Flag century

[Click the graphic to get a more readable view]

Concerning the flags identifying the origins of readers, the arrival of a visitor from Ghana has just enabled the Antipodes blog to hit the century mark.

Braidwood bushrangers

About a year and a half ago, I placed the following document in the Issuu system:



It's a chapter of the monograph entitled A Little Bit of Irish, which presents my maternal genealogy.

Yesterday, I was thrilled to receive a friendly comment from a woman in Australia named Kylie Clarke, whose great-great-uncles Thomas Clarke [1840-1867] and John Clarke [1844-1867] were prominent bushrangers in the Braidwood district, executed by hanging in Sydney on 25 June 1867. For a while, my great-great-uncle William Hickey [1818-1901] was a member of their gang.

Seeing one another

Please excuse me for borrowing a couple of terms from elementary mathematics:

— A relation is said to be reflexive if it works in both directions. For example, "can see" is reflexive in the sense that, if John can see Mary, then normally Mary can see John. But "loves" is not necessarily reflexive, because John can love Mary whereas the sentiment might not be reciprocal.

— A relation is said to be transitive when its effects are, as it were, cumulative. For example, "is greater than" is transitive. If X is greater than Y, and Y is greater than Z, then X is necessarily greater than Z.

A few days ago, while watching my daughter and my dog scampering over the slopes at Gamone, I found myself wondering, for a few instants, whether "can see" might be, not only a reflexive relation, but transitive too. For example, if I can see simultaneously both my daughter and my dog up on the hillside, does this mean that they can see one another? This, of course, is a stupid question. Clearly, the answer is no. For example, you might be able to see two individuals in adjacent rooms, whereas their mutual vision is blocked by a wall. In other words, "can see" is not a transitive relation.

Here's a view of the circus of Choranche, as seen from my house:

Of an evening, I often see a bright electric lamp at the far end of the valley, at the spot where I've put a red dot. This lamp has always intrigued me, for three reasons. First, it's the unique source of light in this entire direction. (In other words, as soon as the Sun goes down, when the lamp is unlit, the entire scene of the photo is plunged in darkness.) Second, I've never been able to determine with certainty the precise place where this light is located. Third, the lamp is only lit at certain short periods of the year, which don't necessarily seem to coincide with holiday dates.

Behind the red dot in the photo, the massive rock wall that fills in the horizon between the cliffs of Presles and the slopes of the Bournillon is called Chalimont. On the far side of their crest, the vast forest of Herbouilly stretches out over the Vercors plateau in the direction of Villard-de-Lans.

Just beneath the red dot in the photo, you can see a curved line of clifftops, lying above the River Bourne, which tumbles down from a break in the Chalimont (hidden, in the photo, by the cliffs of Presles). In the middle of this curved line, some seven kilometers from my house (as the crow flies), the lowest point is a pass (for experienced rock-climbers) known as the Devil's Doorway. A nearby hole in the cliff is referred to as the Gaul's Cave. Besides, it's perfectly possible that human Bronze-Age cavemen might have used this place, two or three thousand years ago, as a base camp for their summer hunting season. And somewhere between the red dot and the curved line of clifftops, there's a sizable village, St-Julien-en-Vercors, lying alongside a major road that runs from the Bourne across to the village of La-Chapelle-en-Vercors (located behind the Bournillon plateau).

At the end of my article of 26 December 2009 entitled More fallen rocks [display], I explained that, to escape from Choranche, I have to choose a route up over the surrounding mountains. The other day, I left early and headed up towards St-Julien-en-Vercors, while saying to myself that I might find time to finally elucidate the puzzle (which arose for the first time in May 2004) of the lamp at the end of the valley. By chance, the first villager I encountered happened to be (I learned later) the most informed person in existence concerning St-Julien and its surroundings. As soon as I told him I came from Choranche, he said "I've never liked that village. No charm whatsoever." I found this frankness reassuring. There was no chance that this fellow would tell me bullshit. In fact, within a few minutes, we had become firm friends, and he told me everything I needed to know about the mysterious lamp. So, here's a summary of the affair.

The light comes from a forestry hut, high up on the slopes of the Chalimont, several hundreds meters above the village of St-Julien. The hut and a surrounding forest zone belong to a retired member of the French merchant navy, who lives down at Cassis, near Marseille. He and his wife drive up to the Vercors and stay up in the hut (accessible only on foot, and surrounded by snow at present) whenever the owner has to handle various aspects of the management of his trees. Since I left my name and address, the fellow phoned me up yesterday, introducing himself with humor as my "next-door neighbor". This afternoon, I used a telephoto lens to take a photo of what I believe to be his log cabin:

[Click the photo to see an enlarged version.]

It sure looks icy up there. It seems to be so far away, and yet this Siberian scene lies just at the end of my long-focal lens.

Now, let me return to the definitions of mathematical relations at the start of this article. I said that the "can see" relation is reflexive. So, since I can see the lamp of this log cabin up on the slopes of the Chalimont, then the occupants should be able to see the lights of my house at Gamone. When I asked the owner what he could actually see from his log cabin when he looked in the direction of Choranche, I was surprised to learn that he can apparently see many interesting places. If I understand correctly, of an evening, he can see so many lights that he's not at all sure which one is my house at Gamone. Usually, he has a clear view of the autoroute that leads south in the direction of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, on clear days, he can often detect a celebrated mountain range in the south of France: the Cévennes.

That last detail set me thinking. If I can see my neighbor up on the slopes of the Chalimont, and he can see straight down to the south of France, then what a pity that the "can see" relationship is not transitive... otherwise I too should be able to gaze down at the south of France. This, of course, is totally unthinkable. From Gamone, I can't even see as far south as the first village in the Drôme, Saint-Eulalie, which is no more than a kilometer away.

During the first half of the 19th century, the French engineer Claude Chappe invented and installed a vast semaphore system throughout France, which concretized the transitive nature of the "communicate with" relation. During the Napoleonic Wars, for example, a series of Chappe towers could receive and retransmit information so rapidly that a message could be sent from one side of France to the other in a quarter of an hour. Now, that approach would in fact enable my Chalimont neighbor to inform me visually, every evening, what the weather had been like down in the south of France during the afternoon. He could use his powerful lamp to send me messages in Morse code. In fact, this won't be necessary, because I've already given him, not only my phone number, but my email address. Still, I get a thrill out of thinking that, at Gamone, I'm a mere hair's breadth away from being able to gaze down upon Provence.

Funny spam

It's rare to receive spam that's frankly funny. Here's a delightful specimen that reached me a couple of days ago:

Good Day, I am Fadhil Mohammad an accountant with Turk Ekonomi Bankasi A.S in Turkey. I want to ask your attention to receive Funds on my behalf, as you co-incidentally bears the same name with my late client. The purpose of my contacting you is because I need someone who can receive it for our mutual benefits. On your response, I will send you the full details and more information about myself and the funds. Yours sincerely, Fadhil Mohammad

As you can see, I'm about to become a wealthy man for a precise reason: namely, Fadhil Mohammad's "late client" was apparently named Skyvington. What an extraordinary surprise. I was totally unaware that I had a wealthy relative in Turkey. The funniest aspect of Fadhil's email is the header, which is particularly user-friendly:

He was smart enough to send off his shit email to a list of "undisclosed recipients". Nevertheless, Fadhil doesn't seem to have a firm grip on the English language. Somebody had apparently informed him that emails of this kind fall into a category known as spam. So, to make sure that his email is recognized as belonging to the correct category, Fadhil has inserted the word SPAM, explicitly, at the head of his subject line. That way, there's no way in the world that his email might be mistaken for something that it's not intended to be.

Fadhil sounds like a nice guy, and he has given me a good laugh. So, I plan to reward him with a sizable cash bonus for kindly informing me about this money left by my late relative in Turkey. In fact, my inherent generosity and highly-developed spirit of Christian charity persuade me to let Fadhil keep the whole bloody jackpot.

CORRECTION: The joke's on me. After examining more closely the header of Fadhil's email, I realize that the term SPAM was not actually used by the author of the email. It has beeen inserted, somewhere along the line, by a diligent spam filter. That's the first time I've ever seen such a warning, which probably indicates the exceptional purity of Fadhil's production. On second thoughts, I've decided to reduce the cash bonus I intend to give him. And I've been thinking of using this windfall money from my late relative in Turkey to buy a yacht and go sailing down along the coast of Somalia.

Irish law on blasphemy

On this first day of the new decade, Ireland's medieval law on blasphemy becomes operational.

My article of 26 November 2009 entitled Damnable Irish Catholic behavior [display] evoked a report on disgusting sexual crimes involving children committed by Catholic personnel in Ireland. Today, it's frankly preposterous that this same nation should be intent upon promulgating a law against blasphemy. This ugly law must be repealed as soon as possible!

People might react by claiming that Ireland is an independent nation and that the Irish have the right to outlaw blasphemy if they so desire. In other words, if Ireland wants to remain backward, it's none of my business. Well, I would reply that, since the creation of the entity known as Europe, everything that's decided in Europe in the way of new laws is the business of every European. But there's a stronger reason for worry. This kind of archaic law about blasphemy is wind in the sails of extremist Muslims who've been lobbying at a UN level for the drafting of new international laws designed to protect religion... which means, of course, their religion and religious customs.

Decade dog

I'm told that the most spectacular image on this first night of the new decade is the so-called Blue Moon. It isn't really blue at all, of course, but merely full... like countless New Year drinkers at the present moment. But I found a better photographic subject to symbolize this moment for me: the end of a decade in the constant company of Sophia, and the start of a new one.

Five minutes ago, when I took this photo in the kitchen, not even the flash disturbed the deep slumber of my darling dog. At the present moment, on the contrary, after suddenly waking up and demanding that I open the door, she's racing around and barking on the slopes. I've often said that it takes no more than a farting fox on the crest of a nearby mountain to cause Sophia to spring back into action.

Reality of revels

In about five minutes, the first decade of the 21st century will be drawing to a close in France. And festivities are under way.

I've just noticed a press article indicating that, throughout France this evening, some 45,000 police and gendarmes are deployed to make sure that peace prevails.

Ray of hope for our devils

For many years, the marsupial known as the Tasmanian devil has been the victim of a terrible form of facial cancer that is so contagious that it could well drive these precious creatures to extinction.

An article in The New York Times reveals the existence of a ray of hope [display]. It has always saddened my heart to hear that these fabulous beats have been suffering and dying, and it would be utterly marvelous if modern genetics could save them.

In another cancer domain, concerning human beings, scientists at the UK-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have catalogued the genetic maps of skin and lung cancer, and identified specific DNA mutations that can lead to malignant tumors.

There's something beautifully harmonious in the idea that we humans and the Tasmanian devils are all awaiting the magic benefits of scientific research. There's no sense in our praying, of course, since devils—like atheists—don't seek salvation from God.

Changed my Twitter name

I've noticed that hardly anybody uses an underscore character in their Twitter name. So, I've changed mine from William_Sky to Skyvington.

Within the system, this modification appears to be transparent. So, I don't have to notify anybody in any way whatsoever.

It might look a little pretentious of me to refer to myself by a simple surname... like Charlemagne. In fact, it's great to have a surname that is so rare (maybe due to a spelling error committed by an ancestor) that no other user of Twitter has ever seized it. Now, if some other Skyvington decides to use Twitter, I'm afraid that he or she might be obliged to decline their identity by adopting a precise name such as Emmanuelle_Skyvington or François_Skyvington, for example. Sorry about that. But, as they say in the Bible: First come, first served! Besides, I get a kick out of thinking of myself (once again, as they say in the Bible) as a patriarch... like, say, Mr Moses, Esquire.

Bertrand Russell on God

Throughout my younger years, the books of the English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] were no doubt my main non-fictional reading. Even today, my copy of Russell's big History of Western Philosophy (which I bought in Paris in 1962) is located permanently on a bookshelf just alongside my bed.

Whenever I stroll through London's Trafalgar Square, I recall this photo of the 87-year-old white-maned philosopher standing among the lions at the foot of Nelson's Column at a 1959 rally of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

This evening, it was a pleasure for me to discover this interview on the Dawkins website:



Naturally, I always imagined Russell first and foremost as a philosopher and a mathematician (whom I approached initially through his work in the domain of symbolic logic), and only then as an outspoken freethinker and a nuclear-disarmament campaigner. He impressed me greatly, of course, by describing himself explicitly as an atheist... at a time when this term was hardly fashionable. I tended to interpret this, however, as Russell's way of telling us that he simply didn't have the time or the inclination to be concerned about questions of divinity. That's to say, I imagined him rather as an agnostic, since I never really felt that Russell had provided us with convincing proofs that God did not exist... if indeed such proofs were thinkable.

Today, looking back upon my admiration of Russell, I see him retrospectively as a precursor of Richard Dawkins. Or, rather, I imagine Dawkins as an intellectual descendant of Russell. There is something similar in their elegant style, their power of inquiry and expression, and their profound humanism.

In God we don't trust

Theoretically, in the USA, the national legislative body has no power to deal with religion. That's to say, church and state are separated, as stipulated in a clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Nevertheless, the nation's official motto is "In God we trust".

Since 1978, an association of freethinkers named the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Wisconsin, has been striving to erode the grip of God's trustees. Among other things, they've got around to designing what look like stained-glass windows of a new kind. Here's their Dawkins model:

[Click the banner to display a humongous version]

The word "trust", with financial connotations, can be found in French dictionaries. The presence of this verb on US banknotes lends weight to the view that the power of the dollar is, in some mysterious way, divine. This money is backed by God, as it were. I used to feel the same way about the basic monetary unit of modern Israel, the shekel.

Here in Europe, we've got a lot of work to do before the euro shines divinely like a piece of silver warmed by the hand of God. The underlying problem, of course, is that the mythological pagan creature Europa was not exactly the kind of female who would be welcomed into the home of a normal God-fearing family. As for the idea of "In Zeus we trust", this just wouldn't sound convincing to a serious banker.

Letter from Polanski to French philosopher

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has received a letter from the cinéaste Roman Polanski, who authorized its publication.

[Click the portraits to display the letter]

An English translation of Lévy's initial reaction to the Polanski case was published on 27 October 2009 in the US liberal news website co-founded by the Greek-American author and syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington. [Click the banner to read this article]

Announcing blog posts via Twitter

For the moment, I'm definitely not an addicted user of Twitter. In fact, I've only ever sent out three "tweets" (I hope my use of jargon is correct), and I only follow one "tweeter": an interesting Parisian woman (working in the medical field) who once let me use her excellent photos taken inside the Hôtel Dieu hospital.

However, I'm thinking of using Twitter systematically to announce new blog posts. For the moment, I haven't made up my mind whether to make such announcements in English, in French or in both languages.

Fabulous fig story

I'm intrigued by the power of Richard Dawkins as a writer, and I've often tried to determine the ingredients of his amazing artistry.

First, of course, this erudite Oxford professor has a profound mastery, not only of zoology (his basic field), but of neighboring sciences such as biology and paleontology. Besides, Dawkins is quite at ease in fields such as games theory and statistics, and he's even a competent computer programmer. The second obvious ingredient of Dawkins' success as a writer is his virtuosity in the domain of the English language, which he handles constantly with the sensitivity of a poet. His scientific and literary achievements are reflected in the fact that Dawkins, in Britain, is both a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. When appropriate, he can fall deliberately into the casual vernacular of a journalist writing in a popular magazine, just as he can switch on instantly, if need be, the didactic language of a schoolmaster. He can throw a tender personal anecdote into the middle of pages of scientific explanations:

I was driving through the English countryside with my daughter Juliet, then aged six, and she pointed out some flowers by the wayside. I asked her what she thought wildflowers were for. She gave a rather thoughtful answer. "Two things," she said. "To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us." I was touched by this and sorry I had to tell her that it wasn't true.

Ever since 1976, through ten splendid books, Dawkins has been explaining that many commonly-held beliefs are simply not true. But above all, he has been telling us, more importantly, what is true, especially in the Darwinian domain of evolution.

The first Dawkins book I read was The Blind Watchmaker, which stunned me instantly. That was the first time I had ever heard of the possibility (today, I would say the certainty) that, on the early inanimate planet Earth, a crude mineral self-copying entity composed solely of clay or crystal had evolved into the fabulous DNA replicator that has since become the unique basis of all life on the planet.

Dawkins comes through as a great animal-lover. I'm not talking of the ordinary kind of person who gets carried away (like me) by dogs, donkeys, squirrels, hawks and so forth. No, the love expressed by Dawkins would be better described as awe when confronted with the inbuilt technology found in countless creatures. In the Blind Watchmaker book, he devoted an entire opening chapter to the amazing design of the navigational system of bats.

Several of these delightful creatures are lodged here at Gamone, where they offer me aeronautical shows in the twilight on late summer afternoons... like the fruit bats in my native Grafton.

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins expresses his utter amazement concerning another creature of which there are ample specimens here at Gamone: the spider. Their web-building operations, as explained by Dawkins, are fantastic.

Towards the end of the same book, we are presented with an even more amazing story: that of the common fig.





Now, insofar as I'm particularly fond of figs (receiving fruit from Madeleine and Dédé, as well as from Bob's tree... while waiting for my own—given to me by Natacha and Alain—to become productive), I had imagined that I probably knew at least a thing or two about this fruit. Well, it turns out that, before reading Dawkins, I was totally and dismally ignorant on the subject of figs. First, what we imagine as the so-called "fruit" is not at all a true fruit. It's rather a strange garden of countless delicate fig flowers. What we see as the fig's skin might be thought of as the "earth" in which these flowers are growing. And the garden has curved, over evolutionary time, into a concave bulb that hides the flowers. Furthermore, inside this closed garden, the fig flowers live and procreate thanks to the complex services rendered by a community of devoted little male and female wasps, whose entire existence and survival are inextricably linked to the fig tree in question. In order to understand what happens in this mysterious garden, I started to draw a few diagrams like this one, which indicates the four principal actors: male and female fig flowers, female wasps and wingless male wasps.

The female wasps (made pregnant prior to their actual birth) stuff pollen from male flowers into their breasts and escape from the fig garden through holes in the "earth" burrowed by males. As soon as a female wasp locates another "garden" with female flowers waiting to be pollinated, she crawls in through the tiny hole at the extremity of the fig, maybe tearing off her wings in the process. Apparently we crunch such microscopic Agaondae wasps every time we bite into a fig, but they can do us no harm. Within the confines of this blog, I certainly don't intend to try to delve more deeply into the fabulous fig story. In any case, Dawkins has already told this story fully and splendidly. I recommend his book to everybody who's sensitive to all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.

Planting peonies

Near Crest, a half-hour drive to the south of Choranche, a reputed nursery named Rivière specializes in peonies (pivoines in French).

[Click the photo to visit their website.]

At this time of the year, bare-roots peonies can be purchased for planting. You have to order them by phone or Internet, indicating the precise varieties that you want, and there's a delay of a few days before the packages are ready. I ordered eight different peonies: four tree plants and four herbaceous plants.

Each plant is packaged individually in a sealed cellophane bag crammed with natural moss. This packaging enabled me to wait for the snow to melt at Gamone before starting to plant the peonies. Finally, I carried out the planting last Tuesday morning, in unpleasant cold and muddy conditions. But the pleasure of opening up each package and taking care of the precious plants compensated for the discomfort. Here's an unopened package:

When you slit open the cellophane, the contents emit a wonderful aroma of damp moss and wood.

Once the moss is shaken off, the moist bare peoney roots have such a delightful wine-hued aspect and vegetal aroma that you might feel like eating them. (Well, that's what I felt.)

I'll wait until spring before describing exactly what I've now planted at Gamone in the way of roses and peonies.

More fallen rocks

Last Monday morning, I set out early to drive into town. Half a kilometer down the road, a roadblock had been set up just before the Pont Picard (which marks the entry into Pont-en-Royans) due to rocks that had tumbled down from Mount Baret during the night. This sight is becoming familiar.

The employee told me that several rocks had fallen, reaching the roadway at distinct spots over a distance of fifty meters. There seemed to be four separate rocks.

The "footprints" of rock #1, before it terminated its itinerary in the middle of the road, can be seen in the macadam. Rock #2 must have bounced off the slopes at a certain height and landed directly like a bomb on the edge of the roadway, where the violence of the impact shattered it into fragments of creamy limestone.

Rock #3 was halted by the protective net, whereas rock #4 smashed a wooden post, broke through the netting and left a telltale hole in the roadside earth where it bounced before ending its trajectory down on the edge of the Bourne.

An hour later, a civil-security helicopter was flying over the scene, taking a close look at the spot on the top of the mountain where the rocks had been dislodged. Their verdict: Bigger rocks were poised, ready to roll down the slopes. So, the road was immediately closed... probably for several weeks. To escape from Gamone without going through Pont-en-Royans, there are several solutions, all of which involve roundabout routes up over the surrounding mountains. You might say that this is the price I pay for living in such an exotic setting as Choranche.

Sophia's latest larder

I put a bag of old walnuts onto the compost heap, because some of them had been attacked by insects.

Not surprisingly, Sophia saw this as wasteful behavior, which she's not prepared to tolerate. So, on wintry afternoons, whenever Sophia feels that she hasn't consumed a sufficient quantity of calories to keep out the cold, she'll have a handy larder.

Time-honored season's greetings

A French website offers marvelous specimens of the season's greetings over the years.


A thought enters my mind, but I have trouble expressing it: Has the Internet replaced the Xmas season... as it were ?

Sophia recycling

Maybe you've got a surplus wad of insulation material in your attic, and you don't know what to do with it. Well, Sophia can give you an idea for recycling it... as an excellent dog mattress!

Normally, this kind of stuff shouldn't be lying on my kitchen floor. I had taken this wad out of the attic with the intention of stuffing a few strands into a crack on top of an outside door frame. Then, when the tempest started to blow up yesterday, I rapidly collected everything that was scattered around outside. So, overnight, the wad remained on my kitchen floor. This morning, returning from a trip into the village, I found my Sophia stretched out comfortably on top of it. I believe that both cats and dogs have a remarkable intuition for detecting cozy places to lie down. They're surely equipped, in their chromosomes, with some kind of a soft-mattress-detector gene.

Gérard dislikes automobiles

Mounted on his old horse, Don Quixote attacked windmills with nothing more than his knight's lance.

France's celebrated actor Gérard Depardieu is suspected (but not yet formally accused) of having attacked an innocent automobile parked in a Paris street in the vicinity of Gérard's apartment. He operated almost barehanded, so it appears. The damages are brutal: a broken windshield and doors kicked in.

Observers are wondering what might have motivated such an assault. It has been suggested that this act of destruction might be interpreted as fallout from Copenhagen's failure to achieve what had been expected in rules stipulating cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. It's a fact that the automobile is looked upon as a major culprit in this domain, along with farting cows. So, maybe the actor's behavior was a symbolic personal expression of his profound desire that our children might inherit a cleaner planet. In that case, though, why did he perform this noble act in the middle of the night, in a somewhat stealthy manner, instead of operating in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of environmental activists and joyous spectators?

If indeed this hypothesis of an aversion to automobiles turned out to be correct, then it would be nice if Gérard were to go along to the police station, when he is summoned, on horseback, like Don Quixote. This would make a huge positive impact upon global-warming protagonists throughout the world... and might even persuade the municipal authorities in Paris—who have already reintroduced bicycles with much success—to examine the possibility of reverting massively to horses for transport inside the City of Light.

Realistically, we must not exclude the possibility that alcohol and aggressiveness might have played a role in this act of violence. If that were the case, then the lucky car-owner should look forward to the pleasure of soon being able to drive around Paris in a famous pristine vehicle. He could put photographic banners on his brand-new doors to thank publicly the benefactor... referred to affectionately as Gégé.

This automobile—the Gégémobile—could rapidly become a unique and highly-priced collector's item.