Centenary of a computing giant

These days, we hear a lot about the achievements of Apple. I'm unlikely to complain about that, of course, because I've always been totally addicted to the products of Cupertino, from back at the time I wrote my first book about the Mac, in 1984, and even before then, at the pioneering epoch of the Apple II computer.

In the midst of all the talk about the marvelous creations of Steve Jobs, we must never forget, however, that the Big Daddy of computing has always remained a celebrated US corporation that made a name for itself by selling so-called "business machines" on an international scale.

In 2011, the company will be turning 100, which means that it was born in the same year as Tennessee Williams, Ronald Reagan and France's Georges Pompidou. I joined IBM in Sydney towards the end of 1957, and worked as a computer programmer using the Fortran language on a vacuum-tube machine called the IBM 650, whose central memory was housed on a revolving magnetically-coated drum.

The new IBM website designed to celebrate the centenary includes an interesting video on the second-generation transistorized computer that came next: the IBM 1401, seen here in an old marketing photo:

This was the machine I was programming (in a macro-assembler language called Autocoder) at the time I arrived in Paris, in 1962, and started to work at the European headquarters of IBM. Click the above photo to see the video concerning this machine, which shows various former IBMers of my generation.

These days, IBM has embarked upon a colossal computer challenge in the domain of artificial intelligence. Known as Watson (the name of the founder of IBM), this project aims to get a computer to perform better than human beings in the American TV game called Jeopardy! The system, based upon so-called massively-parallel probabilistic evidence-based architecture, incorporates a vast array of big boxes that have much the same external aspect as the units of an archaic IBM 1401… but you can be sure they do more things!

Click the photo to visit IBM's website on their fabulous Watson project.

AFTERTHOUGHT: It's good, in a way, that IBM has been somewhat out of the limelight for many years, compared to companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google. That has enabled IBM to move ahead quietly and constantly in a field such as artificial intelligence without too much media interference. But this situation is likely to change in a spectacular fashion as soon as Watson starts to bare its teeth… which is exactly what's happening at this very moment. Personally, I would not hesitate for a moment in declaring that a project such as Watson represents one of the greatest human challenges of all time: the invention of a deus ex machina that seems to be approaching the spirit of the famous IBM slogan.

I used to dream about that challenge back in the early '70s, when I was making a series of documentaries on this subject in the USA, for French TV, and writing my book on artificial intelligence.

And I still do, today, more than ever… particularly since scholars such as and Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker have convinced me that we human beings are "merely" a special kind of machine, imbued with a strange property (not yet understood, of course) referred to as consciousness.

ANECDOTE: You might wonder why software engineers at Google and elsewhere have been scanning vast libraries of books of all kinds, and making them freely available to researchers. Are the corporations and engineers doing this because they want to offer more and more reading material, philanthropically, to old-timers such as you and me? Don't be naive! They're building those vast digital libraries for readers of a new kind: future generations of intelligent computers.

BREAKING NEWS: Stephen Wolfram, in his blog [display], seems to believe that IBM's Watson will win the forthcoming Jeopardy TV event. Moreover, he is encouraging IBM… even though their Watson is a competitor of his own approach: the so-called Wolfram-Alpha system.

Spartan logo

Some observers looked upon this logo (before it was animated) as one of the most ingenious graphic inventions ever invented. Apparently, some viewers fail to notice the head of a Spartan warrior.

Spartan Golf from Daniel Johnson on Vimeo.

The Flash animation is great, but maybe superfluous.

I don't know whether the logo is still up for sale, and what price the creators are asking. I'm amazed that no wealthy investor has got around to setting up a new golf club named Spartan, with a view to using this fine logo.

Railway of shame

People in France have known for decades that the French national railway system—called the SNCF—was implicated explicitly in the ignominious transportation of Jews from France to the Nazi death camps in Poland.

Today, the president of the SNCF, Guillaume Pepy, admitted publicly that his corporation had been "a cog in the Nazi extermination machine". He was speaking from the old station of Bobigny, on the outskirts of Paris, from which some 25,000 individuals were freighted away to the camps.

The SNCF has decided to donate its Bobigny real estate, including the old building, to the local municipality, to be transformed into some kind of Shoah memorial.

The Bobigny station lies just two kilometers away from the notorious transit camp of Drancy, where inmates tried desperately to lead an everyday existence while awaiting their deportation to places named Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, etc.




At the same that we recall the shameful behavior of SNCF authorities who once condoned the evil exploitation of their railroad resources, we must not forget that countless SNCF technical employees played a vital role in the Résistance through their sabotage operations.

French media have drawn attention to what might be construed as an insidious purpose behind this sudden SNCF apology. The company is making bids for gigantic railroad contracts in California and Florida, and US Jewish lobbies have expressed their opposition to hiring a company with Jewish blood on its hands. The SNCF president tackled such criticism by stating that the decision to transform the Bobigny station into a memorial was "not dictated by circumstances", but by his "convictions". We'll see how people in the USA react to all this.

Hilarious prank in Belgium

To appreciate this video (spoken in Flemish with excellent English subtitles), you'll need a few preliminary explanations. Four young fellows have decided to play an ingenious prank on a Belgian phone company named Mobistar, notorious for the poor quality of its call centers. The fellows rented an office container: that's to say, a fully-equipped mobile office that looks, from the outside, exactly like a shipping container. They painted their phone number on the outside of the container, and then got themselves delivered on the back of a truck to the suburban headquarters of Mobistar, where the container was placed in the middle of the road in such a way that it prevented Mobistar employees from getting into the parking lot. Then the four fellows waited. Meanwhile, friends in front of the Mobistar building filmed the huge traffic jam caused by the container.

Inside the office container, the phone soon started to ring. It was Mathieu, the Mobistar security officer, who imagined naively that he was in phone contact with the offices of a container company called Buro-Containers. Mathieu, of course, wanted the container company to come along immediately and remove their container from the Mobistar premises. But poor Mathieu receives robotic and moronic reactions of the same kind as those of the Mobistar call center.

Acquiring land and a brand

I have a short family-history article appearing in the forthcoming newsletter of the Clarence River Historical Society [website], located in Grafton (New South Wales), my birthplace in Australia. In this article, I mention my father's branding iron (which I now have with me here in France). As a former employee at the Ford dealership in Grafton, my father chose V8 as his registered stock brand.

Click the photo to download a copy of my article.

Free settlers in the Antipodes

Australia Day is an appropriate moment to commemorate my ancestral relative Thomas Rose [1749-1833] from Dorset. Aboard the Bellona, Thomas and his wife Jane Topp [1757-1827] were the first free settlers to arrive in New South Wales, on 15 January 1793. While not a direct ancestor of mine, Thomas was a close cousin of my ancestor Elizabeth Rose [1728-1774]. The Rose family came from the village of Sturminster Newton in Dorset. The following map indicates the location of this village with respect to Blandford Forum, the main town in this part of Dorset:

The following chart presents the family context of Thomas Rose:

Thomas's parents were married at Sturminster Newton. The four offspring were born and/or christened there, and Thomas and Jane were also married there. Here is the church of St Mary's at Sturminster Newton:

Let me turn now to my direct Skivington and Rose ancestors:

Elizabeth Rose, my 6-times-great-grandmother, was the eldest child in the Rose family.

Her father William Rose was christened in Sturminster Newton. Later, he moved to the nearby village of Okeford Fitzpaine where he married Repentance Ridout [1708-1774], and where their four offspring were christened. In the map near the top of this article, other neighboring villages associated with my Skivington ancestors are highlighted: Belchalwell, Shillingstone and Iwerne Courtney.

Comparing the two Rose charts, I would imagine that the respective grandfathers of the Antipodean settler Thomas Rose and my ancestor Elizabeth Rose—that's to say, the elder Christopher Rose and James Rose—were brothers in Sturminster Newton. In one branch of the family, an audacious grandson, Thomas, decided to leave for Australia in 1793. In the other branch, a granddaughter, Elizabeth, stayed in Dorset and married a local fellow named Charles Skivington [1728-1778].

Over a century later, one of their descendants—my grandfather Ernest Skyvington [1891-1985]—would venture out to Australia. After becoming interested in genealogy, I discovered (through the Internet) that we Skyvingtons had an 18th-century ancestor named Elizabeth Rose. More recently, I heard about Elizabeth's second cousin Thomas during an excursion to Blandford Forum in August 2007, described in my article entitled Dorset ancestral anecdotes [display].

The name Sturminster means "monastic church (minster) on the River Stour", while Newton means "new town". There's a beautiful old stone bridge over the Stour at this place.

An ancient sign on the bridge warns that vandals found "injuring" the bridge might be transported.

So, out in New South Wales, Thomas Rose could have run into former adolescent friends from Sturminster Newton who had traveled there in rather different circumstances to those of the free settlers.

Today, I'm tempted to compare the quiet and beautiful environment of England's West Country with the somewhat dramatic lifestyle in Australia… expressed famously by Dorothea Mackellar [1885-1968].

She was a romantically-minded lass… but I haven't always shared her enthusiasm for the Down Under landscapes, climate and meteorology.

I often wonder which of the Rose cousins got "the better deal": those who left for the exotic Antipodes, like Thomas, or those who stayed in the traditional Old World, like Elizabeth. My personal reaction to that interesting question is betrayed by my current address…

There's another intriguing anecdote, in a quite different context, concerning my discovery of ancestors named Rose. In Israel, in 1989, I visited the splendid Billy Rose Sculpture Garden in the Holy City, near the Knesset, funded by a US philanthropist.

After this memorable visit, I had imagined that Rose was surely a Jewish surname. I discovered much later that the full name of the famous showman Billy Rose [1899-1966] was in fact William Rosenberg. Meanwhile, I had started to write my Israeli novel, which would finally become All the Earth is Mine (published as an iBook).

The hero of my novel is an Australian-born engineer, resembling myself in certain ways. Since he was Jewish (which is not my case), and since his professional and human destiny would coincide with that of the modern state of Israel, I thought of the above-mentioned Jerusalem benefactor and decided to name my hero Jacob Rose. He would arrive in the Holy Land and perform various engineering miracles there. So, I liked the expression "Jacob Rose in Israel", which evoked the Biblical-sounding declaration: "Jacob arose in Israel". Later, having completed my tale of Jacob Rose, I was surprised to learn that I actually had ancestors named Rose. But all this is purely anecdotal and coincidental, and I'm not suggesting that my fictional character has anything in common with my English Rose ancestors.

Today, I'm thrilled and proud, of course, to realize that a member of my ancestral Dorset family named Rose was the first free settler in the land that would become Australia. I was equally enthusiastic about having my fictional Australian alter-ego named Jacob Rose settle in Israel. Between genealogical facts and imaginative fiction, the differences are of little significance. Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose (Gertude Stein). And by any other name would smell as sweet (William Shakespeare). That's how I see this celebration of our past and present: Australia Day.

Hail Mary, full of grave accusations

Now that all the saintly celebrations have ended, and the papal partying has subsided in Sydney and the suburbs, I think it's time to draw attention to an amazing aspect of the case of our sunburnt made-in-Down-Under Southern Cross saint Mary MacKillop [1842-1909].

I don't know whether or not Benedict XVI did this intentionally, but our illustrious Aussie Saint Mary might be thought of as the patron saint of Catholic sex-crime victims. To obtain the details of her celebrated actions in this domain, click the above image.

Once you're in contact with the highly-documented but low-profile website named Broken Rites Australia, search around for the story, say, of a nice Aussie priest named Rex Brown. In fact, Father Rex is one of many, far too many. Click around in the What's new domain of Broken Rites. It's enlightening but frightening…

Korean fireworks

Curiously, I haven't noticed much in the media about a spectacular and successful operation that has just been carried out by South Korea against Somalian pirates. A week ago, the 11,500-tonne Samho Jewelry was transporting chemicals from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka when it was hijacked between Oman and India. Aboard, the hostages consisted of 8 South Koreans, 2 Indonesians and 11 Burmese.

Over the last week, the South Korean destroyer Choi Young has been stalking the stolen vessel, 24 hours a day, and disturbing the 13 pirates aboard by flying periodically a helicopter over their heads.

Finally, South Korean commandos from the destroyer moved in rapidly and boarded the Samho Jewelry, as seen in this amazing photo:

They killed 8 Somalian pirates, captured 5, and liberated the crew.

By chance, an expert report about piracy on the high seas was being presented this morning to the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon by one of our favorite and most brilliant French Socialist statesmen, Jack Lang, who's an experienced producer of all kinds of theatrical events. OK, Jack, tell us: This perfect timing cannot possibly be coincidental. How did you organize things so that the performance took place exactly at the right moment, and with the right results?

Limelight, lucre and lust

I'm thinking of a weird winter that started 48 years ago, in December 1962, in London. I was 22 years old, and a confirmed computer programmer who had just spent seven wonderful months working in the heart of Paris, a few hundred meters away from the Elysées Palace in which Charles de Gaulle had been cogitating upon the Algerian problem. As a well-paid employee of the European headquarters of IBM, I had ended up imagining that I wasn't learning much French (because everybody at IBM spoke English), and I thought it might be fun to spend some time in the UK.

That harsh winter of 1962/1963 was a meteorological shocker, but it soon merged into a shocking spring, symbolized by the famous photo of the notorious call-girl Christine Keeler astride a contemporary chair. That was the sexy espionage season of the Profumo Affair.

This evening, I watched a TV documentary about the rich sex life of John Kennedy [1917-1963]. If I understand correctly, his treatment for Addison's Disease involved the absorption of pharmaceutical products that made him as randy as a billy goat. JFK appears to have been obsessed with screwing any cute cunt that appeared upon the presidential horizon, irrespective of the political affiliations of the possessor of the tempting vagina in question. The most famous Kennedy female was, of course, Marilyn Monroe… whose death remains most mysterious.

Before Marilyn, there were spectacular Kennedy conquests named Mariella Novotny, Suzy Chang and, above all, the posh German prostitute Ellen Rometsch, who appears to have opened willingly her thighs for diplomatic intrusions from both the East and the West.

Today, it's ludicrous to discover that remnants of the Kennedy clan have succeeded in blocking the broadcasting of a TV mini-series called The Kennedys.

Admittedly, it's a page that's hard to turn in modern US history (like many others). A heavy page weighed down by filthy American limelight, lucre and lust.

Evolution on a keyboard

When I saw Richard Dawkins sitting down in front of a piano, I was afraid that he might be about to give us a rendition of an old Anglican hymn, say, such as Onward Christian Soldiers or Abide with Me. (That's because I often do such strange things.)



His use of the keyboard to illustrate the vastness of evolutionary time is most eloquent.

Tools for better thinking

There's a fabulous website (for readers of my kind… whatever that fuzzy expression might mean) known as Edge, which was created by the celebrated literary agent John Brockman. It's truly a place where all the big minds hang out. This year's fundamental question for Edge participants (suggested apparently by Steven Pinker… which doesn't surprise me) is:

What scientific concept would improve
everybody's cognitive toolkit?

In other words, in the case of thinkers who don't seem to hit the nail exactly on the head: What are they missing in the way of paradigms that might enable them to "think different", or at least better?

I remember saying to myself, after my first reading of The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins: That fellow would write and explain things even more brilliantly if only he knew a bit about object-oriented computer programming! (I still have this impression.)

Today, I was amused and impressed by the answer of this same Dawkins to the 2011 Edge question. The professor suggests that people should master, as a prime necessity, the principles of the double-blind control experiment, as used by countless researchers in the domain of biology and, more particularly, pharmacology. Why not? Testing potential remedies in an objective scientific style prevents us (as Dawkins states) from being "seduced by homeopaths and other quacks and charlatans, who would consequently be put out of business". As I've always said, Dawkins is at his best when he's talking about down-to-earth scientific knowledge. He's the mythical science master whom all of us should have encountered when we were at school.

Another brilliant answer to the 2011 Edge question was supplied by Michael Schermer. He suggested that people should learn to think in a bottom-up rather than a top-down fashion. Now, that kind of advice pleases me immensely, because it uses the everyday talk of computer programmers from back in the last quarter of the 20th century. The only difference is that most of us were emerging, at that time, from an epoch of being fanatically top-down rather than bottom-up. We had been inculcated into thinking that the only way of solving problems is to start at the top and work your way down. In fact, as Michael Schermer points out, Nature (like everything in the Cosmos, so it would seem, ever since the Big Bang) has always started at the bottom and worked its way up…

Most loathsome Americans

When I heard of the existence of the following list of names, my immediate reaction was: "No, that's not possible. It's surely an error. There can't be as many as fifty Americans who deserve to be called loathsome." Besides, I myself would probably be incapable of even naming fifty living Americans, be they loathsome or lovable. That's like asking me to name, say, my ten favorite British TV soap-opera characters, or my twenty most boring Aussie pollies, or the hundred most arrogant French citizens (in which list it would be fitting if I myself were at least nominated as a candidate).

Although I recognized few names, the list is amusing. But it's all terribly parochial (which is a criticism that Americans are unlikely to understand). Often, I tried to guess, from the explanations, why the list compilers considered that such-and-such a person was loathsome. In certain cases, on the contrary, they sounded like interesting individuals (the targeted people, not the list-compilers). The weird idea of designating the reader as the 50th loathsome American was, to my mind, dull and meaningless. Besides, I didn't like to see Barack Obama's name appearing in the list. I wasn't able to figure out whether or not the list-compilers themselves appeared in the list. They should, I think. In conclusion, this annual list appears to be a mildly interesting idea, but the project has got somewhat screwed up, and run out of steam somewhere down the line. Maybe I react like that for the simple reason that "loathsome" is an adjective I've always loathed.

Bug Mac and beetle sauce, please!

I was intrigued by an article in the French press revealing that Dutch food researchers are advancing rapidly in the domain of new foodstuffs based upon edible insects.

According to this fascinating article, crunchy baked insects often have a taste reminiscent of hazelnuts. As foodstuff, they're rich in proteins, low in fat, and insect maladies cannot be transmitted to humans who might eat afflicted insects. Unlike cattle, insects don't fart methane. Unlike pigs, insects don't produce piles of filthy manure that can harm the environment (as in Brittany today). You might say that the only negative aspect of the idea of insects being envisaged as food for humans is our cultural aversion to eating creepy-crawly things. Still, we've overcome that reaction in the case of lobsters, prawns and crabs. Besides, people who've gotten over the hurdle of consuming oysters, snails and frogs' legs shouldn't have much trouble in gobbling down, say, grilled grasshoppers or raw witchetty grubs. It's a pity that many videos of people being introduced to bush tucker in Australia, say, include images of screaming females looking as if they're about to puke.

Efficient promotional work will have to be carried out, to convince future consumers that insects are not, somehow, dirty and disgusting.

Buggy lollipops might be a good idea for kids, but I've got a better suggestion for selling such food to adults. The insects should be pulverized (so that their recognizable attributes disappear) and transformed into a surimi-like paste. This could then be aromatized, colored, enhanced with natural herbs and then packaged like ready-to-grill barbecue rissoles… maybe under a nice new market-oriented name: Insex steak. Producers could even start rumors about the powerful aphrodisiac effects of this stuff, and its extraordinary results in the case of sporting champions. Maybe they could hire the great Lance (now that he's about to retire) to launch a planetary promotional campaign with the buzzword InsexStrong…

The figures are eloquent. To produce a kilogram of traditional meat, farmers need to supply ten kilograms of vegetal fodder. This same quantity of plant resources could produce between six and eight kilograms of insects. And it's now known that at least 1400 insect species could be consumed safely by humans. So, when do we sit down for lunch?

Queensland calamity

As an Australian, moved by the legendary toughness of our northern cousins, I find it intellectually embarrassing that a dimwitted 59-year-old Queenslander named Ken Ham should be making a name for himself in God's Own Country (he would be better off shoveling mud in his homeland) by his promotion of Creationist bullshit of the worst idiotic kind.

Intelligent citizens of the world might be asking: Is that kind of juvenile fucked-up brain an endemic thing in Australia? I answer emphatically: No! No! No! Ken Ham is a sick mutant. Few Australians follow this fellow. We're all happy he found his way to the USA. Take care of him, feed him if you like, be kind to him, and keep the bastard, please! We don't want him back. We won't even ask for a refund… Shit, there's no use in spending millions to promote great Aussie themes about our dynamic land and open-minded cultures when a crackpot like Ham can instill overnight the idea that we might all be crazy Down Under.

But are we? Or aren't we? I'm not sure. Good questions…

I'm wondering whether we could launch some kind of international process (maybe with technical help from Julian Assange) aimed at "disowning" Ken Ham. You know, like parents who don't want to bequeath their heritage to a wayward offspring. Meanwhile, here's a good article about why our Ham is all pigshit.

Seriously, this Ham guy needs to be neutralized. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm talking of logic, not gunfire. For Christ's sake, don't shoot the silly bastard; he would surely be canonized overnight by Silly Benny. Saint Fucking Ham! Worse than Frankenstein's monster. What a horrible unending nightmare… Maybe there's some kind of cockroach powder than might work on Ham. Fellow embarrassed Aussies, let's put our heads together and decide what might be done.

The bark and the bite

I'm probably not mistaken, dear reader, in supposing that you would be quite incapable of distinguishing between a bit of bark from, say, a walnut tree and a similar bit of bark from a plum tree. That's because you're not a donkey. These animals seem to find the bark of young plum trees considerably more tasty than that of walnut trees.

It's not as if the donkeys are consuming tree bark because they're starving. As indicated in my article entitled Learning a thing or two about horses [display], there's abundant grass in the part of the property I recently opened up to cater for the arrival of Will's horses. The simple truth is that donkeys are fond of plum tree bark in the same way that we humans are fond of plums. As for the poor plum trees (growing wild at that spot, and not particularly valuable), I'm afraid they might not survive this in-depth attack. But they will have died for a good cause: the epicurean tastes of my donkeys... and I'll have a better view of the valley.

Almost like spring

The sun was shining, yesterday, at Gamone. It was almost like a warm spring day. So, I went out walking with the dogs.

As usual, Fitzroy takes advantage of every opportunity to joust with his senior companion. As for Sophia, she remains alert and slim as a result of all this unsolicited exercise.

Fitzroy was visibly impressed by the cascades in Gamone Creek.

I had some work to do there. Just below my house, the creek runs through a big pipe under the road. A fortnight ago, when a thick blanket of snow covered every detail of the landscape at Gamone, the municipal snow plow appears to have bumped into a few big blocks of stone that formed an irregular wall around the upper extremity of this pipe. Broken fragments rolled over into the hole in the creek bed where the underground pipe starts, blocking it. I first noticed this problem a few days ago, when creek water started running over the road instead of through the pipe. Yesterday afternoon, I decided that the best solution would be to solve the problem myself, instead of waiting for the municipality (made aware of the situation) to get into action. It's amazing how a few chains, a block-and-tackle and a conveniently-located tree can be used to dislodge huge blocks of stone. (I believe the Ancient Egyptians made a discovery of that kind, long before I did.)

The water is now cascading perfectly, once again, down Gamone Creek.

Wiped-out generation

In my recent post entitled Latest deductions from Skyvington research [display], I explained that I've been grouping together all the Mormon references concerning surnames such as Skeffington, Skevington, Skivington, etc, and painstakingly sorting them by year. The immediate goal of all this work is to home in on individuals who might have been the immediate ancestors of my earliest clearly-identified patriarch: George Skivington, born in Belchalwell (Dorset) in 1670. I've often imagined that there might have been some kind of rupture not long before the birth of this "Belchalwell George" (as I call him). On the one hand, George's parents had no doubt moved to Dorset from a neighboring region. And, in so doing, they had probably replaced the old Skevington spelling by Skivington. Since George was a relatively uncommon given name in 17th-century England, I would imagine that my "Belchalwell George" probably descended from a family context in which that name existed already. Now, that set of likely constraints helps to narrow down the domain in which I'm searching.



In my article of 15 August 2007 entitled Midland ancestors [display], I spoke of my excursion to a charming little town called Turvey in Bedfordshire, which was the home of a big family named Skevington in the second half of the 16th century. I've always been persuaded that these folk were the ancestors of my "Belchalwell George", and this is my main line of research at present. Besides, there were Turvey individuals named George Skevington. Finally, at the end of my recent processing, when I was able to sort all the Skevington records by date, I was surprised to discover a big packet of Skevington burial records in Turvey for the year 1608. It's a finding that would have never struck me previously, when I was dealing with records in a casual manner. It was only when I had grouped together all existing records, and sorted them, that this observation suddenly hit me in the face.


Clearly, for almost an entire generation of a family to be wiped out in the space of a single year, there was only one possible explanation: the Black Death, or bubonic plague. I spoke already, in my article entitled Dressing up [display], of the beak outfit worn by plague physicians in the 17th and 18th centuries.

I have reasons to believe that this plague calamity played a role in causing a handful of young Skevington survivors to move away from Turvey, maybe down towards Dorset. And, in so doing, their links with the past were no doubt weakened. In the turmoil of this upheaval, it would not have been unusual that the spelling of our ancestral name should change, in certain cases, from Skevington to Skivington.

Flood tourists

Peter Nicholson has kindly allowed me to reproduce the following cartoon which appeared in The Australian a few days ago:

We see here the wet and windswept lady Anna Bligh terminating her speech about the legendary toughness of Queenslanders [display]. Behind her, a tourist from Canberra, Julia Gillard, is sticking her massive nose into a camera. The other day, when Gillard loitered alongside Bligh at a press conference, the prime minister looked like a decorative table-lamp in an old-fashioned drawing room. She was posed there, waiting to be turned on, if ever anybody thought that her presence might light up the scene. But nobody seemed to think so. As for Kevin Rudd, I did in fact see video images of him wandering around in the water with a suitcase on his head, and mumbling something about lending a hand to students.

Here's another of Peter Nicholson's touristic visions of Brisbane:

Meanwhile, down in New South Wales, the flooded town of Grafton (my birthplace) received the visit of an American tourist, the premier Kristina Keneally.

Click the photo to access an article on this subject in The Daily Examiner by local journalist Terry Deefholts, who reached the rather obvious conclusion that the premier's excursion was a "public relations stunt". In any case, we could hardly expect any of the Anna Bligh style of rhetoric from such a mediocre woman. Terry Deefholts attempted vainly to persuade Keneally to talk about the notorious local road that I mentioned in my article entitled Highway called Pacific [display]. Her parting gibe to the insistent journalist was particularly condescending: "You could live in Sydney, you’ve got enough grunt for it." Those words sound like something from an old American movie: "What's a smart guy like you doing in this one-horse town?"

The following photo by Lynne Mowbray shows Terry (in the boat) accompanying the editor David Bancroft in the delivery of their newspaper to residents of flooded Maclean.

Another of their many flood photos caught my attention:

The two drovers taking cattle to higher grounds could have come straight out of my childhood memories of floods at South Grafton.