Asymmetrical faces

At first sight, you might—or might not—imagine that these are portraits of two sisters, who could well be twins (but surely not identical twins):

In fact, these two reconstructed images are based upon a unique original photo of a single individual whose facial features are rather asymmetrical. To form each image, one half of the woman's face has been copied and then combined with a mirror image of itself.

Click the double-portrait to access the website of the photographer, Julian Wolkenstein, who presents several samples of this technique. It's a pity (I feel) that he doesn't show us the original photos.

In reality, many ordinary-looking human faces turn out to be quite asymmetrical when examined closely.

La plume de Fitzroy

Everybody who has studied a little bit of French has heard of "la plume de ma tante" (my aunt's pen) which has been lying for countless generations of students "sur la table" (on the table). In fact, the word "plume" designates a feather. So, we must imagine that the aunt is an old-timer who still writes with a goose quill dipped in ink. And that trivial anecdote suggests that the teaching of French in the English-speaking world might be a little antiquated. Maybe it's time that French teachers got around to an example such as "l'ordinateur de ma copine est sur le bureau" (my girlfriend's computer is on the desk).

The word "plumes" designates (among countless other things) ostrich feathers adorning the backsides of female dancers at places such as the Lido and Folies Bergère.

In the second half of the 19th century, the French had the impression that "plumes" of the peacock adorned the backsides of strutting Prussian military commanders.

These days, I'm often under the illusion that my dog Fitzroy has a thick "plume" sprouting from his backside.

When you compare the tails of the two dogs, that of Fitzroy is indeed feathery, to say the least, and he often moves around with his curved tail held high in the air. (This is a behavior also adopted by Christine's dog Gamone, the daughter of Sophia, who is in certain ways a similar kind of friendly animal to Fitzroy). When Fitzroy drops his tail, it looks quite normal, because he's woolly all over in this cold season.

Contrary to what Christine and I might have imagined when we first met up with little Fitzroy as a pup, up in his Alpine abode, he is turning into quite a big animal.

In his head, though, Fitzroy remains a playful young dog, who rarely winds down. For me, it's a fascinating pleasure to have two canine companions of such totally different mentalities and behaviors. In fact, the two dogs seem to complement one another.

Apple devices that are beautiful to look at

Apple devices must be beautiful to look at… otherwise there's little point in designing and marketing them. Everybody is aware of that by now, even those skeptics who persist in sticking to antiquated tools, maybe because they're anguished by modernity. The two beautiful and interesting devices that I'm about to present are for different categories of users. The first one can be manipulated immediately by totally inexperienced beginners, maybe with a little help from friends. The second device, on the other hand, is quite sophisticated, and it can only be handled efficiently by individuals who have gone to the trouble of examining closely its operational principles.

I'm obliged to point out that neither of these two devices was accompanied by any kind of user manual, although I acquired a lot of basic guidance from this well-written little book (in French), full of interesting suggestions of all kinds, that I came upon—of all places—at the local supermarket. It was fun to play around with the two devices until I finally succeeded in mastering their concepts. But now that I'm more or less enlightened on their use and usefulness, I'm happy to have made that slight necessary effort. Besides, I have a weird inner feeling of having attained some kind of superior spiritual union with the designers and manufacturers of these devices, as if we were truly on the same wavelength and speaking the same language.

Apple shops in Provence surely stock this first device. I say that because mine was given to me as a gift by friends in Marseille who know I'm a crazy fan of products in this exciting domain.

Critics might say that this device is so simple that it appears to be a toy, and that it hardly deserves to be described as a high-tech tool. Apple products often provoke that kind of reaction, particularly from individuals who have never dared to try them out. You might be wondering about the actual use of this device. While insisting upon the fact that questions of that kind are excessive (often spiked with malice) and hardly worth asking, I will limit my explanations to pointing out that the only way to appreciate this device is to sit down of a wintry evening in front of a log fire, and let the red coals do the rest, transporting you into a marvelous new sensual world…particularly if you happen to be fond of charred fruit.

Apple devices of the second kind are, as I said, a quite different kettle of fish (if I can be pardoned for using an inappropriate metaphor).

A critic said that only a trained engineer could use this tool, and that only an untrained engineer could have designed it. To my mind, that's a blatant exaggeration. Even a skilled tradesman with experience in the assembly of agricultural machinery could no doubt figure out, after a while, how this device is to be put in action. As for the idea that an untrained engineer has designed this sophisticated tool, that's sheer rubbish. Not even a first-year apprentice attending a technical college with a view to obtaining a certificate as a machine operator in a factory would be sufficiently audacious, indeed rash enough, to imagine a machine such as this. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the designer went mad while trying to get his device to function, and then he was probably removed in mysterious circumstances by the owner of the workshop that had agreed to manufacture the device. Or maybe they were both assassinated by an investment banker who saw his company's hopes mangled like mashed apples as a result of plans to build and market this device on the international scene.

But I can hear you all screaming out an obvious question: What's it supposed to actually do? Well, let's say that it's a processor. Apple specialists would call it a core processor… and the above photo reveals that this designation is perfectly correct. But it does much more than provide you with a core. It also makes a bloody mess… where the adjective applies literally if ever you were to place the fingers of one hand in the vicinity of the core while turning vigorously the handle with the other hand.

Incidentally, I should point out that the devices I've just described date from some time back, and it's quite possible that they've been replaced since then by more advanced models. In that case, if ever you happened to have the technical specifications of the latest versions of these devices, I would be most grateful if you were to refrain from going to the trouble of informing me. Apple products don't necessarily have to be replaced every time that new models are released. For the moment, I'm perfectly happy with the devices that I currently own.

APOLOGIES TO THE KIND PEOPLE WHO OFFERED ME THESE GIFTS: I've been joking, of course. Your gifts are proudly displayed in my house at Gamone, where they draw attention from puzzled visitors. If only I were young and seductive, I'm sure I could score in the village pubs and nightclubs with the line: "Why don't you come up to my place for a glass of cider, so I can show you my Apple devices..."

Daydreams of a solitary stroller

Soon after starting to work as an English teacher at the Lycée Henri IV in the Latin Quarter of Paris, I discovered this wonderful book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-1778]… whose tomb is located in the national sanctuary called the Panthéon, just opposite my lycée.

It might be considered anachronistic that the start of my life at the intellectual hub of the great city should coincide with my fascination for the rural daydreams of an 18th-century philosopher and musician from Geneva. In fact, it's only since my arrival here at Gamone that I've discovered—with a little surprise—that I've become a passionate solitary stroller of the Rousseau kind. And that discovery caused me to realize that my propensity for daydreaming while strolling around on the slopes was surely the outcome of a habit I first developed when I was a child, accompanying my father during our excursions to his bush property out at Deep Creek.

These days, I've had ample opportunities of noticing that younger people—particularly those who were born and bred here—rarely stroll. Even when deprived of their motor vehicles and obliged to move around on foot, they gallop from one spot to another, with no obvious passion for anything that might be termed daydreaming. Yesterday afternoon, for example, I met up with friends at Presles, and a group of seven of us spent half an hour pacing along a delightful circuit up behind my friends' newly-constructed chalet in the village. Frankly, it was annoying that I had to augment considerably my habitual strolling speed, and refrain from halting to admire anything whatsoever in the magnificent landscape, if I were to avoid getting out-distanced. And, back home at Gamone at the end of the day, I found that I had sore feet.

Funnily, some of these same friends expressed their astonishment that a newcomer such as myself had acquired an awareness of various aspects of the background of this region in which they had always been living. For example, they weren't aware of the international importance of the local laboratory mentioned in my article of 30 April 2008 entitled Source of the cheese industry [display], nor did they seem to know that the old-timers here were wine-makers for centuries before turning to the production of walnuts, or that there used to be three great medieval castles down in the valley. I felt like saying to my friends: If you're interested in delving into interesting tales of that kind, then you should first stop galloping, and take time to look around you.

Admittedly, other factors of a strictly personal kind are involved. Whenever I travel in a train or a bus, I would find it unthinkable to "waste my time" by sticking my nose into a book. The spectacle of a landscape (be it rural or urban) unfolding before my eyes, through the windows of a moving vehicle, has always been for me an immense visual pleasure. Even in a tram in Grenoble, I could never imagine myself reading a newspaper. I prefer to gaze at anything and everything in the world around me: not only interesting sites and attractive females, but even dull views whose interest resides in their very dullness. To my mind, failing to communicate constantly with the surroundings, even though my mode of communication might remain essentially passive, would be like getting invited to a dinner evening and asking my hosts if I could watch TV.

Peasant pie

This so-called peasant pie is a delicacy from the wooded Jura region of eastern France.

The basic ingredient is the celebrated sausage from the village of Morteau, to the east of Besançon, just alongside the Swiss border at the level of Neuchâtel.

These pure pork sausages are smoked slowly using resinous woods (pine, spruce and juniper), and this operation gives the sausage skins (natural pork gut) their amber color. As for the peasant pie recipe, it's remarkably simple (and there are no onions or liquid):

— roll of puff pastry
[Authentic peasants would have made their own pastry.]
— bottom layer of steamed potato and carrot slices
— middle layer of sliced sausage
— upper layer of cooked asparagus
[Peasants may have used leaks instead of asparagus.]
— topped (inside) with shredded Emmental cheese
— upper covering brush-daubed with mixture of egg yolk and milk

It goes without saying that many other kinds of cooked pork sausages might be used instead of the French Morteau variety. Don't forget the chimney in the middle of the pie. Best baked slowly (30 to 40 minutes) in an oven no hotter than 180 degrees. Eaten preferably in the presence of a genuine and admiring peasant's dog.

CONCLUSION: The only problem with my homemade pies at Gamone is that each one gives rise to several meals. I've never been courageous enough to test the possibility of deep-freezing dishes of this kind. Incidentally, I now know why the Good Lord invented big families, particularly in pious rural environments where food resources were meager and waste could not be tolerated. He did this in order to justify the preparation of king-sized peasant pies, which could be consumed at a single sitting.

REACTION FROM FITZROY'S FRIEND IN BRITTANY: I was surprised when Christine expressed her surprise that Fitzroy is absent from the first photo, as if I might be treating him harshly. I'm afraid that the idea of expecting Fitzroy to pose calmly for a photo alongside a dining-room table holding a peasant pie is unthinkable for the moment. Fitzroy is perfectly capable of scaling near-vertical rocky embankments. He does that regularly to inspect such things as the rustling of grass, or the movements of a lizard or a bird. So, the challenge of jumping up onto a table to devour a sweet-smelling peasant pie would be a quite simple and worthwhile affair for Fitzroy. When it's warm enough to sit outside for meals, I'll have to handle this educational problem.

Bicycle outing in Chile

Not only is the bicycle a pleasant, healthy and non-polluting way of moving around. It also enables you to travel quite rapidly from one place to another, often along unexpected pathways, as demonstrated by this video of a brief bicycle outing in Valparaiso, Chile.



Certain viewers might complain that such a cyclist has to pay so much attention to the road that he doesn't really have ample opportunities of admiring the scenery. You can't have everything...

Australian meat pies

My daughter and son have never forgotten their first day out in Sydney, when they were small kids. I bought three hot meat pies, and we sat down to eat them in a corner of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Since this would be the first time ever that my children were to taste this famous Australian delicacy, I warned them that the gravy inside the pies was quite hot. So, they must not be tempted to bite into their pies as if they were sandwiches, for they would burn their mouths. As a conscientious dad, I made sure that this message got through to my kids. And they attacked their pies expertly. As for me, I failed to heed my own warning. Biting into my own meat pie as if it were a lukewarm hamburger, I promptly yelled in pain as a stream of boiling gravy scalded my lips and splashed my shirt. Needless to say, my kids found the situation funny.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I decided to prepare genuine Aussie meat pies (or almost) at Gamone, using ready-rolled pie pastry. It's remarkably easy. A packet of 400 g of beef mince enabled me to prepare enough mix for the equivalent of four individual pies, which I cooked in two sessions: yesterday, then this evening. My meat pies happened to be square, not round, since I baked them in a rectangular ovenware dish. Incidentally, that meant that I had to buy square pastry rather than the usual circular product.

I didn't worry too much about strict Aussie orthodoxy, in the sense that I did not incorporate Vegemite into the meat mix, and I didn't serve them up smothered in ketchup. My mix included chopped black olives and precooked French mushrooms, and there was no doubt a little more Italian olive oil than in standard Aussie pies. Needless to say, I used ample Worcestershire sauce both in the preparation of the meat mix (to dissolve the maize starch) and to accompany the cooked pies. The combination of olives and Worcestershire sauce gave my pies a distinctive flavor.

Incidentally, I found it necessary to erect a small parchment-paper chimney in the middle of the pastry, to prevent it from rising above the meat during the baking. I don't know how they solve this problem out in Australia when cooking standard-sized meat pies.

Problem still unsolved

At the end of my recent article entitled Hose running [display], I said that Fitzroy had been trying to figure out how to run around on the lawn with one end of a long hose in his mouth. Here's a photo I took early this morning.

Clearly, the problem hasn't been solved yet. I try in vain to imagine the turmoil in Fitzroy's brain when he discovers that, the more he runs rapidly around the young tree, the more the situation worsens. At no moment throughout the day has he decided to try to untangle the hose. Maybe my dear dog, realizing that the challenge is more arduous than what he had expected, has drifted into a state of frustration and discouragement. I don't think so. I certainly haven't noticed him acting like a despondent dog. But would he be hiding his despair in the depths of his soul? I hope I don't have to find him a psychoanalyst… unless, of course, I were to read up on this subject with the help of Wikipedia, and do the job myself. The problem, then, would be to get Fitzroy to lie down calmly on a couch while I analyze him. I could always put him on my knees, but he would fall asleep instantly, as he always does, which would prevent him from hearing my words of Freudian wisdom. So, we still have problems.

Man in stripes

Everybody agrees, I'm sure, that this gentleman looks great in stripes… particularly when we notice that the stripes are in fact composed of repetitions of his name: Hosni Mubarak.

Other men, in other places, at other times, have worn stripes.

One might imagine that everybody ends up wearing the stripes he deserves… but I don't necessarily agree with that simple way of looking at things. It all depends upon circumstances, and the forces for change. As we all know, neither tigers nor zebras can change their stripes… but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mubarak's stripes were soon to be changed by force. For the moment, though, nobody can be quite sure of what these various Mediterranean dictators will be wearing next.

Remarkable ruins

In the special case of a great American city such as Detroit, which played a central role in the history of the automobile, it's fitting that urban vestiges should have the same stark forms as the rusty dislocated carcasses of antiquated limousines reposing in a junkyard, patiently awaiting their destruction.

The beauty of derelict sites in Detroit has been captured marvelously by two French photographers, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. To access several splendid specimens of their work, click the above image of William Livingstone's dilapidated house in the Brush Park neighborhood of the city (finally demolished in September 2007).

It is important to realize that most of this decrepitude dates from a long time ago, and had existed already long before the relatively recent slump when the Detroit Big Three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) were bowled over by Asian competition.

It was Mitterrand who gave the order

We learn today in a book by the French journalist Bruno Fay that, according to information from former French PM Michel Rocard, it was in fact the president François Mitterrand who ordered explicitly the destruction of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985.

This revelation is likely to darken our memory of a great statesman whose heritage has already been somewhat stained by two or three items drawn from his past.

Investigation to be launched in Libya

The prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the ICC [International Criminal Court] has just announced the opening of an investigation in Libya, which will concern Muammar al-Gaddafi, his sons, the minister of foreign affairs, Gaddafi's personal security chief, the chief of internal security in Libya, and other unnamed Libyan dignitaries. This UN tribunal—located at The Hague (Netherlands) and known in French as the CPI [Cour pénale internationale]—deals with cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Gaddafi would be lucky, in a way, if he could be brought before such a court and examined in an almost gentlemanly fashion. But the chances are slim concerning the likelihood of such a civilized outcome. On the one hand, Libya has never signed, yet alone ratified, the Rome Statute upon which the ICC was founded. On the other hand, one must realize that Libya is, not so much a "normal" nation, but rather a collection of desert tribes. And, if Gaddafi were to lose his grip on the land, it's doubtful whether a majority of members of hostile communities would be happy to simply hand him over to a body such as the ICC.

Then said Jesus […]
all they that take the sword
shall perish with the sword.
-- Matthew 26:52

I've dropped my flag counter

It was amusing to see the number of nations whose citizens apparently visited my blog. At the end, the count had reached 171 countries. But I've never been particularly confident in the authenticity of all these visits, and I have the suspicion that certain visitors were dropping in merely to search for new flags to add to their personal collections. I've never bothered to look into how they actually go about this quest from a practical viewpoint, but I'm convinced that this business exists. So, I decided to drop my flag counter. In its place, I've reinstalled a simple site meter… just to be able to check, from time to time, that Antipodes still has readers.

Hose running

No, I'm not talking of running hoses, such as when you forget to turn a tap off in the garden. Hose running is a totally different affair. It's an outdoor occupation, a game… or indeed a sport. It's a straightforward activity, which consists essentially of grabbing a length of hose and running as fast as possible, and often in circles, while taking care not to let go of the piece of hose, or have it knocked out of your grip by an encounter with an obstacle. My dog Fitzroy (seen here from an upstairs window, in the middle of his untidy little universe of sticks and twigs) has become a top-class performer in this sport.

Sophia, on the contrary, has never been tempted to get involved in this sport. She looks upon hose running with disdain, considering that a dog has to be rather empty-headed to get a kick out of such a silly activity.

In fact, Sophia has never even bothered to take the first step for a future hose runner: acquiring the basic equipment, which consists of finding a hose and biting off an appropriate length for hose running. Fitzroy performed this task ages ago, not long after his arrival at Gamone, which means that he has now acquired some three or four months of solid experience in this sport.

Fitzroy is becoming competent in another occupation: pool construction. Maybe I should speak rather of making puddles.

The trick, here, is to do your digging at a spot where you've detected the presence of water. Fitzroy, who has always been particularly observant, noticed that there's a link in the hoses from the spring that allows a tiny quantity of water to escape. So, he calculated the ideal location of the excavation operations, which were carried out in the early hours of the morning. And the puddle was full a few hours later.

I now believe that Fitzroy's deep attachment to humans is permanently wired-in to the synapses between the neurons in his brain. Besides, I'm convinced that this wiring-in got under way right from the first instants of his encounter with Christine, who nursed him tenderly in her lap during a lengthy car trip from his birthplace in Risoul up through the Alps to Gamone. These days, of an evening, Fitzroy likes nothing better than to crawl up onto my knees when I'm seated in front of the fireplace, watching TV. The presence of the little woolly dog on my knees is warm and cuddly, and it's marvelous to see him fall asleep almost instantly, apparently in a state of serenity. But, with the weather about to warm up, it would be unwise of me to encourage this habit, because of the possible presence in Fitzroy's fur of ticks and fleas, both of which can cause terrible afflictions in humans. So, sadly, I'll have to draw a line that limits our cuddly proximity. There's another risk in these fireside sessions with Fitzroy half-asleep on my knees. Periodically, he decides to adjust his position, and this can result in his lashing out drowsily with his paws to get a grip on the surroundings, which can be my face and neck. So, I really must cease behaving like one of Fitzroy's favorite dogs, and leave that role solely to Sophia.

BREAKING NEWS: Even an experienced hose runner can encounter problems when new sporting equipment is being tested on inappropriate grounds.

In fact, when I first dashed for my camera, the hose was wound several times around the tree. In the time it took me to get my camera ready, Fitzroy had already started to solve the problem. And half a minute later, the hose was completely free. But Fitzroy has apparently sensed that something's wrong with this king-sized equipment because, for the moment, he has abandoned the hose on the lawn.

More precisely, although he's completely soaked by the light rain that has been falling all day (resulting in insufficient light for me to take acceptable photos), Fitzroy seems to be deciding what to do next.

Belief in an afterlife is a substitute for wisdom

I've just been watching an interesting video of a debate on a Jewish TV network on the subject of an alleged afterlife. The celebrated atheists Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris converse with two US rabbis, David Wolpe and Bradley Artson Shavit.

[Click the portraits to access the video.]

Not surprisingly, within the group of four, the star was Hitchens. He really is a brilliant thinker and speaker. As for the rabbis, they come across as friendly guys, and far removed from familiar caricatures of crazed and biased religious fanatics. But their superficial friendliness doesn't make them one iota more credible at the level of their beliefs.

I've always felt that the historical and cultural foundations of Judaism (which have always interested me enormously, and still do) are so rich and dense that it must be difficult—well nigh impossible—to ditch them overboard, even in the name of common sense and/or science. For a goy (such as me), on the other hand, brought up in a typical Christian environment, it's much easier to rid oneself of all religious beliefs, mainly because many of the fairy-tale tenets of Christian theology (virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, Heaven and Hell, etc) are frankly ridiculous, and much of Christian ecclesiastic history (handling heretics, conflicts with non-Christians, crusades against infidels, immorality of the clergy, pomp and vanity of the Catholic church, conflicts between different branches of Christianity, sects, etc) is quite nasty, and best forgotten. A Jew who turns to atheism might say to himself: "Am I committing an irreparable error is abandoning my great family?" A Christian, devoid of nostalgia, is likely to exclaim: "Thank God I've been able to move away, at last, from that ugly mindless herd!"

Ideal bread recipe

People who make their own bread at home often find that it's not easy to create a standard product, whose quality never varies. Some people find that the inevitable variations from one session to another are actually part of the fun, and they deliberately experiment all the time. As far as my personal activities in this domain are concerned, after screwing up completely a recent bread-baking session [display], I have the impression that yesterday's trial session has enabled me finally to hit upon an ideal recipe. And, exceptionally, it doesn't even include my usual walnuts… which is a sin of omission, here at Gamone, that might be considered a bread-making equivalent of blasphemy. Here's what my ideal loaf looks like (after having been tasted abundantly by me, Sophia and Fitzroy):

I'm noting down the recipe here so that I'll be able to come back to it, if need be.

— Pour a third of a liter of cold water into the bowl of the bread machine.

— Add a teaspoon of salt.

— Add a tablespoon of olive oil.

— Add a tablespoon of poppy seeds.

— Add 450 g of white flour.

— Add 300 g of whole-wheat flour.

— Add a packet of yeast.

Select the program for whole-wheat bread, which takes about 4 hours (starting with a warm-up period of half-an-hour).

For the moment, the upper crust of the baked loaf tends to be lumpy, and the lumps often become detached when the loaf is sliced. Maybe there's a way of getting this surface to be more regular.

I think, therefore I am… misguided

I've just started to reread a book by the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, published in 2002.

It's an exceptional book, like all of Pinker's published works, dealing with the time-honored debate between nature and nurture. That's to say: Is the character of a human being determined by his inherited genes, or are we forged essentially by our childhood environment and upbringing? The title of Pinker's book is The Blank Slate. Maybe I should explain to young readers of this blog that, once upon a time, when the Earth was young (before the invention of the iPad), and writing paper was still a relatively expensive commodity, school children used to carry out their class exercises in subjects such as arithmetic and spelling by means of a reusable writing tablet composed of a flat and thin rectangular slab of dark stone, known as a slate.

As Pinker points out, the metaphor of a blank slate is usually attributed to the British philosopher John Locke. The expression itself seems to be a variation on the medieval Latin tabula rasa [scraped tablet]. These days, in everyday French, people use the expression "table rase" to designate the notion of starting from scratch. In monasteries, the tabula was a notice board on which daily chores were associated explicitly with the various monks. So, a tabula rasa was a notice board that was momentarily empty.

In view of its title, Pinker's book on the nature/nurture debate seems to be begging the question, since the blank slate metaphor represents the nurture viewpoint that a baby's brain is relatively empty before being metamorphosed by the acquisition of experiences from the surrounding environment, including above all the people around him, which form his personality, character, intelligence and all the rest. On the contrary, Pinker's book defends the nature viewpoint, in the sense that he considers that human babies are born with a lot of their future intellectual resources already "wired in". In other words, he argues against the theme expressed by his title. At first sight, this is a little confusing for the reader. It's as if the author of a book in support of atheism (such as The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, for example) were to have chosen whimsically a religiously-oriented metaphorical title such as, say, The Great Ship of God, before going on to liken it to the Titanic.

Pinker introduces several other celebrated metaphors, always in a negative sense. That's to say, he carefully explains these metaphors, and then spends the rest of his book demolishing them.

One of Pinker's earliest targets is dear old René Descartes. Throughout the western world, everybody loves him, because he told us that a human being is a very special hunk of meat equipped with a mysterious thing called a mind. That's to say, a human being is a tandem affair. On the one hand, each individual has a body. And at the same time, he has a mind, which might be thought of as "driving" the body, in much the same way that a person drives an automobile. Now, that's an idea that cannot fail to flatter us, because it's a bit of a bore being stuck with the vulgar hardware, the meat, devoid of an explicit and essentially autonomous self, a mind, indeed a soul. Descartes describes differences between the two collaborators, which might be likened respectively to a nice fresh apple and a hard billiard ball.

I'm not suggesting that Descartes liked apples or played billiards. These objects are merely proposed as a convenient way of looking at Cartesian dualism. Descartes distinguished the two entities by means of a criterion of partial destruction. An individual can lose a part of his body—an arm or a leg, say—just as easily as you take a slice out of an apple. On the other hand, it's practically impossible to cut a billiard ball into slices. Today, nobody likens the human mind to an indestructible billiard ball, because we've heard so much about schizophrenia and so-called split personalities. There are even spectacular cases of patients whose cerebral hemispheres function separately.

A new metaphor for the Cartesian mind was invented by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, who referred to it as the ghost in the machine, which seems to be a modernized variation on the ancient "deus ex machina" theme.

During the 18th century, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau invoked the theme of a wise and pristine creature, untouched by the vices of civilization, whom he designated as the noble savage, whose slates had seen no evil, heard no evil, and spoken no evil. And explorers in the Pacific often imagined that they had come upon such human tribes. But they were inevitably disillusioned before long.

Against the backdrop that I've just sketched, Pinker's task in The Blank Slate is frankly revolutionary, for he attempts to present conclusions—those of the computational theory of the mind—that are often totally astounding. Here's a typically-succinct paragraph in which Pinker employs a wonderful but little-used concept, consilience, which my Macintosh dictionary defines as "an agreement between the approaches to a topic of different academic subjects, especially science and the humanities".

History and culture, then, can be grounded in psychology, which can be grounded in computation, neuroscience, genetics and evolution. But this kind of talk sets off alarms in the minds of many nonscientists. They fear that consilience is a smokescreen for a hostile takeover of the humanities, arts and social sciences by philistines in white coats. The richness of their subject matter would be dumbed down into a generic palaver about neurons, genes and evolutionary urges. This scenario is often called reductionism, and I will conclude the chapter by showing why consilience does not call for it.

I agree entirely with Pinker's precise summary of the situation. On countless occasions, when I've attempted to defend a purely scientific worldview in various human domains, I've encountered immediate accusations of reductionism… often disguised in polite phrases such as "Science can't explain everything" or "You're forgetting the spiritual dimension of our existence". And when I try to affirm that science should be able to explain everything, or that an expression such as "the spiritual dimension of our existence" is fuzzy to the point of being meaningless, many people assume immediately that I'm a dull-witted crackpot with no sensitivity for humanism and culture. Worse, they see me as a misanthrope who has deliberately turned himself away from the real pulsating world of people.

Pinker was courageous to tackle the gigantic challenge of demolishing beliefs in a blank slate, which he designates as "the modern denial of human nature". For me, it's a joy and an easy task to follow Pinker's presentation of the current situation… but that's merely because I agreed entirely with his outlook even before my first encounter with his book. On the other hand, I don't know to what extent a firm believer in the blank-slate concept would be swayed by such a densely-written book. And I fear that even my humble blog post is likely to appear to certain readers as confused mumbo-jumbo.

Play your didgeridoo, Blue

An unexpected advantage of owning an old automobile is that it often needs to be repaired, or at least undergo its obligatory annual checkup, and this means that the owner is forced to wander around for an hour or so in various dull urban environments where he wouldn't normally set foot. Consequently, one often makes interesting discoveries.

Yesterday afternoon, at St-Marcellin (home town of the famous cheese), I wandered down an unfamiliar lane in order to visit a big nondescript warehouse that is totally specialized in the sale of cheap and nasty goods made in Asia. If I understand correctly, the lady behind this enterprise had been an enthusiastic tourist in lands such as Indonesia. One day, she decided to pay cash for a container of assorted merchandise that would be delivered to St-Marcellin. That must have been several years ago. Since then, has she purchased further containers full of this stuff, or is she still trying to find buyers for the initial delivery? I really don't know… but I find it hard to believe that many of the sturdy local folk would be tempted to track down this out-of-the-way warehouse and buy goods there. But I may be wrong. After all, I've never been inside the homes of many citizens of St-Marcellin. Maybe, if we were to conduct a rigorous survey, we would discover that there's an amazingly large proportion of Asian junk decorating the local living rooms.

Be that as it may, the part of the warehouse that fascinated me most of all was a tiny corner holding an upright pile of objects that appeared to be Australian didgeridoos… which normally look like this:

Now, the didgeridoos on sale in the warehouse at St-Marcellin didn't really look much like that. First, they were almost perfectly cylindrical, from one end to the other, rather than tapered. Next, when I picked up one of them, I found that it was quite light: not at all what you would expect in the case of a hollowed-out eucalyptus sapling some 2 meters in length. Then, the decoration had a glossy plastic look, as if it were composed of sheets of industrially-printed fake-Aboriginal graphic designs that had been glued onto the surface of the cylinder. Finally, the price of these objects was more-or-less standard, no matter what the size and decoration: a couple of dozen euros. It was then that I noticed, on a price tag, that these didgeridoos were in fact made out of bamboo and manufactured in Indonesia. As the lady at the sales counter put it, they were purely decorative didgeridoos. Instantly, I started to wonder whether there were many families in the St-Marcellin area that boasted the presence, hanging on a wall, of a fake decorative didgeridoo.



An unexpected advantage of not having many local friends (in my case, not a single individual living in St-Marcellin) is the negligible likelihood of receiving this kind of object as a gift from a kind-hearted person thinking that it would bring me warm memories of my distant land of birth. Today, of course, if such a calamity were to hit me, I could always hand the object over to my dog Fitzroy. All I would need to do, then, is to leave the chewed remnants of the instrument on the kennel roof, and inform my kind-hearted friend that a slight but unfortunate accident had occurred when I was teaching Fitzroy to play the didgeridoo…

Excellent dog food

I don't intend to display any photos, and I ask you to keep this sad story to yourselves. Initially, I hadn't even intended to mention it in my blog… but I decided that doing so might have a therapeutic effect, a kind of cathartic release.

If you say I'm absent-minded, that doesn't offend me at all. I've always known that I tend to get lost in my thoughts. Even at school in Grafton, my mates must have had some sound reason, based upon observations, to give me my nickname: the Professor.

Besides, over the last 24 hours, I've been tremendously pleased to have received technical help concerning my ongoing Macintosh software project [display] from a friendly senior Google guy, and it's starting to look like the real thing. Consequently, I tend to be constantly thinking about computer-programming questions, rather than practical matters in my everyday existence. And I've always been fond of that kind of situation, where I can "float above" real-life problems, deceptions and anguishes.

Here are the blunt facts concerning an unfortunate incident. This morning, I decided to bake some bread. For the first time ever (I don't know why), I put the poppy seeds and olive oil in the bowl of the bread machine before inserting the usual 50/50 mixture of white flour and whole-wheat flour, followed by walnuts. Did this minor change in my habits play a role in upsetting me? Be that as it may, I then turned on the machine, in an unthinking zombie-like fashion (Oh horror of horrors!), without adding the yeast!

It wasn't until several hours later, when the "bread" was baked, that I discovered my error. As I said in the blog title, the end-result is an interesting new variety of tasty and nutritious dog food.

BREAKING NEWS: The situation is significantly better than what I might have led you to believe in the above account. Not only dogs, but donkeys too, appreciate the nutty flavor of this dense damp foodstuff. I must make a point of remembering the recipe. Meanwhile, I have no reason to believe that forgetting the yeast should necessarily be interpreted as a symptom of Alzheimer's disease. Admittedly, my personal point of view on this question is neither sufficient nor highly significant. Even after leaving the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan usually felt that he was in perfect shape…

Favorite road sign

All too often, rural road signs make no attempt to be friendly. They order you to slow down, or turn in a certain direction, or stop… and that's all there is about it. They expect you to obey, but they offer absolutely nothing in return. On the contrary, a friendly stop sign might say: Dear driver, if you were to halt here for just a few seconds, there's a chance that you'll receive the visit of a charming hostess, who'll give you a bunch of flowers. Even those nasty radar cameras on main roads could be made vastly more friendly. For example: If you slow down to less than 90 km/hour, that will enable us to take a nice photo of your vehicle so that you can be enrolled in our next road-safety lottery, where you could win the privilege of a 24-hour speeding pass. But the authorities never have enough imagination to invent such friendly offers. So, it came as a pleasant surprise to discover this poetic sign:

It seems to be saying: Dear driver, you're in for a huge surprise, which lies just around the next corner. If you don't want to miss it, then maybe you should slow down a bit. As for the exact nature of this surprise, it's so amazing that words fail us. We simply don't know how to describe it!

As soon as I saw this sign, my mind started trying to guess what I was about to witness. Maybe the Mediterranean had finally gouged out a channel all the way up to the Vercors, and I was about to find myself alongside a beach, with Parisian tourists lounging on the warm golden sand, and a fellow riding around on a tricycle, selling ice cream. Maybe, on the contrary, I was being warned about the scene of a horrible accident in which a shepherd and his entire flock of sheep had been knocked over and flattened by a huge truck, leaving pieces of red meat and tufts of blood-soaked wool strewn all over the macadam. Could it be some kind of roadside nudist colony, with naked nymphs scrambling all over the roadway, pursued by Alpine beasts with horns? Was the road simply blocked by the fall of a high-speed train, which had strayed off the track between Lyon and Marseille? Within the space of a second or so, all these dramatic scenarios, and others, flowed through my mind.

When I parked my old Citroën by the roadside in order to get a closeup view of the exclamatory phenomenon, I was somewhat disappointed. It was a fizzer… as we Aussie kids used to say, designating double-bungers (a variety of fireworks) that hiss and smoke but fail to explode correctly. It was simply a bend in the road that was slightly too narrow for more than a single vehicle at a time.


In fact, this pair of warning signs, found on the site just after the exclamation mark, are largely sufficient to draw attention to the danger. They're considerably duller and less exciting, though, than the exclamation mark. So, all in all, I didn't mind about being swindled, as it were. For a few brief instants, I was invited to dream. And, in our mundane existence, opportunities like that are precious, and deserve to be appreciated in a state of joyous expectation, in an existentialist frame of mind.