Michel Drucker found the right words

French TV is supposed to be in color.  I prefer to say it's black and white: either incredibly lousy or splendid. The time-honored TV celebrity Michel Drucker had harsh words concerning a nitwit named CH who would make me vomit if ever I were obliged to watch him for any length of time. Drucker has been around for decades, and his TV credentials are the finest in French media history.

Concerning the vomit guy, Drucker came up with a delightful formula:

It was impossible for me to do that kind of bad TV work. My mother would have been disgusted. She wouldn't have let me come home. She would have changed the door locks to keep me out in the cold.

Latest map of Mosul

This map has just appeared on the French Internet :

Click to enlarge slightly

How many days, weeks or months will it take

for the black zone to disappear... forever ?

In an upside-down world, roles change

Hollande has unleashed a terrible truth

In the book Un président ne devrait pas dire ça by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, the most outlandish « ça » consisted of admitting that a chief of state might decide, outside any kind of legal framework whatsoever, that it is better for the nation that a particular extremely dangerous individual should simply cease to exist.

[photo Martin Bureau / AFP]

Many observers consider that Hollande was a nincompoop in enabling the publication of this secret information. One might imagine that, in doing so, he discarded his moral right to remain at the head of France.

I do not intend to say publicly whether or not I share these opinions.

I've changed the sense of Antipodes

Looking out upon an upside-down universe

Many voyagers have imagined for ages that the word "Antipodes" refers to a land on the other side of the globe. So, ever since the day I started this blog, I saw this term as a suitable title, since the blogger was born in Australia, which is roughly (very roughly indeed) an Antipodal location with respect to my new home place, France. Besides, that blog title gave me a pretext for popping in fragments of Australian news.

But, in recent years, the challenge of incorporating into my blog the theme of my land of birth has become hard and tedious. First, there's not really a lot of interesting stuff that happens in, or can be said about, Australia. Second, above all, I have fewer and fewer communications with Australia, even through the Internet. So, I was finding it more and more difficult to write anything at all on that subject.

So, I've finally decided that it would be preferable to eliminate altogether the subject of Australia from my Antipodes blog.

Maybe not the nice novel I need

I don't often read novels, and I'm not really looking for one at the present moment. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile glancing at a description of the novel that has just won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in Paris. Well, the author is Leïla Slimani. The theme of her novel Chanson douce [Sweet Song] sounds about as charming and soothing as a kick in the balls from a guy wearing football boots. She deals with the assassination of two children by their nurse. I'm sure I should read it... but I fear I won't. There's so much exciting news on the Internet and television about killings of all kinds.

Now kids, if you'll calm down, put your pyjamas on, and jump into bed, I'll read you a few pages of a nice story about children. And I'll give you a handful of cyanide lollies.

Is the big bugger still in town ?

Click here to access an article in The Independent suggesting that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi might be hiding these days inside the city of Mosul. This information comes from "a senior Kurdish official" who spoke to The Independent. Let's hope the USA can quickly find the big bugger and drone him. There's an even better idea. Iraqi soldiers might simply find him in hiding, and put him in a bag bound for Baghdad.

Zombie in the Elysées Palace

In The New York Times, the journalist Adam Nossiter has written an article [here] about the French president François Hollande.

The author looks upon Hollande as a living dead specimen who seems to be politically alive. Our president “still occupies the magnificent gilded Élysée Palace, still gives speeches attended by important people and still attends ribbon-cuttings”, whereas nobody believes for an instant that he’ll survive the forthcoming presidential election.

Hollande’s most unexpected recent attack—not only on his enemies, but on his former friends and associates—was a book of “secrets” published by two journalists, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme. It's title in English : A President Shouldn't Say Such Things.

In earlier days, François Hollande could only be bruised by a very tough opponent. Nowadays, he succeeds in doing the job all on his own.

Beginning of the end of the liberation of Mosul

Elite Iraqi soldiers moved into the north of Mosul yesterday, in the neighborhood of Gogjali. A few hours later, the general Taleb Cheghati Al-Kenani, in command of Iraqi counter-terrorist troops, said it was the beginning of the end of the liberation process that had started a fortnight ago. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other Iraqi soldiers are encircling the city from the east, the north and the west, while the US-commanded coalition controls the air space.

Wounded Iraqi soldier
[Photo by French photographer Laurent Van der Stockt for Le Monde]

Experts believe that Daesh would have between 3,000 and 5,000 individuals in the city, striving to defend to the bitter end the place where their chief Abou Bakr Al-Baghdadi had proclaimed a caliphate over Iraqi and Syrian territory taken in 2014.

Moving into Mosul

Click here to see dramatic footage from Mosul. The journalist Arnaud Comte and his cameraman are working in a nasty environment.

Halloween without laughter

Dressed up to kill

In the centre of Toulouse, at 3 o’clock in the morning, police found a Halloween prankster disguised in black and khaki military wear, and carrying a fake assault weapon.

They picked up the 26-year-old idiot, who had already terrified several people in the street where he had been strolling along casually. In the scuffle, his fake gun was broken. The fool, already known to the police, couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to do whatever pleased him on Halloween night. He was taken back to the police station, where he was charged with using a weapon to threaten people and presenting an apology for terrorism. Then he spent the night in solitary confinement.

I think he deserves some kind of special Halloween prize for poor taste.

Iraqi forces enter Mosul

The Iraqi army announced today that their forces have entered Mosul.

 

Lifeboats leaving a doomed ship

No !
We’re not boat people looking for a new land.
We’re simply abandoning a sinking ship.

In this political cartoon by Plantu, which appeared in L’Express, the captain of the red vessel is François Hollande, whose regard is directed constantly towards the heavens. The big ship in the foreground is a French Navy vessel, whose sailors are recognizable because of red pompons on their caps. The red vessel is about to crash into an iceberg whose summit has the same shape as Hollande's head. In the lifeboat, a tattered flag carries the rose symbol of Hollande’s Socialist party.

Electrician who worked for Picasso

In theory, when an electrician such as Pierre Le Guennec works well for a painter such as Pablo Picasso [1881-1973], it’s quite likely that he’ll receive a few paintings. The expression “a few” is vague. To be more precise, let’s say that the lucky electrician received a  bag full of 271 Picasso paintings. The electrician’s wife Danielle Le Guennec confirmed that they were a gift from the artist.

Some observers have never really believed this story about a gift from Picasso. That’s why the electrician and his wife were condemned in February 2015 for the concealment of stolen goods. Today, an appeals trial has started at Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône).

Precious little bottles marked V and H

Once upon a time, a con man in France made money by flogging little bottles marked V (vinaigre) and H (huile) to naive tourists, telling them that they once belonged to the great writer Victor Hugo.

Concerning vinegar, one might imagine that everything in France that can be said and done is a thing of the past. Imaginative rural sisters in the Beaujolais region, Lucie and Chloé (what charming names!) have demonstrated that there’s still room for innovation in this traditional domain. Using their grandmother’s ancient recipe, they created a new variety of vinegar, and they’ve already put 100,000 nice little bottles of their product onto the market. Several big distribution channels have jumped upon their offer. Also a celebrated French chef in Lyon. To say the least, their business doesn’t really have a bitter taste of vinegar.

Some splendid animals, once wild, are entering human society

I wrote a very dismal blog post here, which I now regret a little (but I’ll leave it untouched for the moment). It was simply far too simple for a naïve observer such as me to deplore the fact that a huge proportion of wild animals are going into oblivion. In writing that blog post, I was behaving in just as stupid a manner as Marie-Antoinette when she said that the starving people of Paris should simply eat cake. One has no right to boast about his lucky childhood when wild beasts could be observed roaming freely through the jungle. We must never forget that the vicious fellows who destroy free animals are indeed depraved human cousins, biologically closer to us than any so-called wild animal.

From now on, the only approach that would be worthy of a serious observer consists of concluding that, since magnificent wild animals are no longer capable of surviving in the jungle, where they are likely to be destroyed by vicious humans, then the only noble solution is to protect them as best we can, by whatever means we can imagine, including the idea of inviting as many beasts as possible into sanctuaries in the heart of our human societies.

Thoiry, in France, has been doing a splendid job in taking care of many beautiful beasts, and inviting visitors to see them up close.

Alongside these big beasts running around in liberty, click here to glimpse Thoiry’s Ark of small creatures.

Television is playing a role in making us aware, if need be, that so-called wild animals have always been our fabulous cousins. This awareness creates an atmosphere in which sanctuaries can obtain necessary funds. A few days ago, for example, I was one of millions of TV-viewers who watched a group of devoted young carers handling a female bonobo who needed to provide a blood sample. I felt the same sense of drama as if we were watching a surgical intervention upon a sick child.

Software for people who can’t handle traditional verbal culture

A Dutch software manufacturer named Assistiveware has created a tool named Proloquo2go for people who are incapable of handling traditional verbal culture. The tool incorporates a virtual on-screen keyboard with pictograms, and it is only offered, for the moment, to users of English, Spanish or French. Here’s an example of a typical pictogram phrase:

As soon as the user enters a set of pictograms, a speech synthesizer produces an audio version of the phrase.

This tool belongs to the domain of AAC [Alternative and Augmented Communication], which facilitates the life of people with elocution problems : autistic individuals, those with trisomy (including Down Syndrome) and victims of strokes or Parkinson’s disease. In France, about 1.3 million people suffer from such sensory handicaps.  In the special case of the Proloquo2go product, most users happen to be less than 11 years old.

Georges Brassens died 35 years ago

Click the loudspeaker icon to unmute

Jean-Pierre Darroussin : "J'ai rendez-vous avec vous"
Karin Viard : "Mourir pour des idées"
Michèl Fau : "Le pornographe"
Guillaume Gallienne : "La prière"
Audrey Tautou : "La mauvaise réputation"
Pierre Richard : "Les passantes"
Michel Bouquet : "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux"
Catherine Frot : "La complainte des filles de joie
Lionel Abelanski : "Je me suis fait tout petit"
Roger Dumas : "Auprès de mon arbre"
Julie Depardieu : "Le gorille"
Léa Drucker : "Les amoureux des bancs publics"
François Morel :"La non-demande en mariage"
François Berléand : "Le temps ne fait rien à l'affaire"
Valérie Bonneton : "Chanson pour l'Auvergnat"
André Dussolier : "Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète"

In France, this evening, everybody's thinking about the time of day

During the night, at 3 am, French clocks that still have old-fashioned "hands" will be expected to have them turned back an hour, to indicate 2 am. In other words, if I wake up tomorrow morning and climb out of bed in an accustomed manner, after what would appear to have been a good night's sleep, my Apple computer will inform me that it's earlier than what I might have expected... if only I hadn't read all the advice that has been appearing throughout the day in French news about switching back to winter daylight hours. It's not a big problem here at Gamone, since I only have my old watch and two wall clocks to wind back. Here's a good French reminder :

Opening of the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem

As far as big news goes, this is really Big News. For the first time in centuries, the tomb of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem is being opened.

It goes without saying (but I’ll nevertheless say so) that there is nothing whatsoever inside this time-honored hole in the ground. Besides, I can’t understand why Christians dare to even speak of the alleged “tomb” of their hero. Click here to access a National Geographic website that proposes a short video on the exposure of Christ’s so-called “burial place”. Here again, it’s time for somebody to inform that respected magazine that, in theory, Jesus was never buried anywhere. Everybody agrees that Jesus died on an atrocious wooden torture instrument. (Well, most people agree... except for those who consider that the alleged individual simply never even existed.) But Christians consider that he didn't stay dead for more than a few days, and was certainly never buried. I'll terminate my brief explanations there, because readers are surely familiar with that tale.

Negative judgment for Roybon project

This legal decision could be a major negative step in the Center Parcs project at Roybon (Isère).

Base jumping at Choranche

I have the impression that the following YouTube videos are composed of base-jumps from a site in Presles located above the Rochemuse estate in Choranche. Often you glimpse a small lake: the electricity dam located between Châtelus and Choranche.

Je serais content de recevoir des informations précises

sur ces vidéos de la part de spécialistes locaux.

+

Max Moret tombé à Choranche le 30 avril 2011

Corsican who changed the existence of my Australian cousin

In the early 1970s, in Paris, my good friend Jean-Paul Pagès, an ex-professor of medecine, invited me to lunch with one of his former students, a Corsican doctor named Xavier Emmanuelli. I brought along my cousin Peter Hakewill, a young Australian doctor who happened to be visiting Paris at that moment. Xavier Emmanuelli was starting to acquire a reputation through his role in the creation of the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders].

By the end of the luncheon, my cousin was making plans with Emmanuelli to join his organization for work in Thailand. And that was the start of a lengthy experience for both my cousin and his brother Mitchell Smith.

Friday evening, Xavier Emmanuelli made an uncommon appearance on French TV.

Much muddy water has flowed under the bridges of distressed nations (not to mention wealthy countries such as Australia) since that chance encounter in Paris between Emmanuelli and my cousin some 45 years ago. As for Xavier Emmanuelli, he had a short political career, and published a biographical book, S'en fout la mort [Don't give a damn about death].

Biggest marine show on Earth

Australia will be seated in the front row, as close as possible to the animals. The world’s greatest marine park will be located in Antarctica, just a short boat trip to the south of my native land. After years of difficult negotiations, the 25 members of the Commission pour la conservation de la faune et de la flore maritimes de l'Antarctique adopted unanimously the creation in Ross Sea of a marine sanctuary of a million and a half square kilometres.

Vertebrates are disappearing fast

The greatest show on Earth—the world’s populations of mammals, fish, birds, amphibians and reptiles—is disappearing like melting snow. In the short space of 42 years, between 1970 and 2012, over half their number has disappeared. Clearly, the show will soon grind to a halt, because the artists will no longer be there to keep it running. A few specimens will remain in zoos.  But that’s not Nature. We present-day spectators of wild life in natural surroundings will be thought of, by sad descendants of our children’s children, as the last lucky members of a disappearing world: a planet that is about to lose most of its spectacular inhabitants.

More powerful than a Japanese robot

Click here to see a spectacular video of a four-year-old Russian genius. I have no idea how they make kids like that. Have the manufacturers published a technical manual on this amazing product?

Healthy ecumenical breakfast food

from Think Atheist

Beginning of the end of the Cuban embargo

 

For the first time since the UN embargo against Cuba came into existence, 54 years ago, the USA has refrained from voting in favor of continuing the embargo. It’s not yet an all-out vote in favor of Cuba, but it’s no longer an expression of determined opposition. It’s as if the USA said “no problems”. For Obama’s nation, that’s almost like saying OK.

Let them eat cake

People who grew up in English-speaking countries often remember a school story about the French princess Marie-Antoinette. Hearing that poor people in France had no bread, the young lady said they should be told to eat cake. In the French version of this tale, "cake" is replaced by "brioche". Historians then inform us that the story is probably apocryphal.

The right-wing presidential candidate Jean-François Copé started the ball rolling recently.

Answering a journalist’s mundane question, Copé revealed that he was no longer aware of the price of the familiar children’s pastry known as a pain au chocolat (chocolate pastry roll).

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the execution of the Austrian lady on 16 October 1793 might have been connected in any way whatsoever with her words about bread or cake or any other kind of pastry.

But, just to clarify all possible misunderstandings, I take the liberty of strongly advising Copé to drop into a bakery shop and update his knowledge of current prices.

Darling little devil

A scientific report from Sydney University on the carnivorous marsupial known as the Tasmanian devil [Sarcophilus harrisii], found only in that Australian island state, reveals that the milk of this endangered animal contains an impressive antimicrobial arsenal. We humans possess a single variety of such a substance, whereas the charming little Tasmanian animal has six varieties. This means that its immune system is considerably more powerful than ours, and might even be used to guide future human-oriented research in this domain.

If the Tasmanian devil has developed such a powerful immune system, it’s because they’ve had to learn to survive in a particularly dirty environment in which its food comprises varieties of dead animals, mammals, fish and insects. Since baby devils are born prematurely, researchers simply couldn’t imagine how they managed to survive on such nasty food… and that’s why they decided to study their milk.

These days, the development of powerful bacteria capable of defending us against Staphylococcus is a major goal in medical research. The Review of Antimicrobial Resistance states that, in 2050, deaths from bacterial infections might occur at the rate of one every three seconds… which would be more than cancer deaths.

Dreamworld in Australia turns into a tragedy

A mortal accident took place in Dreamworld, the major aquatic theme park on the Gold Coast in Queensland. (Many years ago,  my grandfather from Burleigh Heads took my children and me to see a dolphin pool in an early version of the site.)  A few hours ago, four people—two 25-year-old couples—died at Thunder River Rapids in circumstances that remain unexplained.

Here’s a recent video of the pleasant raft ride, apparently far more dangerous than what innocent people imagined:

"Attention, riders : Please keep your hands

and arms inside the boat at all times."

Jungle at Calais is losing its people

The French government's plan to remove the so-called Jungle at Calais seems to be working well. Here are images from the early stages of the evacuation:

On Tuesday morning, observers had the impression that the evacuation had been carried out in excellent conditions. While it's still too early to know whether the evacuation process has been totally successful, I feel that French government authorities deserve congratulations on the professional harmonious handling of this affair.

It is indeed quite a big place

Click to enlarge slightly
Hubble Space Telescope view of thousands of galaxies made
during the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.
Credit M. Giavialisco/University of Massachusetts, Amherst and NASA

The more we learn about the universe, the less we grasp. It’s simply too big and too complicated to understand… and I’m not even sure that the words I’ve just written make any sense. In any case, the central premise of William’s Treatise on the Cosmos is that we humans were not designed to understand what it’s all about. We shouldn't even try to do so.  So let’s simply forget about that would-be question, best described as a non-question…

Phil Collins is alive and kicking

Next spring, he’ll be carrying out a small tour of France, Germany and England, accompanied by his son on drums. “I want to do some concerts. If the public’s happy, then me too.” Click here to access a French-language video.

Political opinion of a distinguished intellectual

Jean d'Ormesson, 91, believes that Alain Juppé will indeed be the next president of France, but that his presidency will not go down in history as a remarkable era. In a nutshell, nothing much will happen in France. The brilliant and alert member of the French Academy considers Juppé as a kind of Jacques Chirac. I tend to agree.

Cartoonist on Trump

Click cartoon to enlarge

Nicolas Vadot is Franco-British and Australian.

http://www.nicolasvadot.com/

Random morning message

There’s a nice French expression to designate a sudden urge: une envie de pisser [wish to pee]. That’s what happened to me a moment ago, leading up to the present message. It’s a philosophical viewpoint that has been pursuing me ceaselessly for a long time. So, here it is.

Our outlook on existence is totally biased by the particular dimensions of our observations, which define a mere window. We remain incapable of adopting windows that might be more macroscopic or microscopic.

• The first weakness means that, in spite of our gigantic windows out into space-time, we remain like ants who imagine their anthill as the entire universe.

• The second weakness means that, in spite of our fondness for elementary particles and string theory, we humans are not very good at dealing with things that are far smaller than what we see through our eye-glasses.

Besides, it’s funny that we introduce a direction into these two scale differences. What right do we have to say that, in the macroscopic case, existence appears to get bigger and bigger, whereas it’s smaller and smaller in the microscopic case? Maybe we should simply say that the differences are no more than changes in our two kinds of viewpoints, without claiming that one change is “bigger” and the other “smaller”.

For the moment, it’s primarily the second weakness that has inspired my matinal philosophy message… but nothing really changes when we move to the first weakness. All our human conclusions about what is good or bad, and what is right or wrong, have been concocted from within our familiar everyday window, at the level of human organs and our devices such as eye-glasses. For example, people use their normal viewpoint to encounter all kinds of happenings, from peace and love up to war and terror. This suggests that our above-mentioned human conclusions would no longer have the same sense if we were to modify our viewpoint, by moving in an up/down direction. In other words, morality is not a universal phenomenon. It’s rather a purely relative viewpoint-based affair.

Personally, I am both awed and frightened by this conclusion. For the moment, therefore, I avoid the temptation of accepting it completely.

Ah, if only our existence were to be nothing more than watching a rugby match! Sadly, at no instant in my existence has my life ever moved an instant into such a nirvana. That has always been my major problem...

New Yorkers love French art and France

Spencer Hays and his wife Marlene have just announced a huge future donation to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: 600 paintings from the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. This is the largest overseas donation to a French gallery since 1945.

Early arrival of a future Oscar winner

Click here to view a TV-studio performance

of Jean Dujardin in December 1996.

We all know that cheese stinks

So, why do we want to eat it? There must be some kind of logical answer. Well, there is… but it’s not necessarily a simple affair.

First of all, there are many people who love cheese. But there are also a great number of folk—roughly 6% of French society—who simply hate the stuff. So, what’s happening? Click here to access a French-language article and video on this subject.

Neuroscientists at the CNRS in Lyon and a biology laboratory in Paris have published a study, here, indicating that your appreciation or your hatred of cheese depends upon a small like/dislike gadget in the centre of your brain known as your globus pallidus. When your tastes are normal, the pallidus turns on a like icon. If not, it turns on a dislike icon. Now, insofar as your pallidus seems to work a little as if it were using FaceBook, I suggest that we refer to this cerebral organ as your CheeseBook gadget.