Where did Hannibal cross the Alps?

If only my smart dog Fitzroy had been around in 218 BC, I'm sure he would have figured out rapidly the exact itinerary chosen by Hannibal to cross the Alps and move into Italy. Fitzroy would have simply sniffed around for a while until he determined with accuracy the places where there were traces of horse dung and elephant piss, and he would have known immediately where Hannibal had traveled.

These days, scholars are still trying to solve this problem, and they are using scientific instruments to sniff at ancient specimens of animal dejections. Click here to access an article by Chris Allen, an environmental microbiologist at Queen's University Belfast, who reveals how microbial evidence has located dung left by Hannibal's horses when they were moving across the mountains.

[ I find it hard to believe that this kind of pseudo-scientific historical research is indeed serious. I'm not exactly proud to admit that I tend to be biased by the fact that the research in question has been conducted by would-be Alpine specialists from Northern Ireland. ]

The exact spot where Hannibal crossed the Alps is thought to be the treacherous Col de Traversette, seen here:

In the following map of the section of the Alps between France and Italy, the red blob indicates the location of the Col de Traversette:

Click to enlarge slightly

In the lower left-hand corner of this map, you can find a tiny village named Risoul. That's the Alpine birthplace of my dog Fitzroy, which lies just a whiff to the west of the spot where Hannibal and his animals scrambled over the Col de Traversette. It goes without saying that, if the Irish fellow Chris Allen wanted to call upon help from a local specialist to locate traces of archaic elephant piss and horse dung, I'm sure that my dog Fitzroy would be thrilled to participate in such an excursion... particularly if it's a chance to get involved in ancient history.

Gold Coast nut

Alex de Waal is an executive in charge of Queensland tourism. So, it’s normal that he was proud in June 2014 of that nitwit invention of personalized number plates.

Alex de Waal has just stepped into the limelight once again with his moronic opinions on coral bleaching. He downplays claims reported by scientists, and says that they’re overstated. He believes that areas in the vicinity of Cairns and Port Douglas, where most boat tours visit, are "looking great".

Why is this uninspiring fellow put in charge
of such a precious fragile asset?

Renaud won't be voting for the Left

The popular French singer Renaud emerged recently from a lengthy period that appeared to be linked (?) to depression and alcohol. Next Sunday afternoon, his appearance on the TV show of Michel Drucker is being hailed like an arrival of the Messiah. Meanwhile, the resurrected hero is voicing his current dislike of his former Left-wing friends. Consequently, political observers are bending over backwards (along with Renaud himself) in attempts to say whether the singer will end up voting for such-and-such a Right-wing candidate.

Recent rumors mention François Fillon. Personally, I feel that Renaud's a bright lad who's good at handling his publicity. When searching for an ideal expression, Renaud has the linguistic skills of a street poet: "La politique de ce gouvernement me débecte." (I'm incapable of translating his words into English. Maybe: "The government's politics sicken me.")

Getting ready for a tough match

This morning, in the football stadium at Saint-Etienne, emergency crews carried out plans for the forthcoming Euro 2016 matches by simulating a terrorist attack involving lethal gas. Nobody got hurt.

French presidential candidate, fruitcake category

This relatively moronic French fellow, Jacques Cheminade, has just enrolled himself as a presidential candidate. He competed already in 2012 and obtained 0.25% of the votes. One of Cheminade's popular plans is to set up colonies on the Moon and the planet Mars. He has also compared Obama to Hitler.

One of many versions of the Antipodes Law of Intelligence

Anybody who explicitly compares somebody with Hitler is probably a nitwit.

Panama papers

In the domain of financial scandals, this appears to be a really big show.

The Icelandic prime minister, two leading members of his government, and the chief of his political party have already been ensnared. And there'll surely be more to come, in various places across the globe.

Click to enlarge slightly

Portrait retouching in Sydney

When I was a young man in Sydney, I often used to catch a suburban train at an underground station in the city named Wynyard.

The station had two platforms, which could be entered from several outside places. But every aspect of this station was uniformly ugly.

To access staircases leading down to the platforms, people trudged along ramps packed with stalls of vendors.

Even the entrance located in a neighboring park was so dull that it might have been an underground toilet.

The main reason I'm raving on about this uninteresting Sydney train station is because I was reminded recently of a particular kind of boutique that had become popular in this setting. Merchants proposed retouching services for old damaged photographs. As a naive child, I had been impressed by the magical skills of the firms that carried out this retouching, whose results were demonstrated proudly in their boutique windows. First, we were shown a severely-torn fragment of an old damaged photo. Then we admired the magic outcome of asking the specialists to repair the damages.

I would have liked to include some graphical specimens in this blog post, to illustrate the theme that I'm presenting, but I was incapable of finding the kind of stuff I had in mind.

For ages, I had never actually met up with anybody who called upon this type of retouching service. Then suddenly, when I was least expecting to encounter this kind of old-fashioned stuff, I was invited to witness such a specimen in the village of Pont-en-Royans, just down the road from Gamone. The most amazing aspect of the event was that this shoddy retouching, giving rise to a totally fake image, had in fact been performed, by chance, in my native Australia... which gave me the impression that this abominable approach to "retouching" was almost certainly an Aussie specialty. I had just met up with a new resident of the French village: an Australian lady whose surname coincided with that of a famous Australian explorer. I naturally asked the lady if she happened to be related to the famous explorer, whose story was part of our history lessons when I was a school kid in Grafton. The lady replied: "Yes, of course, he's an ancestor of mine. Step inside and I'll show you his portrait." Well, inside the lady's house, in the heart of the village, I was shocked to come upon a framed color portrait that was so terribly kitsch that it looked as if it had just emerged from a scruffy retouching boutique in the Wynyard ramp.

A few years later, I had a second encounter of a similar kind,... once again, from an Australian lady. In the context of my family-history research that was giving rise to A Little Bit of Irish, I was excited to learn by e-mail that a remote relative (?) in Australia was prepared to send me a copy of a photo of one of our old-time bushranger folk. When it arrived, I was saddened to find that, once again, I was faced with a kitsch mess from a Wynyard photo shop. I trashed it instantly.

Spirit of Judaism

I've just been rereading my Israeli novel, All the Earth is Mine, which I published through Gamone Press.

I'm constantly proud of that major period of my life when I was often visiting Israel, studying the Hebrew language and reflecting vaguely about Judaism. It was one of the most fascinating and truly noble adventures of my life. I look upon my novel as a personal celebration.

Pedalling with pills

This attractive drawing has been used in Le Monde to illustrate an ordinary article about the coming cycling season.

I often wonder whether many conscientious parents would be thrilled, these days, to see their children becoming enthusiastic about road cycling. At another level, when I was driven around a bit in Brittany last year, I became aware of the fact that riding a bike on rural roads has become a terribly treacherous pastime. As a young man, I made several thrilling two-day trips from Paris to Brittany (about 450 km) then back to Paris a few days later. Today, I'm sad to realize that any attempt to carry out such a pleasant trip would be totally suicidal.

Australian self-righteousness

From time to time, my native land is overcome by waves of self-righteousness concerning the poor treatment of Aborigines. This was the case — first on so-called Sorry Day, 26 May 1998, then again on 13 February 2008 — when Australia made a point of apologizing to Aborigines for having dispossessed them of much of their land and treated their offspring badly.

The truth of the matter is that these special days are largely a pointless celebration of self-righteousness, and that the actual conditions of Aborigines don't seem to evolve greatly.

Click here to consult a pompous declaration that emanated recently from an Australian university on what they refer to as Indigenous Terminology, which is basically a matter of learning to express oneself in a politically correct manner.

French president's big flop

Finally, in spite of an early promise, our constitution will not be altered to deal with French terrorists. In the wake of the terrorist acts of 13 November 2015, François Hollande had suggested that the nationality of our home-grown criminals might be altered, to render them harmless.

Unfortunately, right from the start, this seemingly smart idea got screwed up, and went wrong. Today's official backflip is a major setback for our president. I can't imagine how he might possibly recover his popularity, and get reelected for a second presidential term.

Children's stories enhanced by US firearms

US kids are already concerned by the constitutional right to carry firearms. Since the beginning of 2016, some 50 US citizens less than 18 years old have accidentally fired a shot at somebody, often themselves.

It was inevitable, in God's Own Country, that old-fashioned stories for European children would end up being enhanced by the presence of protective firearms. Conscientious US parents certainly won't tolerate the possibility that their fat little kids might get devoured by a wolf.

Koala gets police assistance on a busy highway

Click here to see a Queensland koala taking advantage of exceptional police road-safety assistance. It would be a mistake, I fear, if koalas were to imagine that they can count upon this kind of convenient assistance. They need to realize that Australian police officers are busy individuals, who don't normally have spare time to help koalas cross the road. I feel it's the responsibility of mother koalas to get this message across to their young offspring, maybe with the help of government specialists in road safety and education. Could we imagine the creation of some kind of regular school training in this field, for juvenile koalas?

Difference between murderers and assassins ?

In my own mind, this linguistic question arises often. For example, in the case of my preceding blog post, I wasn’t quite sure whether I should designate the Taliban suicide-bomber who killed 72 people on Sunday as a murderer or rather an assassin. This question was further complicated by the fact that the killer had surely targeted Pakistani Christians, whereas his victims apparently turned out to be mostly Muslims.

The Arabic word hashishiyyin is a plural noun meaning “people who consume the drug hashish”. At the time of the Crusades, it was thought that future killers were often deliberately motivated, prior to their murderous acts, by drugging themselves with hashish. Consequently, the plural term gave rise erroneously to a singular word, assassin. Over the years, an assassin is thought of as a murderer of an illustrious victim. In the case of terrorist killers whose victims are often everyday citizens, there is no obvious reason to label such murderers as assassins. Admittedly, the case of the celebrated Charlie journalists in Paris might be thought of indeed as a strict assassination.

Murder of Christians in Pakistan

This hallucinating photo shows a devastated Pakistani mother who has just learnt that her son died in a terrorist bombing at Lahore.

Click here to access a British newspaper website with dramatic images of the slaughter perpetrated on Sunday by a Taliban suicide-bomber.

In a distant city on another continent, the New York artist Liza Donnelly has used simple strokes of her pencils to express the universal grief of Humanity's maternal civilization.

French easter eggs of a special kind

In the town of Pierrelatte, a little to the south of where I live, there's a famous crocodile farm, for tourists and lovers of these splendid Nile reptiles. Easter is their annual breeding time. Click here to access a video on this fascinating subject.

News from Belgium: video of a free man

Click here to watch the video of a man
who has just been set free in Belgium.

His name is Fayçal Cheffou. To the left of the innocent man, you can see two genuine terrorists: Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, who would soon blow themselves to smithereens. I would imagine that the police are keeping a protective eye upon the innocent fellow, to make sure he doesn't run into harm. What a wonderful world!

In another domain, click here to watch a short video of a mother in Molenbeek, whose daughter has disappeared, probably forever, as the wife of a Daesh jihadist in Syria.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, the count of recent victims of terrorism has risen to 35 dead and 340 wounded.

What do we mean by a “Molenbeek” ?

Patrick Kanner, the French Ministre de la ville (minister in charge of townships) has said that, in France, at least a hundred neighborhoods are similar to (have the same potential problems as) Molenbeek. It's a kind of newly-invented word in our French language. So, an obvious question arises: What exactly do we mean by a “Molenbeek” ?

« It's an enormous concentration of poverty and unemployment. It's a collection of ghettos. It's a maffia system with an underground economy. It's a system in which public services have practically disappeared. It's a system in which the elected representatives of the people have ceased to react. »

The minister added that the big difference between comparable situations in Belgium and in France is that, here in France, the existence of so-called Molenbeek systems is being tackled constantly.

I've noticed indeed that, in the French press, there seems to be a mounting degree of outspoken criticism of Belgium's failure to handle her "Molenbeek" communities.

Dramatic arrest at Schaerbeek last Friday

In the following photo, taken last Friday, a wanted fellow named Abderamane Ameroud has just been "neutralized" by police at a tram stop in Schaerbeek (Brussels). He's still perfectly alive, of course, but his legs have received a good dose of a mysterious police product that prevents him from going any further.

The victim of this apparently successful neutralization operation is still holding on to his back pack (maybe because his muscles have become rigid?) while a robot vehicle is moving up to the scene. Missing from the photo is the victim's young daughter, who was calmly taken away from the scene by detectives, before the robot was brought into action. You might click here in the hope of receiving understandable images and explanations concerning this dramatic arrest.

Personally, I think I've evolved somewhat in my understanding of police techniques. And I would hope that police forces in my native land (Australia) have also evolved considerably since their shoddy handling of Sydney's Lindt Café affair in December 2014. I often said to myself, in the aftermath of that calamity, that it would be a good idea if Australian police were to seek high-level professional advice from France. I don't know whether this ever happened, but I don't think so... particularly when I notice that naive Australian political leaders are trying to give advice these days to France and Belgium.

Trivial family data that remains a mystery

Apparently my father "Bill" Skyvington, as a teenager in Grafton, had made friends with a well-known family, named Clunies-Ross. It was only recently that I acquired a little information on this friendship, from my father's sister Yvonne Tarrant, but I've never been able to obtain any confirmation whatsoever. My father himself never seems to have mentioned this friendship to any member of my generation. So, one might say that this alleged friendship is such a flimsy tale that I ended up looking upon it as an empty family legend, which somebody (not my father) had invented. Furthermore this friendship legend was trivial, unimportant. But I'll repeat the tale briefly here in my blog, in the vague hope that readers might offer me a little factual data.

Clunies-Ross history and facts

Click here to meet up with historical facts concerning the so-called King of the Cocos Islands. More recent information deals with a descendant of the family who was in charge of scientific research in Australia, and there is even an aged descendant of the family living today in Western Australia. But nowhere in this mass of data is there any mention of members of the Clunies-Ross family who might have become my father's friends.

Story of a phantom vessel in South Grafton, the Induna

On the banks of the Clarence River in South Grafton, rusty remnants of the iron hull of an old vessel, the Induna, are still visible today.

When I was a child, we could clearly observe the perfectly visible form of the celebrated ship that used to transport train elements across the Clarence River before the construction of the bridge in 1932. Click here to read this story, which even includes a vague mention of Winston Churchill.

There seems to be no doubt whatsoever that the vessel, after being towed from Sydney to the Clarence River by the tug Heroic, in late 1924, steamed upriver to Grafton under the command of a certain Captain T. Clunies-Ross. According to our family legend, the captain's family settled down in Grafton, and my father "Bill" Skyvington (born in 1917) made friends with the Clunies-Ross children. That's all I know: certainly not much of a story...

Silly fellow who thought he was funny

A humorous Jewish fellow decided to celebrate the Purim festival by getting dressed up in an Arabic djellaba, carrying a fake kalachnikov and wandering into an austere synagogue in Vincennes.

Once inside, he cried out "Allah Akbar". Ah, what an imaginative and joyous clown. He'll have an opportunity of testing his sense of humor upon a local law court.

Beethoven Ode to Joy in Brussels

Click here to hear Beethoven in Brussels.

For the last half-century, tears start to flow whenever I hear that music. Today is no exception...

This fellow's name is Malcolm Turnbull

He happens to be the prime minister of a rather dull country, Australia (where I was born in 1940), on the other side of the planet. Turnbull obtained that job last year, not because Australian citizens had elected him as their chief, but simply because he decided unilaterally to replace the existing party leader, Tony Abbott. Well, for reasons I fail to understand, this quite ordinary Australian fellow believes that, in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in France and Belgium, he has political lessons to give to the Old World. I obtained that information this evening, through a joke item on a French TV channel. I would be less embarrassed if Turnbull were to simply shut his dumb mouth.

POST SCRIPTUM Click here for a real challenge that Turnbull must face.

Radovan Karadzic, "the butcher of Bosnia", condemned to 40 years in prison

At the height of his notoriety, Radovan Karadzic was known because of his flamboyant hair style: which was not unlike that of a present-day US presidential candidate. Today, the so-called "butcher of Bosnia" received a 40-year prison sentence.

In the above photo, his ugly mate was Radko Mladic, who is still awaiting a trial.

When he was arrested in 2008, Karadzic had been a fugitive for ten years, disguised as a hairy monk.

Radovan Karadzic and Radko Mladic committed one of the nastiest crimes in modern history, the genocide of Srebrenica, perpetrated between 11 and 13 July 1995.

Great scientists receive their award in Paris

This afternoon, in Paris, two great scientists, the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, will be receiving the Oréal Unesco prize that they share for their discovery of the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 technology that is now applied worldwide in genetics research.

Many observers still have doubts about the ethical aspects of this technology.

"Before CRISPR-Cas9 might be used as a menu to build human babies, a lot of work would need to be done", states Emmanuelle Charpentier. "I feel that things are happening very rapidly. I think we should proceed step by step."

Passenger name record

The idea of setting up a PNR file (passenger name record) for people who move around by planes in Europe is a Loch Ness monster story that comes to light momentarily whenever there's a search for terrorists, then it disappears once again.

At present, both Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve have been strongly advocating this PNR project.

Do terrorists of the kind that concerns us today actually move around in Europe on commercial airliners? That would surprise me. I'm reminded of the joke about a fellow, having lost his keys, who's searching for them at the foot of a lamp post. Somebody asks him: "Are you sure you lost them at this place?" The fellow shakes his head. "No, I don't think I lost them here... but the light from the lamp post makes it easier to search for them in this area."

Good Texan gun robbers

http://videos.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/video-l-impressionnant-braquage-d-une-armurerie-au-texas_1769824.html

When I say that these fellows are "good", it goes without saying that I don't really mean that they're actually good, in any way whatsoever. Or, if you prefer, they're good at being bad bastards.

My thoughts go out to all our Belgian friends

The Eiffel Tower in Paris is lit up this evening with the colors of Belgium.

Often, throughout the day, while watching news broadcasts about these tragedies in Brussels, I've been reminded of the extent to which strong links have always existed between France and Belgium.

French prime minister: "We are at war"

This morning, the French prime minister Manuel Valls made a curious statement: "We are at war."

Personally, I'm not convinced that words of this kind serve any useful purpose. The Daech bastards, whose operations are not a case of conventional warfare, don't deserve the honor of such a declaration from the prime minister of France.

Mad Daech bastards have hit Belgium

Daech spokesmen have just declared officially that members of their organization are responsable for this morning's attacks in Brussels.

Click to enlarge slightly

How much more time will it take before European forces eradicate forever these mad bastards?

BREAKING NEWS (Tuesday 17 h): Belgian police have just released this photo of three suspects:

New images of Molenbeek capture

Click here to access video.

I was impressed by the courage of the guy in white who decided to dash through the door, just in front of the armed policemen, and start running... as if he were invisible or capable of dodging the bullets.

He was rapidly "neutralized"... which is police jargon indicating that his body was hit by a mysterious pharmaceutical dart (?) making it impossible for him to go any further. Was he courageous, or rather suicidal, or simply foolish? Totally stupid? Maybe he was counting on prayer...

Practical questions

It was only a few years ago that I started to become obsessed by asking various practical questions, and attempting to find answers. Our modern life in society often leads us to ignore many fundamental questions of a practical nature, as if they weren't important enough to merit our attention. For example, countless urban youngsters eat hamburgers regularly without fully understanding all the steps that go into the production of such foodstuffs. For all they know, hamburgers might grow magically on MacDo trees.

When I revisited my native land, ten years ago, I was quite impressed by the widespread presence in Sydney of sushi products, all over the city. My first reaction was to wonder how it came about that so many Australians had acquired the skill of producing sushi. Had they all gone up to Japan and back, for a few weeks, to attend training courses? Had they then installed many modern Japanese kitchens in Sydney, to create these products? The truth of the matter is that all these sushi products were no doubt manufactured by a single firm, in one small factory, and then delivered throughout the city by small vans, in the early hours of the morning.

Over the last few days, I've become fascinated by a trivial practical question concerning the small town in Australia where I grew up, South Grafton. I had received an e-mail from a young man who informed me that his mother had been the daughter of our village baker, named Allan Gregor. It was easy for me to detect the building in which the bakery had existed (when I was a child), for its facade was crowned by a sheaf of wheat. And customers entered the bakery through the left-hand door, behind the reddish automobile.

Click to enlarge slightly

I was instantly intrigued by an obvious question. That bakery must have comprised an oven fueled by wood. So, how did the baker take delivery of wood for his oven, and flour for his dough? For hours, I studied GoogleMaps images, trying to figure out where the wood and flour could have been delivered. It took me some time to realize that there used to be a narrow lane to the right of the bakery, where a tree and a whitish vehicle are located in the above photo. I don't know whether the lane was big enough to allow the presence of a vehicle, but that's a minor question. In the early hours of the morning, a truck could have halted outside the lane, and the baker could have then used a trolley to cart wood and flour along the lane, to the rear end of his bakery.

Vernal equinox, first day of spring

In our northern hemisphere, 20 March 2016 is the vernal equinox: the first day of spring.

I've always liked that woodcut of a fellow poking his head through the celestial vault... but I realize, of course, that it's meaningless nonsense, and a silly choice of an illustration intended to evoke the start of spring.

Castle in Spain

Ever since the 9th century, the castle of Matrera stands proudly on a hill near Cadix.

But the ancient castle suffered from heavy rain in 2013, and was in need of restoration. This work was carried out by a Spanish architect named Carlos Quevedo Rojas. The problem, alas, is that the restored medieval castle now looks like a modern concrete building.

The architect is nevertheless convinced that he did a good job. Click here to access a short video of the massacre. An observer is reminded of another notorious restoration job in Spain: the Ecce Homo fresco at Borja carried out by an unskilled 82-year-old lady.

Smart bird

A 30-year-old fellow was judged in Arras for the possession of cannabis, along with an undeclared firearm.

Handling his own defence (with no assistance from a barrister), he explained to the tribunal that his pet canary had used his beak to plant cannabis grains in the soil just alongside the bird's cage.

JUDGE: "You're saying that you simply failed to notice the rows of cannabis that the bird had planted alongside its cage? They grew freely in total liberty, with no help from anybody? Not even the canary? Some of those cannabis stalks were nevertheless over a metre in height."

ACCUSED FELLOW: "Yes, that's what I'm saying."

If I understand correctly, nobody accused the canary of having acquired the unregistered firearm. The bird might be keen on weed, but there's no way in the world it would get mixed up in illegal weapons.