Happiness and harmony

For those who like watching opening/closing ceremonies, I'm sure that last night's TV transmission from Vancouver was a huge source of happiness. Personally, I seem to remember that I abandoned TV transmissions of opening/closing ceremonies back at the time of the Sydney Olympics. I was overcome by a nauseating feeling of embarrassment when I discovered that the artistic director of the panorama of Aussie history and lifestyle had imagined a sequence revealing that hordes of dwellers in suburbia devote their weekends to mowing their lawns. Big deal! What an awesome bunch of people they must be in Australia! Believe it or not: They cut the grass on their lawns with power mowers! Each of the actors in this scene took delivery of a big cardboard box containing his personal lawn mower. The impact was too much for me. You can't fight nausea. I decided at that instant to give up forever the habit of watching opening/closing ceremonies.

Should we be alarmed or simply saddened by the accidental death of a 21-year-old tobogganist from Georgia? Long ago, I recall a brief Internet conversation with a woman who was disturbed to have discovered, during her genealogical research, that a great-uncle, working in New South Wales as a commercial traveler, had been mortally intoxicated in a hotel room by a cyanide-based product that was once used to fumigate bed mattresses. In those days, in many countries, there were tales of hotel guests who went to bed in similar circumstances, and died peacefully in their sleep. My friend exclaimed: "What a terrible way to die!" She was surprised to find me disagreeing: "On the contrary, it's surely one of the most harmonious ways imaginable of dying. God had decided that this salesman had visited his last customer. So, the Almighty calmly drew a line under his final order." I think it's a bit like that in the case of the dead tobogganist.

Meanwhile, here at Gamone, I'm getting fed up with the recurrent whiteness. I've often wondered whether the quiet and friendly personality of many Scandinavians might not be the longtime outcome of endless months of pure whiteness. In that respect, I'm a bad Scandinavian. With a bit more snow, I could well end up in some kind of nasty neurotic state. My dog Sophia, on the other hand, is in a constant state of happiness.

As I pointed out already in an earlier blog, the fluffy white world, for Sophia, is exactly as it should be. Incidentally, that's probably the main reason why the winter hasn't yet made me neurasthenic. It's such a joy for me to witness constantly the happiness of my dog.

My donkeys don't seem to be greatly troubled by the snow, particularly when they drop in for their massive daily dose of oats. They've taught themselves to gouge out the snow with their hoofs and snouts to access grass. On the other hand, they advance cautiously through the smooth snow, step by step, because they've discovered that the hidden earth can be uneven.

Their fur is so long and thick that one is tempted to imagine that it's the snow that actually causes the fur to grow this way. But that thinking would, of course, be bad biology. Meanwhile, in the latest issue of Scientific American, which arrived in my mailbox a fortnight ago, there's a front-page story entitled Why humans have no fur. Its subtitle: And how evolving bare skin led to big brains. Goodness me, we're expected to digest such a vast assortment of basic knowledge in our modern existence. When I've assimilated that article, I'll be able to go out and boast to the donkeys that it's all very well to be able to wander around in the snow, oblivious of the cold, awaiting solely the next bucket of oats... but I've got a bigger brain!

As for the birds, they seem to be happy with the seeds that I leave out for them. But I've learned that the situation is a little more irregular than what I had imagined. The black and yellow tits visit the wooden container, where each bird only stops long enough to pick up a sunflower seed in its beak. For the finches, though, it's a quite different procedure. They seem to be interested only in picking up seeds of other kinds that I've strewn around on the ground. If I leave the seeds in a dish, no bird ever goes near it, no doubt suspecting the dish to be some kind of a trap. So, I have to empty the dish of seeds onto the snow.

As they fly in and out of the bird-house, often waiting politely for the previous occupants to leave before barging in, the tits are so well organized that you could almost imagine that they have radio contact with a control tower. I notice however that all is not necessarily so harmonious in the existence of the finches. Whenever there's a small group of finches darting around on the ground, they seem to start attacking, or at least intimidating, one another. It's quite amazing. As soon as one bird has picked up a seed, it often moves aggressively towards a neighboring bird. I've been examining the erratic behavior of the finches, and wondering whether there might be some kind of hierarchy in the finch colony, resulting in a pecking order as for chickens. Thinking that Google might be able to enlighten me, I typed in the words "finches pecking order", which directed me to a review of a book: The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, published 16 years ago [display]. With a little astonishment, I discovered that Weiner's book is included in the bibliography of Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins. My naive question about the birds at Gamone had landed me right back in the middle of Darwinian interrogations. Finches (rather than iguanas and tortoises) were in fact the true heroes of Darwin's revelations on the Galapagos.

Apparently Weiner's book describes the efforts of a couple of English-born scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent two years on the desolate Galapagos island of Daphne Major studying the beaks of finches. [Click the banner to explore the finch story.] During their stay on the island, in the drought conditions of 1976-77, Peter and Rosemary discovered that "the average beak size of the larger seed-eating finches increased by half a millimeter", enabling the birds to tackle bigger and tougher seeds. [I sometimes feel that you have to be English to possess the necessary enthusiasm and stamina to make that kind of discovery!]

I'm living in a wonderful world [a world full of wonder]. Clearly, I can no longer go outside to give oats to my donkeys, or seeds to the wild birds of Gamone, without my being impregnated unexpectedly by marvelous evocations of science.

Bad day for a ladybird

Towards the end of last summer, I was happy to find ladybirds (known also as ladybugs or lady beetles) at several places near the house, since they have a good reputation for devouring aphids on rose bushes. You can even purchase a stock of ladybirds, for your garden, through the Internet. Well, my ladybird colony still seems to exist at Gamone. From time to time, I come upon specimens on the window sills, whereupon I place the insect in what I imagine to be a better spot for survival... on the earth of one of my potted oleander shrubs (which I have to keep inside the house every winter).

Now, it's possible that a specialist in this field might inform me that the chances of a ladybird hibernating successfully in an indoor oleander bush are no greater than if I were to leave it where I first saw it. I guess it's the same old illusion, which has pursued me ever since I was a child, of imagining that I might save the life of a tiny bird fallen from its nest...

In any case, there are other risks for a ladybird that might wish to spend winter inside my house. This enlarged photo (of poor quality) reveals a drama that has been unfolding alongside my desk for the last twenty minutes.

When I closely inspected the battlefield with the help of a big magnifying glass (the one I use when I'm consulting archives in Grenoble or Valence), I discovered that the spider was enclosing the ladybird in a tight silk shroud. As I mentioned in my article entitled Fabulous fig story [display], spider webs are explained brilliantly in Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins. It's his fault, rather than that of the Dalai Lama, if my house is a little more cobwebby at times than it used to be.

During the time it has taken me to write the present article, the spider and its wrapped-up prey have disappeared behind my bookshelves. It's obviously one of those creatures who doesn't like its privacy being invaded through the Internet.

Darwin Day

A year ago, I wrote my first blog article on Darwin Day [display].

This National Photographic photo must be dedicated grudgingly to the memory of our hero, because Darwin apparently thought that the fabulous marine iguana, symbol of the Galapagos Islands, was ugly. He also dared to straddle the back of a Galapagos tortoise.

That's not the first time we've heard of otherwise intelligent individuals behaving as silly sporting tourists. So, we should be prepared to pardon posthumously the young naturalist for his frivolous behavior. In any case, Galapagos is where the theory of evolution seems to have been conceived. I imagine these islands as a sacred place: our Jerusalem.

In Christian theology, certain great figures have been linked to animals.

The four Evangelists are associated with symbolic creatures: a lion for Mark, an ox for Luke, an eagle for John, etc. It's high time to update theology. I proclaim: Henceforth, our beloved Saint Charles D will be represented by an iguana, our living Saint Richard D by a tortoise.

Be a creative critic!

This intellectual exercise won't take you more than a minute, and it should be fun. Click this illustration (signed by an artist named Matthew Martin) to access a short article in The Sydney Morning Herald whose title is Fast lifestyle, faster sperm. The author of this article is Nicky Phillips. Having read this specimen of Australian journalism, I invite you to invent a terse summary of its content and style. Your suggestion can be anything from a single word up to an in-depth analysis. You might like to send me your suggestions as comments. Go for it!

Spoilsport

The dictionary informs us that a spoilsport is somebody who mars the pleasure of others. Wretched individuals who behave this way are sometimes described as killjoys or wet blankets, and I would imagine that my Aussie compatriots, great lovers of sport, could supply me with further appropriate synonyms.

I experienced my first stirrings of spoilsportsmanship when I was a boy in Grafton. At our high school, there were all sorts of competitions. A few of them were of a scholarly nature (which I often won), but most of these competitions were in sporting domains... between individuals, or school divisions known as "houses", or even between neighboring schools... provided, of course, that they weren't Catholic schools, since our community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants preferred to avoid communicating with those people. Well, from an early age, I was often struck by the sheer inanity of sporting competitions, matches and championships. I enjoyed fun and games (such as mixed doubles in tennis, where I could observe the girls at close range as they served), and I liked to participate in certain competitive activities such as cycling and rowing. Swimming competitions, too, could be terribly exciting, especially when (as explained by my compatriot Clive James in his Unreliable Memoirs) the girls would get out of the water in their dripping Speedo costumes which, in those days, were made out of transparent skin-clinging textiles. But I could never understand why, in general, we should scream for the victory of one participant in a competition, or one side in a match, rather than another competitor or the other side. After all, weren't they all playing the same game, to the best of their respective abilities?

These days, I often watch competitive sport on TV, but I generally feel that I'm an idiot in doing so. Spending an hour or so following lap after lap of an F1 motor race (as I sometimes do) is surely just as dumb as watching a curling tournament. Or, worse still, a competition in synchronized swimming: no doubt one of the most stupid competitive sports ever imagined.

In a recent article entitled Little gods [display], I mentioned the brilliant writing of Christopher Hitchens (whose Twitter name is hitchbitch). Well, in the Newsweek magazine, Hitchens has just written the ultimate spoilsport article, entitled Fool's Gold [access].

He suggests that "the Olympics and other international competitions breed conflict and bring out the worst in human nature". Personally, I couldn't agree more. It doesn't take much imagination or logical skill, simply a good dose of common sense, to arrive at an obvious corollary. Organized sport is a universal pest to be likened, in its harmful effects, to organized religion.

Feeding the snow birds

During the night, there was a heavy fall of snow at Gamone. As soon as the sun rose, in a misty sky, groups of small birds started to drop in on the seed supply that I maintain beneath my bedroom window.

There are three categories of visitors. The balls of fat attract tits of the variety designated as charbonnière (coalman), because the males have a black apron on their breast that brings to mind the appearance of the men who used to deliver bags of charcoal for heating. Other tits aim directly for the heap of black sunflower seeds inside the bird-house. Meanwhile, finches prefer to scratch around on the snowy ground beneath the bird-house.

Google variant of Twitter

Many people persist in believing wrongly that Twitter is strictly for the birds. Often, this merely means that they've misunderstood what it's all about, or that they haven't yet got around to trying it out in a hands-on fashion.

Google has just announced its own variant of this kind of communications device. It's called Google buzz. Click the banner to access an article that describes the tool, or watch the following video:




Personally, I haven't yet got around to trying to use it. I'll keep you informed, through my blog, of my buzz experience.

BREAKING NEWS: I've just received an invitation from Google to get started as a buzzer. So, I've sent my first buzz... about feeding the birds in the snow. My buzz name (I believe) is William Skyvington. So, if you happen to be a buzzer, please let me know if you can find me, and please tell me your buzz name. For the moment, I'm not too sure what it's all about.

Mystery as philosophy

We Aussies never forget that the world is a stage, and that we are actors. No matter what our field, we have a knack of looking the part.

It goes without saying that, with my years, my rural existence in France and my thinning hair (nearly seven years ago, already, when Natacha took this photo), I'm no exception.

David Chalmers is the 43-year-old professor of philosophy at the Australian National University in Canberra. His major claim to fame was the invention of the concept of the so-called "hard problem of consciousness", which simply means that we naked apes inhabiting the planet Earth find it difficult, if not impossible, to fathom the phenomenon of consciousness. Apart from that, what else is new? Well, it appears that David, armed with a powerful Canon camera, has become the official photographer of attendees at international philosophy conferences [display], but his photos are rather dull, not particularly philosophical.

A British philosopher, Colin McGinn, has gone one step further by declaring that the Chalmers enigma has no solution. That's to say, he thinks that we'll never know why we think as we do. Big deal. McGinn has become the leader of the school of New Mysterianism.

Now, it wouldn't be so bad if these guys who claim that we'll never know everything about everything were to hibernate calmly in the background, while awaiting further revelations. But no! They attract adepts, some of whom are quite bright fellows (atheists, of course), intent upon gaining recognition.

One such latter-day mysterian is the US professor of psychology Jerry Fodor. I have the impression that this distinguished academic is upset about not being on the Dawkins/Pinker bandwagon. He feels left out of things. So, he and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini have decided to create a storm in a teacup by bringing out a book with a provocative title: What Darwin Got Wrong. It's hot off the press, so I haven't had a chance of reading it yet. But, needless to say, through its mere title, this book is going to be divine manna for all the nitwit young-earth creationists and advocates of so-called intelligent design. It's just too good to have a reputed US professor of philosophy shouting out that Darwin got things wrong.

Google video during the Superbowl

The title of the video is Parisian Love, and it suggests that Google can help a Superbowl spectator to find his French true love in Paris.



I managed to do that a long time ago... with no help from Google. As a non-American, I left out the bit about finding a church in Paris. As for Emmanuelle's lovely crib, I seem to recall that it was a gift from Christine's parents. There too, we were able to get by without Google. Thank goodness for that. In those days, Google didn't even exist!

Bretons at play

I thought I knew a thing or two about what goes on in the native land of my ex-wife Christine, but I've had occasions to discover that many Breton traditions escape me. The last time I visited Christine, she and our son took me to a simple country tavern where local musicians had decided to get together for an evening of Irish music. Although I was familiar with musical evenings in Paris cafés (where I used to play guitar and sing Leonard Cohen stuff), I have to say that this event in Brittany was one of the most unexpected and extraordinary musical evenings I had ever experienced. It was ostensibly a normal tavern with ordinary customers (like Christine and me) dropping in for drinks. But I soon discovered that almost every individual who stepped through the door of that tavern that evening was accompanied by a musical instrument: violin, flute, guitar, bodhrán, etc. By the end of the evening, we were among the few non-playing people, surrounded by some thirty musicians... who all managed to collaborate splendidly!

Today, for the first time, I heard about Breton wrestling, called gouren. You lose, apparently, as soon as you get knocked off your feet. Thankfully, during all the years I've known Christine, she never once tried to do that. This video shows Breton girls wrestling on a beach:



In traditional bouts, the grand champion receives a special trophy: a live ram, which he has the right to hoist up onto his shoulders.

I appreciate the symbolism of this trophy. Back in the days when I had a small flock of sheep at Gamone, I was often knocked off my feet by a blow from an otherwise friendly ram. Funnily enough, they always attack you from behind, and when you're least expecting it.

Now, there has been a court case in Brittany because the league opposing cruelty to animals considers that there's something immoral in the idea of awarding a live ram to the winner of a wrestling tournament. But the legal judgment was most appropriate: the animal-rights plaintiff got knocked off his feet.

French war toys

A French fishing-trawler operator who snapped this early-morning trajectory on his mobile phone might have imagined that he had sighted a falling star.

But meteorites drop downwards, whereas this fellow was moving upwards. In fact, he had photographed a test of a French ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] launched from a nuclear submarine.

The submarine is Le Terrible. No need for translation.

I'm convinced that humanity is likely to succumb, one of these days, to some kind of a "nuclear contingency" (to use a nice expression that doesn't even smell too much like death). Between now and then, I'm not entirely unhappy to know that some of the nastiest toys happen to be held in the hands of the French Republic. As a prospective citizen of the world, I'm saddened by the fact that hordes of my fellow-citizens appear to be bloodthirsty mindless morons whose skulls are stuffed full of Islamic shit and hatred, while others persist in believing politely in a magic all-knowing "God" up in the skies. Maybe, one of these days, when they all find reason and come back down to earthly objectivity, France will be able to teach them how to launch fluffy Disney-like international ballistic snowballs. Meanwhile, I love to believe in happy-ending fairy stories...

Sustainable driver

I grew up in the midst of four-wheel vehicles. (I was also immersed, from as far back as I can remember, in an exciting environment of vehicles of a two-wheeled kind: track-racing bicycles, but that's another story.) My grandfather Ernest Skyvington was the Ford dealer in Grafton, and his son Bill (my father) was employed for a while as a mechanic in this business. In the late '40s, my mother, Kath, used to drive us to school in a Jeep, while her Walker family (dairy farmers in Waterview, South Grafton) even got around in an old Pontiac.

Well, in spite of this, I never acquired any kind of lust for automobiles. I obtained my driver's license before leaving home but, during my time in Sydney, when I was employed as a computer programmer with IBM, the idea of purchasing a car never entered my mind. Apart from racing bikes, my only objects of fascination and desire (to call a spade a spade) were computers and romantic female nymphs who played the piano. It was only in France, after seeing Christine at the wheel of a primitive Citroën, that I finally got around to purchasing my first car.

These days, I believe that one of the most noble roles of an automobile in rural France consists of taking you to a nearby train station where you can maybe hop on to a fabulous TGV (high-speed train) to travel rapidly to another corner of the land. Besides, if your car happens to be rather ancient (like my 1996 Citroën ZX), then you can leave it parked near the train station with no worries that it might get scratched or bumped or stolen.

Here at Gamone, there has never been a garage... because automobiles didn't even exist at the time my house came into existence. So, my car has always stayed out in the open, in the sun, rain, hail, ice, snow, etc. At certain times of the year, oil drops from the blossoms of my giant linden trees and leaves a dirty black stain on the roof of the car. At other times, it gets covered in red dust blown across the Mediterranean from the deserts of Africa. Once, I used to scrub the car clean every so often. But now, I generally wait for the rain to lend a helping hand, and I only intervene when it's impossible to see out through the windows.

At the height of summer, it's a luxury to be able to invite Sophia to jump into the car for a trip down to the Bourne, for a swim. Then, on the return trip, the soaked dog, with muddy paws, lies down on the upholstery of the rear seat to dry herself. Later, I end up taking out my vacuum cleaner to remove a thick coating of dog hairs from inside the vehicle. Another luxury consists of being able to use my car as a utility vehicle for transporting rubbish, or for picking up a few bags of cement. For bulkier stuff, I hook on a light trailer.

Christine once remarked that the old façade of my house at Gamone (before restoration) bore scars, like an adventurer who had traveled through many dangerous lands.

This is not surprising in the case of a modest residence that was probably erected shortly after the French Revolution of 1789. My car, likewise, has collected a respectable set of scars, picked up mainly in Grenoble, Valence and various Dauphiné villages.

During the time that I've owned my Citroën ZX, my former neighbor Bob has got around to consuming his fifth vehicle. I have no trouble understanding why that's the case, because I've been in cars with Bob at the wheel (including my own). He's convinced that I'm an untalented and frustrating driver, because I don't whip my vehicle like Ben Hur in his chariot. Bob considers that, since the resale value of my Citroën is now zero, and since it still runs perfectly (in spite of its mileage: some 260,000 kilometers), then the logical economic solution is to carry on driving it until it falls to pieces. I agree with him. I'm the proud owner of a sustainable automobile.

This afternoon, I took the old Citroën along for its obligatory annual technical inspection. At the end of his 30-minute procedure, using all kinds of sophisticated gadgets, the fellow said: "Everything's perfect. The ZX is a sturdy Citroën model. Normally, you should be able to get another 100,000 kilometers out of yours."

Over the years, there have never, of course, been any miracles. Various parts of my Citroën have indeed given up the ghost from time to time. But, instead of throwing up my arms in anguish and rushing out to purchase a new automobile, I simply get the broken parts replaced in an excellent little Speedy garage alongside the Leclerc supermarket in St-Marcellin. I've got to know the mechanics fairly well, and they never try to cheat me on their invoices. Besides, they use an excellent computer system, built by their colleagues in Paris, which enables them to track down required spare parts efficiently and quickly.

In fact, the ultimate luxury for an automobile owner such as me is to leave the vehicle at home and go out on foot for a stroll to the village or in the hills, accompanied by my dog.

I've often said that I would wait until I had a garage here at Gamone before contemplating the replacement of my old car. Well, as of this morning, after an intense 24-hour period of earth-moving operations carried out by my friend and neighbor René Uzel, there's a broad ramp of rocky earth (very muddy for the moment) leading up to a corner of the house, which could soon become my garage. Observers wonder if it's wide enough for a garage. My Citroën has an external width—between the tips of the rear-view mirrors—of 2 meters. The distance between the stone wall of the house and the concrete pillar is 2.5 meters, and it's 6 meters deep.

Up until now, it was quite impossible to see the entire northern façade of the old house from this viewpoint. The roof on the right has been recently renovated, as you can see from the pale-colored wood. The empty zone beneath the western side of the house (where you can see a tall metal ladder leaning against a roof rafter) was used by former owners of Gamone as a hay loft. Besides the future garage, there's an available area of 60 square meters, much of which lies above the ancient stone cellar that was used as a winery. The following photo, taken at the southern side of the house by my daughter Emmanuelle in the summer of 1994, shows me dragging out this hay to burn it. I didn't yet own any farm animals, and I was afraid that the hay might catch fire.

One of these days, I would like to board in the upper part of the garage opening, and install a pair of big wooden doors. I would also cover the ugly new concrete pillar by a layer of stones.

I had intended to build a firewood-shed to the right of the new ramp, up against the embankment. In facts, I now hesitate, because I'm not sure that this view of the ancient house should be marred by the presence of a flimsy new wooden structure for storing firewood. There's an obvious constraint concerning the location of a shed for firewood. It must be located not far from the spot where my neighbor Gérard Magnat drops off from his big truck. That's to say, the shed must be near the road... since I don't want to find Gérard driving across the "lawns of Gamone" (where the inverted commas highlight the fact that my modest lawns have little in common with those, for example, of Windsor Castle). Maybe I could erect my future wood-shed (dimensions of about 1.5 m x 4 m) on the flat area to the left of my mail-box, which I have been using, up until now, as a place for hanging out my washing.

One hesitates (as Christine knows full well) before introducing any kind of new constructions into an ancient place such as Gamone. Even though it's a quite humble site (that adjective pleases me), with no pretensions towards esthetic splendor, I dislike the thought of polluting inadvertently this ancient environment, of a beautifully minimalist and austere sub-Alpine nature, with my Mickey Mouse erections.

BREAKING NEWS: I agree with Christine (who has always been my guide at Gamone) that the stark frontal aspect of the house, viewed from the north (as in the above photo of the new ramp), should not be disfigured by any kind of construction, neither up against the new embankment nor in the vicinity of the mailbox. The rustic charm and spirit of the place reside in its basic austerity, which must remain unaltered. We therefore have the impression that a convenient and inconspicuous spot to stock firewood might be beneath the overhanging roof on the slope to the right of the house.

I often think that my property at Gamone is a reflection of my life. Over the last few years, in the style of a Buddhist monk (which I'm definitely not), I've been whittling Gamone down to its bare but essential sustainable elements: me, for example.

Tomorrow's computing concepts

Many years ago, when I was visiting the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston for French TV, I recall meeting up with a young guy on the staff of their AI (artificial intelligence) group who was apparently paid to do little more than dream up ideas of a science-fiction kind about the future of computing. This friendly one-man think tank gave me a copy of his latest paper, which was a lengthy list of possible inventions, described with an abundance of freshly-coined technical words and abstract philosophical expressions. I remember that he used the AI acronym as a noun, designating what most people at that time would have called a robot. Apart from that, though, little else in his futuristic wish-list was within my conceptual grasp.

Apparently this tradition still exists at MIT. Yesterday, my friend Brahim Djioua (himself an AI researcher at the Sorbonne) sent me a link to a fascinating video about a visionary fellow named Pranav Mistry, a graduate of the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) who went on, while working on his doctorate at MIT, to dream up a fabulous approach to computing as it might exist in the near future. The following video speaks for itself, since Pranav has actually implemented many of his dreams in the form of real devices, but you may have to watch the video several times (as I did) for the astonishing messages to get through clearly.

Nativity rites

Jean Sarkozy, the president's son, married his adolescent sweetheart, Jessica Sebaoun-Darty. The following photo shows the father and the son, accompanied by their respective wives.

A son, Solal, was born to Jessica and Jean on 13 January 2010. A few days ago, I saw in the press that the baby was subjected to the Jewish tradition of circumcision, which I find archaic and physically revolting. The Christian rite of baptism is less bloody, but just as stupid today, at the start of the third millennium. In both cases, an innocent child is being enthroned as a member of an elite body of religious believers, and this membership is being established solemnly at a time when the tiny creature at the heart of the ceremony is not yet capable of any degree of intellectual discernment. What utter nonsense, perpetrated by mindless adults!

In a recent article entitled Little gods [display], I mentioned my reading a book by the great atheist author Christopher Hitchens. On the question of circumcision, I was moved by the parts of that book in which Hitchens condemns "child abuse" in the form of "sexual mutilation". He even gives us the gory details of the way in which circumcision has been performed, as recently as 2005 in New York, by certain Hasidic fundamentalist foreskin-removers. Nasty stuff!

I predict a day in the not-too-distant future when a joyful nativity rite of a new non-religious kind will become, as it were, standard practice. The DNA of the newly-born individual will be examined and stored permanently (as permanently as possible) in a great database of the kind that would bring joy to the heart of a Mormon genealogist. And this rite would symbolize (literally, you might say, since the DNA sample is in fact a huge set of symbols) the baby's passage into the great planetary congregation of humanity.

For the moment, those who come closest to this nativity rite are the researchers in genealogy who get their DNA tested (like me). But it remains a relatively superficial affair, since only the Y-chromosome of males and the mitochondrial DNA of females are in fact examined. And it's a private firm that holds on to the DNA samples. So, I can't really count upon the hope—if ever that were my intention (which it isn't)—of my being cloned at some future time.

No sooner had I finished writing this article than I came upon a CNN story [click the baby photo to display it] indicating that US babies appear to have their DNA tested systematically, with medical reasons in mind... much to the distress of certain parents.

Insofar as humans seem to like ceremonies based upon rites of passage of various kinds (birth, marriage, death, etc), I can well imagine creative Americans (the sort of people who have transformed Halloween into a planetary event) who would find ways of transforming the baby's DNA test into a kind of celebration, with music, food and drinks, solemn speeches and even short readings from the books of Dawkins, performed by students of genetics. This new nativity rite could be called DNAtion (rhymes with creation, confirmation and ordination).

Choranche Circus

At the Choranche Circus, don't expect to see any clowns... apart, maybe, from me. I shouldn't really have to make an excuse of that kind, because tourists who drop in on Piccadilly Circus won't normally see too many clowns. In the everyday language of the Ancient Romans, known as Latin, a circus is a round ring. And the mountains and cliffs around my adoptive village of Choranche do indeed form an oval.

Critics might point out that the Cournouze mountain, on the southern side of the Bourne, is located on the territory of Châtelus, not Choranche. They would be wrong, in fact. The upper surface of the mountain lies within the commune of St-Julien-en-Vercors, in the département of the Drôme. But what the hell about administrative boundaries. For me at Gamone, the Cournouze—as I've often pointed out—is my own sacred mountain: my mythical Uluru... which happens to be the first magnificent specimen of godless Creation that I witness every morning, as soon as I look out of my bedroom window.

In my recent article entitled Second look at iPad weaknesses [display], I evoked the immensely rich Flash approach to website creation... which is not reflected, unfortunately, in either the iPhone or its miserable big half-brother iPad.

Admittedly, at Gamone, this is the wrong time of the year to get involved in landscape photography. The lighting is minimal, and everything looks uniformly grayish. But, this afternoon, I had a sudden urge to wander up the road with Sophia to take a few photos, which I then patched together with Photoshop and inserted into a Flash context. If you click the above winter photo of the Cournouze, you'll see the resulting website: a sweeping half-circle panoramic view from Gamone towards the Vercors plateau, the eastern edge of the French Alps. To stop the horizontal scrolling, move the cursor to the middle of the image. I would hope that this modest Flash exercise might have the merit of providing you with an approximate visual idea of the mountains and cliffs that enclose and enthrall me. Nothing, of course, beats being here with me and Sophia.

Sister's blog

My sister Anne Skyvington, whose married name is Onslow, has just started a blog called Philomel. [Click the banner to access Anne's blog.]

Anne lives in Coogee, on the coastal outskirts of Sydney. Her husband, Mark Onslow, is a university professor who has become a world expert in the domain of stuttering therapy. I shall publish details on my Antipodes blog, as soon as they become available, concerning the professional and cultural activities of my sister and her husband.

Second look at iPad weaknesses

Concerning Apple's iPad, my recent article entitled Latest creation [display] was inadvertently but grossly over-enthusiastic. Preoccupied by the amusing phenomenon of Steve Jobs presenting his latest Apple baby, I did not even attempt to say what I thought personally about this new device.

Well, having looked into this affair a little more closely, let me now say that I fear the iPad will be a total marketing flop. Why? For the simple reason that I can imagine few reasons why anybody would ever want to use such a gadget.

For a moment, I had imagined the iPad as a blown-up version of the iPhone. This, of course, was poor thinking on my part: I was forgetting that you can't make phone calls with an iPad. Located midway between an iPod touch (an iTunes reader and portable game player) and a full-blown computer such as a MacBook, the iPad might be thought of as combining the advantages of both. Well, I now believe that this is not in fact the case. In trying to be a little bit of a mobile device, and a little bit of a true computer, the iPad turns out to be neither!

A particular aspect of the iPad shocks me greatly. Like the iPhone, it won't display Flash websites. From that point of view, the iPad reminds me of a French novel entitled La disparition, written by Georges Perec [1936-1982], which doesn't contain a single instance of the letter "e", which is normally the most widely-occurring vowel in the French language. In the same way that I wouldn't rush to buy a gimmick novel that doesn't contain the letter "e", I wouldn't rush to purchase a gimmick Internet machine that doesn't offer Flash.

And why exactly is it so important for me (as for millions of other web-users throughout the world) to have a computer that can handle Flash? Let's start with this blog. Normally, in the right-hand column, there are various small banners pointing to my associated websites. Well, if your computer can't read Flash stuff, you simply won't see any of these links. Over the last few years, I've built a score of websites on all kinds of subjects ranging from my personal genealogy through to cultural stuff about the medieval hermit Bruno who's considered today as the founder of the Chartreux order of monks. Well, without Flash, you won't be able to examine the slightest element of all this work of mine. And a corollary of this antiquated state of affairs is that I wouldn't be able to use an iPad to modify anything whatsoever in my web creations. So, to my mind, the iPad gadget is strictly for exotic individuals with specialized computing needs such as Beefeaters in the Tower of London, Druids, Mormons, six-day bike-riders, Creationists and other yokels.

Having said this, I hasten to add that, if anybody were to send me an iPad as a gift, I would be immensely happy to receive it. I would pass it on immediately to the neighboring kids in Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne, who love to play games. As for me, I'm too old for that. Besides, in all my life, I've never, at any moment, been an inveterate games-player. For me, there has always been only one big game, with fascinating and mysterious rules, called Life. Nothing to do with iLife.

POST-SCRIPTUM: Somebody extracted all the positive words and expressions employed by Steve Jobs and other Apple executives during the recent presentation of the iPad, and strung them all together in the following video:



It's hardly reassuring to find that a new product needs such excessive verbal icing sugar.

Irish ancestors

This little American girl, Ann Dunham [1942-1995], had an ancestor named Mary Kearney.










Meanwhile, this little Aussie girl, Kathleen Walker [1918-2003], also had an ancestor named Mary Kearney. However the two Marys belonged to different generations, separated by half a century.

Jumping back in time to the end of the 18th century, we find that the Kearney ancestors of both girls were Irish. Ann Dunham had an ancestor Joseph Kearney, born around 1794 in Co Offaly (province of Leinster). One of Kathleen Walker's ancestors was a Michael Kearney, born around 1785, probably in nearby Co Clare (province of Munster). Admittedly, Kearney is not an unusual surname in Ireland. Nevertheless, with a minimum of speculation (which remains an essential ingredient in genealogical research), one could well imagine that these Kearney males were cousins, if not brothers.

Let's jump forward in time, to 1961. In Hawaii, Ann Dunham married a Kenyan gentleman named Barack Obama. This photo shows Ann holding their son named Barack Obama II, born on 4 August 1961:

As for the other little girl, Kathleen Walker, she was my mother.

It's a fact that both Ann Dunham and Kathleen Walker, brought up in continents on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, can be identified as great[3]-granddaughters of Kearneys settled in south-west Ireland at the end of the 18th century, within a radius of a hundred kilometers or so. As I've pointed out proudly in chapter 4 of my monograph entitled A Little Bit of Irish [display], the Kearney ancestors of my mother Kathleen Walker lived in the legendary village of Spancil Hill.

Old phoney has finally gone

Over the last couple of decades, it was hard for a former fan such as me to believe that the goddam old guy still actually existed somewhere in flesh and blood, in a remote corner of his native land. For ages, the great US novelist J D Salinger—who happened to have been present as a soldier at Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day—had become a recluse, who shunned contacts with the outside world.

Like countless adolescent readers throughout the planet, I was convinced that the teenager Holden Caulfield, hero of The Catcher in the Rye, was indeed my alter-ego. Fortunately, though, by the time I got around to reading this ground-breaking work of fiction, I had already left school, so my parents and former teachers escaped the unpleasant ordeal of enduring an obnoxious Caulfield imitator swaggering around and using coarse American slang. But I'm sure that younger school generations of brooding adolescent fans of Salinger filled in for me amply.

I was particularly fond of Salinger's novellas featuring the weird but wonderful siblings of the Glass family: Seymour, Buddy (the narrator), his sister Boo Boo, the twins Walt and Waker, and the two youngest children Zooey (male) and Franny (female).

Last Wednesday, when the old story-teller finally locked for the last time his secret vault of tales, it might have been a great day for Steve Jobs and his iPad, but it was definitely a bad day for Bananafish.

Smear trial

I've already mentioned a messy high-profile court trial in Paris referred to as the Clearstream affair, because of the name of a Luxembourg bank [display]. Nicolas Sarkozy saw himself as the victim of a smear campaign in which Jacques Chirac's former prime minister Dominique de Villepin seemed to have played an evil role.

Sarkozy had even committed the fault, at the start of the trial, of publicly stigmatizing DDV (as Villepin is often called) as "guilty". And he had also threatened to have the culprit hung up (metaphorically, we assume) on a butcher's meat hook. Well, the verdict was announced this morning, and DDV was cleared of all charges. Needless to say, this outcome is a significant moral blow for the president.

Sarkozy reacted by announcing that he did not intend to lodge an appeal. On the surface, that looked like a charitable decision, designed to end the feud and bring about appeasement. In Sarkozy's announcement, however, there's just one tiny mistake of a legal nature, which is quite unexpected in the mouth of a former professional barrister. In this kind of trial, French law simply does not allow the plaintiff (seeking symbolic damages) to lodge an appeal. This blunder, while of no practical significance, is surprising. Is the president flustered? Does he need a holiday break?

BREAKING NEWS: The state prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin has just announced that an appeal (emanating, not from Sarkozy, but from the prosecutor's office) will indeed be lodged. It will be interesting to see whether this extra display of judicial ferocity will have a favorable influence upon Villepin's thinly-disguised plan to be an opponent of Sarkozy in the presidential election of 2012. The former prime minister might end up being cast in a positive underdog role. Having said this, I should point out that the term "underdog" doesn't sound quite right in the case of a distinguished Gaullist gentleman and former French diplomat whose full name is Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin. Son of a senator, Villepin is not in fact a member of the French aristocracy. It was only during the 19th century that this high-sounding name was concocted out of the quite ordinary surnames of paternal and maternal ancestors. But his elegant style as an orator, his noble political principles (concerning, for example, the US invasion of Iraq) and his silvery mane of hair make him out to be a most racy underdog.