her friendly senior-citizens home near St Brieuc (Brittany). I see that event as a wonderful case of "une boucle qui se boucle", as they say in French (a loop being looped).

My personal conclusions are explicit. François is certainly a talented presenter, and he is surrounded by a great professional team. Bravo!

Fitzroy in Sophia's basket

Up until recently, Fitzroy liked to tear apart everything in his vicinity, including cushions, baskets, mats, etc. Well, he seems to have become better behaved at that level. As of yesterday, when I dragged out Sophia's old wicker basket and put a cushion inside, Fitzroy suddenly realized that it might be a comfortable place to lie down, instead of a couple of nice objects to destroy. This afternoon, he even used the basket when I put it alongside his kennel.

I've been trying to prevent him, as far as possible, from venturing around in the paddock with the donkeys, because he comes back to the house covered in prickly burs, which I then have to remove with my fingers in a one-by-one manner. From time to time, in certain underlying regions where the layer of burs is thick, I resort to scissors. As for Fitzroy, he seems to enjoy all this attention, which he probably sees as grooming operations carried out kindly by the chief dog in the pack (that is, me).

THIS MORNING: Yesterday was quite cool. In the space of a week, we've gone from heat-wave conditions to chilly autumn weather. Last night, seeing Fitzroy dozing cozily, indeed angelically, in Sophia's basket on the warm kitchen floor, I didn't feel like putting him outside into his kennel. So, I closed the door between the kitchen and the living room (so that Fitzroy wouldn't decide to scramble upstairs and wake me up in the early hours of the morning), and left him to sleep there. Well, this morning, I discovered that it was no more than wishful thinking when I spoke about Fitzroy being better behaved in his relationship with easily-destructible objects. Back at the time of Sophia, Fitzroy had already started to destroy the basket and its cushions (which once belonged to an Ikea chair, which has had new cushions for a year now). This morning, inside and around the basket, there was a new crop of fragments of foam rubber. For this outside photo, I gathered up the fragments and placed them inside the aging basket.

My dear old Sophia is no longer there to deplore the damaged state of her cherished basket, which was impeccable before Fitzroy's arrival. So, it doesn't really matter if Fitzroy and the elements continue their inevitable process of destruction. And I'll continue to collect the bits and pieces of a morning.

Restoration of the holy image

I was inspired by Cecilia Gimenez for her restoration of Ecce Homo.

The original was indeed a bit dull, and it needed fixing.

Like many other Internet artists, I felt like getting involved in this fascinating field of restoration. And I was inspired, too, by Clint Eastwood's recent contribution to the Mitt Romney circus.

You can find a huge collection of masterpieces here.

Inventing a blasphemer

Over a fortnight ago, a 14-year-old mentally-deficient girl named Rimsha (probably suffering from Down syndrome), said to be a Christian, was arrested and thrown into prison near Islamabad on blasphemy charges because it was claimed that she had set fire to papers that included pages from the Noorani Qaida, a religious book used to teach the Koran to children. In Pakistan, a crime such as that could lead to life imprisonment.

Richard Dawkins tweeted his indignation:

Meanwhile, nearly a million Internet users (including myself) have signed a petition on this case.

The girl's most outspoken accuser was an imam named Khalid Chishti.

I know it's not nice to judge people by their external appearance, but those eyes and that vague smile destabilize me somewhat. Frankly, if I happened to be thinking about purchasing a used rickshaw, for example, I wouldn't feel confident about accepting a vehicle proposed by Khalid Chishti.

I would be afraid that the vehicle might break down mysteriously in the middle of a neighborhood where they like to throw stones at people who look like white Christians.

Well, the latest news is that the imam Khalid Chishti has just been arrested because it is claimed that he set up this whole affair by inserting pages of the Koran in among the trivial papers that the girl was said to be burning. If the imam were truly guilty of doing this, that would make me a pretty shrewd used-rickshaw buyer. And it would make the imam a disgusting bastard. For the moment, however, since the case against the imam has not yet been judged, we should respect the principle of the presumption of his innocence... even though he and his supporters would have probably not argued that way concerning the accused child.

POST SCRIPTUM: I've deleted a comment that insulted the nation of Pakistan as a whole while advocating barbaric punishment for individuals who perpetrate evil deeds such as that for which the imam is accused. The imam's name is apparently spelled as Chishti rather than my initial spelling (Chisti). This morning (Monday, 3 September), Rimsha was still in prison, and will probably remain there until Friday, at the earliest. Shameful!

Frilly-necked postcard

Yesterday, while browsing through old papers, I came upon this postcard:

As an Australian, I recognized immediately this fine photo of a dancing specimen of our celebrated frilly-necked lizard [Chlamydosaurus kingii]. It's not really dancing, but simply running speedily across the sand in the direction of the photographer, with its frills flattened by the airstream. Now, who would have sent me such a postcard, and why did I keep it in a box of precious old documents? Here's the other side of the postcard:

It was mailed to me from Tokyo, 28 years ago, on 1 September 1984. The message reads:

Erimaki tokage, la nouvelle idole of Tokyo, le Macintosh des lézards!

In English:

Erimaki tokage (frilly-necked lizard in Japanese), the new idol of Tokyo, the Macintosh of lizards!

And the postcard was signed by a great French filmmaker, 63-year-old Chris Marker, who was a good friend of mine at that epoch. He was in Japan to film the making of Akira Kurosawa's movie Ran, which resulted in Marker's documentary AK, released at Cannes in 1985. Here is one of the rare portraits of Chris Marker (who detested the idea of personal photos and biographical stuff):

During the three or four fascinating years that I spent at the Service de la Recherche de l'ORTF [French National TV Research Center] in the early '70s, private screenings of Marker's short movie La jetée [The Pier], created in 1962, were one of our staple foods.

Pierre Schaeffer—founder and chief of the center—often explained to us why Marker's cinematographic essay was a great milestone in the history of movie-making. And countless cinéastes have indeed been impressed by Marker's ground-breaking style expressed for the first time in that tiny masterpiece.

And what does all this have to do with frilly-necked lizards and Macintosh computers?

Japanese fascination with an Australian lizard was the outcome of a promotional project created by Mitsubishi Motors. Confronted with a vehicle called the Mirage, the people at Mitsubishi's ad agency found that this word sounded like the Japanese "tokage". So, the expression Erimaki tokage became popular overnight, in the typical way in which certain memes apparently proliferate in that country.

Soon, the Japanese transformed the image of the Australian lizard into a cute manga creature.

In Australia, of course, we're not accustomed to thinking of our native fauna as imaginative objects of adoration... maybe because we've become accustomed to seeing the real creatures up close.

We know that many of our exotic animals are not as friendly or cuddly as they might appear. On the other hand, Australians are no doubt happy to pocket yen from tourists who arrive Down Under with aims of seeing Erimaki tokage. I can imagine a version of the Paul Hogan ad:

"We got some visitors here who like lizards. I'll slip another frilly on the barbie."

By coincidence, the original ad I'm referring to (directed, not at Japanese, but at Americans) dates from the same year as Chris Marker's postcard, 1984. But it looks terribly old hat today.

And 1984 was also the year in which the Macintosh computer arrived on the scene. I've always thought that their celebrated commercial has a science-fiction style that vaguely evokes the Chris Marker movie.

Since Chris Marker was fond of sophisticated machines such as the Mac, he was rapidly brought into contact with the French branch of Apple Computer, whose director was Jean-Louis Gassée. At the same epoch, I had submitted to that company a project for a futuristic video application, while knowing full well that the current technology was not yet capable of supporting my project. Apparently Apple France gave Chris Marker a copy of my project—named Videoville—and that's how we became friends. Chris was tremendously impressed, like me, by the potential of the Mac, and we dreamed about the sorts of creations that might soon appear. However, not long after that time, I went out to Australia, and I lost contact with Chris.

A month ago, I was sad to hear of his death [obituary]. Many of the papers written about Chris Marker have mentioned his adoration of cats. At the time I knew him, the creature that fascinated him most was, not the cat (nor, of course, the frilly-necked lizard), but rather the owl. Inside his house in Neuilly, Chris Marker had a marvelous collection of all kinds of artistic representations of wise and less wise owls.

Opening chapter of Skeffington study

I've more-or-less terminated the opening chapter of my Skeffington One-Name Study, entitled Elusive patriarch [download], dealing with the half-century that followed the Norman Conquest in Leicestershire, in the vicinity of the village of Skeffington.

As the title of this opening chapter suggests, I haven't been able to track down and identify the patriarch of the Skeffington family in England. So, you might say that the hero of my document is totally absent. On the other hand, as I've often suggested, the widespread adoption of genealogical genetics (Y-chromosome profiles) could well add totally new dimensions to this quest. For the moment, I seem to have no potential relatives whatsoever in the Y-chromosome database, so the current score of my Skeffington matching is a huge zero. In fact, the match hasn't even got under way yet, since I'm still the sole player on the field. My chapter 1 might become interesting in the future, for certain small groups of readers, when the techniques of genealogical genetics have become commonplace.

This seat's taken

The Mormon dimwit Mitt Romney invited Clint Eastwood to ramble on incoherently at the Republic convention. The actor decided to speak to an empty chair, as if it were occupied by Barack Obama.

Obama replied to Eastwood and Romney by means of a marvelous three-word tweet and photo:

It's an excellent example of the effectiveness of imaginative tweeting. The power of such a message, today, is equivalent to what would have been obtained in the old days (before the Internet) by a vast and costly billboard campaign.

Unusual evening photo

Over a week ago, at around 7 o'clock on the evening of 22 August 2012, I took this photo of the Bourne valley, looking eastwards:

[Click to enlarge]

At first sight, it looks as if the Sun were rising. But, at that time of the day, the Sun was actually setting in the west: that's to say, in the opposite direction, behind the photographer's back, beyond the slopes behind Gamone, on the low horizon beyond Pont-en-Royans. So, what's the origin of that pink hue in the clouds above the cliffs of Chalimont? Unfortunately, I didn't pursue that investigation on the evening in question. (My attention was probably attracted by the TV news. Besides, I didn't even know yet whether my Nikon had recorded an interesting image.) I would imagine, though, that the clouds were reflecting light from a first-quarter Moon, low in the sky behind the Cournouze.

I now recall that, a couple of days later on, I had received a most unusual phone call from my neighbor Madeleine, at around 11 o'clock in the evening. She had been woken up by the barking of her dog. Looking outside behind her house, she had the impression that there was a glow in the air, like the light from a halted automobile. She asked me whether there was a full Moon that evening, and I said no. To remove her fears that there might be an intruder in the vicinity, I actually jumped into my car and did a rapid trip down to Madeleine's house and back.

When I phoned back to say that everything was pitch black and calm around her house, Madeleine told me she was sure she had heard voices at the same time that she noticed the glow. I explained to her that I had noticed lately that voices from her nephew's house can travel down along Gamone Creek in a remarkably clear fashion. On that very day, I had been cutting weeds, well below my house, when I was convinced that I was hearing the voices of people who had just stopped at Gamone. When I scrambled back up to the house, I realized that it was simply Jackie chatting with his donkeys, a hundred meters up the road.

Darwin nomination

You've probably heard of the prestigious Darwin Awards:

In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.

So, the winner of a Darwin Award [click here to visit their website] is necessarily a dead idiot whose disappearance inspires us in the sense that we would like to see more individuals of his kind removed forever from our gene pool. The award winner is the posthumous symbol of a branch of humanity for whom our dearest and deepest (unspoken) wishes would be extinction.

I've just found my personal candidate for the forthcoming award. I'm happy to present this silly dead bugger to my readers. First, you need a few elements of US backwoods culture, straight from Monsanto. You see, folk in that part of the world have met up, for ages, with a legendary apelike creature known as Bigfoot, whose rare sightings are awesome. The following image of Bigfoot proves that he exists.

But, even in Monsanto, lots of folk refuse to believe in Bigfoot. So, they need a little nudge, otherwise belief in Bigfoot might subside, which would be a state calamity. A bit of military gear does the trick.

This outfit is known as a Ghillie suit, used as close-combat camouflage, and you can buy one through the Internet.

A certain Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana was apparently alarmed by the recent drop in Bigfoot sightings. He decided that the most efficient promotional act would consist of buying a Ghillie outfit and wandering around on a local highway, in the hope of arousing talk about the legendary creatures. Sadly, the silly bugger got run over, Ghillie suit and all, by a passing driver. RIP, Randy. I hope and pray that you'll get a Darwin Award. You deserve it. There should be more deaths like yours.

Breton moon child on moped

My son François Skyvington has just terminated a whole year of shooting a TV travelogue series, which will soon be broadcast regularly by the Franco-German chain Arte. The shows will start in a week's time, on 3 September 2012, at 18h30 (Monday to Friday). Breton media have just started to roll the publicity ball, with an interview in the prestigious Ouest France daily (incidentally, one of the finest newspapers and media organizations in France).

For French-language readers, here's the start of the article:

[Click to enlarge]

As I see things, my son's burgeoning TV career is a logical outcome of his extraordinary gift for immediate introspection into what makes individual people tick. In my personal case, any such genetic inheritance failed to make itself manifest (I'm totally incapable of evaluating people, places and situations), but I'm convinced that we can identify the ancestors of François who gave him such genes. I'm thinking, of course, of his grandfather Jacques Mafart [1916-2011] and his grandmother Kathleen Walker [1918-2003], who both expressed, differently but amazingly, this exceptional talent. In talking like this, I'm aware that maybe I might be seeking sillily the proverbial origins of the smile of the latest baby in the sepia images of ancestors. But I persist in believing that the exceptional skills of François as an introspective TV interviewer ring a bell in my memories, and that the genealogical associations that I'm evoking enable us (me, in any case) to better appreciate his talents.

POST SCRIPTUM: The French expression "doux dingue" might be translated as "mild eccentric" or "gentle crackpot". Normally, an individual described as a "doux dingue" of something or other would be thought of as a fanatic, who eats and sleeps with the objects of his obsessive adoration. In fact, the relationship between my son and mopeds is not at all of this all-embracing nature. He likes mopeds, I think, in much the same way that I used to like bikes or, more recently, donkeys. But don't expect François to seek election as the president of the French National Society of Moped Lovers (if such an association exists). He simply hit upon an interesting item of sociological data: namely, the fact that, for an entire generation of French youths, starting in the 1980s, the moped was a synonym of liberty, enabling them to escape momentarily and simply from the family cocoon. Then François combined this observation with the obvious fact that this "escape" of the moped rider is strictly slow speed, enabling him to count the roadside daisies on rural roads and, above all, enter into immediate contact with people encountered along the way. So, in my son's mind (if I can speak for him), there emerged this concept of an exceptionally user-friendly old-fashioned vector for personal transport. I wasn't particularly surprised, therefore, when François phoned me excitedly during their shooting in the Cévennes to tell me that he had just met up with a fabulous book, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, written in 1879 by a certain Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894].

And nobody, of course, would ever dare to refer to the Scottish author of Treasure Island as a gentle crackpot.

New woman taking care of French president

It's hard to keep up with all the president's women. The Tweeter presence of their most prominent member, Valérie Trierweiler, was notorious. I have no idea of the name and identity of this latest individual, but she certainly seems to be in intimate contact with François Hollande, brushing dust off his elegant suit (with its Légion d'Honneur button) before the start of a new presidential work-day.

Apparently this attractive young blonde lady is English, in spite of her French-sounding title: Madame Tussaud.

The Eagle has landed

On 21 July 1969, in front of our black-and-white TV set in the living room of 16 rue Rambuteau in Paris, it was almost as if I were there on the surface of the Moon, alongside Neil Armstrong.

Christine and I watched the incredible events unfolding in real time on our fuzzy TV screen. In an adjacent bedroom, our two-and-a-half-year-old Emmanuelle was no doubt far more fascinated by the presence of her two-months-old brother François. I've always looked upon François and Emmanuelle, in a way, as Children of the Moon.

That was surely one of the USA's greatest hours.

And yesterday, one of the USA's greatest quiet heroes went back to the Moon, forever.

Out on the slopes opposite Gamone

For the last few days, I had been intrigued by a golden-hued patch of vegetation located on the slopes opposite Gamone, not far from the vestiges of a winegrower's stone cabin (circled in green).

[Click to see enlarged versions of these photos]

I got dressed up for some outdoor scrambling over the slopes (overalls and solid boots), grabbed my stout chestnut stick and set off up the road with Fitzroy (who soon wandered off on his own into the woods). I discovered rapidly that the golden color was due to dead ferns, parched by the heat.

Here's a view of my house, looking down into Gamone Valley from the spot where the golden ferns are located.

I wandered up to the ruins of the winegrower's cabin.

In its original state, the southern façade of the cabin extended to the spot in the next photo, on the right-hand edge, where you see a cluster of white flowers.

In the background of the above photo, beneath the invading vegetation, you get a glimpse of the rear wall of the cabin, erected against the embankment. Here's a closeup view of that wall, from inside the cabin:

 An edifice of this kind, composed of blocks of limestone, dates surely from the time of the monks.

The French nation seized ecclesiastic properties after the Revolution. Vineyards in the vicinity of Gamone were sold by auction during the period from 1791 to 1793.

As you can see from the starting prices (957 pounds for the property that used to belong to the church at Presles, then 2992 pounds for the pair of properties belonging to a chapel in the church of Pont-en-Royans), the authorities were not giving away these highly-reputed vineyards for next to nothing. They would have been acquired by relatively well-off local citizens. New owners of the Choranche vineyards would have no doubt lived in prosperity for over half a century, up until the scourge of phylloxera destroyed the vineyards entirely. After that, the cabins would have been knocked down, slowly but surely, by wind and snow. Maybe this marked fragment of a broken roof tile might enable me to date the construction of this particular cabin:

A few meters below the ruins of the cabin, I came upon another group of stone blocks that look as if they surrounded a well or maybe the winegrower's outdoor cooking zone.

A finely-cut slab of thick flat stone is lying in the earth. For the moment, I don't understand its role in the structure. Would it have been an element of some kind of a work device used by the winegrower?

I gazed across at the valley of the Bourne, below my house, and tried to imagine a time when this area was covered in grapevines, with scores of workers moving around on the slopes.

On the way back down to the house, I broke off a small branch of pine needles, to bring home.

These pines are just a few hundred meters up from my house, but they are growing at a slightly higher altitude than at Gamone, where I have no such trees. These pine needles were a souvenir of my brief excursion into a remote mountain territory... which I admire daily from my bedroom window.

Good books

Britain's New Scientist weekly has just put out a selection of 25 popular science books that "have changed the world" [here].

I would have been a little worried if this list of books had included many works that I did not know. On the contrary, I was thrilled to discover that I had read 15 of their suggested titles, while most of the remaining titles rang a bell (in the sense that I had heard of them, and had a good idea of their themes). The only one of the 25 books that was a total newcomer to me was The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (1985). Here are those that I've read:

•  A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988)

•  Brighter Than a Thousand Suns by Robert Jungk (1956)

•  Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (1979)

•  Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997)

•  On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859)

•  The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski (1973)

•  The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg (1977)

•  The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker (1994)

•  The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)

•  Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)

•  The Double Helix by James Watson (1968)

•  The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose (1989)

•  The Mysterious Universe by James Jeans (1930)

•  The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris (1967)

•  What is Life? By Erwin Schrödinger (1944)

At the top of this list, the "big three" for me would be Dawkins, Watson and Pinker. I would have included a title by David Deutsch... but it's a fact that he remains a bit too recent to have changed the world yet. Maybe "will change the world". The same could be said of Lawrence Krauss.

Perfectionist punishment

The US Anti-Doping Agency's decision to erase the career of Lance Armstrong is a blatant case of perfectionism. I'm using this term in a pejorative sense, designating a Kafkaesque situation in which holier-than-thou bureaucrats have gone to absurdly extreme lengths in the hope of installing their lily-white conceptions of what professional cycling should be all about.

Lance Armstrong, August 20, 2009 – photo Stefan Wermuth, Reuters

In punishing an outstanding sportsman for alleged faults committed long ago (if indeed they were truly committed), USADA is harming gravely the sport of cycling in general and the Tour de France in particular. For countless admirers in the USA and Europe, Armstrong will remain a hero because of the amazing story of his combat against cancer, and the way in which he happened to pick up no less than 7 yellow jerseys in the wake of that combat. The world of professional cycling has been making enormous efforts to wipe out the use of illicit pharmaceutical products and doping strategies. And the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) will be shooting itself in the foot if it accepts the conclusions (as it is more-or-less obliged to do) of the US anti-doping organization. Hoping to clean up cycling by punishing Armstrong retrospectively is an idiotic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.