Australia's choice of fighter planes

I started my professional life in France, in 1965, as a technical writer concerned with the Cyrano radar system of Thomson-CSF for fighter aircraft. Later on, I worked in audiovisual production with my friend François de Rivals, former Dassault test pilot.

Last Thursday, February 25, 2010, a surprising article appeared in The Australian, signed by Cameron Stewart: Scientists warned defence department against Joint Strike Fighter [display]. The gist of this fascinating scoop is that a study carried out ten years ago by the internal group known as the DSTO [Defence Science and Technology Organisation] warned the federal government of the risks that would be incurred through a choice of the US aircraft known as the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter]. In spite of these warnings, the government of John Howard signed an order in 2002 to purchase a hundred JSFs for $16 billion: the biggest Australian defense purchase in history.

Today, I would not be particularly dismayed, retrospectively, by this secretive Aussie style of doing defense business were it not for the fact that the DSTO study contains scathing criticism of the other available options if Australia were to reject the JSF choice. These options included, in particular, the US F-15E and the French Rafale. According to the article in The Australian, the study concluded that the French aircraft had weaknesses described as follows:

— "France's Rafale had an unreliable and weak engine."

— "Rafale has short-term shortfalls in engine and radar performance."

Insofar as the virtual JSF product, at that time, existed only on paper, it can be said retrospectively that Australia plunged blindly into the US program, inspired primarily by Howard's attachments to his time-honored protector. Today, it's too late to change things, but the publication of last week's revelations in Australia demands an informal French reaction concerning the unjust criticism of the illustrious Rafale fighter, which is a proven masterpiece produced by Dassault Aviation.

Last December, during a giant international encounter organized by the United Arab Emirates, the Dassault Rafale, in spite of its "unreliable and weak engine" and its "shortfalls in engine and radar performance", proved itself a superior killer. Today, the only aircraft that is in fact technologically superior to the Dassault Rafale is the American F-22. But it costs three times the price of a Rafale, and it's not a polyvalent aircraft capable of air/ground and air/sea actions.

Meanwhile, the American JSF project seems to be moving head-first into a brick wall of technical and financial problems... whose consequences will be felt inevitably, sooner or later, by Australia.

Believe me (or rather, believe Dassault and the facts):
There's nothing wrong with the Rafale!

Adjani

I've always imagined naively that the great Isabelle Adjani would be the ideal French actress to play the role of Abelone in my recently-completed movie adaptation of a celebrated novel of Rainer Maria Rilke: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. That's to say, I've been duped deliciously into thinking that this 54-year-old lady could indeed play the role of an Abelone who's more like half that age. That's the magic of Adjani: she's ageless... like the Germanic nymph Ondine in the play by Jean Giraudoux, in which the presence of Adjani mesmerized me back in 1974.

A year ago, I started a second blog, French Leaves, focussed upon French literary themes. Lazily, I got no further than an article about Adjani playing the role of a distraught school teacher [display]. This role has just earned her the César award for best actress.

Great Viking god

As I've often pointed out, Y-chromosome tests have revealed that my haplogroup is R1b1b2a1b5, which means that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool European. Unless there was an adoption somewhere up the track, my Skyvington surname surely takes me back to a Norman companion of the Conqueror, whereas my grandmother's Pickering surname takes me back with a high degree of certainty to the Conqueror himself, in person. Although I've always enjoyed reading about the fabulous myths of Egypt and Greece and the profound legends of Judaism and Christianity (and still enjoy this recreation), I've never really "felt"—at a gut level, you might say—that my elders belonged to the tribes who produced such stuff. Never was this feeling stronger than when I used to visit Israel regularly, in the late '80s and early '90s. With respect to all the various peoples and cultures on the edge of the Mediterranean, there's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I'm a total outsider. I've devoted a lot of energy to studying both Modern Greek and Hebrew, and I would love to imagine that one of my ancestors might have been a Sephardic Jew who studied algebra in the great library of Alexandria, before moving across to teach the Kabbala in Thessaloniki. But I know that such thoughts are fairy tales. Noel Coward used to sing that "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun". Seeing the way my skin turns crimson on such occasions, it's obvious that none of my ancestors used to hang around the Mediterranean or the deserts of Arabia and Northern Africa. As people in France might say: Billy and the Bedouins are two distinct entities.

Now, I've only navigated for a year or so in a wooden sailing boat (the Zygeuner, out in Fremantle), and I've never got around to plundering villages and raping maidens. Still, I often feel as if I have a Viking soul (if ever these fellows had such things). And a corollary of this feeling is my spontaneous admiration of the exploits of a good old Norse god such as Thor.

So, you'll understand why I was so thrilled to come across an excellent article on this subject written by a bright Scottish lass named Muriel Gray [display]. Insofar as my pagan heart still stirs to the soothing roars of thunder, maybe it's a mistake for me to describe myself as an atheist. I'll have to check whether there's maybe some kind of church in America that worships these archaic gods. I'm sure there must be. On the other hand, when I was working on the typescript of a novel about Master Bruno (founder of the Carthusian monastic order), I once tried to acquire a basic understanding of the legends of the Germanic Nibelungen (in which young Bruno, in medieval Cologne, was no doubt bathed), which strike me as the most confused shit I've ever encountered. So, maybe it would be wiser if I were to remain a pious old-fashioned atheist, devoid of fancy ribbons and bows.

Free Tilikom!

The most fitting operation that could be performed as a tribute to celebrate the life and marine loves of the veteran Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau, drowned by a captive orca on February 24, would consist of releasing the huge animal into the ocean. An interesting article entitled How to free a killer whale written by Naomi Rose, a US marine mammal scientist, explains how this complex operation could be carried out [display].

Cassoulet update

In my article of 7 November 2009 entitled Memorable cassoulet [display], I mentioned my enthusiasm for the preparation of this traditional dish from south-west France. Then, in an article of 24 January 2010 entitled Handmade French ovenware [display], I described my discovery of a pottery firm that produces the traditional ovenware for cassoulet. All that was missing was a typical photo of my own cassoulet preparation served up in a handmade Digoin dish. Here, at last, is the missing photo:

You might ask: What persuaded me to prepare a cassoulet dinner? Well, last Friday evening, French TV offered us a live transmission from Cardiff of the rugby match between France and Wales. Since I've always associated cassoulet with rugby, I decided that this match provided me with an excellent pretext for inaugurating my ovenware. It was also the first time I tasted my home-cooked duck confit... which is excellent.

Gamone spring

[This article, intended for a small subset of my readers, concerns a technical problem at Gamone.]

In my article of 23 October 2009 entitled Waiting for water [display], I described the overflow pipe I had attached to my spring, up above the house at Gamone. As I said, I would have to wait until there was a sufficient quantity of water in the pool before knowing whether or not the installation was totally successful.

Well, a week or so ago, after all the snow on the slopes above Gamone had finally melted, I was able to get a clear picture of the situation. Water has continued to flow nonstop through the overflow hole:

And it emerges from the red tube as a strong and steady stream:

However, an equally strong and steady stream flows along the U-shaped steel gutter that crosses the road:

Clearly, the diameter of the overflow hole is not nearly large enough to empty out all the water that is backed up in the pool, seen here:

The following photo shows both the surface of the pool and the start of the red tube that takes water away from the overflow hole:

The pool and the red tube are separated by a dam wall, a meter high, made out of thick limestone blocks. The rectangular steel lid can be lifted to provide access to the overflow pipe. As you can gather from these two views of the pool, a huge mass of water needs to be evacuated. And some of this water is seeping out over the upper edges of the pool and giving rise to the stream that crosses the road.

Solution? Next summer, when the pool is once again almost dry, I'll have to widen considerably the diameter of the overflow hole in the limestone wall, so that a greater volume of water flows into the red tube. To do this, I'll need to rent a powerful electric jackhammer of the following kind:

Since the drilling will be horizontal, I'll need to rig up some kind of overhead support with a chain capable of bearing the weight of the jackhammer. I can sense already that this is going to be a heavyweight task, but it's the only way of solving the problem.

Building for the birds

When the sun is shining at Gamone, I love to work outside at manual tasks. Think of it, in musical terms, as a counterpoint melody with respect to the hours I spend in front of my computer. My everyday Gamone fugue is 50 percent intellectual, 50 percent manual.

Judging from the quantity of tools, this job looks like a big project.

By chance, I received a visit from one of the fellows who recently restored a corner of the roof of my house. When he saw my sturdy style of construction of a nest box for mésanges (great tits), he burst out laughing. "There's no way in the world that the birds are going to kick that box apart... not even if they turn out to be ostrich eggs." I explained that I was simply following construction principles that I had discovered on the web. I agree: I've probably used twice as many screws as are really necessary. On the other, it's not the thigh muscles of the baby tits that worry me, but rather the combined effects of rain, wind and sun. I can't even paint the nest box, because wild birds don't like painted surfaces. In any case, here's the finished object:

The diameter of the entrance, 30 mm, corresponds theoretically to giant tits. I'm proud of the genuine slate roof (half of a single slate tile purchased at Castorama for 4 euros), which I've glued to a hinged plywood lid. This roof can be opened for annual cleaning. The interior "balcony" will be used by the parents as a convenient platform when entering or exiting the nest box. As for the nest itself, to be built by the birds, it will be located down in the depths of my box. The final object is quite heavy (because of the slate), and shouldn't normally be blown apart by the first tempest at Gamone.

I've anchored it firmly against a stout vertical branch of one of my linden trees. In April, by which time the box will have merged into the setting, the moment of truth will arrive. Will Monsieur et Madame Mésange decide to move in and procreate in my nest box? We'll see...

Detectors

French drivers have grown accustomed to the ubiquitous presence of automatic radar devices that catch speeders.

Road-users have reacted by perfecting ways and means of not getting caught by such machines. The most obvious method consists of simply slowing down at the approach of the device... and then speeding up again as soon as it's behind you. When I say "behind you", I should add that some devices, placed on the far side of the road, are designed to flash speeders from behind... which makes it possible to catch motor-cyclists (whose unique number-plate is located at the rear). The latest evolution imagined by the authorities consists of a pair of devices capable of calculating the average speed of a driver over a distance of several dozen kilometers. Meanwhile, some road-users in France are installing illegal hi-tech instruments that start beeping as soon as the presence of a nearby radar device is detected.

This cat-and-mouse process reminds me of a situation in nature that is presented in detail by Richard Dawkins on pages 382-390 of The Greatest Show on Earth. He speaks metaphorically of "arms races" between species that have an unfriendly attitude to one another, such as predators and prey, or parasites and hosts. Each evolutionary improvement to one creature provokes a counteractive improvement on the opposite side. The combined developments produce a spiraling effect as in the context of man-made weapons and defense systems.

We've just heard about a new French law that will make it obligatory to install a smoke detector in every home. This is weird, because I believe that people still have the right to smoke in private homes. With smoke detectors installed, young people in the following situation—a much-maligned poster imagined recently by the association Droits des non fumeurs (rights of non-smokers)—would bring about the arrival of the fire brigade.

Indeed, the world is becoming such a complex place, for ordinary folk like you and me, that we'll soon be needing clear labels à la Magritte in order to distinguish between old-fashioned good and evil.

Here at Gamone, if there were a smoke detector in my living-room, it would be ringing alarm bells and flashing its red lights every winter evening when I light up a log fire. And this would upset, not only me (in front of my beloved TV), but Sophia too... who would be instantly convinced that the terrifying dinosaurs and mammoths of Choranche are attacking us once again.

The device I would dearly love to purchase, if ever I could find one, is a bullshit detector. I would install it on my desk, just alongside the Macintosh, so that it could be beamed down permanently upon everything that comes up on the screen. Naturally, I would probably get a little upset whenever the device started to beep at some of my own stuff, but you can't have it both ways.

Grass dog

I end up thinking that my dog Sophia likes to plant her backside in the scope of my Nikon. Maybe (a more objective observation) my Nikon simply follows Sophia. Be that as it may, Sophia has always been my photographic star. Here, she's showing off the winter grass at Gamone.

In this photo, you get a glimpse of Bob's house, a hundred meters or so up along Gamone Creek.

US vision of the future

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, President George W Bush instigated a process aimed at overhauling the US intelligence system. In 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who took over some of the government and intelligence functions that had previously been handled by the time-honored CIA. As of a month ago, the DNI is Dennis Blair, appointed by Barack Obama.

I was gladly surprised to discover that we can obtain, for free, a 120-page document entitled Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, presenting the profound thoughts of this office concerning the future of our world. Just click this image and follow instructions:

Before starting to read this fascinating report, make sure you've understood the significance of the acronym BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China], which reappears constantly.

The report is good reading in that it highlights the fragility of US thinking. We've always known that the giant has feet of clay. But it's alarming to discover that maybe his brain, too—his so-called "intelligence"—is made out of porcelain.

In the vulgar verbiage of the authors of this futuristic fairy story, Europeans will be "losing clout" in 2025. I feel like giving a sharp clout on the snout of the dumb Yank who wrote such rubbish. The notorious CIA (which reports henceforth to the DNI) has made so many blunders, however, that we might expect a certain amount of US intelligence drivel for some time to come. It's not tomorrow that we'll be removing the inverted commas from "US intelligence". But I insist upon the fact that this nice bedtime reading can be freely downloaded. It won't even cost you what it's worth: peanuts.

Forgotten mountain

I've been meaning for ages to correct an injustice. I've put up pictures on my blog of all the imaginable mountains and cliffs that surround me at Gamone. But I'm not sure I've ever included a full photo of the great bald peak up behind my house, to the west.

The reason for this negligence is that I have to move at least several hundred meters away from my house, to the east, in order to get a good view of this mountain, named Les Trois-Châteaux (the three castles). My stray sheep have been living on the lower slopes of this mountain for over three years. There are a few wild mountain goats up there, too.

On the righthand side of the photo, you can glimpse a corner of my house sticking out behind a low hill in the foreground. The road to my house runs up alongside Gamone Creek, which flows in the hollow between that low hill and my property.

This mountain is located entirely on the territory of the commune of Choranche. On its lower slopes to the left, a much lower mass of rock, located on the territory of Pont-en-Royans, bears the same name, indicating that three ancient castles down on the nearby plains could be observed from these vantage points.

Not only have I never climbed up onto this mountain, but I've never seen or even heard of anybody doing so. The rock appears to be rather flaky and crumbly, making it a relatively dangerous place for casual visitors. On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time sliding around on its lower slopes (in the adjacent valley that belongs to my neighbor Gérard Magnat) trying to catch up with my stray sheep... who no longer consider me—if ever they did so—as their good shepherd.

Visited by an ancestral spirit

In yesterday's article entitled Seafarers [display], I introduced readers to my CF-haplogroup ancestor named Dreamtimer, who lived in southwest Asia with his wife and family during the Old Stone Age. As I explained, besides being my ancestor, Dreamtimer was also an ancestor of today's Aborigines in Australia. Well, during the early hours of the morning, I was awoken by weird noises, like musique concrète. It was a mysterious mix of Indian tablas and sitars, Balinese bamboo xylophones and Buddhist gongs. And above the throbbing percussion, I could detect clearly the eerie drones of a didgeridoo. My dog Sophia was awoken by the clammer, and she started to bark furiously, as she always does whenever our sleep is interrupted in the middle of the night by frightening sounds such as the shrieks of dinosaurs up on the slopes of Choranche, or the grunts of mammoths down in the valley of the Bourne. Then a voice boomed out: "Billy..."

I knew immediately who it must be, because there are only three individuals who call me Billy. The first is Natacha, who would never dream of waking me up in the night in a cacophony of xylophones and didgeridoos. The second is my 94-year-old uncle Isaac Kennedy Walker, who's prevented from contacting me through his deafness. And the third, of course, was... my tribal ancestor Dreamtimer.

"First of all, Billy, I just want to tell you that I'm furious about you showing everybody that picture of my descendant Mungo Man. Your Aborigine cousins have known for ages that this is not correct. So, why did you do such a thing?"

I tried to tell Dreamtimer that it was simply a photo I had found on the web, but it was pointless trying to defend myself. How do you talk about Internet stuff with a guy who's been dead for 60 thousand years?

"Billy, if I decided to drop in on you this evening, it's not because of Mungo Man. It's because of that fucking Russki couple, who have offended us immensely. Billy, go grab a few boomerangs and run across to Canada right now. And strike 'em dead!"

I had no idea what my ancestor Dreamtimer could possibly be talking about. I was about to tell him that I didn't have any boomerangs with me at Gamone, and that it was out of the question for me to go walkabout to an overseas place such as Canada. Meanwhile, Dreamtimer had faded back into his never-never land. Before taking leave of me, he had switched on my TV. In an instant, the images from Vancouver informed me of the cause of Dreamtimer's furious visit.





If ridicule could kill, then the corpses of Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalinon, attired in their crazy "Aboriginal" costumes, would have been spread out on the ice. The next time that Dreamtimer calls me, I'll have to tell him however that I can't strike down the Russian skaters, no matter how greatly they've offended him. After all, the Russians are my genetic cousins. We're all one big Earth family.

Mythical beasts, tough sex

This amazing sex video appeared on the excellent Pharyngula blog by the US atheistic biologist PZ Myers [access]:



This National Geographic video provides us with new insight into the difficulties of being a hyena. Among humans, these animals have acquired a particularly negative reputation, which they surely do not deserve. They're depicted as cruel, treacherous, greedy, "piggish", laughing devilishly and obsessed with kinky sex. Even in Africa, where people should know better, hyenas were thought of as the steeds on which sorcerers and witches traveled around. It's true, however, that it might not be a great idea to bring home a pair of hyena pups with a view to bringing them up as pets. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if a reader were to inform me that my judgment on this question of household hyenas is wrong. In any case, the criterion of evaluating wild animals by their potential as pets is ridiculous.

Socialist overseer of the nation's spending

Didier Migaud, a 57-year-old Socialist, has just been appointed to the prestigious position of first president of the Cour des comptes ("court of accounts"), which is the national institution that examines constantly the spending habits of the République.

Migaud is a local politician: a député (member of parliament) for an electorate regrouping the southern part of Grenoble and the Oisans mountain range. It's not bad at all that Nicolas Sarkozy has called upon a political opponent to fill this important position, previously occupied by the Gaullist Philippe Séguin who died last month.

I like the cluttered look of Migaud's desk. How could anybody seriously claim to be a competent bookkeeper (or even a blogger, for that matter) without a good bit of clutter around him? The Linux penguin sitting on a bookshelf is a positive sign, too. Anybody who appreciates Socialism, Grenoble and Linux can't possibly be a fool.

North-west corner of my house

I'm trying to get a feeling for the newly-acquired visual aspect of the north-west corner of my house, so that I'll know how to best handle the various operations that will be facing me as soon as the warm weather arrives. Here's a rough sketch of the basic ideas I have in mind:

That's to say, I would build a carport, 3 meters wide and 6 meters long. The roof of this carport would join up with a new roof over the small stone structure (a former pigpen) that juts out from the façade on the left. The empty inside space at the far end of the carport would be used to store my firewood, and a staircase would lead down from there into the main house.

To take the following photo, which looks down onto the start of the new ramp, I climbed up the slopes behind the house:

Here's a side view of the old pigpen as it exists today:

And here's a view of the place under the present roof that I'll be using to store my firewood:

The total surface of the new ramp is quite large, and only the upper half of that area will be used for the carport. The total area of the ramp will be covered in pale gravel.

Finally, here's an unexpected feature of this corner of the house: an intriguing hole into the hill!

In fact, it's the entrance of a horizontal tunnel, about 20 meters long, which ends abruptly in a vertical wall of earth. It appears to be an ancient construction, and I've never found any obvious traces of the place where all the excavated earth might have been placed. Most people who try to imagine the reason why this tunnel was dug evoke the idea of a farmer (winegrower?) hoping to find water. But that idea doesn't add up, because there has always been an ample supply of spring water a hundred yards further up the road. Besides, at the place where the tunnel has been dug, there are no visible indications whatsoever suggesting the presence of subterranean water. The interior of the tunnel is perfectly tidy, and devoid of vegetation, as if it were dug quite recently. I prefer to imagine that the tunnel was dug as a hiding-place for wine-making tools and equipment, or maybe for stocks of wine in small casks or bottles. When would the owner of Gamone have wanted to hide such stuff? And from whom? I believe that a plausible answer is provided by events that took place long ago at Choranche. One of the rare books mentioning the history of Choranche, written by the Abbé Jean Morin, states that Carthusian monks acquired their first vineyard in this commune in the year 1381. Then, in the 16th century, the Royans region was the scene of bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. Here is my translation of a paragraph from the book by Abbé Morin:

At the end of the wars of religion, in 1593, a former prior of our Chartreux monastery wrote that "the grapevines of Choranche have been cut down and ruined, and the cellars demolished, by the adepts of the reformed religion who lodged their garrison here".

I have always imagined—without being able to prove my beliefs in this domain—that the wine cellar at the heart of my house was built during that century of the so-called Wars of Religion, because it resembles a similar construction of that epoch that still exists today in the ruins of the Carthusian monastery at Bouvantes. So, I believe that the mysterious hole behind my house could have been a hiding-place for the possessions of the vineyard, which was dug rapidly at some time during the devastating Protestant raids of the 16th century.

Seafarers

In my article of 2 December 2007 entitled Reenactments [display], I mentioned a Norwegian adventurer named Thor Heyerdahl [1914-2002], who was a hero for young people of my generation.

Click the photo to see original footage of the balsa-wood raft Kon-Tiki on its 1947 voyage from South America to Polynesia. Heyerdahl and his companions were trying to demonstrate that the Pacific islands could have been colonized by seafarers who drifted westwards from the American continent.

Today, we're practically certain that Heyerdahl's theory was wrong. Recent linguistic research suggests that ancestors of the future Polynesians probably sailed from the island of Formosa (present-day Taiwan) around 3,000 BC. As indicated in the following diagram (with French captions), these seafarers ended up settling in such scattered islands as the Philippines, Fiji, Madagascar, Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island.

[Click the above diagram to obtain a more readable version.]

Many millennia before these long voyages across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, intrepid dark-skinned seafarers from Asia had reached the Australian continent. These ancestors of Australia's Aborigines made this voyage well before the time of the Homo sapiens sapiens individuals whose remains were found in 1969 and 1974: Mungo Man [see photo] and Mungo Woman, who lived out in western New South Wales, not far from Mildura, probably some 40,000 years ago.

Besides the various tests aimed at dating these bone fragments and the geological context in which they were found, DNA testing of modern Aborigines confirms beyond doubt the "out of Africa" origins of this indigenous people. Haplogroup C4 is the most common Y-chromosome result among indigenous Australians, and it has not been found outside of that continent. For an R-haplogroup individual such as myself, this means that the latest common ancestor of today's Aborigines and me lived in southwest Asia around 60,000 years ago. Genetically, his haplogroup is known as CF, but not the slightest trace of such a human being has ever been found yet.

Incidentally, if there are any Aborigines reading the Antipodes blog, I take this opportunity of letting them know that I've got into the habit of referring to my Old Stone Age CF-haplogroup ancestor by a tender nickname: Dreamtimer. It goes without saying that, if anybody were to find traces of him, I wouldn't be personally offended in any way whatsoever if present-day Aborigines were to take photos of old Dreamtimer (they don't need to ask my permission), or if his remains were to be put on display in a museum.

At the time of these epic voyages, there were land links between Asia and Australia that have since been submerged, but the seafarers were no doubt obliged to sail across an expanse of at least a hundred kilometers. Consequently, the ancestors of the Aborigines have been considered, up until now, as the greatest navigators of prehistory.

A month ago, the seafaring supremacy of the sons and daughter of Dreamtimer was subjected to a rude shock, of Titanic proportions, when a report from the the American School of Classical Studies in Athens was made public. Apparently, archaeologists have found the following prehistoric stone implements on the island of Crete:

[Click the image to access the original story in the New York Times.]

They're at least 130,000 years old. At that time, there were no land links inside the Mediterranean. Consequently, prehuman seafarers must have been able to leave the European mainland and sail to the distant island of Crete.

This new discovery pleases me immensely, because I like to think that there were ancient mariners in the Mediterranean at that early date. It's hardly surprising that this great sea, in the middle of planet Terra, went on to acquire a reputation as the home of illustrious navigators such as Ulysses. Obviously, Ulysses and our Antipodean Dreamtimer were distant "genetic cousins" of these Cretan sailors... who might have been smart Neanderthals. (Naturally, we cannot exclude the possibility that they might have been dumb Neanderthals who fell asleep in the branches of a tree that got struck by lightning and then washed out to sea. By the time they realized what had happened to them, they found themselves on a delightful beach in Crete.) It's imaginable that the sailing skills of the archaic Aborigines, which enabled them to reach Australia, were inherited indirectly from these prehuman Cretan seafarers. Maybe these skills were assimilated, much later on, by navigators from Phocea in Asia Minor, enabling them to colonize Marseille. Then a fellow named Pytheas, from that same city, used similar skills to go on a sea excursion up to England, around 325 BC, where he visited Stonehenge as a tourist. As for myself, I'm sure that all these illustrious ancestors and archaic prehuman relatives would have been proud of me when I worked for a month or so, back in 1963—in the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea—at the helm of a Greek tramp steamer, the Persian Cyrus.

Donkey dinner

When I found a few apples lying in the grass, preserved by the snow, I cut them up and put them on top of the donkeys' daily dose of oats.

I was a little surprised to find that the animals promptly pushed aside the apple fragments so that they could get stuck into the oats.

I had always imagined that the donkeys are immensely fond of apples. Well, they are, I'm sure... but it seems that they're fonder still of oats.

Five minutes later, when I returned to pick up the dishes, both the oats and the apples had disappeared. Maybe it's like children having a meal in such-and-such a celebrated junk-food restaurant. I would imagine that, spontaneously, a normal kid would tackle the hamburger and French fries first, and then move on to the sundae.

The donkeys were standing still at the same spot, above the empty dishes, digesting their dinner.

Judging from the respective positions of their ears, old gray-faced Mandrin is waiting for me to say something (or maybe he's intrigued by the buzz of my Nikon adjusting its focus), whereas young beige-faced Moshé is more interested in keeping an auditive "outlook" on what might be happening behind him: in particular, the presence of Sophia... who learned long ago that it's not wise for a dog to spend too much time behind the powerful rear legs of a donkey.

Sea change

Up until the age of sixteen, I was an adolescent in a dull Australian place named Grafton, where the Good Lord surely intended that nothing unusual should ever happen, not even my birth. In my time, this magnificent landscape had sadly lost its pioneering soul before losing forever its spirit of social evolution and economic development. Today, Grafton is a charming empty carcass, whose sole awareness is the fact that it's a boring old town, with nothing to say nor even hide.

Downstream, at the estuary of the Clarence River, our outlet on the Pacific Ocean was named Yamba. In 1954, surrounded by school friends, I found it an enthralling place.

My most moving recollection of Yamba dates from the summer of 1957. I had returned to Grafton after a year at the University of Sydney, and my parents had decided kindly to take me on an excursion down to Yamba... which I had not visited for quite some time. I remember, as if it were yesterday, that my father Bill Skyvington had parked his LandRover while Kath was buying food down in the new shopping area of Yamba. I was exploding internally with the urge to tell my father that, during my first year in Sydney, I had just encountered a fabulous corpus of knowledge about the nature of the world. I can even recall the slim volume of relativity physics that had engendered my enthusiasm. In a backstreet of Yamba, on that sunny afternoon, I tried naively to transmit an iota of my enthusiasm to my father. He looked at me as if I were a Martian, and informed me abruptly that he had no time for such nonsense... which was vastly less urgent, in his mind, than the question of earning one's living by grazing and slaughtering beef cattle (my father's business). By the time my mother returned from her shopping, I had lost forever all possible intellectual intimacy with my paternal progenitor. In an instant of incomprehension between a father and his son, on that sunny Yamba afternoon, I moved forever away from my ancestral ignorance... into enlightenment.

In my mind, Yamba remained nevertheless a seaside sanctuary, which my children were able to encounter briefly with joy during their teens.

Today, I learn sadly from the Australian media that something seems to have gone wrong at Yamba [display]. Is it just Yamba, I ask innocently, or Australia at large?

Dame République, expecting

Shortly after the French Revolution, a girl named Marianno was the heroine of a revolutionary song in the Occitanian language. The song became popular in October 1792, just after the creation of the French Republic, which adopted Marianne as its allegorical incarnation. She is always represented wearing a pointed bonnet, designated as Phrygian (a legendary people of Asia Minor). After the July Revolution of 1830, the painter Eugène Delacroix showed a bare-breasted Marianne on the barricades, with a tricolor held high, leading the people to liberty.

Since then, there have been countless pictorial and sculptural depictions of Marianne. Whereas the Church has been symbolized by the Virgin Mary, and French royalty by Joan of Arc, Marianne has become the official female symbol of the République. Busts of Marianne adorn town halls, administrative offices and schools from one end of France to the other.

Since the Libération of 1944, among the females who have been chosen as models for Marianne, we find Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve and Laetitia Casta.

Over the last few days, French people have been somewhat surprised to discover Marianne appearing in advertisements for Sarkozy's future state loan:

OK, it's nice to know that France is investing in her future. And we can understand that the République is expecting... massive financial investments. But who in fact got her pregnant? It's rather disturbing to learn that this should happen to a fine young woman whose moral behavior has always been beyond reproach. Most people weren't even aware that she was "frequenting" (as they say in rural France, meaning to go out frequently with a specific male friend). Many folk would be furious to learn that the future father is randy Sarko himself, for example. Maybe one of the old fellows: Giscard, or Chirac...

The most eloquent criticism came from an indignant feminist blogger named Emelire: "The hand of the State should stay away from my uterus, particularly if it's trying to grab some cash!"

European solar-energy project

Last night, on French TV, I saw an amazing reportage concerning a revolutionary project aimed at capturing solar energy through panels attached to a geostationary satellite and then transmitting the energy to Earth by means of an infrared laser beam. Today, I've been trying to obtain more detailed information about this project, described as European, but the web doesn't seem to have anything much to offer in this domain. As soon as I started searching for information, I had the impression that the only people on the planet who are pursuing this research are the Japanese. Maybe the European researchers are deliberately keeping a low public profile because of the complexity of the project, and the fact that it's still at a very early stage of development, since it wouldn't become operational before another decade. Or did I simply imagine that it was a European project?

No, it wasn't an illusion. The project is being carried out well and truly by the European company Astrium, the space subsidiary of EADS (the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company). Click the banner to find out a little bit more about this company.

The TV reportage evoked a question that springs into everybody's mind. Would it be catastrophic if the laser beam were to be slightly displaced so that, instead of reaching its correct target on the ground, it hit a house or a school. Would it fry everything in a split second? Apparently not. The fellow being interviewed treated this as a silly question. The future system will be as harmless as a phone connection, in spite of the fact that it's channeling the energy of the Sun.

In any case, even if it's too early to obtain a significant quantity of serious information concerning this project, it's not too early to meditate upon the idea of a potentially unlimited source of perfectly clean energy. Or am I still dreaming?

POST SCRIPTUM: Although it's not directly related to what I've just been talking about, you might like to listen to Bill Gates presenting his thoughts on energy. Personally, I prefer to hear him rambling on in this field rather than evoking his ugly software products...