Warming my toes with Darwin & Dawkins

When Badger suggests, in a comment to my First fire article [display], that I might be curling up my toes in front of the fireplace instead of pursuing Antipodes, he has hit the proverbial nail on its head. I have indeed got into the pleasant habit, over the last week, of sitting in front of the fire of an evening and soaking in slowly—as if I were appreciating a fine wine—the powerful words of the Richard Dawkins book that I evoked recently in the article entitled Latest Dawkins book [display]. I found it hard to imagine a priori that Dawkins still had room to produce yet another book on his usual themes of Darwinism and genes, but all I can say is that the master has succeeded brilliantly, surprising me in ways that I would never have imagined.

Insofar as this book simply aims to supply readers with the actual evidence in favor of Darwinian evolution, Dawkins has written it in an almost colloquial style. Here's a humorous specimen: One Australian river turtle, indeed, gets the majority of its oxygen by breathing (as an Australian would not hesitate to say) through its arse.

There's a hell of a lot of good basic stuff about fossils and the way in which they're dated by radioactive "clocks". I don't know whether or not God exists, but the Devil surely does... otherwise I can think of no other reason to explain why Ardi waited up until the Dawkins book had just rolled off the press before making her coming-out. In a way, it's no sweat, because (a) it's easy to fit Ardi into the context presented by Dawkins; (b) it's nice for us lowly disciples to have an opportunity of feeling, if only for a short while, that we possess more information than the master; and (c) we'll be looking forward to a forthcoming book in which Dawkins will give us his reactions to Ardi.

To my mind, the best-written section of this book deals with embryology, and a quasi-magical phenomenon known as epigenesis, which concerns the processes enabling a single cell to "evolve" (nothing whatsoever to do with Darwinian evolution) into a living organism. We know that the single cell soon splits exponentially into countless essentially identical cells. But how do all these cells get their act together in such a way as to coalesce into a creature such as a dog or a human, or a rose bush? If we liken the end product (the creature or the plant) to a symphony performed buy an orchestra, and the cells to a vast set of musicians belonging to the orchestra, where's the conductor who makes sure that every performer is playing the required notes in a perfect manner? For that matter, where's the score? To approach such questions, Dawkins resorts to the fabulous metaphor of flocks of starlings in an aerial ballet:



The amazing conclusion is that each cell in the evolving organism, like each starling in the flock, is in fact doing its own thing. There is neither an explicit score, nor a unique conductor. This idea is hard to grasp. Computer programmers are accustomed to working in the domain of object-oriented programming, where you program a single relatively-simple object equipped with its own methods, whereupon you can instantiate that object as many times as you like, with differing parameters. This computer-based version of cloning provides a good paradigm of the starling phenomenon, or the process that enables ants to build vast and complex subterranean cities. And this is what biological epigenesis is all about.

Everybody knows that DNA can be likened to a string. But living tissues are highly-convoluted three-dimensional structures. So, in embryology, how do simple strings get folded into all the wonderful shapes of living creatures and plants? To tackle this question, Dawkins calls upon the metaphor of paper-folding, known as origami, of which there are many fascinating demonstrations on YouTube [click here for an origami rose].

The only negative element in this great new Dawkins book is his insertion of a four-page transcription of a TV interview between Dawkins and a female named Peggy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America. In the context of so much scientific poetry and wisdom, her presence is like a hair in the soup. Read the book, to see if you agree/disagree with me.

First fire

In my tiny world, it's a momentous evening. I've just lit up the first fire in the chimney to herald in the approaching cold season. Sophia's eyes have turned green, miraculously or, rather, photographically. It will be the final winter of my 60s. Next year, I'll be an old man in his 70s. Let me be truthful: an older man... like every other man, for that matter, who has ever spent an instant in the Cosmos. So, there's nothing special about me.

On cool momentous evenings like this, I hardly need to point out that I'm an inveterate Internet user. And I find myself in contact with various layers of communicators. There are those—like close members of my family, my adolescent friend Bruce Hudson in Australia, or more recent friends such as Natacha and Corina, just to name a few—who appear to be tuned in regularly to what I write in my Antipodes blog, be it serious or silly, or somewhere in between. That's normal, because this blog is intended, first and foremost, as a vector of personal communication. Let's not forget that I only started it, in 2007, because an Aussie bushwhacker ISP [Internet service provider] named Big Pond refused to deliver emails to my dear aunt Nancy in Sydney, alleging that anything coming out of France was probably evil. Then there are other layers of communication, less personal, more global, even universal...

In the context of my Internet contacts, there's a breakdown between global matters and things that concern only me. For example, when my aunt evokes the question of whether or not there's a dot between lucky and pierre in their curious email address [a problem that I haven't yet solved], that's strictly in the personal domain. But, when I write about President Obama getting a big prize, and Prince Jean getting a big job, we're obviously in a bigger communications domain.

I'm often amazed and amused by the apparent speed at which things move forwards (a fuzzy concept, I admit) in these two domains... in parallel, as it were. I often have the spooky impression that my blog is in fact advancing with giant's steps whereas the rest of the Obama/Sarkozy universe, as reflected in the media news, is almost stationary... like those expert track cyclists who can stand still for long minutes, in a balancing act, on a curved timber surface, before dashing forth in a startling burst of energy. Normally, one would consider that, at every instant, there should be a million more things happening in the outside world than in my private universe. But I'm rarely struck by overpowering evidence to this effect. On the contrary...

Often, I feel that all my personal energy references revert to bikes, just as all my personal literary references revert to Rainer Maria Rilke, and my song references to Jacques Brel. The Internet gives me the impression that I'm still evolving, but the first fire of winter reminds me that I've never really gone beyond bikes, Brigge, Brel and all that ancient stuff, with a little bit of computing thrown in as spices.

Up in the sky

Over the last few days, when I've been working up at the spring on the slopes above Gamone, my dog Sophia (who usually has the habit of accompanying me everywhere) has preferred to remain at the house. That's because she's wary of getting chased or kicked by the cantankerous donkeys. And, at the end of my work, Sophia is waiting for me down at the house.

I have the impression that she's intrigued to catch sight of me at the top of the embankment, almost up in the sky. Here at Gamone, there's an amazing assortment of levels of all kinds, including even five or six distinct levels inside the house. I often wonder whether Sophia's mind is capable of modeling the environment geometrically, enabling her to deduce the path between two points. I don't think so. I have the impression that she locates me, in these multi-level contexts, by a trial-and-error approach based upon the intensity and direction of my smell. On the other hand, nothing proves that Sophia's not an absolute wizard at geometric model-making. Maybe she's continually saying to herself: "What a terrible pity that poor William has to rely solely upon geometric modeling, without ever being able to use smell to find me."

Spring-water questions and answers

Tackling problems concerning a spring is fascinating, because you're faced with challenges of a primordial earthly kind, like those that ancient settlers had to deal with. Over the last few days, working at times in the style of a backyard archaeologist, I've even discovered elements of the ancient solution to the spring-water challenge at Gamone, along with subsequent modifications that can be described retrospectively as a blunder. My spring, 50 meters up on the slopes behind my house, can be represented as follows:

The red object is a closed cemented-stone receptacle that takes in spring water through a hole on the left, and lets it flow out, down towards the house, through a flexible rubber tube on the right. The presence of this compartment ensures that the water will be relatively clean, that's to say, free of mud and floating vegetation (since there's an iron lid at the top of the receptacle). Besides, the right-hand wall of this receptacle enables the rubber outlet tube to be held firmly in place, and sealed to prevent leakage.

Down at the house, during the eight or nine months of the year when there's water in the spring, I simply leave a hose running non-stop, watering the lawn, garden, vegetation and fruit trees. On the other hand, since my house is linked to the municipal water supply, I don't use the spring water for domestic purposes... apart from occasional tasks such as washing the car, mixing concrete, etc.

There is, however, a hitch. When the level of water in the pool is relatively high (as in the above diagram), there's a major overflow from the embankment below the spring. The quantity of leaking water is such that it's like a second hose emerging from the base of the spring. Up until now, I've never understood why this overflow occurs, nor where exactly the water is leaking. Since the surface of the pool never rises to the top of the receptacle, it's not an overflow in the normal sense of the word. It's rather a massive leakage from somewhere inside the pool. But it's definitely not seepage from the bottom of the pool, because there are long periods during which water continues to flow abundantly from the hose at the house, whereas the leakage at the base of the spring has stopped. Pierre Faure, the municipal employee, concluded therefore that the seepage probably occurs through cracks and crevasses around the upper edges of the pool. In other words, the water level in the pool has to attain a certain minimum height before the seepage starts.

Other rural friends have suggested that maybe the diameter of my outlet tube is too small. To me, that never sounded like a plausible explanation. After all, I imagine that the flow from this rubber tube was perfect for the former proprietor of Gamone who had installed it, before the arrival of the municipal water supply, in order to bring spring water into the house by means of a single tap in the kitchen... which still existed when I first discovered the dilapidated house in 1994.

I ended up considering that, since I was unable to explain the origin of the leakage at the base of the spring, I would have to "live with" this fault. Consequently, I imagined a makeshift solution that would consist of "capturing" the leakage in some kind of a drain, and bringing the water down to the house by means of a second hose.

Yesterday afternoon, by a mixture of logic, chance and some digging in the mud, I finally solved the mystery. I discovered that there's a much bigger outlet hole, concealed (but not plugged) by the earth wall, further up towards the top of the receptacle, as shown here:

This is almost certainly where the leakage occurs, allowing a large volume of water to flow down a subterranean path to the base of the earth embankment, where it emerges and flows onto the road.

Now, the obvious next question is: Why does this big hole exist in the upper wall of the receptacle? In fact, it was the initial outlet, no doubt installed by the monks who made wine here before the French Revolution. This hole was the start of the ceramic pipe system that used to run down the slopes to the house. Here's a fragment of one of these pipes, partly clogged up with a calcareous deposit:

Much later, when the level in the pool was low, a farmer must have decided to replace the ceramic pipes by a narrow rubber tube. And the lazy fellow didn't even go to the trouble of blocking up the initial outlet. For me, this is fortunate, because I now intend to abandon the rubber tube (which is regularly blocked up with mud and weeds) and bring the ceramic-lined outlet back into use.

Now, my explanations must sound simple and boring. What you have to understand is that the real context in which I've been tackling this problem is both messy and muddy. Let me show you some photos.

That's the receptacle, with the lid raised. The next photo gives you an idea of the pool, surrounded by vegetation, to the left of the receptacle:

I've been using the green hoe to take out some of the accumulated mud, which I intend to use as natural fertilizer for my rose bushes. And here's the outside wall of the spring, where you can just make out a crowbar (beneath the power tool) stuck into the ceramic-lined outlet that I had just unearthed:

Why is this an important preoccupation for me? Two reasons. First, if I don't succeed in halting the leakage from my spring, it could bring about a landslide on the lower slopes. Second, as soon as I succeed in mastering the flow from the spring, I want to store the water in an artificial dam, below my house, and use it to irrigate my rose garden.

Don't tell Mum...

... that Dad hopes to get me a fabulous job. She thinks I'm a struggling student trying to plan my future in an egalitarian republic.

Members of the French political and business world are upset. They're astounded that the 23-year-old son of the French president is being offered a professional position on a silver plate: chief of the organization that governs the great economic zone of La Défense, on the western outskirts of Paris.

Yesterday it was bling-bling: a mere fantasy. Today it looks more like nepotism, which is generally viewed by genuine republicans as a fault.

Meanwhile, there's a new French Twitter game known as Jean Sarkozy partout (Jean Sarkozy everywhere), which consists of imagining our favorite father's son in all kinds of novel situations. If I were an adept (which I'm not, since the brevity of Twitter is definitely not my style), here's a possible contribution: Jean Sarkozy wants to acquire the Vatican as a future retirement village for his dad and step-mum. Or another: Spielberg signs up Sarkozy Junior for an avant-garde version of the Prodigal Son. Music: the star's step-mother. Promotion: his father.

POST SCRIPTUM THOUGHT: Just as the Nobel for Peace was awarded to President Barack for the future wars he's going to end, I reckon that our Prince Jean, Dauphin de la Défense, should have received the Nobel in Economics for all the marvels he'll surely be introducing, as soon as possible, into the heart of French industry and business. The two men are brimming over with potential.

Age of Aquarius

If ever you were thinking about the idea of maybe trying to win a Nobel prize, my advice is to forget about stuff such as science and literature. Aim at peace. It offers you by far the biggest potential ROI [return on investment]. Start out by searching through the numerous nice websites that sell Saturday-evening hippie gear of the soft peace-and-love kind. It's not at all expensive. For a few dozen dollars, you can look as Woodstock as Hendrix. Naturally, the costs of the operation are likely to climb considerably if you insist upon smoking the genuine kind of stuff that caused a dense cloud to hang over the '60s... but there are so many laws against lighting up anything at all, these days, that you're probably better off cheating at this level. You might think about chewing on an unlit pipe, or maybe a stick of liquorice root candy... but you run the risk of not appearing to be authentic. In any case, smile non-stop like a born-again Christian, hug everybody you meet, and don't stop talking about peace and love. After that, the important thing is to get elected to some kind of prominent job, where onlookers will have opportunities of admiring you and your colorful clothes. Then, just wait around politely and peacefully until something happens... like the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. You'll get the prize you deserve.

Big feet

You may have thought, like me, that our female ancestor Ardi [display] had particularly big feet. With feet like that, if ever Ardi had got involved in kickboxing, she would have been capable of flooring and throttling her opponent, using her opposable big toes, in a single swift action. But Ardi's feet were as dainty as a fairy's alongside the huge dinosaur footprints that have just been found in France, at a place named Plagne.

Now, the aspect of this discovery that really spooks me is the fact that these big savage beasts inhabited a quite built-up region, just alongside Geneva, and not far away from several highly-populated French cities, not to mention Gamone (current human population of 1).

To me, it's totally incredible that the presence of these giant creatures should have gone unnoticed all this time, up until this week.

Surely, in a God-fearing territory such as Switzerland, capable of trapping the dangerous predator Polanski, there were alert citizens who would have detected the presence of these terrible reptiles. In the pure Alpine air, I would imagine that, when an animal of that size farts, the pestilential smell would be noticeable within a vast perimeter... not to mention the accompanying blast of hot air, the trembling ground, and the thunderous blood-curdling boom. So, why weren't the police and army informed, much earlier on, along with local hunters (generally armed with crossbows, like the courageous William Tell)? And what have the Creationists been doing, all this time? In normal circumstances, they're pretty good on dinosaur stuff. In the case of the present findings, though, it looks as if the local Creationists have been sitting around lazily on their pious asses, oblivious of the dangers, or maybe deliberately ignoring them while they reread Genesis for the umpteenth time?

If I were the president of Australia

Readers will realize immediately that the substance of this blog article is no doubt meaningless, for the obvious reason that there is no such thing as a president of Australia, since the country is neither a republic in the French sense nor a union of states like the USA. But allow me to continue my meaningless daydream...

I would set out to convince my compatriots (that's to say, my electors) that the nation's future must be 100% nuclear, in practically all domains (except the production of weapons): mining, processing, energy production and the safe disposal of nuclear waste. I would immediately seek to obtain the people's consensus on two essential questions:

• General democratic acceptance, through a referendum, of the overall project: a 100% nuclear future for Australia.

• The immediate nationalization of every aspect of this future industry. Existing uranium mining sites would be simply repossessed in the name of the Australian Republic, with nominal (minimal) compensation paid to shareholders.

In other words, no greedy capitalists would ever become excessively rich through this project, since all revenues would be poured back into the country, to develop its dilapidated civil infrastructure and defense system. The entire nuclear domain would be declared—through an article attached to the Constitution of the Republic of Australia—as "out of bounds" to foreign investors and run-of-the-mill capitalists.

The first step in this giant project would consist of Australia establishing an in-depth partnership with her sister republic, France, aimed at acquiring (basically for free, or almost) all the existing French Areva know-how in domains such as nuclear engineering and the disposal of nuclear wastes... as it is being performed today at La Hague in Normandy. France would assist Australia in the construction of reactors for the production of electricity, and in the total changeover of Australia's navy to nuclear propulsion. Together, the two nations would become world pioneers in every imaginable aspect of the waste-disposal problem, including security in particular. Their research center and processing installations concerning this activity would be set up in the Northern Territory of Australia, in a geologically stable zone.



In the immediate future, Australia and France would establish an indefinite moratorium on sales of uranium to certain undesirable customers throughout the world. Meanwhile, Australia would authorize France to install various military bases on Australian territory. This latter tactic would reflect the fact that Australia, through its grand nuclear project, might become a desirable piece of cake for ruthless neighbors. Naturally, the in-depth partnership with France would bring about a huge geopolitical shift at the level of Australia's traditional links with English-speaking nations, while drawing Australia closer to the operational heart of Europe.

Seriously, I believe that a handful of imaginative and courageous Australian political figures (whom I don't need to name) would not be totally shocked by my daydreaming. On the contrary...

Atheism in my modern world

Fortunately, most of us are intellectually capable of changing our opinions over time... except, maybe, for politicians who look upon changed opinions as a sign of weakness. The other day, I laughed when I observed Christine's marvelous dog Gamone waiting until our dirty plates were stacked nicely in the dishwasher before she moved in to lick them... much like polite humans wait until everybody is seated and served before tackling their food. Christine pointed out that she was horrified the first time she saw me inviting my dog Sophia to lick clean our plates, as if the dog's saliva were poisonous, infectious. I used to think in that silly way, but nowadays I know that the only way of being infected is to get bitten by an animal with rabies. As for the rest, the dog's saliva contains no harmful bacteria that won't disappear in the dishwasher. Inversely, I'm constantly afraid that my dog might bite into a rodent that has just eaten poison. That's why I prefer to catch mice alive, in the following excellent trap, which I've been using for years:

Whenever I find a mouse snared in the wire-netting cage, I accord him a fighting chance of survival—in a kind of Dalai Lama spirit—by taking the trap and its contents down the road and opening the cage in the presence of Sophia. I look upon what ensues as a kind of physical-alertness exercise for my dog, a little like those books of elementary problems, based upon letters and numbers, that are a popular pastime for elderly folk who prefer this mental stimulus rather than, say, writing blogs. Sophia seems to use her olfactive capacities, rather than her eyesight, to locate the fleeing rodent in the grass. And she soon pounces upon the mouse, generally crushing it beneath her heavy paws... whereupon I take the dead mouse by the tail and hoist it to eternity in the creek bed.

Now what does this have to do with atheism in the modern world? Well, in the same way that Christine has ceased to be disgusted by canine saliva, I've ceased to be anguished by atheism. With the wisdom of my many years spent in France, including in particular the time I've been living alone here at Gamone as a kind of areligious hermit, I've become totally enthralled by atheism... or, rather, by its positive dimension: my profound love of life and scientific knowledge, culminating in a total fascination for all living entities such as dogs, roses and even bacteria (although I haven't got around to domesticating any of the latter, and keeping them as pets). Admittedly, observers might claim that I don't seem to have got up to an acceptable cruising speed as far as admiring and loving my fellow human beings is concerned. But give me time. For the moment, there are attenuating circumstances: I've been watching too many films about the world wars, Hitler, Stalin and company. One day, if I continue my Dalai Lama-like ascension, I'm sure I'll end up accepting humans to the same extent as all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small... such as mice, weeds and viruses. [Don't take me too seriously. Towards the end of that last sentence, I was just joking. But I must be careful. How shall I ever find myself a wife if I start to fall into the trap of using misanthropic language? OK, I heard somebody say that it's already too late. Be that as it may, I should nevertheless take care of my language.]

The truth of the matter is that I had the privilege of growing up in a unique cultural environment—that of Grafton, New South Wales, Australia—which was an excellent breeding ground for future atheists. You see, the municipality was composed, about fifty-fifty, of Catholics and Protestants. Better still, my mother was Catholic whereas my father was Anglican. So, you might say that I had it in my genes to cease believing in God. [No, that last sentence is not really sound genetic talk.] In any case, I was strongly inclined to believe, from an early age, that it was absurd to imagine the peaceful coexistence of a Catholic god and a Protestant god, and this surely meant that both parties were misguided.

As a kid, I must have ridden my bike past this impressive edifice many hundreds of times. It was Saint Patrick's in South Grafton, the official church of my own mother, Kathleen Walker. But neither she nor any other member of my maternal family ever invited me to set foot in that newly-constructed building. I grew up looking upon that church as forbidden territory. As the nun's told my aunt Nancy, my mother was a mortal sinner, since she had married a Protestant. So, I was the offspring of a woman who had sinned, and her iniquity had no doubt rubbed off onto me from the earliest instants of my procreation.

Insofar as I was comfortably accepted into the refined gentlemanly circles of the Anglicans in Grafton, my personal experiences were insipid compared with the delightful tales told by the Irish comedian Dave Allen:



Today, there's a splendid website that deals with both the wonders of atheistic evolution and the stupidity of conventional religions.

Since the publication of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has become an anti-religious militant. I have the impression that his stance was motivated, less by the traditional conflicts in the British Isles between Catholicism and Protestantism, than by the upsurge of ultra-conservative Judaism and radical Islam. Then, the shock of 9/11 was another terrible indictment of fanatic religion culminating in hatred and horror. The following video is quite long, and some of the images are hard to watch. But they are a striking demonstration of the consequences of madness caused by the God delusion.

Apple influence

Recently, I suggested that I had been hit on the head by an apple, which was my way of introducing a possible link, in my personal genealogy, to Isaac Newton [display].

My compatriots appear to have been hit on the head by this fruit for different reasons. First, a fellow came up recently with a new name for a variety of Vegemite, the yeast-based edible mud that has always been consumed ritually, spread on bread, by generations of Australians. This new logo didn't last for long. After a few days, it was howled down violently by Vegemite aficionados all over the planet. This is understandable. It would be unwise to eat this stuff while using a high-tech iDevice. If ever a drop of muck reached the inner electronics, the gadget would surely be corroded irreparably. (That danger reminds me of the Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons who complains regularly to the after-sales people because his DVD reader is full of mayonnaise droppings... or something like that.)

The Aussie branch of Woolworths has just invented a new stylized W image, which reminds us of a familiar logo that usually appears these days with a silvery hue. Now, if ever Woolworths started to use this new logo in their marketing of consumer-electronics products such as PCs and portable media players, it doesn't take much visual thinking to imagine that certain customers might suppose they were purchasing stuff that had something to do with my favorite computing company.

Latest Dawkins book

This year, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. And it so happens that the world has just been introduced to Ardi, our most ancient identified ancestor with most of her bones available for inspection. So, the time is perfect for another book by Richard Dawkins, presenting the evidence for evolution.



It's utterly amazing that countless Americans, today, still consider stupidly that evolution is a mere theory, in which they refuse to believe. That's to say, they ignore that evolution has become an established element of contemporary science.

Collection of papers on Ardi

Science is a journal published by the AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science], founded in 1848, which describes itself as "an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association". The stated mission of the AAAS is to "advance science, engineering and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people".

This journal has assembled a splendid collection of papers concerning the creature Ardipithecus ramidus, and this collection can be downloaded in PDF form. All you need to do is to register (free) at their website, which can be accessed by clicking the above banners. I've downloaded all their 15 files, and I find them relatively easy to read and totally fascinating.

Loose language

I've already evoked the brilliant books of the Canadian-American psychologist Steven Pinker. He's best tackled, I believe, by The Language Instinct (1994), which explains simply—as its title suggests—that we humans have an instinctive relationship (as if anybody ever doubted it) with the gift of the gab.

From a Pinkerian point of view, my blog title, Loose language, is abominable, since human language is a constantly-evolving process that should never be described as "loose". Lame, lost or lousy, maybe... but never loose, since it remains a mysterious archaic art that experienced human practitioners are constantly perfecting.

This afternoon, I was momentarily surprised to see an exhortation on the cover of a popular French science magazine: Mangez sain. Translated literally into English, that reads: Eat healthy. In grammatical terms, the adjective "healthy" has been placed into a slot that normally receives an adverb such as "healthily". Now, is this a problem that should upset me? No, not at all.

I was vaccinated by the publicity of my favorite computer company:

Apple wasn't suggesting that we should think differently in the same way that you might ask somebody to reply rapidly, to talk calmly or to argue intelligently. The "think different" exhortation simply urged viewers to adjust their thinking to a different context: that of Apple products. That's to say, it was shorthand for: Do your thinking in a different context. So, no major grammatical crime was committed.

The most striking Pinker book, to my mind, is How the Mind Works, which is guaranteed to send shivers down the spine of old-fashioned adepts of Freud. Pinker adopts a totally "mechanistic" explanation of the human mind... where my adjective in inverted commas designates everything that has been happening in computer science and brain research over the last half-century. In a nutshell, everybody knows by now that humans are magnificent machines, neither more nor less. So, why carry on talking as if there were mysterious ghosts in the machines?

As for Freud, he has been thrown out wordlessly and unceremoniously with the slops. Maybe it would have been nicer, more polite, if Pinker had pronounced a wordy eulogy concerning this well-minded Viennese quack doctor who fascinated the Western intellectual world for a century or so... and still does. History has its charms. But time wasted in talking about what we now know to be obsolete nonsense would be better devoted to catching up with the fabulous realities of contemporary science.

Grandma, maybe you should put your clothes on

Her given name, Ardi, is short for Ardipithecus ramidus, which was a hominid species that lived about four and a half million years ago in present-day Ethiopia. As I deigned to point out recently, with a touch of romantic despondency, in a nostalgic letter to a maternal aunt in my native continent of Australia who's madly passionate about family history, it was almost like yesterday that we humans branched away from our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. I'm sure Nancy agrees, but she hasn't replied yet... Meanwhile, what must we think of naked Ardi?

She looks fine to me: the sort of woman that a maternally-dominated male such as me would like to discover as a future bride. But maybe she should put her clothes back on, because we modern descendants are no longer accustomed to nudity. To talk frankly, I don't really mind the hairy belly, thighs and genital zone. On the contrary, as I've indicated explicitly in the porn-taste fields of all my social websites, I'm fond of that kind of stuff, provided I don't run the risk of getting lost in the jungle. But let's not get led astray...

What were we saying? Truly, this is a fantastic discovery. Ardi is indeed our probable grandma. I love her already. In gazing fondly at her image, in the deepest regions of my loins, I seem to sense the same archaic attractive tingles that might have caused Grandpa to move in firmly, and finally make me what I am today. Good on you, Grandpa! What a wife! What a sexy ancestor!

Flatland creature

I'm sure you won't believe me, but I'll nevertheless reveal, tardily, the truth. As an adolescent, about to start university studies, I imagined for a moment that I might apply to be trained as a fighter pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. It sounded like a fascinating occupation... although I must admit that I had never, at that time, flown in anything bigger (as a thrilled passenger) than the tiny yellow Tiger Moth belonging to a distinguished South Grafton gentleman named Eric Hudson, father of my childhood friend and current blog-commentator Bruce Hudson.

Retrospectively, I believe that this professional choice would have been a mistake, even though I love to get into big airplanes of the kind that fly between Paris and the Antipodes. I know today that I'm essentially a flatland creature... in the spirit of my ancestors who moved around over the flat grasslands of Africa and later the steppes of Asia. Back in those days, our archaic brains had to be good at detecting the presence of wild beasts, edible plants and nubile females. Since none of these entities hung around in the air, our brains (if I can speak for all humankind) had no reason to get adapted to bird's-eye views of things.

Today, there are two environments in which this inherited weakness hurts: mountains and seas. Here in the Vercors, I'm often stunned to realize just how hard it is for me to comprehend the topography of the landscape in which I reside. To put it bluntly, mountains seem to move, not only sideways, but up and down. A peak that looks tall when viewed from Saint-Jean-en-Royans becomes a pimple at Pont-en-Royans. Distant summits that lie far apart when seen from Saint-Marcellin nudge closer to one another when I get up close to them... or maybe the opposite. It's all very disconcerting, particularly the weird phenomenon of neighboring summits that change their respective altitudes, depending from the place and angle of view. Somebody said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. He might have added that geographical coordinates seem to behave exactly like beauty. It's a kind of idiot version of Einstein's theory of relativity. When I drive from one village to another, or when I stroll on foot from one vantage point to another, mysterious space-time dilatations—contractions and expansions—come into play. Up until now, I've never bothered contacting the scientific world to let them know that I've made these observations. So, you might consider this blog article as a personal coming-out. Others take pride in announcing that they're homo, hetero or travelo. As for me (big news), I'm basically flatto: a flatland being.

A case in point. In recent articles, I've evoked the newly-acquired cliff-top property of my son François (also known as Chino in his ancestral Breton territory):

• Rapid trip to Brittany [display]

• Ocean silence [display]

• Virtual dream house [display]

My son's place lies somewhere in the following bird's-eye view of the region:

But, even with highly-enlarged satellite images, I find it hard to determine exactly where my son resides, and what kinds of inaccessible beaches lie at his doorstep. What I really need is a new-fangled high-tech system of powered wings—à la Nicolas Hulot–that would enable a flatland creature such as me to explore at ease these questions, from the skies of Brittany. Or maybe, simply, a boat.

Ireland wants to stay aboard

It's tremendously encouraging to see that a popular vote in Ireland has confirmed the nation's desire to accept the Lisbon treaty and stay aboard the boat of Europe.

The central issue was, of course, economic. Were Ireland's political leaders simply telling lies and trying to scare the people when they suggested that the almost bankrupt nation would be in dire straits if ever it rejected the treaty a second time? Many shortsighted citizens believed this persistent rumor.

Let's see now how Poland and the Czech Republic react to Ireland's yes.

BREAKING NEWS: Allow me to get a kick out of translating from French into English the words of our most European president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom this Irish vote was a major milestone:

This vote—which crowns the efforts made in particular by the French presidence [of the European Union] in order to answer preoccupations expressed by the Irish—is a great satisfaction for all Europeans. It will allow us to take a decisive step towards the actualization of the Lisbon treaty. France hopes that states that have not yet done so [proclaimed their allegiance to the Lisbon treaty] will accomplish as soon as possible their ratification so that the Lisbon treaty can become operational before the end of the year, which is the engagement of the 27 [nations that have already ratified the treaty].

Obnoxious Jap

Back on 10 July 2009, I published an article entitled Winning or losing concerning Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France.

[Click the photo to display the blog article.]

For reasons I don't understand, this inoffensive article has been polluted by regular "comments" from an obnoxious Jap whose link leads back to a vulgar porn website. When I say "vulgar", I mean that the home page of this guy's website has even less erotic appeal than a crude manga image. Pure dull shit.

I was hoping naively that this pest would simply disappear... but he's still there. So, I've finally got around to indicating his presence to the Blogger forum, to see if somebody can tell me how to eliminate this obnoxious intruder. What I really need to find, I guess, is a link to an attractive website containing incitations to commit hara-kiri.

BREAKING NEWS: For problem-solving, the Blogger forum is most efficient. A wizard-level contributor named nitecruzr has kindly told me how to react, by means of a sort of Hiroshima button (which I simply hadn't noticed up until he pointed out its presence to me). Normally, all the Japanese comments have disappeared forever, along with the evening rays of the imperial sun. But I wouldn't be surprised if the pest reappears in future unexpected kamikaze attacks on my Antipodes. At least I know now how to gun him down.

New Google gadget

There's a new Google gadget called sidewiki. To be able to use it, you need to equip your browser with the latest version of the Google Toolbar. Click the banner on the left to visit a website that invites you to obtain and install this Google Toolbar.

For the moment, I'm playing around with this new gadget, to get a feeling for its behavior. My first impression leads me to see this new Google thing as an extremely potent device, since you can apparently attach your humble "side stuff" to any website you visit. But I haven't yet figured out how they plan to control the risk of pollution, spam, etc. We'll see. Normally, you should be able to test this gadget upon the present blog. So, go at it!

Liberate Gilad Shalit

It's marvelous to see that the Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit appears to be in perfect shape. He must now be liberated, absolutely, as soon as possible, at the same time as Palestinian prisoners. That's the only way that Gaza might be able to start its long road towards becoming a livable land.

Crime and punishment

Dostoevsky's novel has nothing to do with the crime of an adult male's sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl, and the punishment that should be meted out, in a law-abiding society, to the offender. Certain observers consider that a crime of this kind was apparently committed, three decades ago, by Roman Polanski. And Californian "justice" has finally used archaic under-the-belt tactics, in collusion with Switzerland (which has always been a "neutral nation", as we all know), to catch up with him. That's to say, they caught this distinguished gentleman in a trap, as if he were a wild beast.

If there's a trial of Polanski, we'll surely learn all the explicit details about what the hell his young "victim" was doing, with her naked ass posed in a Hollywood jacuzzi in the company of the "predator". Was she just strolling around in the neighborhood when she suddenly decided to take a bath? Talk about laughing out loud...

At a technical level, brilliant highly-paid lawyers will soon be supplying the planet's media with juicy details about the technical process of sodomizing an unwilling girl at the deep end of a jacuzzi. Indeed, there's a certain amount of explaining to be done at that bathtub level. Meanwhile, wise parents should prevent their 13-year-old daughters from ever watching a Polanski cinematographic masterpiece such as Tess, because you never know what ignominious things might happen when the poor child's back is turned.