Nobel pub talk

Does an outspoken Nobel Prize winner such as 79-year-old James Watson—US co-discoverer, in 1953, of the structure of DNA—have the right to make shallow remarks, in public, about sensitive racial issues? A week ago, in an article in Britain's Sunday Times Magazine, Watson said that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours... whereas all the testing says not really". Concerning the notion that the intellectual capacities of all humans are equal, Watson descended to a pub-talk level in saying that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

Following this interview, Watson's scheduled presentation at London's Science Museum was immediately canceled. Above all, his longtime employer—the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, 35 miles east of Manhattan—decided to suspend Watson's responsibilities as their chancellor.

Watson's book The Double Helix, presenting the hectic search for the structure of the DNA molecule, is one of the most thrilling and best-written scientific tales I've ever read. When the discovery was made, in collaboration with Englishman Francis Crick [1916-2004] and New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins [1916-2004], James Watson was merely 25 years old.

Accounts of this amazing breakthrough in fundamental knowledge are marred solely by the fact that the essential collaboration of the brilliant English crystallographer Rosalind Franklin [1920-1958] has rarely been fully recognized.

Concerning Watson's much-publicized words last weekend, I look upon them as harmless provocative nonsense from a silly old bugger who's currently promoting a new book with a sensationalist title: Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science. While I find it erroneous for any scholar today to suggest that human intelligence can be measured, and that the respective intellectual capacities of different races can be compared, I'm not shocked by the fact that an outspoken old-timer could let such words slip out of his mouth, as if he had downed a pint too many in a London pub. If it were I who had discovered the structure of the basic molecule of life, I think I might have spent the rest of my days in a permanent state of intellectual intoxication, and I would have never stopped making crazy statements.

Explanation of the spinning woman demo

In view of feedback I've received, I feel obliged to make it clear that the demo presented in my offbeat article entitled Right brain versus left brain [display] is merely an amusing and innocuous hoax, which has nothing to do with the viewer's brain. My presentation of the demo and my subsequent comments were deliberately facetious: a big joke! It would have been neither more nor less silly to claim that viewers who see the girl spinning in a clockwise direction have right-wing political beliefs, and vice versa.

Only the final two sentences in my post [where I suggest that interested observers should examine the individual images in this animated GIF, using a graphics tool such as Fireworks] are to be taken seriously. The truth of the matter is that everybody sees exactly the same animation, which does indeed change directions suddenly, before reverting to the initial direction. The demo is ingenious in that the 34 fixed images composing the animation have been designed and drawn in an exceptionally skillful manner. Viewers are intrigued by the fact that, when the woman changes directions, she does so in such a smooth and seamless fashion that we have the impression that this change has taken place—like the perception of beauty—in "the eye of the beholder". This is an illusion. The change has well and truly occurred in the animation, not in our brains. In most of the silhouettes in the animation, various visual features of the woman—including her face, her breasts and her pony-tail hair—provide explicit clues as to the direction in which she is spinning. But I have extracted a unique image, shown here, in which all these visual features are missing:

Here, the viewer is unable to decide between two perfectly plausible possibilities:

— We are facing the silhouette of a woman poised on her left leg and spinning in a clockwise direction.

— The silhouette is a rear view of a woman poised on her right leg and spinning in an anticlockwise direction.

Consequently, when this pivotal image occurs in the animated sequence, the direction of spinning can be either maintained [as is usually the case] or reversed [exceptionally] in a totally seamless fashion. And this is why the woman seems to spin in a clockwise direction for a while, then suddenly change directions, and finally revert to the initial direction.

Some readers might not be familiar with the concept of animated GIFs. Back in the early Internet days, people often included an animated image of this kind in the email contact section of their rudimentary websites, showing a letter being folded, place in an envelope and slipped into a mailbox. Animated GIFs provide a good example of software gadgets—a little out of fashion nowadays—that are relatively laborious to create, but simple to borrow and use.

Reversing roles

I'm not usually narcissistic to the point of taking a photo of myself... with such a preponderance of green hues (the fault of my bathroom lighting) that you might imagine me as a political candidate for an ecological party. To appreciate the trivial anecdote I'm about to relate, you need to imagine me as I was this morning, attired in dusty working clothes, in the process of demolishing my woodshed with a sledgehammer. I stopped for a moment to contemplate the big pile of firewood that my neighbor Gérard Magnat delivered yesterday afternoon.

Up until now, I would have simply tossed the pieces of wood into the adjacent shed, and then stacked them up. But, since I've decided to do away with the woodshed, the task has become more difficult. I have to move all that firewood up into the empty corner of the house. It didn't take me long to decide that the best approach, rather than moving the wood manually in a wheelbarrow, is to wait until my Honda transporter is repaired, some time next week. While these thoughts were going through my mind, Sophia started to bark, and I noticed that an automobile had stopped down below my house. A young man and a woman, carrying briefcases, wandered up the road towards me.

Me: "What brings you up here on this lovely sunny morning?"

Visitor: "We were hoping that you might have a moment to talk with us about the word of God."

Me: "Sure. What faith are you?"

Visitor: "Jehovah's Witnesses."

Me: "That's interesting. I have a lot of ideas about God and Jehovah's Witnesses. Please step over here into the sunshine, because my explanations are lengthy and rather complex. Now, where can I start?"

The two visitors were a little perplexed by my directorial manners, but they stood there silently and listened obediently to my monologue, which lasted for about half an hour. And I talked non-step, with enthusiasm, as if I were a preacher, except that my sermon was an attack upon religion, and a plea for the values of science and atheism. From time to time, the fellow would interrupt me politely, to ask a question. Each time, I would reply calmly, but inevitably in the sense of demonstrating that his questions were uninformed, indeed idiotic. Insofar as my visitors had come to preach to me, we were faced with a delightful case of reversed roles.

Our encounter ended on an amusing note. One of the minor details in my explanations concerned the name of their religious organization. I had drawn their attention to the fact that, as any student of Hebrew knows, the e-o-a vocalization of the Tetragrammaton, as in their silly term "Jehovah", could not possibly be correct, and that a more plausible solution was an a-e vocalization as in the two-syllable pronunciation "Yahveh". Well, this suggestion seemed to trouble them greatly. Funnily, they didn't react upon hearing a pure atheist such as me declaring that the "God delusion" (to borrow the title of the excellent book by Richard Dawkins) was an absurd human invention that did not correspond to cosmic reality. But they were visibly disturbed at the idea that there might be something wrong with the name of their particular branch of Christianity.

Visitor: "Let me ask you a final question. You're familiar with the name John."

Me: "It's my second given name."

Visitor: "You surely don't mind that the French say Jean for John. The Italians say Giovanni, the Greeks say Yannis, the Israelis say something else, and so on. Well, why don't you agree that Jehovah is simply another way of pronouncing Yahveh?"

Me: "I agree with you one-hundred percent. Historically, except for devout Jews, the terms Yahveh and Jehovah have ended up designating, in a perfectly equivalent manner, the mysterious concept of the Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew bible. But, if we agree on that point, then why don't you accept a majority decision and suggest to your superiors that they change the name of your organization to Yahveh's Witnesses?"

They laughed as if I just had just cracked a huge joke, and turned to leave, wishing me well with my task of moving the stack of wood.

Retrospectively, I can say that I surprised even myself (let alone, I suppose, my visitors) by the ease with which I was able to produce such a lengthy impromptu discourse in French, spontaneously and effortlessly, while remaining perfectly calm and friendly, like a polite clergyman. What I'm trying to say is that the amazingly smooth and continuous style in which my lesson unfolded suggests that it probably wasn't as spontaneous as I might have imagined. In other words, my brain is no doubt working constantly, unconsciously, on this kind of discourse. Unbeknown to me, the rhetoric of my Sermon on Mount Gamone had almost certainly been thought out and fine-tuned in advance. If God existed, I would be inclined to agree that He seems to act in mysterious ways.

Dog on a wall

When I cut away the straggly honeysuckle and jasmine shrubs in front of the house, Sophia quickly discovered that she could obtain a slightly better view of happenings down in the valley by jumping up onto the bare wall. So, I put her rug there, whereupon Sophia instantly abandoned her big wicker basket and posed as a sentinel on the wall.

Don't we all like to climb up on top of walls to get a better view of things? I recall the extraordinary experience of walking along the top of the great stone wall around the old city of Jerusalem.

With or without the web?

These days, there are two major approaches to using computers. For a long time, it was a matter of switching on your personal machine and running a software tool such as Word or Excel, for example. More recently, the Internet has provided a more powerful means of exploiting computing resources, which consists basically of getting connected to countless remote machines whose geographical whereabouts are not only unknown but irrelevant. Ideal examples of this new approach to using computers are provided by the Google behemoth, but less spectacular web-based computing services make it possible to make purchases of books or even groceries from your living room.

In the case of Apple's iPhone, we are at present on the borderline between these two approaches. Up until now, if a developer wanted to extend the possibilities of this device from a computing viewpoint, the only possibility consisted of working through the Safari web browser. This wasn't a very convenient solution, because you can't even access Flash websites on the iPhone. A few days ago, Steve Jobs decided to turn the situation upside-down by announcing a forthcoming software development kit that will enable developers to work with the iPhone as if it were more-or-less a normal Macintosh computer.

Some observers see this as an indication that the web-based approach has been a failure in the case of the iPhone. Be that as it may, developers will be happy to envisage the iPhone as what it really is: a genuine Macintosh of kinds. Nobody likes castrated computers.

Final role of woodshed

Before completing the demolition of my woodshed, to enlarge the area between the road and the house, I used the structure for a final task. One of the solid beams served as a support for the block-and-tackle and chains enabling me to hoist my Honda transporter [which refuses to start] onto my trailer, to take it to a repair shop.

Although the Honda transporter is very heavy, I was able to perform this task in an effortless manner. Here's the final result:

I took my neighbor Dédé along with me, for the drive to Romans. He likes mechanical things, and calling in at the shop of a dealer handling machinery of the Honda kind is more exciting for Dédé than visiting a museum. We also had time for a bit of tourism. That's to say, Dédé hadn't visited Valence for decades, so I took him to see the new station for the TGV [high-speed train]. He was amazed, and kept repeating: "The station's all glass and metal."

Enrolled voter

I've just received an official confirmation that, for the first time in my life, I'm an enrolled voter in Australia. To enroll through the Internet, I was obliged to prove my identity. This was done, not through my birth certificate, nor even my passport, but thanks to the number on an expired driver's license. Really, Australia hasn't yet got its act together as far as the question of identity is concerned. This is really weird, because our new passports contain a computer chip, whereas a driver's license is just a piece of colored plastic. Maybe somebody will explain to me, one day, why Australia has this tradition of using driving licenses as identity documents. An even sounder proof of identity in Australia is a firearms license. The only problem is that the draconian legislation on firearms prevents about 99% of the population from obtaining such a license.

It'll be interesting to see if they let me vote through the Internet... which wouldn't surprise me. Now I have to scratch my head and decide for whom I'm going to vote. I'll be able to get some good guidance from the excellent animations by Peter Nicholson in The Australian.

Click the image to see a delightful spring racing event.

Two Apple announcements in France

In this morning's French news, there are two much-awaited Apple announcements: the Leopard system on 26 October, and the iPhone on 29 November. I immediately ordered the so-called Leopard "family pack" allowing for five installations, including two for me, and one for my daughter.

Grafton in aeronautical history books

Towards the end of 2002, while using Google, I discovered by chance that my birthplace, Grafton, was mentioned in the French-language website of the Fédération Française de Vol Libre [display] as the place where the hang glider was invented. The author of this article was a French university lecturer named Jean-Paul Budillon in the nearby city of Grenoble. For me, this reference to Grafton was unexpected, to say the least. Initially, I imagined a misunderstanding at the origin of this story. Hang gliders usually take off from mountain slopes... and there are simply no mountain slopes in my native town. But Jean-Paul Budillon mentioned precise dates and events, and even indicated the reference of an article and photos in an October 1963 issue of Grafton's Daily Examiner. I sent off a request for enlightenment to the CRHS [Clarence River Historical Society]. Their president, Frank Mack, delved into newspaper archives and sent me back a copy of the article. I learned that the wing had been designed and created by a Grafton man named John Dickenson, and that the glider pilot, Rod Fuller, took off by being towed behind a speedboat.

Rod Fuller is shown in these pictures in the latest equipment for those who like water-skiing with a difference. It is a ski-wing, designed and made by John Dickenson for the Grafton Water Ski Club. The ski-wing is something new and its design has been registered by Mr Dickenson. The wing, about 18 feet in length, will soar to a height of 70 feet. Its construction is rather unusual and, despite the frail look of the wing, it soars like a kite. The ski-wing was made from light timber and plastic, of the type used for covering bananas. It was made in a few weeks and donated to the ski club by Mr Dickenson. It will be one of the highlights of the club's water-ski carnival next Sunday. A water-skier straps himself to the wing and is pulled behind a speedboat until air-borne. It operates in similar fashion to a kite, but is much more risky to operate than the box-type kites formerly used behind speedboats. In the top picture, the Crown Hotel forms a background.
— The Daily Examiner of 21 October 1963

I put this data up on a personal website, along with other low-quality photos and a technical drawing of John Dickenson's invention.



For several years, my website article on Grafton's "ski wing" evoked no reactions whatsoever. Then a hang-glider pilot from New Zealand, Graeme Henderson, stepped into the arena and started to publicize John Dickenson's historical role. Henderson had found a Canadian article of May 2004, published in the Cloudstreet magazine of the BCHPA [British Columbia Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association], which mentioned Dickenson's pioneering work.

The article in question [display] was written by Mark Woodhams.

My first encounter with Graeme Henderson was somewhat abrupt, in that he appeared to be criticizing the content of my innocuous web page about John Dickenson and Rod Fuller. The issues at stake were slightly technical. Since I knew little about hang-gliding, I promptly deleted my offending web page. In spite of his blustery manners, I congratulate Graeme Henderson today for having played a dynamic and efficient role in gaining recognition for Grafton's pioneers, shown in this recent photo alongside a replica of the historic wing:

The latest news is that John Dickenson's place in hang-gliding history has just been recognized officially by the highest instances, through an award from the FAI [Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world's Air Sports Federation]. Here is the citation:

FAI Hang Gliding Diploma

John Dickenson invented the modern hang glider at Grafton, Australia. It was flown on 8 September 1963. John built scale models to determine design concepts, until a full sized glider was towed behind a speedboat. He incorporated the control bar into the airframe by designing the A-frame to distribute flight, refining this further when he invented the pendulum weight-shift control system. John developed the piloting techniques, and taught all the early pilots, including Hang Gliding pioneers Bill Moyes and Bill Bennett, to fly the wing. John Dickenson’s invention has been copied by every manufacturer globally, with few minor changes for over a decade.

[Click the banner to visit the FAI website.]

This is an enormous honor for Dickenson, Fuller and Grafton. The city's Big River made it possible—through Dickenson's inventiveness and Fuller's courage—to concretize the myth of Icarus. I would like to suggest that Grafton might look into the idea of a twinning operation with the town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet [not far from where I live], which is the hang-gliding capital of France. Click [here] to see their website concerning the fabulous Coupe Icare. Ten minutes ago, I was talking on the phone with Jean-Paul Budillon, who suggested that his hang-glider friends of Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet would no doubt be delighted to receive John Dickenson as a guest of honor for next year's Icarus Cup...

Optical illusion

The first time I saw this optical illusion, I was tricked. I believed naively that it had something to do with left brains and right brains.

From time to time, the spinning woman seems to change directions, going suddenly from from clockwise to anticlockwise, or vice versa. It's easy to find an explanation for this illusion on the web. It all depends on when the viewer's brain suddenly decides spontaneously that the direction should change. There's no real trick, simply a finely-designed demo.

What went wrong

I'm aware, of course, that the sense of the word "wrong" in my title depends on whether you were supporting the Wallabies, the All Blacks, the French, etc. I might add that there's even a subtle way of the interpreting this word in the case of observers who are concerned about the future of international rugby in general, as a great game. In any case, over the last weekend, France has witnesed the sudden birth of a vast new generation of rugby wizards, commentators, expert journalists, would-be team managers, coaches, etc. I never imagined that there were so many rugby specialists in France. And here I am, me too, about to jump up onto this bandwagon...

Many French people seem to agree on the following three things:

— It's a pity (whatever that means) that a tired French team, still getting over its combat with New Zealand, got kicked out on Saturday by the English.

— It was not only unexpected, but illogical too, that great teams such as New Zealand and Australia, accustomed to spectacular offensive play, should be bludgeoned out of the competition, at a surprisingly early stage, by the defensive strategies of the Old World.

— It would be good (whatever that means) if South Africa were to emerge as the victorious nation.

The consensus opinion here seems to be that future rugby should be played ideally in much the same way that the Southern Hemisphere is currently doing so, but that teams such as the All Blacks and the Wallabies must invent methods and strategies, urgently, to handle situations in which their uninspired opponents devote all their energy and resources to building brick walls across the field. It's a bit like boxing, where three ingredients are required in every recipe for success:
(a) You need to attack.
(b) You need to be able to defend yourself.
(c) Last but not least, you need to have tricks up your sleeve to know how to deal with an opponent who insists upon doing little more than constantly defending himself.

Put in those elementary terms, rugby sounds almost as if it were nothing more than a mere game.

Aerial urban surveillance

In my article of 29 August 2007 entitled Sydney skies [display], I criticized Australia's decision to place a jet fighter above the city during the APEC gathering. Funnily enough, my scenario about the possibility of an innocent private aircraft getting blasted out of the sky by this fighter almost became a reality.

Later, in my article of 6 September 2007 entitled Stadiums [display], I mentioned the vast security resources that French authorities planned to use during the Rugby World Cup.

It was only yesterday, on TV, that we had a closeup presentation of one of these resources, used in the sky at Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris. Apparently there's a tiny remote-controlled aircraft floating around constantly in the air above the great stadium, and it's video camera can see everything that's happening on the ground. In a control room, several police specialists control the movements of the robot aircraft, and watch the images it provides on a large screen on the wall. The images are so precise that you can easily distinguish human individuals, including groups of people who might be up to mischief.

The female police officer whose job consisted of "flying" the tiny noiseless aircraft explained that, if nobody gets upset about this surveillance method, it's primarily because it's invisible. She added: "Most modern police departments throughout the world are now using this technique." Hearing this, I pricked up my ears. Was the police department in Sydney actually using this approach during the APEC? If so, was the publicity about the jet fighter in Sydney's skies simply a strategy to make people forget about the presence of tiny robot aircraft equipped with video cameras? Was the ban on all other aircraft over Sydney designed to make sure that the little robotic devices would be free to glide around in an airspace free of turbulence and obstacles?

If ever it so happens that Sydney is not yet aware of this new robotic technology, then it might be a good idea if a few Australian police delegates were to visit France, at the end of the rugby matches, to see what it's all about. In making this suggestion, I'm thinking above all of the safety of private pilots wishing to take their family or friends on future joy flights over the Sydney coastline or the Blue Mountains, while unaware that the local police are protecting Important Visitors and searching for potential Troublemakers and Dangerous Terrorists. It would be so much less messy to collide with a tiny robotic drone than to get pulverized by a jet fighter belonging to the Royal Australian Air Force.

Bone box excursion

In my recent article entitled Bloody beliefs [display], I described a place of pilgrimage, not far from where I live, named Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier. Well, I went back there last Sunday to witness a curious event, of an anachronistic unworldly nature: the arrival in the church, for a few hours, of a bodily relic of a relatively recent Christian saint, Thérèse de Lisieux.

She became a nun at the age of 15, and her life was uneventful. Afflicted with tuberculosis, she died unknown at the age of 24, leaving behind a simple autobiography entitled Story of a soul, which made her posthumously famous throughout Christendom. It was said that the corpse of Thérèse Martin produced a strong scent of roses for several days. Now that is literally what the Church has often referred to, ever since the Middle Ages, as an "odour of sanctity". As weird as this phenomenon might appear to us today, this allegedly pleasant odour of such-and-such a dead body has often played a role in transforming the deceased individual into a candidate for sainthood!

Inside the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier last Sunday, I was surprised by the size of the crowd of reactionary Catholics who had gathered to welcome a relic of Thérèse de Lisieux.

Up until recently, I had imagined it as unthinkable that Catholics in France, in the year 2007, would still allow themselves to be mystified by a fragment of bone from the body of a young woman who had died of tuberculosis 110 years ago. I thought that the primitive adoration of relics had disappeared with the Middle Ages. Not at all! The people I saw in the church at Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier a week ago looked like the ordinary parishioners you might see of a Sunday morning in front of innumerable French churches. Inside their brains, though, they must nurture very weird beliefs... of corpses that smell like roses, and of bone fragments, capable of bringing them nearer to God, which are worthy of being carted ceremoniously around the countryside in a glass and gold box. In fact, I went off to Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier with my new movie camera, thinking that it might be an interesting subject for a short reportage. But the vision of all those crazy people parading in front of the reliquary nauseated me to such an extent that I lost whatever desire I might have had to communicate with them and make a video.

Fresh macadam

My most marvelous olfactive memory of all times was fresh bitumen: the smell of hot macadam laid upon the dirt cycling track at McKittrick Park in South Grafton when I was about 12 years old. In my adolescent imagination, this oval was a sacred stadium: the hallowed place where my Walker uncles, Johnny and Charlie, had once been track-cycling champions. [Click here to see an article including a photo of my uncles.] And the bitumen surface was the icing on this fabulous cake of sporting achievements that I had heard about from as far back as I could remember.

Last Tuesday, I was thrilled once again by the smell of fresh macadam when the Gamone road was extended up to the house of my neighbor Bob Morin. Meanwhile, my splendid wood shed, emptied of its contents and stripped of its tiles, has set out upon the same inexorable road to extinction as giant Dodo birds, Tasmanian Aborigines, old computers and French rugby hopes.

In fact, if the fellows laying down the macadam were so keen to start gouging out the earth alongside my wood shed, I now realize that it was primarily because the extra space acquired in this way made it easier for their giant trucks to move around the bend at the level of my house. But I don't regret the start of operations, because I'm now obliged to finish the demolition of the wood shed, organize the completion of the earth removal and start planning the construction of a garage of kinds. I work most efficiently of all, in the practical domain, when I'm forced by circumstances to do things.

Meanwhile, Sophia seems to like the new road, for the macadam is gentler than stones on her soft paws. The Gamone road, for my dog, is henceforth a Le Mans speedway... particularly when she's heading downhill.

Bob, too, is immensely happy with the new road, which makes it possible, for the first time in ages, to drive an ordinary automobile up to his house. This probably means that he'll soon be putting his property up for sale.

Three males, two females

I like this peaceful pastel photo, taken yesterday, of the three Gamone males: Gavroche, Moshé and Mandrin.

The following photo of two females in the snow, Gamone and her mother Sophia, reached me mysteriously this morning by email:

It was accompanied by a complicated graphic explanation informing me that "a friend" had taken this photo on a portable phone and sent it to me. When I examined the phone number of the sender, I found with astonishment that it was... me! True enough, almost two years ago, after acquiring my Nokia portable, I took a photo of the dogs and tried to send it to one of my websites. The procedure was so awkward and uncertain that I was never tempted to take another photo on the portable phone. As I've often said, I'm an addicted computer user, oriented Apple, but I've never been on the same wavelength as portable phones. [In other words, I'm a perfect future customer for the Apple iPhone, as soon as it reaches France.] In any case, for unknown reasons, the photo of the dogs took nearly two years to reach me. No problem. As everybody knows, dogs are timeless. Fortunately, like God, they're eternal.

Talking of eternal dogs, look at this fabulous photo, sent to me yesterday by Christine, of her lovely Gamone lounging in a fireplace:

What warm and peaceful harmony: an ideal image of a hot dog!

Falling apart?

The rumor mill has been running at full steam today, particularly in Switzerland, concerning the alleged imminence of a breakup of the French presidential couple. Cécilia Sarkozy didn't accompany her husband on a recent trip to Bulgaria, where she became a heroine after playing a role in the liberation of the nurses imprisoned by Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya. Then she didn't accompany Nicolas to the rugby match in Cardiff in which France defeated the All Blacks. Finally, last Sunday, Cécilia failed to take part in a TV talk show in which Michel Drucker received the female minister of Justice Rachida Dati, a close friend of the Sarkozy couple.

Would a falling apart of the Sarkozys have any dramatic consequences in the French presidential and political context? Not at all, to my way of thinking. On the contrary, I would imagine that countless ordinary French observers have been wondering how the hell any lady, with the kindest heart and purest intentions in the world, could be courageous enough to stand by, let alone run after, such a busy and excited gentleman as Nicolas Sarkozy.

Gamone creature

This shy little fellow has taken up residence recently in the ancient stone cellar behind my living room: the place where the monks once made wine. When I opened the door and turned on the light, I found him hanging from the tufa ceiling, so I raced upstairs and grabbed my Nikon. He wasn't very happy to find somebody using a flash on him in the middle of the night. He started to fly around a bit, but decided to stay. So, I quickly turned out the light and left him in peace.

Ever since reading the fascinating chapter on bats written by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker, I've developed a huge respect for these incredible creatures, whose engineering is far more complex than anything ever designed and built by humans. I'm often spellbound by their flight in the early evening twilight, when they're catching insects for dinner. Besides, they are beautiful creatures, built a little like miniature Formula 1 automobiles, or jet fighters. Suspended upside-down on the ceiling of my cellar at Gamone, this delightful little bat is an excellent antipodean symbol.

Bloody beliefs

Last week, I drove to the village of Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier, not far beyond Saint-Marcellin. In the local church, this stained-glass window tells a curious bloody story. On Assumption Day 1649, a local Huguenot named Pierre Port-Combet was trimming a willow tree in front of his house, to obtain twigs of the kind used to make wicker baskets. Devout Catholics—such as Pierre's wife Jeanne Pélion—knew, of course, that it was a sin to work on such a feast day. Suddenly, Pierre was astonished to see that his curved pruning sickle and his clothes were covered in blood. Thinking he had cut himself, Pierre went into his house, to clean himself up, but neither he nor his wife found any trace of the imagined wound. When they returned to the willow tree, blood was flowing from slashed branches. Pierre was henceforth notorious throughout France, which led to his being condemned by the religious authorities for working on 15 August.

The sequel of this story is illustrated by a second stained-glass window. In 1657, eight years after the amazing phenomenon of the bleeding willow tree, Pierre was plowing his field when a lovely female stranger [the Virgin Mary] appeared and informed the Huguenot that she knew him, that she disapproved of his Protestant beliefs, and that he would soon die if he didn't convert to Catholicism. True enough, soon after the apparition of the Virgin, Pierre Port-Combet fell ill and died. And the legend of Our Lady of the Willow Twigs [osier in French] was born.

The Virgin's personal concern for the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism amuses us today. One would imagine that the lady's apparition upon the planet Earth might have been directed towards more universal and profound issues, instead of making the long journey from Heaven simply to reprimand a humble Dauphiné farmer because he was a Protestant. But, as we all know, the ways of God remain mysterious. Meanwhile, a lovely little chapel has been erected at the spot where the Huguenot's bloody willow tree once stood:

A flower-bedecked altar evokes the Virgin's warning words to the unrepentant Huguenot:

Devout believers take these past events seriously, as proven by the quantity of thanksgiving plaques:

In the middle, to accord an allure of credibility to this affair, there's a photocopy of a declaration made in 1686 by the Catholic widow, Jeanne Pélion, 30 years after the death of her Huguenot husband. That was the time it took for the message of the mother of God to sink in. Recent marble plaques inform us that such-and-such a believer got through a baccalauréat exam thanks to the Virgin, whereas another was even awarded a superior university-level certificate with the help of Our Lady of the Willow Twigs. Conclusion: As every true believer knows perfectly well, religion works!

Block and tackle

Living on slopes, as I do, is quite different to living on flat land. And living on my own is quite different to being accompanied by a wife and a horde of country offspring. To do anything whatsoever, I can only count upon myself. The other day, a fellow working on the new bitumen road up past Gamone asked me: "You don't live here all year round, do you?" He seemed to be amazed when I said yes. From my viewpoint, I can't imagine where the hell I might live if I didn't live here at Gamone. Do observers see me as a wealthy guy who resides normally in Zurich, say, and only comes here to Choranche to admire the countryside from time to time, when he's tired of the noise of the city? It's a little like the surprise of people who learn that I cook for myself, instead of going out every evening to eat in one of the many imaginary restaurants in the vicinity of Choranche. Or the observers who are surprised that an Australian such as myself doesn't drop out to Bondi, Alice Springs or the Great Barrier Reef every so often.

At Gamone, I'm often obliged to move heavy stuff—such as blocks of limestone—from one place to another, often over sloping ground. I do so with the help of an excellent block-and-tackle device, seen in orange in the following photo:

On the left of this photo, there's a ten-meter length of silver chain that I purchased a few days ago in a hardware store at Valence. Often, when I'm using the block-and-tackle tool (attached to a tree, for example) to drag stuff from one point to another, I use nylon ropes. But this is a silly solution, for the ropes soon become inextricably knotted. So, it's preferable to work with heavy chains instead of ropes. My newly-purchased chains are indeed heavy. In the hardware store, a young guy was struggling to drag out the ten meters of chain, supervised by a friendly and attractive female colleague, with a glint in her eye.

He: "These chains are terribly heavy."

She (in a perfectly serious tone of voice, as if she were commenting upon the price of my purchase): "In the case of a vicious mother-in-law, you can't settle for anything less."

That's what I love about France and the French. People are never totally serious. They retain a great sense of humor and linguistic skill.

Intriguing tourist

I've always been amused by the following innocuous joke: A tourist is driving in the Australian outback, looking for a friend of a friend whose property is located at a place named Stumpy Hollow. Having asked for directions in a roadside pub, he receives precise information from the publican: "No problem, mate. Just keep driving straight along the road here. In another hour or so, you'll see a road sign marked Stumpy Hollow 1 mile. Carry on driving. Two miles further on, you'll see another identical road sign, but pointing back in the direction from where you came. The place you're looking for is located midway between the two road signs."

In the Cartesian spirit of France, with later inspiration from a methodical Corsican soldier named Napoléon Bonaparte, every square meter of the land bears a precise geographical reference, composed of the names of the commune in which the place is located, and the département to which that commune belongs. For example, my property at Gamone is located in the commune of Choranche, with an official population of about a hundred inhabitants, which is a part of the department named Isère. In a typical rural commune, there's often a central village or bourg in which the mairie [offices of the mayor] is located, along with the commune's main church, possibly a school and a post office, and usually a few cafés. In the same rigorous manner that I just mentioned, French road authorities place a huge name-panel at the entry to every village in France.

Friends in automobiles, knowing that my address is Choranche, often have trouble in finding me because they don't understand the difference between a village (bourg) and a commune. So, they drive to the tiny village named Choranche, located some 3 kilometers further down the road from my house on the slopes at Gamone.

Why am I talking about all this? Well, in France, many villages are affected by what we might call the Stumpy Hollow Syndrome. That's to say, you don't realize you've arrived in the village before you start driving out of it. One such village, not far from where I live, is L'Albenc... which appears to motorists as little more than a few buildings grouped around a bend in the road from Saint-Marcellin to Grenoble. In fact, I'm exaggerating, because you encounter a village "square" at L'Albenc [a round-shaped intersection of a few streets] with a church, set against the backdrop of the Vercors mountain range.

Nearby, the dull façade of an old house overlooks a sad fountain:

On the other side of the road, there's an attractive restaurant:

But the place is so clogged up with parked automobiles that it's hard to appreciate its charm. In fact, as for countless tiny French villages, you have to stop for a moment in L'Albenc to see what lies behind the Stumpy Hollow bend in the road. And, once you stroll away from the busy road that has mortally wounded the village, there are charming surprises, including even an ancient castle:

The greatest surprises of all are to be found in the archives, which inform us that a strange tourist named Nostradamus once spent an evening in L'Albenc, in 1545, at an inn named La Croix blanche [The White Cross].

The village looked like this about a century ago:

The mairie of L'Albenc informs me that nobody, today, knows exactly the location of the auberge where the celebrated seer spent an evening. A possible site is this ancient building, whose façade looks as if it might date from the 16th century... but that is pure speculation on my part. So, let us abandon present-day L'Albenc, and look at what the archives tell us about the famous evening that Nostradamus spent in this Dauphiné village.

Charmed by the quiet elegance of the 42-year-old Provençal tourist who signed in as Michel de Nostredame, the female innkeeper of La Croix blanche, named Christine Châtaigner, invited Nostradamus to dine at the table of half-a-dozen local dignitaries, who had ordered a simple but tasty local dish of roast chickens. Nostradamus wanted to know how such fabulous "slow food" might have been prepared, and he learned that the secret consisted of feeding the chickens with crushed wheat macerated in milk.

The L'Albenc hosts of Nostradamus imagined their curious guest, at first, as a reformist preacher of one kind or another. Nostradamus corrected this error by informing his friends that he was in fact a medical researcher. He had been summoned to Lyon to investigate an outbreak of the plague, and he was now wandering through Provence in a non-directive manner. As fine an after-dinner orator as Bill Clinton, the charismatic Nostradamus declared: "We are entering upon a huge schism. From a religious viewpoint, your village [L'Albenc] will not escape from the normal order of events. Invaders, claiming to interpret liberally the teaching of the Bible, will burn down your churches. For forty years, civil war will bring iron and fire to the Dauphiné. Even when peace treaties have been drawn up, the cost of supporting troops sent here to maintain peace will devour your resources. In the end, however, your village will return to its ancient beliefs. As in the case today, there will be a single religion here." Those in the tavern who listened in bewilderment to the speech of Nostradamus wondered whether the chicken meat of L'Albenc possessed the curious power of turning a tourist into a soothsayer. As for the oracle himself, he took leave of those who had listened to his words, and went to bed, for he intended to leave L'Albenc early the next morning.

Shortly after the visit of the strange tourist, L'Albenc and a good part of the Dauphiné province were devastated by religious wars between Huguenots and Catholics for nearly forty years, from 1561 to 1598.