Rock is ready to fall

We've just been informed that the dynamiting of the huge rock overhanging the road at Choranche has been pushed back 24 hours, because light rain is falling this morning, and this could interfere with the ignition of the explosives. So, the ignition is henceforth scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday, 12 December, at 13.00 hours.

The rock is located several kilometers up beyond my property, and a kilometer or so to the east of the village of Choranche. There are relatively few houses in the vicinity of the rock. The pretty beige house with pale green shutters is quite close to the rock, and could be damaged by the explosion. The property of my friends Tineke Bot, the Dutch sculptor, and her husband Serge is a hundred meters further down the road. The constructions in the foreground of the above photo are in fact located at Châtelus, and separated from the rock by the Bourne. It goes without saying that all these properties will be emptied of their occupants a few hours before the explosion.

As you can see from the above photo, the section of road directly beneath the rock is supported by a man-made stone wall, which in fact juts out into the valley, forming a hairpin bend beneath the rock. If the overhanging rock were to be dislodged in a relatively calm fashion, with a minimum charge of explosives, it would slide down vertically onto the road, and its gigantic weight would then carry the roadway and the stone wall down into the Bourne, creating a nasty mess. So, the strategy adopted by the engineers will consist of placing a huge charge of explosives behind the left-hand (Choranche) side of the rock, so that it will be blown out into the empty valley to the right, in the direction of Villard-de-Lans.

Beneath the rock, the engineers have created a huge pile of old tires, covered in gravel. Ideally, this should cushion the shock of big chunks of rock falling onto the road, and nudge them off into the valley... where hikers will be discovering, for years to come, wedged between the trees and the rocks, mysterious fragments of damaged tires. The next time the Bourne is flooded at Pont-en-Royans, residents of the cliff houses will be intrigued by the strange vision of rafts of old tires floating beneath their balconies.

My first tiramisù

Ever since my Italian friend Ezio demonstrated his skills in this domain, in his tavern in the nearby village of Presles [website], I've been tempted to see if I could prepare a tiramisù cake. Well, the truth of the matter is that it's not too difficult, particularly since you can now find several excellent books on this art, written for dummies like me. The most amusing aspect of preparing this celebrated cake, invented in the Veneto province of Italy, is that you don't even have to do any cooking. You simply mix together the ingredients and, presto, you've got your cake, ready to be cooled in the refrigerator and eaten a couple of hours later. OK, you need a magic Italian cream-cheese ingredient named mascarpone, which you can find it in French supermarkets.

When I started to browse through the recipes, I quickly realized that tiramisù belongs to the category of preparations that don't really necessitate precise recipes. You merely have to understand the basic principle, which is most simple: Beat up egg yokes and sugar, then add the cream cheese. Beat up egg whites, and add them to the first mixture. Ladle the mixture over a bed of light biscuits called boudoirs in French. [They're known in English, I seem to recall, as lady fingers.] Before being laid in the dish, each biscuit is bathed rapidly in strong black café with a touch of Marsala wine. Sprinkle cocoa over the surface of the resulting "cake", and cool for a few hours in the refrigerator. For observers who aren't familiar with the secret art of tiramisù preparation (like me, up until yesterday), this delicacy is both tasty and mysterious.

Unwelcome guest... with money

"It's normal that the weak resort to terrorism." Apparently, that sentiment was expressed last Friday by Mouammar Kadhafi at a summit conference of African and European leaders in Lisbon. In the spirit of French law, these words might be construed as an apology for terrorism, and this would appear to be a crime in France. But we're on unstable ground. From a certain viewpoint, Kadhafi is merely describing a situation that exists in the real world, where the weak do in fact resort regularly to terrorism. And the French never forget that their heroic Résistance fighters, who didn't wear military uniforms, were in fact considered by Vichy and the Nazi occupant as terrorists.

Throughout the world, today is the 59th anniversary of the creation by the United Nations, in Paris, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many observers in France are disgusted to find Nicolas Sarkozy receiving Kadhafi as a guest at the Elysées Palace this evening. One of the most outspoken critics of this reception is Sarkozy's state secretary in charge of Human Rights, Rama Yade.

This exceptional 31-year-old lady, born in Senegal, accompanied Sarkozy to Libya when he went there on 25 July 2007 (without his wife) to thank Kadhafi for liberating the Bulgarian nurses. Full of smiles, she even shook hands with the Libyan dictator.

Consequently, many people are surprised, today, by the violence of her words concerning Kadhafi's visit to France. She stated publicly that the Libyan leader must "understand that our land is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can wipe from his feet the blood of his deeds". She concluded her declaration by a dramatic metaphor: "France must not be the recipient of this kiss of death." Although Rama Yade is hardly an authentic representative of the downtrodden (her father, a professor of history, was the personal secretary of Léopold Sédar Senghor), her direct language is that of a youthful and intelligent France: the opposite of the so-called langue de bois (empty "woody" language) often employed by politicians.

Needless to say, the words of Rama Yade have made a huge impact in the media today. Countless individuals who don't necessarily admire Sarkozy's young lady from Senegal have voiced their disapproval of this state visit... whose obvious aim consists of signing French contracts (weapons, nuclear power, desalination equipment, etc) for some ten billion euros. Money like that goes to your head, and makes you forget—for a day or so—about human rights.

Links to Lewis Carroll

I'm delighted to discover that my article on the maternal genealogy of Lewis Carroll [1832-1898], author of Alice in Wonderland, incorporating results of my ongoing research into Skeffington genealogy [download PDF file], is referenced in the official website of the prestigious Lewis Carroll Society:


I hasten to point out [for readers who might be tempted to jump to wrong conclusions] that I am not related personally to either Lewis Carroll or his Skeffington family that ascends to the Plantagenet monarchs. The current state of my personal family-history research suggests that my Skyvington ancestors branched away from the patriarchal Leicestershire Skeffington line at an early date, well before these ramifications involving Skeffington folk in Ireland and subsequent marriage links with British royalty. I'm constantly motivated by the challenge of identifying a primordial Skyvington patriarch—linked to individuals named Simon de Scheftinton, or John de Skefynton, or maybe even Odo de Scevington—relatively close to the epoch of William the Conqueror. Like Carroll's personages, these legendary ancestors all lie on the other side of the looking glass, and I don't really expect to ever find them one day. But it's fun to search for shadows.

Sounds of silence

The new president is ubiquitous. That's a highfalutin way of saying that he's everywhere, simultaneously, 24 hours a day, prepared to intervene, like Zorro or Superman. Nicolas Sarkozy is an earthmoving machine in overdrive, but many critics are not sure what he's shoveling. Meanwhile, his prime minister, François Fillon, is more like the Invisible Man.

In the political aftermath of Sarkozy's victory, it has become fashionable to evoke the silence of the Socialists, and to joke about the fact that the once-great leftist party has imploded, with a few former members even being lured to the president's camp. They still have a nominal chief, François Hollande, who used to be the companion of Ségolène Royal.


In the near future, when Hollande steps down as party chief, there's a good possibility that he might be replaced by the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë. This openly gay gentleman has worked well in his job in Paris, and become highly respected and indeed popular. It's premature to envisage such questions, but Delanoë has supporters who see him as a future presidential candidate.

On the far left of the political spectrum, the youthful postman Olivier Besancenot carries on believing naively in his eternal Robin Hood convictions. In society, there are two classes: the lazy rich and the poor workers. To make things hunky-dory, all that's required is a political system that takes wealth away from the rich and distributes it to the needy. But don't waste your time asking Olivier how a society generates new prosperity. He's good at delivering letters and packages, but it's not his business to know what's inside them.






Meanwhile, the socialist madonna Ségolène Royal is going about things in a calm and determined manner, convinced more than ever that the nation will need her one of these days. She has just written a book that analyzes her recent electoral defeat, and she's currently doing the media rounds to publicize it... but drawing less attention than she might have expected. For the moment, nobody knows whether she might try to conquer the leadership of the socialist party when her former partner François Hollande vacates the post. So it's a little too early to evoke, or even imagine, a hypothetical leadership battle between Ségolène Royal and Bertrand Delanoë. Today, a journalist asked Ségolène a pertinent question: "Could a future presidential contender win the election without being the official candidate of a major political party?" Ségolène said yes. Then she added: "At one and the same time, I'm enrolled inside the socialist party, and outside the socialist party." In French, that kind of situation is described as sitting on a fence. Maybe, though, it's a fence with metallic spikes and barbed wire.

For sale: horses, carpets, souls...

Referring to current discussions in Bali on the conception of a post-Kyoto agreement on greenhouse emissions, Australia's new prime minister Kevin Rudd used a quaint Aussie metaphor: "It will be a negotiation, and negotiations involve horse-trading. People here know a bit about what horse-trading means."

Here in France, when negotiators get around to trading advantages and disadvantages in a laborious fashion, a common metaphor evokes Middle Eastern merchants selling carpets.

At the Vatican, the pope is selling neither Australian horses nor Persian carpets. As we all know, he deals in souls. And, in his soul-trading, the pope uses neither dollars nor euros. The papal currency bears an antiquated name: indulgences. The basic idea is that the sins of pious people can be pardoned, at least partly, by the pope. In the 16th century, you could even obtain an official papal receipt (hot off the newly-invented printing presses) stating the precise terms according to which a part of your debt due to sin has been canceled.


Pope Leo X [1475-1521] got around to selling indulgences to acquire finance to rebuild the basilica of St Peter. There was even a brilliant marketing slogan: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs."





A strait-laced German monk named Martin Luther [1483-1546] was quite exasperated about this procedure, and the final outcome of his fury was the foundation of Protestantism... which seems to confirm that God moves in mysterious ways.



For the third time since he became pope, Benedict XV has just bestowed a so-called plenary (full) indulgence upon the faithful. This latest papal offer will benefit pilgrims visiting Lourdes during the next 12 months. Opening date = Dec 8, 2007. Closing date = Dec 8, 2008.

Always interested in the possibility of using the Internet to make money [which, sadly, has never been the case for me up until now], I seize this opportunity of announcing to pilgrims to Lourdes that, for the duration of this exceptional and highly attractive Vatican offer, I'm prepared to advertise and market their indulgences through my blog... or maybe, if the volume of trade were to become excessive, through a dedicated website [what a lovely adjective!] whose coordinates will be announced at a later date. My fees are amazingly low: a mere 15% of the sales value of the indulgence. And I promise to send each purchaser, for a small extra fee, a computer printout that illustrates—more eloquently than graphs or pie charts—the soundness of his/her investment: an ancient engraving revealing the horrors of eternal damnation in Hell.

Faith fun

I believe it would be good for god-fearing humanity [including Mormons, above all], good for half the US population and good for fun-loving aficionados of religious clowns everywhere if would-be presidential candidate Mitt Romney were to be accepted officially and wholeheartedly by the Republicans as their miracle man for 2008.

Now, I must be careful when I speak about Mormons, because the folk in Salt Lake City have provided me, free of charge, with fabulous online genealogical resources enabling me to indulge in one of my favorite and most meaningful pastimes: family history research. Coming from Americans, this assistance is yet another demonstration of pure US altruism, with no obvious strings attached, like D-Day in Normandy and the Marshall Plan... not to mention their generous attempts to remove Communists from Vietnam and Islamic terrorists from Iraq.

Already, Bush is less and less in the limelight. And life is going to be duller for everybody when his star finally fades and goes down over the political horizon. Mitt Romney would be capable of brightening up our long winter evenings, particularly if he were to be coaxed into telling us more about the purported 4th-century prophet named Mormon, the alleged angel named Moroni, and the weird visionary, all too real, named Joseph Smith [1805-1844], shot to death at the age of 38 by his fellow citizens, while in jail, in the purest American style.

There are all kinds of ways of gaining an awareness of the planetary phenomenon of America, and an insight into what might be termed American thinking. I guess the ideal way is to visit the USA or even decide to settle down there. Short of that extreme solution, you might view lots of US movies and TV series, watch CNN and Fox News, and dine constantly at McDonald's. If that kind of punishment sounds excessively harsh, here's a painless and entertaining approach to enlightenment: Take a look at Mormonism. Personally, I've tested this approach [albeit briefly and superficially, because I didn't want to take the risk of picking up any kind of mental virus], and I can assure you that it works. Like me, you'll be vaccinated against America forever.

Urban visual pollution

What is there in common between an Australian railway-worker turned politician named Joseph Cahill [1891-1959] and a French banker turned politician named Georges Pompidou [1911-1974]? Answer: They both succeeded in disfiguring for decades (forever?) two of the most magnificent natural sites in the world.

— Joe Cahill gave the go-ahead for a particularly ugly elevated motorway and train line along the Sydney waterfront that pollute, visually, the glorious bay known as Circular Quay: the port for harbor ferries, just alongside Sydney's fabulous Opera. To be perfectly honest, I should add that Joe also supported the latter project. So, we might hope retrospectively that he has been lodged in Purgatory rather than in the environmental equivalent of Hell (which is no doubt crisscrossed by motorways and railways).

— Georges Pompidou decided to transform the quiet banks of the Seine into a 13-kilometer motorway that crosses Paris in a west/east direction. For visitors who wish to have a rapid taxi-trip encounter with the glorious City of Light, Pompidou's road is a blessing. But it remains a monument to the short-sightedness of Pompidolean people [note that lovely French adjective, whose Anglicized version might not be spelt here in an academic fashion] who worshiped the goddess Automobile.

In Sydney, which I tend to think of as my native city (although I wasn't born there, and didn't know the place until I was a teenager), I'm thrilled to learn that the Cahill Expressway would appear to be [I must be cautious in my language] a candidate for forthcoming demolition. I well remember the epoch of its construction, in the late '50s.

As a young man, I was alarmed to see all this steel and concrete invading the quiet bay named Sydney Cove: the sacred site of the founding of the colony of New South Wales by Arthur Phillip on 26 January 1788. Indeed, there's no more effective way of introducing a stark element of desolation into a magnificent landscape than by slashing through it with an elevated motorway, a railway line and a tunnel... as revealed in this lugubrious painting of the Cahill Expressway by Jeffrey Smart:

When you look at Circular Quay from some distance away [from the city end of the bridge, say], the offending structures appear as horizontal bars separating the water from the base of the buildings.

As you get closer, or when you're actually strolling along the edge of the water [at the place where the harbor ferry wharves are located], the Cahill stuff starts to form an ugly backdrop. It hinders passengers arriving on boats from visualizing the waterfront onto which they are about to set foot, and it prevents people on land, at the foot of the buildings, from seeing the boats.

If the Cahill Expressway were to be demolished, then the entire zone between the base of the buildings and the ferry wharves [including the latter, which are antiquated] should be redesigned and transformed into an automobile-free garden plaza.

Throughout the world, busy waterfronts graced by a harmonious and authentic land/water symbiosis are rare and precious. One of the most pleasant places of this kind I've seen [although it's not perfect] is Marseille. I'm convinced that it wouldn't take an enormous amount of imagination and effort to make this a reality in Sydney.

For whom are roads built?

For drivers, primarily, of course. But country roads in France are used too by tons of cyclists, both with and without motors. I've even found myself waiting to overtake cross-country skiers who train on roller skates during the summer months. But the basic breakdown is between people who use the roads to earn their living, and others who are driving along it for purely personal reasons, maybe to go on a shopping excursion, or maybe for pure fun, as tourists.

In my article of 3 November 2007 entitled Deadly collapse of rocks in Choranche [display], I described a freak accident on the mountain road through Choranche in which a huge rock rolled down from the top of the slopes and fell onto an automobile, killing a father and his son.

Everybody knows that the spectacular limestone valley of the Bourne, from the ski resort of Villard-de-Lans down to Pont-en-Royans, is fragile and therefore treacherous, and it is quite possible that more rocks will fall down onto vehicles using the road. The authorities are aware that, if they invite tourists to use such a road, known to be risky, they could be held responsible for future accidents. So, there has been talk about condemning this road, even though this would be a great pity from a touristic viewpoint.

Fortunately (one might say), this treacherous road is also used by many working people, in diverse fields: truck-drivers, local farmers, tradesmen, etc. They're aware of the constant dangers when driving along this road, but they're prepared to accept this risk. If they weren't, they would no longer be able to earn their living. For these professional users, it's entirely out of the question that the road might be closed permanently.

So,we're in a weird situation. It's almost as if the authorities are saying to people: Don't use this road unless you're really obliged to, for professional reasons. It's dangerous. So, don't say we didn't warn you. In fact, the authorities can't really express themselves explicily in this kind of language. So, they simply hope that the message will get spread around by word of mouth, and that people will react accordingly.

Donkey's tail

Once upon a time, US presidents could be wise men. I'm delighted by this conversation between Abraham Lincoln and a colleague:

Abraham Lincoln: Sir, how many legs does this donkey have?

Colleague: Four, Mr Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln: And how many tails does it have?

Colleague: One, Mr Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln: Now, sir, let's suppose we were to call the tail a leg. How many legs would the donkey then have?

Colleague: Five, Mr Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln: No sir, for you cannot make a tail into a leg by simply calling it one.

If you test this tale about the donkey's tail among friends, you're likely to find out that the situation is not as clearcut as Abraham Lincoln (and I) believe it to be. Many people consider sincerely that, in certain cases, once it is said that X is Y, then X is indeed Y. In our modern societies, we're often required to see things in that way. For example, once a law court has concluded that an individual did in fact commit a certain crime, then everybody sees that decision, henceforth, as a statement of truth. In a more superficial domain, that of sport, once an umpire or a referee [I've never known the difference between these two terms] has determined that a ball is out, the players and spectators are required to consider, henceforth, that the ball was in fact out. In totalitarian societies, too, when a dictator says that something is the case, citizens are expected to act as if that something were indeed the case.

In the same way that somebody might wish to call a donkey's tail a fifth leg, individuals such as George W Bush, gifted with imagination rather than wisdom, are prepared to call an embryonic cell a potential human being. In my recent article entitled Red can be wrong [display], I evoked the invention of so-called reprogrammed pluripotent human cells, which should normally be able, in the near future, to replace embryonic stem cells in medical research. Kind observers have suggested that Bush, through his stubborn outlook on embryonic stem cells, should be credited retrospectively for creating the research context in which this invention was made... by force, as it were. To my mind, that's like thanking the donkey for the non-existence of its fifth leg.

Forgive me, Moshé, for making that silly comparison. I don't need to reassure you, my dear donkey, that you're far wiser than the current US president.

Subliminal phallic stuff

I've always imagined that a lot of publicity is deliberately subliminal, in the sense that the reactions of viewers depend upon perceptions that are not necessarily explicit. Subterranean, like moles in your garden.

For the last few months, a major French bank named Société Générale [a member of the elite club of sponsors of the recent Rugby World Cup] has been airing weird and complicated TV ads that—to my mind—simply don't add up. To me, at first sight, it would appear that the bank's ad agency is incompetent, lunatic, indeed stupid. But I might be wrong. Maybe the bank has in fact succeeded in reaching viewers and potential customers through these strange ads. There might well be method in their madness. I'm obliged to give the Société Générale the benefice of the doubt. So, let me tell you what it's all about...

First, this bank has been using intensively an unexpected theme song: Winchester Cathedral by the New Vaudeville Band. I used to imagine it was a Beatles thing. If I understand correctly, you'll find the original presentation in the second half of the following video clip:



Why would a French bank decide to use such a theme song in their publicity? I'm incapable of answering this question. I warned you, at the beginning of this blog article, that I'm out of my depth. Not exactly drowning, but swimming with difficulty in the publicity pool.

Well, Winchester Cathedral might have been enough. But the bank decided to introduce another weird creature: a human thumb that walks around as if it were a human being. Before going any further, I must inform my non-French readers that there's a trivial expression, coup de pouce [literally, a jolt from a thumb], which designates—in Beatles parlance—"a little help from my friends". A coup de pouce might be described as last-minute heaven-sent assistance of a practical kind. For example, if you happened to be painting your garden furniture and it looked like a storm was brewing, your neighbor might provide you with a coup de pouce by stepping in and helping you to finish the paintwork before the rain arrived. In English, I think the equivalent expression is "a helping hand". That's to say, the French have reduced our hand to a thumb, while retaining the sense of the metaphor.

OK. We now know what a coup de pouce is all about. But the publicity experts of the Société Générale wanted to go one step further and actually visualize a human thumb lending a hand in all kinds of situations. The general publicity idea is that, whenever you see the footed thumb moving in to help somebody, you can and should imagine the Société Générale bank acting similarly.

Basically—a priori, as philosophers like to put it—there's nothing wrong with this reasoning. But the publicity experts of the Société Générale bank have apparently insisted upon the presence of a real-life visual human thumb in the middle of their ads. And the problem is that this graphical thumb looks exactly, for all intents and purposes, like a delightful animated prick.

In this latest image, the giant thumb/prick is even ejaculating its beneficial liquidity (in a banking sense) upon a virginal plant. To be truthful, I admire this crazy stuff. I feel reassured [for want of a better word] by the presence of the great pink prick with agile feet [balls?], sponsored by the Société Générale bank, dashing around like a horny Boy Scout, dispensing its urine and/or sperms to anybody who feels like getting stuffed. To be even more truthful, I must admit that I turn off this nasty bank shit as soon as it pollutes my TV screen.

Blog problem: Something is broken

All seven pictures have disappeared mysteriously from my last article, entitled Sunny weekend with Manya. I've reported this problem to the Blogger forum. Maybe the problem will just go away tomorrow. Maybe it won't... in which case I'll try to get in contact with a human being in the Blogger administration [a difficult task]. I'm including the following photo for testing purposes, to see if it gets displayed or not:

Meanwhile, since starting the present article, a member of the Blogger forum has provided me with the following reassuring information:

Blogger apparently has some kind of problem with the images and
supporting them. This issue occurred all day yesterday and Blogger
didn't explain what happened but by the evening it seemed to be fixed.
But of course, the issue acted up again this morning. Unfortunately,
Blogger hasn't been communicative with the blogging community here so
we don't know what's going on and we're at their mercy. Rest assured,
it's not anything you're doing, but there's a bug in Blogger that
they're not letting people know about so we just have to hope they're
trying to fix it.

We're a vast community of blog authors, across the planet, who are exploiting this excellent service named Blogger. It's not a habit of the owner—the distinguished Google enterprise—to allow vulgar bugs to persist for long. So, I guess I should wait patiently for things to fall back into place. If that doesn't happen within a few hours, I'll simply reload the missing pictures...

PS Since the pictures did not reappear spontaneously in the article entitled Sunny weekend with Manya, I ended up reloading them. So, the article is now displayed exactly as it was when I first compiled it... and maybe I'll never know what went wrong.

Sunny weekend with Manya

This weekend, my daughter brought the sunshine and blue skies to the Vercors, which is rare at this time of the year.

Yesterday, we went out walking in the Coulmes forest, up on the nearby plateau between Presles and Rencurel. Sophia was excited by the autumn aromas of the woods and the scents of unknown animals.

My dog transmitted her pleasure to me. I'm never happier than when I see Sophia happy. And I often suspect that the feeling is mutual.

We had to be wary, though, because a hunt for wild boars was under way in the woods, as indicated by this warning sign:

We chatted briefly with several hunters, primarily to make sure that we weren't wandering into dangerous zones. Their replies were friendly but false, in a hypocritical sense. They never actually tell you to leave as quickly as possible, along with your dog... because that kind of talk, addressed to hikers such as us, would earn the hunters a bad reputation (worse than usual) with the authorities in charge of the Vercors nature park. So they give you the same instructions in a roundabout fashion. Specimen: "Be careful of your dog. The boar that we're hunting attacked and killed no less than four dogs last week." A half-truth, no doubt, but we got the message and turned for home.

In the middle of the wilderness, we came upon the ruins of a school:

The French Republic erected this elegant building in 1911. My neighbor Madeleine tells me that one of her aunts was educated there. After the Great War, alas, there were fewer and fewer inhabitants in the Coulmes, and the school closed down forever in 1928.

On the way home, in Rencurel, we admired this small stone barn, in a pure Vercors architectural style. Stone slabs form steps above the gables, enabling the farmer to climb up and push snow off the roof.

In the same neighborhood, we found a splendid old house in ruins:

After our sunny outing, we were happy to return to Gamone, for dinner alongside a log fire. Today, my home is attractive and comfortable. When I purchased the house in 1993, though, it too was almost a ruin.

Reenactments

I've always realized that I'm not a normal healthy person, because reenactments of historical happenings bore me to tears. The worst of all are reenactments of military battles in which lines of soldiers in colorful clean uniforms stroll slowly across green fields, towards other lines of soldiers in clean uniforms of another color, while firing blanks from their fake muskets, giving rise to a lot of noise and smoke. Every now and then, several actors are programmed to fall to the ground, enabling them to take a rest until the next scene of the reenactment is planned to start. There's no blood, of course. Those quaint tailor-made costumes are costly, and it would be stupid to stain them with tomato sauce. There's no mud either, because reenactments of battles generally take place in fine sunny weather, when the organizers can expect to attract crowds of onlookers with their children.

Not surprisingly, in the reenactment domain, the champions are Americans, with their Civil War. [Click the above photo to visit their so-called reenactment headquarters.] The male participants can dress up to look as handsome John Wayne or Clark Gable. They can sip Kentucky bourbon whiskey and talk about their business affairs while waiting for the action to start. Unlike Hollywood extras, they're not paid, of course, but they don't have to spend their time dodging out of the way of crazy Red Indians on horseback.

In the Old World, a popular reenactment theme is that of life in a medieval village. Everybody knows that medieval folk spent most of their time dancing to medieval music, and watching jugglers [who also bore me to tears]. In those days, young ladies looked like creatures painted by Botticelli, and life was constant medieval revelry.

Recently, on TV, I saw a program about the reenactment of people in prehistoric times crossing the Alps on foot. Over a period of several months, two Swiss guys were trained for the challenge by a team of experts. Everybody was determined that every aspect of the reenactment—to be filmed by a TV crew—should take place in as authentic a way as possible. So, the two brave fellows had to be clothed in a prehistoric style, feed themselves as best they could along the way, and find a cavern to sleep in, or build a shelter, every evening. They were shod in specially-made prehistoric sandals, but these soon fell to pieces. And when one of the walkers ended up with infected blisters on his feet, he had to see a medical practitioner and receive a shot of penicillin. They were unable to catch any fish, and soon ended up so hungry that, when their itinerary brought them alongside a Swiss hotel, they asked for food. In general, the fact that we were able to follow the reenactment of this adventure on TV meant that the two latter-day prehistoric walkers were never really as far removed from civilization as TV-viewers were supposed to believe.

As a child, I was thrilled by a film about the raft Kon-Tiki on which the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five companions drifted from South America to islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They were trying to prove that this is how Polynesia was populated.

Today, there's a major maritime reenactment on the horizon. Turkish adventurers intend to demonstrate how the great French Mediterranean city of Marseille was founded in Antiquity, around 600 BC, by Greek settlers from the port of Phocaea in Asia Minor.

The instigator of the project—a Turkish archaeologist named Erkurt Osman—has built a replica of an ancient boat, to be rowed by four dozen oarsmen:

If all goes well, the boat—named Cybèle, after the Phocaean goddess—will be leaving next April from the tiny port of Urla, near Izmir, and the crew should take some 45 days to cover the 1,500 nautical miles to France. After Marseille, the boat will find its way along canals up to Paris, where it will be displayed in the context of France's celebration of Turkey throughout the year 2009.

No, I didn't make a mistake in that last sentence. The reenactment of the ancient voyage of the Phocaeans will be the prelude to celebrations of France's links, not to Greece, but to Turkey.

Mind the gap!

Readers who haven't had the privilege of being jolted around in the London underground train system will need to know that the gap in question lies between the doors of carriages and the edge of the platform. Its width varies from one platform to another, even from one part of a platform to another. And passengers who forget to "mind" this abyss stand the risk of falling into the depths of subterranean London, and maybe breaking an arm or a leg. So, that's why the transport authorities hired a woman named Emma Clarke whose delightful voice floats out constantly, from one end of the underground network to the other, warning passengers of this danger. She also chatters on nonstop about all kinds of trivial things, as if traffic would grind to a halt were it not for all this verbiage. Emma Clarke tells you, for example, that you must stand on the right-hand side [if I remember correctly] of escalators. She informs you that volunteers are collecting money for such-and-such a worthy charity, just as she lets you know that pickpockets have been sighted in such-and-such a zone.

Personally, accustomed to the quiet and smooth métro in Paris, I'm horrified by the noisy London underground. Besides, their stylized maps are far removed from geographical reality, the color-based signs associated with the various lines are meaningless for newcomers, and the basic system for designating itineraries—using directional adjectives such as northbound and southbound—is poorly conceived. In other words, I look upon the London underground as an uncomfortable mess... almost as antiquated and unpleasant as Sydney's trains.

But let me return to Emma Clarke. Having attained celebrity status, she started her own elegant website, with all kinds of unexpected goodies:

Now everything would have been fine, and Emma Clarke would have continued to expand into a bigger and more sophisticated media business if only she had remained a serious young lady, respectful of her employer and her audience. Alas, Emma started to crack jokes on her website. For example, she made a fake public announcement to inform US tourists that they're talking too loudly. And other cheeky things. Well, London Transport doesn't seem to share Emma's sense of humor. In any case, they've just fired her.

Having reached this point in my presentation of the wonders and woes of Emma Clarke, I hasten to add that there might not be a word of truth in all that I've just been saying. Maybe the charming voice of the alleged female is the synthetic audio output of a robot. Her existence could well be a gigantic hoax conceived by smart marketing people and computer experts at London Transport, with the aim of smoothing the edges of their rough network by introducing an imaginary feminine touch. Be that as it may, I'm obliged to point out that my disparaging remarks about the London underground were, of course, totally false. Just ask a typical Londoner and he'll tell you that their trains are the finest service in the universe... even better than Sydney's fabulous system.

Republican thinking

A few months ago, in my articles entitled Land of law? [display] and Indian doctor and Aussie patient [display], I evoked the case of a 28-year-old Indian physician working in Australia, Mohamed Haneef, who was looked upon momentarily, in an unfounded manner, as a possible accomplice of terrorists who had been operating in the UK. Here's a family photo of Haneef and his wife on a Queensland beach, before the affair blew up:

Many observers felt that, in the context of this affair, the behavior of certain Australian authorities was faulty. The outgoing minister of Immigration, Kevin Andrews, spearheaded guilty charges against Haneef in a stubborn style that did not even accord the foreign physician the benefit of the doubt. For the moment, although Haneef is no longer considered as a possible terrorist, the aftermath of the affair is still in the Australian law courts, and Haneef is still in India. But, since the downfall of John Howard and his cronies a few days ago, people are already evoking the idea that there should be a major inquiry, as soon as possible, into what went wrong in this fiasco.

In Australia, the time-honored independent inquiry procedure for dealing with an exceptional affair of this kind is referred to as a Royal Commission. This antiquated expression—in a context where few entities of a "royal" kind still exist—underlines the fact that it is the highest possible tribunal that exists in the land.

In the French Republic, an administrative controversy such as the Haneef affair would be dealt with in a perfectly everyday manner by a permanent tribunal: the Conseil d'Etat [state council], whose modern republican form has existed for over two centuries. The following painting shows the swearing-in ceremony in 1799:

Talking of republican institutions, I was intrigued to see that this theme didn't come up explicitly during the recent elections in Australia.

The ARM [Australian Republican Movement] still exists, of course, but it would appear to be hibernating a little for the moment, no doubt waiting for the electoral smoke to clear. In fact, with Kevin Rudd as the new prime minister, and Malcolm Turnbull as a senior member of the future opposition, the time will soon be ripe, no doubt, to start talking intensely once again about the exciting idea of republicanism in Australia. Do we really need to procrastinate endlessly, while awaiting the reign of a King Charles or a King William? What the hell does the identity of the current reigning Windsor have to do with Australia's potential future as a great southern republic?

World's greatest video publicity library

Ever since first arriving in France, 45 years ago, I've appreciated the overall excellence of French publicity. A highly visible symbol of movie publicity—handled by the firm of Jean Mineur [1902-1985]—was the little fellow who hurled a whirling sickle at a bull's-eye target. French cinema audiences grew up with this cunning midget.

Another constant presence was the creative work of Raymond Savignac [1907-2002], whose colorful posters appeared everywhere in France, on walls, billboards and in the Parisian underground stations. He became famous overnight through his pink Normandy cow that produced milk-based soap:

In an international context, it might be said: Show me your publicity, and I'll tell you what kind of a society you are. It's a fact that US publicity often smells like the fresh ink and crisp paper of new banknotes, and sounds like the ring of an old-fashioned cash register. British publicity invariably exploits quaint caricatural characters with strange accents. Australian publicity often looks homemade, like a cart that Dad has assembled for his kids. Scandinavian publicity can be stark, like a TV reality show. As for French publicity, it often appears to be the work of would-be cineasts who are obliged to earn their living (richly) lauding products such as perfume, yoghurt and automobiles for the simple reason that nobody has ever invited them (yet) to create feature-length art films.

For 18 years, up until 2005, the phenomenon of publicity throughout the world was examined in depth in an interesting weekly TV program called Culture Pub, which became a cult program among publicity aficionados. Yesterday, Culture Pub reappeared as a website:

Its collection of thousands of online publicity videos—including over 60 Australian specimens [display]—is presented as the biggest library of this kind in the world.

Red can be wrong

Everybody recalls the simple reassuring words of the 23rd Psalm of David, which I prefer in the old-fashioned language of the King James version:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths
of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

We have here a striking case of the celebrated ovine metaphor, which was later enhanced by the evangelist John.

The fundamentally awkward nature of the assimilation of Christians to lambs struck me dramatically when I settled down here in Gamone with a small flock of sheep, and started to participate regularly in the slaughter of lambs. Since then, whenever I run up against the Biblical shepherd metaphor, I'm reminded immediately of bloody and smelly sheep operations at Gamone. I think, for example, of the day I used my self-defense revolver to send a rubber marble through the skull of a young animal, which was an alternative to seeing it stunned mortally by the usual technique of a hammer blow delivered by the butcher. I think of all the plastic bags full of dirty fleeces, hoofs and guts that I've dragged down the slopes to burn. I think too of stacking dozens of packs of prime lamb in my freezer, followed by memories of countless excellent dinners at Gamone. Needless to say, these recollections have altered considerably, for me, the poetic charm of the ancient texts.

The words of the 23rd Psalm have even given rise to a popular song, which I heard hundreds of times on the radio during my childhood. Since then, I've often wondered why most people—at least in the English-speaking world—retain the number 23 associated with this poetic text. This number 23 reappeared later in my life, in Paris. For many years, I lived in a flat at 23 rue Rambuteau.

The surname of this 65-year-old ecclesiastic, André Vingt-Trois, means 23 in French. Apparently the identity of one of his paternal ancestors was unknown, so the authorities referred to him by a number, like a soldier or a prisoner. And that number became a surname. As a youth, André studied at the Henri IV lycée: the same school where I taught English for three years, back at the time I met up with Christine. In 1968, when Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his comrades were mounting the barricades in the Latin Quarter, André Vingt-Trois was studying for the priesthood at the seminary down in Issy-les-Moulineaux: the south-western suburb of Paris where I would be working, a few years later, as a scientific consultant for the research division of French Telecom. After his ordination in 1969, Vingt-Trois remained in Paris for three decades, before a stint as archbishop of the city of Tours, on the banks of the Loire. Today he's back in Paris as the archbishop of Paris. And last weekend, the pope made him a cardinal: that's to say, one of the major princes of the Roman Catholic church.

Unfortunately, this man has decided to intervene in a domain in which he knows no more, a priori, than the local grocer... if only there were still grocers in the parish of Notre-Dame de Paris: the use of human stem cells for medical research. Parading as a specialist in the fuzzy field referred to as bioethics, "Monsignor 23" has dared to denigrate France's great annual fund-raising event, coming up shortly: the Téléthon.

Now, if there's one thing I hate, it's narrow-minded religious fanatics who step outside their intellectual prison called Beliefs and Faith with the aim of attacking Reason and Science. The cardinal's obstruction of future medical research might well have been a tragedy. In fact, it's likely to be seen rather as a tragicomedy, for the silly man doesn't seem to have done his homework.

Two days before Vingt-Trois was awarded his red hat, international media announced that Dr Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University had taken less than a month to coax a banal cell from a woman's cheek into behaving as if it were an authentic embryonic stem cell. That's to say, this "doctored" cell was henceforth capable of developing into any of the 200 or so basic types of human cell. Consequently, medical researchers will be able to exploit such cells with no risk of being accused—by Vingt-Trois and his kind—of destroying human embryos. Cells of this kind [seen in the blue photo, above, from Kyoto] can be described as reprogrammed. To indicate that they can be made to evolve into any type of human cell, they are designated as pluripotent.

At practically the same moment that the Japanese researcher announced this extraordinary and exciting news, an American biologist named James Thomson, at the University of Wisconsin, revealed that his team had obtained similar results.

In the revolutionary fervor of May 1968, it's a pity that "Danny the Red" didn't think of trying to get the seminary at Issy-les-Moulineaux transformed into a scientific research institute...

Dancing into the light

The choreographer Maurice Béjart, who died in Lausanne last Thursday at the age of eighty, was the son of a celebrated philosopher, Gaston Berger [1896-1960], inventor of an early form of futurology [forecasting the future] known in French as prospective. When asked to describe the circumstances in which he became a choreographer, Béjart often referred to his fascination for the musique concrète conceived and composed by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. One of Béjart's most fabulous ballet creations was based upon the haunting rhythm of Boléro by Maurice Ravel [1875-1937], in which a solo dancer—either male or female—moves like a great graceful bird upon a raised red circular platform, surrounded by a small group of companion dancers. An outstanding performance of this work starred the great Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who was a couple of years older than Béjart.

Béjart was inspired by the pioneer Russian dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar [1905-1986], who started his career in the troupe of Serge de Diaghilev. A long time ago, back in Paris, Albert Richard [founder of La Revue musicale, in which I had done some writing] once invited Christine and me to a dinner evening with the aging Lifar, whom he had known for ages. My brief contacts with the exciting universe of contemporary music appear to me, today, as quite ethereal, particularly since many of the individuals I encountered at that time—such as Iannis Xenakis [1922-2001], for example—are no longer alive. But I never imagine any of these artists and intellectuals as having moved into darkness. The earthly existence of Maurice Béjart, above all, was spent dancing into the light. The legendary light of the first day of Genesis.