Basic beverages

That bit in the Bible about man not living by bread alone is fair enough, although it denigrates indirectly, to my mind, the fabulous qualities of good bread, evoked recently in my article entitled Our daily bread [display]. Besides, I've always been a little surprised that the Bible didn't get around to stating firmly that man cannot live by water alone... which would have been a friendly gesture from the Almighty in favor of marvelous beverages of all kinds.

If God were to put me back on Earth for a second existence (one never knows what might take place in the wake of the much talked-about Rapture… which unfortunately never seems to take place at all), I would hope to be able to retain my hard-earned French passport, because I've grown accustomed to Europe, and I wouldn't be too keen about returning to the relatively impoverished cultural and societal infrastructure of Australia. In other words, I would gladly spend my second life right here in God's own Mediterranean country, France, but maybe a little further south than Choranche, in a landscape where my old roses (which seem to be quite happy in my care at Gamone) would be accompanied by olive trees and prolific grape vines. I've often said that, in this second life, I would be tempted to work professionally in genetics, since I persist in believing that it's one of the most exciting sciences that exist. But I would still like to remain well-versed in computing, and I would continue to purchase from Amazon (whose business model extends up towards eternity) all the latest books on cosmology and quantum physics.

The basic beverages referred to in my title are tea, coffee, wine and beer. I would never think of claiming, of course, that this list of beverages is in any way universal. There are individuals who would replace tea by whisky or brandy, and many Americans would no doubt prefer to include Coke or Pepsi rather than wine. As for our gracious queen (who has just turned 85), she apparently prefers gin to Guinness.

I already have professional plans for my second life (over and above my research work in genetics and my constant activities in computing). I would like to set up a pub brewery in southwest France, in a fairytale place such as Carcassonne where the men play rugby and the women cook cassoulet: one of my favorite dishes [display].

This idea of making small quantities of beer in a so-called microbrewery first attracted me in 1987 when I was living out in Fremantle, where there's a nice pub brewery called the Sail and Anchor. In Sydney, there's a celebrated microbrewery at the Lord Nelson, which is said to be the oldest pub in the land. The metal equipment (mixture of copper and stainless steel) is beautiful, the aroma of brewing beer is fabulous, and I've always imagined that the very idea of transforming water and malt into beer is magic. (There used to be a great brewery in my home town of Grafton.)


The idea came back to me a fortnight ago at the People bistrot in St-Jean-en-Royans, at the regular Tuesday afternoon get-together of a small group of British expatriates who mingle there with French friends who want to brush up their English. There was an Australian visitor who told me that his job consisted of distributing German equipment to microbreweries throughout Australia.

Now, maybe you shouldn't take me too seriously when I talk about brewing beer in a medieval city of rugby and cassoulet, because strange ideas creep up on me constantly. Christine could tell you, for example, that I once suggested, during a visit to the Flemish city of Bruges, that it would be lovely if our daughter (who was then a baby) might have an opportunity of learning how to make lace. I hasten to add that Emmanuelle has never pursued this fine idea, nor has she ever thought about becoming a nun (as my mother-in-law once suggested, jokingly, to tease me).

Meanwhile, I decided to improve my production of another of the basic beverages: coffee. As a change from consuming standard supermarket stuff, I finally decided to look around for a place where they roast top-quality coffee beans. In fact, if you want a certain choice of beans that have been roasted only a few weeks prior to your purchase, well there aren't too many such places around. The Internet pointed me to an industrial site named Pivard, to the south of Valence. When I got there, I discovered a vast factory with chimneys belching marvelously-aromatic fumes. Fortunately, they have a delightful boutique in the heart of Valence, with a wide choice of the world's best beans. I purchased a packet of freshly-roasted beans of one of the most illustrious coffees in the world: Ethiopian Yrgacheffe. Back home, I used the ultra-fine setting on my KitchenAid burr grinder, to obtain espresso-grade ground coffee.


This morning, I took advantage of the sunny weather to take my DeLonghi machine outside and give it a thorough cleaning, both inside and outside.

Then I brewed my first Yrgacheffe.

The lady at the Pivard boutique in Valence had told me: "If your grinding and brewing are in perfect harmony, the surface of your espresso must be covered in froth. If there's no froth, then something's wrong. Then, of course, you'll judge the result by tasting it." As you can see, there was lots of froth. And I assure you that the taste was great. My Yrgacheffe espresso was absolutely perfect.

Quiche du roi soleil

I've already mentioned the French tart known as a quiche lorraine [display]. Well, I've just invented this variation on the quiche theme, to be known as the quiche du roi soleil [Sun King Quiche].

That's a reference, of course, to Louis XIV [1643-1715]. You may recall that I spoke of this great French monarch in an earlier blog entitled King's anus [display]. In this new quiche, the spokes of the wheel (which might be imagined as rays of the Sun) are composed of midget asparagus shoots.

Gut bug villain identified

Germany has finally decided that bean sprouts are the source of the lethal strain of Escherichia coli.

But are German scientist well-informed and correct? After all the tergiversations, an observer of the devastating effects of Germany's outrageous Cucumbergate might have doubts.

In any case, it would be normal that Germany should pay cash for this erroneous rashness.

The notorious new strain of E. coli bacteria that came to light in Germany has caused acute diarrhea followed by a life-threatening affliction known as HUS (hemolytic-uremic syndrome), characterized by hemolytic anemia (breakdown of red blood cells) and acute uremia (kidney failure).

The designation of the deadly new strain, O104:H4, has nothing to do with the actual genome of this bacterium, which was sequenced in China at the BGI-Shenzhen laboratory. The O and H terms, designating the bacterium's serotype, refer to simple chemical substances called antigens that cover, respectively, the cell walls and tails of the bacteria, provoking defensive reactions (production of antibodies) from the immune system of the host in which the bacteria reside.

In fact, we humans have been living for ages with these terrifying E coli creatures, who've often become intimate friends. As the science-writer Robert Krulwich says so beautifully [click the bacteria images], they're our partners in the gigantic time-space adventure of existence, rather than our declared enemies, and we should respect them.

I nevertheless draw attention to a highly-pertinent document that I downloaded from the website of the University of California [find it by Google], suggesting that mungo bean seeds can be pathogenic, and that their inherent nastiness can move into sprouts in organic gardens. What more do we need to know or say?

ADDENDUM: This is a photo by Stew Milne for The New York Times. Click it to access an interesting US article on links between bean sprouts and the German bacterial outbreak. I learn that such events, in the USA, are referred to as sproutbreaks.

This fashionable foodstuff may indeed be most nutritious, and give the human consumer the pleasant sensation of being transformed into a herbivorous mammal (which we are not) akin to cows, horses and donkeys. What a pity that genetics in general, and bacteria in particular, don't have much respect for the latest nutritional fashions.

The Wikipedia article on the 2011 E. coli O104:H4 outbreak [display] is now well updated and informative... hopefully definitive.

Click the banner for an interesting and novel explanation of how the deadly bacteria might have set up home in our society.

Dog business

Some time ago, when I took the train down to Marseille, accompanied by my dog Sophia, I had an opportunity of discovering, thanks to the wonderful hospitality of my Provençal friends Natacha and Alain, that the challenge of having a dog in an urban environment poses problems. There's a morning ritual of taking the animal downstairs, as soon as the master has woken up, for a pee. And an evening ritual of leading the dog to a convenient place to "do its business" (that's to say, for a turd session). The problem is that a master can't simply flick a switch causing his dear dog to "drop a darkie" (as we used to say in Aussie talk). I can remember Alain and I, in the backstreets of Marseille, trying desperately to imagine how we might persuade Sophia that we were starting to get fed up, and that it was time for her to arch her back and deliver. I even recall wondering whether Sophia, perfectly happy to discover the warm odors of the charming Mediterranean metropolis, realized that the only way of drawing out the delicious twilight promenade was to resist resolutely any urge to defecate. When she finally got around to depositing her turds alongside the footpath, it was because she was no longer capable of blocking them inside her intestines… but she knew perfectly well—poor dog—that this act of abandon meant that she would be led straight back to the apartment.

When I stumbled upon this delightful cartoon by the Flying McCoys, I thought immediately of Alain, Sophia and me at Marseille.

[Click the image to obtain a slight enlargement.]

The depiction of the serious but correctly-collared bespectacled dog doing its business on the suburban front lawn is marvelous, right down to the open laptop and the framed family photo on the desk. I love the dog's ears, which have a Martian-antenna look.

Talking about canine defecation (isn't that a noble expression), I can say that, up until recently, I had carted away tons of Fitzroy's turds from around the house. These days, he has apparently changed his turd territory, to an unknown location... and I don't see them anymore. So much the better. The most amazing thing is that I can truly say that I've never once actually seen Fitzroy in the act of defecating. (It's a fact that, since he lives outdoors, he has a lot of time to handle such affairs well before I'm up and about.) In the case of Sophia, on the contrary, she has always taken pleasure in dropping turds in the middle of throngs of tourists on the banks of the Bourne at Pont-en-Royans.

We're dealing, need I say, with different generations of dogs. Sophia was a pure libertarian baby-boomer (who didn't mind getting screwed by a roaming dog from the neighboring village of Presles), whereas Fitzroy is a product of canine parents who experienced the backlash of the economic shocks of the last decade. Sophia, like me, is an atheist. All I hope is that Fitzroy isn't going to tell me, one of these days, that he has certain moral principles that dissuade him from defecating in public, and that besides—horror of horrors!—he believes in God. Shit!

Potentially breakneck Aussie invention

Some Aussie activities don't look particularly risky at first sight. Take rock fishing, for example. There's no danger whatsoever in being perched on a rock on the edge of the ocean… as long as there are no big waves in the vicinity. For rock fishing to become dangerous, you need at least one big wave in the vicinity. Often a single exceptional big wave is largely sufficient...

An invention known as the Hoverbike is the brainchild of an Australian motorbike enthusiast named Chris Malloy, seen here astride a prototype version of his toy… conveniently tethered to the ground to prevent it from flying into the heavens.

For the moment, the device is being thoroughly tested, with utmost caution, and Chris has never been tempted to release the straps that force the craft to hover close to the ground. At some time in the future, though, Chris figures out that his invention would be capable of rising to an altitude of a couple of thousand meters, and cruising at a speed of over 250 km/hour (like a motorcyclist having fun on a country highway). Here's a view that lets you see the main components of this rather elementary machine:

It occupies roughly the same surface as an automobile, but it's not intended to travel down the same roads as traditional vehicles. One day, when it's flightworthy, the Hoverbike will share the same aerial itineraries as helicopters, ULMs, hang gliders, etc.

Will this craft be risky? No more so than rock fishing… when there are no big waves in the vicinity. At a rough glance, I would imagine that, if ever there were sudden power fluctuations in one of the two propellers, the Hoverbike would immediately develop a tendency to stand up on one end, or turn somersaults, or spin out of control, or maybe simply drop. In rock fishing terms, that would be like the sudden arrival of a really big wave. But nothing like this could possibly happen as long as the Hoverbike remains firmly tethered to the ground.

Maybe, one day soon, the Hoverbike might set out unexpectedly on its maiden flight into the sky… when two of those tethering straps happen to work loose from the ground, at the same time that the pilot is revving up his toy. If this were to happen, the drop to the ground would probably be harmless, but it would be important to avoid having a spinning propeller drift down onto the pilot's head.

When all's said and done, I think it would be preferable to stick to rock fishing, or other relatively safe pastimes such as bushwalking without a compass, or surfing on unknown beaches, or swimming in crocodile ponds… Or maybe riding an old-fashioned motorcycle along winding country roads at the same cruising speed as an air-borne Hoverbike.

Now, I can imagine brave young Hoverbike enthusiasts criticizing me for whimpering liked a scared child. If you're not prepared to take a few risks, then you shouldn't even dare to walk across a busy suburban road. As I've often pointed out, my grandfather died (at the age of 93) as a result of falling off a swivel chair while changing a light bulb in his Gold Coast apartment. So, what's so crazy about jumping onto a Hoverbike and opening the throttle, then flying through the air with the greatest of ease, like the daring young man on the flying trapeze? OK, your arguments are indeed convincing. I'll think about it, and let you know if I change my mind. Meanwhile, please carry on your tethered testing.

Heart map, head map

This beautiful heart-shaped map of the world was created in 1536 by a Frenchman with a funny name: Oronce Fine. I hasten to point out that, in Latin, the gentleman's name has a much more distinguished look and feel: Oronteus Finæus.


Master Oronteus was, not only a cartographer (who produced the first-ever printed map of France), but also a mathematician of sorts, author of an opus entitled Protomathesis. Incidentally, most people would agree with me that this title sounds marvelous for a treatise on mathematics… but there's a slight hitch in that nobody seems to know with certainty what the scholarly term "Protomathesis" could possibly mean!

At the bottom of Oronce Fine's heart-shaped globe, admire the vast imaginary continent of Terra Australis… which must not be confused with the island of Australia. Medieval Terra Australis—whose existence was first envisaged by Aristotle—was more like our Antarctica.

As recently as 1981, Oronce Fine came into the spotlight once again when an American academic named Charles Hapgood [1904-1982] published a book in which he hinted that the medieval mapmaker's presentation of the Antarctic coastline was so close to reality (?) that surely the region had been mapped earlier on by mysterious expert cartographers belonging to an advanced society. What can we conclude? Maybe Martian map-makers in Antarctica?

Let's move geographically, indeed cartographically, from the heart to the head. Here's another celebrated masterpiece created by our friend Oronce Fine:

He gave it a lovely lilting title: O caput elleboro dignum, which might be translated roughly as The world in the head of a fool. Scattered throughout this intriguing mixture of art and cartographical technology, there are many little words of wisdom in Latin. For example, on the jester's scepter, we find the famous inscription Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas (Vanity of vanities, all is vanity), inspired by the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes.

I'm convinced that Oronce Fine, in spite of some light-hearted airiness in his creations, was certainly no fool. And I'm sure he had lots of fun doing what he did.

Symbolic arrows

I encountered the following complicated logo back in 1975, and it immediately intrigued me because of the information it seemed to convey concerning both the entity designated by the logo and the apparent intentions of the people who had designed the logo.

It was the logo of a small group of people in France who were active in various fields of music: the ACIC (Association pour la collaboration des interprètes et des compositeurs). Two categories of musicians are mentioned explicitly in the name of this association: those who interpret (perform) music, and those who compose it. The essential role of the ACIC was to organize concerts of music composed and performed by members of the association.

The aspect of the logo that struck me was the abundance of arrow forms. Clearly, the five that point to the right represent a musical staff, and it is normal that the arrows point in the same temporal direction as the notes of music when they are read and performed. In fact, it is so normal that the five lines correspond to a musical movement towards the right that one wonders why the logo designers thought it worthwhile to insert the somewhat redundant arrow heads.

The giant arrow pointing to the left, with its reinforced two-part head, is more unexpected, in that it does not appear to coincide with any obvious reality of a purely musical nature. Before trying to imagine the possible sense of this symbolism, let us move to the large letter A, which incorporates a fragment of the big arrow as its horizontal bar. The pair of pillars making up this A seem to be planted beneath the surface of the ground, represented by the big arrow, as if they were the massive foundations of a protective structure. The upper part of the A is yet another arrow head, pointing towards the heavens, like the spire of a cathedral. Clearly, it is the vast roof of a place of shelter and safety. There is no doubt whatsoever that the major element in the ACIC is this big sturdy A, for association. Viewed in this sense, the backwards-pointing arrow is probably a defense mechanism, protecting the sanctuary and its occupants from any kind of stealthy rearguard attack.

My interpretation of the sense of the big arrow might throw light upon the reasons why there are arrow heads on the five lines of the staff. They could well be thought of as offensive arrows, designed to remove obstacles from the path ahead. In other words, the composers and performers are using their musical creations as weapons, enabling them to advance without hindrances along their planned path of artistic conquest. Meanwhile, the association shelters them from the elements and protects them from any unexpected threats that might spring into existence behind their backs.

Does the symbolism of the logo suggest that composers and performers have equal status, as it were, within the association? Not really. On the contrary, the performer is represented by a relatively small letter I, firmly planted in the ground as if he were an immobile plant, whereas he is totally engulfed by the great round form of the letter C, designating the composer. An observer has the impression that the ACIC is primarily an association of composers, and that performers are invited to participate in a minor secondary role.

My analysis of this logo left me with the conviction that people do not design graphic symbols “innocently”. There is always some kind of underlying method, maybe subconscious, in their inventions. Above all, I was amused by the eagerness with which the designers of a logo exploit arrow symbols. Later, when I started looking around at other logos, I was astonished to discover that we are surrounded perpetually by all kinds of arrows. In the arena of metaphorical symbols, I have the impression that the arrow is an Olympic champion, which has come down to us from various mythical archers of Antiquity... not to mention our very real ancestors who once used pointed darts to capture mammoths and bisons. Humanity has always lived in a world of arrows, and we still do. The only difference is that, these days, the arrows that abound in our societies are nearly all purely symbolic. But that is another story...

Arrow humor

Back in Paris, I used to collect all kinds of documents in which arrows were used—in one way or another—as metaphorical symbols. At a comical level, this was one of my favorites:

The dispirited fellow is trying to pen a short message (to be published in a newspaper, no doubt, because this was well before the birth of the Internet) that might enable him to find a female. We can read the first three versions, all of which have been crossed out and discarded. I've expanded the abbreviations and translated them into English:

— Man, 40 years old, dynamic, intelligent, cultivated, sense of humor, is seeking a young woman, maximum age 28, for a private relationship.

— Male, new style, is looking for a moderate feminist, maximum age 28, for contacts of a different kind, prospective happiness.

— Creative guy, tender and intense, wishes to encounter a young woman of 28 for excursions into space-time.

The final version is definitely less inspired, more down to earth:

— Fellow, depressive, inwardly phallocratic, outwardly open-minded, is looking for anything at all, maximum age 28, so he can listen to her moaning.

As you can see, Cupid is somewhat dubitative about the tone of the looking-for-love message, and it's not at all obvious that he's about to fire an arrow at a lucky 28-year-old female.

The cartoonist Claire Brétecher is celebrated in the French-speaking world for her depictions of frustrated adolescents (female, above all) trying to come to terms with modern society, parents, peer companions, sexuality, etc. In the case of the present cartoon, Brétecher worked for the Parker pen company, whose elegantly-designed writing implements have always been associated with the arrow symbol. Notice, for example, that the arrow held by Cupid is identical to the model found in the Parker logo. Notice too (a subtle detail) that the fellow has several pens on his table, enabling him to use differing nib widths and handwriting styles for his trial-and-error attempts at lecherous self-marketing.

The French company was courageous in calling upon Brétecher to create this excellent cartoon for their publicity. Today, I'm not sure that many big companies would be prepared to link their marketing communications to this kind of second-degree humor evoking primitive machism.

Our daily bread

A month ago, well after 10 o'clock in the evening on the state-owned TV channel that specializes in documentaries (France 5), a program about bread utterly enthralled me. I was dismayed that such a fascinating and fundamental subject should be dealt with, late in the evening, on a relatively secondary media platform. A few days later, however, I learned that I had been far from alone in watching this wonderful celebration of our daily bread. Over three-quarters of a million viewers had been intrigued and subjugated, like me, by this subject.


Funnily enough, one of the stars of the show was a French-speaking US academic who explained that he had been searching doggedly for a concrete theme enabling him to tackle a vast research subject: the marvelous specificity of French culture. Then suddenly, the ideal subject hit him in the face, as it were: French bread! In fact, the bread theme hit him simultaneously in the nose, the eyes and even the ears… prior to the mouth. (When freshly-baked baguettes are taken out of the oven, the cooling crust makes a gentle crackling sound for a few minutes. Bakers say that their bread is "singing".) A correctly-prepared and perfectly-baked French baguette is indeed an exotic masterpiece of everyday gastronomy that deserves admiration and universal respect.

A few days after watching this TV program, I dropped in at a ceramics store on the outskirts of Valence to make inquiries about their wood-burning stone bread ovens. I said jokingly to the lady who was giving me documentation: "Can you guess what made me think about the idea of installing a bread oven?" She answered immediately: "I suppose you watched the marvelous TV program on bread, a few nights ago." I had the impression that I had been drawn into some kind of bread fraternity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of what they refer to as the English Channel (which the French call la Manche), look at this ugly tasteless stuff—devoid of structure and texture—that they refer to as "bread":

Apparently the Brits invented this kind of foodstuff about half-a-century ago (which is really weird, when you think about it, since they're located just across the water from France), and they're as proud as hell, today, to be able to claim that they've exported the recipe to faraway places such as Australia, South Africa and South America.

I've just been reading an article in the UK press which reveals that the invention of this stuff was the work of "research bakers at Chorleywood". I have the impression that many British folk who've grown accustomed to this product would be most upset if they heard me saying that I find this "bread" utterly insipid. Maybe there are British bread-eaters who would be nauseated and physically ill if they were forced to sit down at an outdoor café table and eat a crisp fragment of a freshly-baked baguette with a chunk of Camembert cheese. Besides, I can already hear the whine of members of the Aussie community telling me that there's no better stuff on the planet than white cotton-wool factory-made sliced bread from Sydney smeared with yucky Vegemite. Thankfully, I don't need to get involved in discussions on questions of that kind. I have the good fortune of living in France.

Constant rain at Gamone

When it's raining at Gamone, I don't usually step outside to take photos. But yesterday, I decided to do so. So, I took this photo of the Cournouze with my Nikon in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

The dogs followed me in the rain, no doubt wondering what the hell I was up to.

If I were a little more courageous, I would take my video camera out in the bad weather, because there's a fascinating sequence that I would love to shoot. I'm talking of the movement of low clouds as they drift rapidly into the Choranche circus (round valley), no more than a hundred meters above the house. The first time I observed this phenomenon, at St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse in 1993, I was amazed. Up until then, I had always imagined that moving clouds are necessarily high in the sky. Here at Gamone, this phenomenon is quite commonplace.

What's happening here?

I like this kind of photo. It forces you to think, to ask questions. What the hell is actually happening here? Maybe the police have just cornered a dangerous psychopath disguised as a Disneyland employee. Why are the two guys in blue shirts wielding simple wooden clubs, whereas the police officer appears to be equipped with a high-tech military weapon? Is the "creature" still alive? Is it about to be killed by the policeman taking aim? How come the people wandering around in the background don't seem to be particularly alarmed?

I don't think I could have guessed the true facts before they were revealed to me by the accompanying press article. They're employees of a Chinese zoo, and they're simply practicing an emergency drill involving the escape of one of their tigers. The weapon is designed to fire harmless anesthetic tranquilizer darts, capable of sending a tiger into a nice deep sleep. In the following photos, prior to the final standoff, we see the ferocious make-believe beast bounding across a road and hiding in the bushes, ready to pounce on zoo visitors:

And here's my favorite photo, showing a real tiger watching the show from his glass cage as the fake creature gets carted off on a stretcher, like a dazed rugby man being taken off the playing field:

I can imagine the authentic beast murmuring to itself: "OK, you bunch of silly buggers, one of these days we'll see if events in the real world are likely to turn out just as nicely as that!"

Bring out your raped!

Last night, on France's national TV news, Kenneth Thompson, the US lawyer representing Nafissatou Diallo, launched an appeal for facts about sexual events involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

This pathetic call for help—from a Black American who seemed to be communicating with the planet Mars—reminded me of a notorious Monty Python sketch.

If Thompson cries out long enough, maybe he'll entice a few morbid bidders. But they'll have a tough job faced with a trio such as this:

The alleged victims are likely to end up whispering sadly, like the Monty Python fellow, that they're not really raped yet. It might be regrettable, if not downright wrong (whatever that might mean in the sexual domain), but the fact remains that, whenever a certain male and a certain female happen to be the only concerned individuals in the case, it's often hard to prove that rape has truly occurred. Rape is a terrible bolt of lightning that evokes a violent solitary criminal act. But most observers—even hoodwinked romantic puritanical Americans—find it easier and more plausible to believe that it takes two to tango.

As Confucious said: "Man with trousers down around ankles runs much more slowly than woman with skirt above thighs."

BREAKING NEWS: The lawyer of Tristane Banon—the young French woman who claimed that DSK assaulted her sexually a decade ago—has made it clear that his client will not be responding to Thompson's appeal. In modern French, there's a verb that might be translated as "to instrumentalize". Imagine a situation in which an individual X makes use of an individual Y as a kind of human object, or instrument, with the purpose of solving a problem that only concerns individual X. Often, the solution of this problem might not necessarily have any positive outcome whatsoever as far as individual Y is concerned. In this kind of situation, we might say that individual X is instrumentalizing individual Y. Well, it appears that Tristane Banon does not wish to be instrumentalized by Kenneth Thompson. Incidentally, the crime of blunt rape provides a textbook example of a notoriously ugly way in which a female can be totally instrumentalized by a male.

Blog metronome

Often, the interruption of my blogging activities for a few days is a healthy sign. It can indicate that I've become involved in some other kind of activity that seems to be of a higher priority and maybe more rewarding than the ephemeral pulses of my blog metronome.

Recently, in my blog post entitled Voices from Vienna [display], I included a copy of a short personal letter sent to me in 1976 by the great Vienna-born art critic Ernst Gombrich. I forwarded a link to my blog to the people in charge of the Gombrich archives, for I imagined that it was my duty to inform them of this interesting little letter (in which Gombrich mentions his friend Karl Popper). Well, to cut a long story short, they are indeed interested in this document, and the circumstances in which my correspondence with Gombrich took place. So I started to dig through my personal archives in order to reconstruct the context in which I had written to Gombrich. At one point, I suggested to the British professor Richard Woodfield (a specialist on Gombrich) that I intended to deal with these questions in my blog, as soon as possible. Richard's honest reaction caught me a little off guard: "Blogs themselves are ephemeral affairs." He would prefer to receive from me something a little more substantial, fit to be incorporated into academic archives. And he's so right. In spite of all our wishful thinking and vain attempts to write words of wisdom, or even to entertain in a wholesome style, our poor metronome blogs remain ephemeral creations, in which bloggers flit gaily from one theme to another, often clumsily and inexpertly, while their commenters continue nevertheless to support and applaud their literary heroes of note with lots of LOLs and "I agrees". Finally, I was happy to tell Richard Woodfield that I intended to create an in-depth PDF document describing the context of my contact with Ernst Gombrich. So, in the near future, my blog will contain a short post that merely invites you to download the article in question (on which I am currently working).

Pursuing the theme of voices from Vienna, I had intended to talk about an event that left me with many fond memories: a Unesco consultation of experts on communication that took place at the Berghotel Tulbingerkogel in Mauerbach, near Vienna (on the edge of the Wienerwald), from 15 to 18 April 1980.

We came from nine countries, including the Soviet Union and Japan. The US participant was Lotfi Zadeh, renowned for his mathematical invention of fuzzy sets. The chairman was the Austrian musicologist Kurt Blaukopf (a specialist on Gustav Mahler), whom I had already encountered when I was working in Paris with Pierre Schaeffer (the inventor of musique concrète). My personal participation came about through my contacts in Paris with the French participant Yves Stourdzé, a sociology academic who had been a comrade of Daniel Cohn-Bendit at Nanterre in 1968.

Anecdote: Stepping into a tourist bus for some sight-seeing in Vienna, Yves Stourdzé said to me: "I've just received a phone call from Paris. Jean-Paul Sartre has died." Curiously, that trivial announcement of the philosopher's death [on 15 April 1980] made a lasting impact upon me… on a par with my being informed, say, that Kennedy had been shot, or that terrorists were flying planes into skyscrapers.

As for the meeting itself (for which I was the elected rapporteur), my blog would be an inadequate medium for delving into the themes that were discussed there. In any case, our meeting gave rise to a special issue of Unesco's International Social Science Journal [vol 32, no 2, 1980]. My personal participation consisted of expressing one of my favorite French themes: the way in which a blending of the semaphore towers of Claude Chappe and the punched-card weaving apparatus of Joseph-Marie Jacquard set the scene for the arrival, a century down the road, of a certain US company that gained celebrity and made a fortune through the manufacture and international marketing of so-called "business machines".


Over the last week, during the time that my blog metronome ceased its audible ticking, I was also enthralled by the fascinating story of the bacterial epidemic in Germany, but I soon discovered that it has become such a complex affair—intertwining several different dimensions: biology, public health, economics, etc—that it would be senseless and reckless to run the risk of writing insipid nonsense about such a huge problem. It's incredible that unexpected incompetence in Germany has given rise to so many disastrous false revelations concerning the source of the epidemic. Meanwhile, I've been working on a short blog post that sets forth my impressions of this affair, but it's probably preferable to refrain from saying anything for the moment.

Undisturbed by the ticks of a metronome, I was also able to take advantage of the warm days at Gamone (a little wet at the present moment) to get around to rereading, at last (for the first time since my move to Gamone), the hermit's hero: the American poet-naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who lived on his own in the woods of Massachusetts, alongside the lake named Walden, for two years. He was outdone in the stakes of solitude, in a way, by Master Bruno [1030-1101], who survived in his Chartreuse hermitage for six years. But I emerge far ahead of both of them, of course, in that I've been living on my own here at Gamone for 17 years!

Finally, let me get back to the metronome. Whenever my blog metronome stops ticking for more than a few days (as has been the case over the last week), I inevitably receive worried messages, of one kind or another, asking whether I'm still alive. At such times, I get around to wondering whether some people might be more attracted by the regular beats of my metronome than by the actual music of my blog (if I may be excused for claiming pretentiously that the latter is supposed to be present). To paraphrase an Aussie pollie who's famous for his blunt colorful language: Is it possible that these people receive my blog as all tick and no tune?

Early TV technology

In 1928, when this incredibly futuristic cover of the US magazine Radio News was published, my father was ten years old.

Two decades later, when I myself was a little boy, sick with scarlet fever in an isolation ward of the hospital in Grafton, my dear father took out a soldering iron and built me from scratch a galena-crystal radio receiver so that I could listen to the local 2GF radio station… which sent me a "get well" message. But TV was still a long way off in the future...

In the above cover, we might imagine that the gentleman is using a hand-held device (connected to the set by a red cord) to select a channel. Not exactly. Primitive TV receivers had trouble staying in synchronization with the camera. So, the viewer had to use such a manual device to nudge the picture constantly back into sync. In any case, there was not yet a choice of channels.

As was the case for many Australians, the first stuff I ever watched on TV was black-and-white news coverage (not yet live, of course) of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. If I remember correctly, relatives (Nancy and Peter in Sydney) had acquired their first TV set for that purpose, and it was in their East Roseville home that I became acquainted with this technological marvel.

Torrid times in French politics

Objective methods make it possible to measure media buzz in a quantitative fashion. This statistical approach informs us, apparently, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn happens to be, at the present moment, the most well-known and asked-about celebrity personage in the universe. Jeez, you might say, this is crazy: DSK doesn't have anything like half the arse of Pippa [display]. Isn't it amazing, the way that buzz can evolve in just a few weeks…

From May 2002 to March 2004, during the presidency of Jacques Chirac, when France was governed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the minister in charge of youth, education and research was Luc Ferry.

The surname of this 60-year-old philosopher remains mythically magic in the modern French republic.

Luc's great-uncle Jules Ferry, a former mayor of Paris, was responsible for the glorious law that promoted "free, laic and compulsory schooling" in the Troisième République. He might be thought of as the spiritual granddaddy of all the smart (and less bright) republican schoolkids who created—and are still creating—the French nation as we know it today. A fabulous heritage!

Last Monday evening, on a French TV channel, Luc Ferry stirred up shit by declaring that many people were aware of the fact that a former French minister had once been found playing around with little boys in Marrakech. Needless to say, this sort of declaration cannot possibly be ignored by legal authorities, neither in France nor in Morocco. For the moment, everybody's trying to guess the identity of the alleged wrongdoer. This anonymous ex-minister risks a lot if the allegations were to be proven… and he might well compete with DSK, as soon as he's identified, for the title of the buzziest man in the Cosmos.

Now, even if many of us were to feel that this kind of notoriety is neither genuinely deserved nor advantageous for France, we might ask rhetorically: What the hell can we do about it?

Dodgy bridge

I cross the Isère several times a week by means of this bridge, between Choranche and St-Marcellin, which dates from around 1953.

The bridge is located alongside a small and ancient village named La Sône (derived from the Latin expression for "sonorous water"), which I mentioned in my blog post of 30 June 2009 entitled Weaving machines [display]. Here's another view of the bridge, photographed from the café in the middle of La Sône.

A week or so ago, the bridge was closed for vehicular traffic, for an unspecified period of time. The red and white barrier that you can see in the above photo indicates the place at which an unexpected engineering mishap occurred. Look closely at the following photo, and compare the levels of the road on either side of the concrete pylon.

There's a difference in levels of about a dozen centimeters due to a curious collapse of the main span at that point.

The following closeup photo zooms in on the precise spot where a corner of the span appears to have suddenly dropped.

This incident must have scared shit out of the first driver who hit the bump. I wonder if he stopped to see what had happened, or whether he put his foot down on the accelerator to get the hell off the bridge for fear it might fall into the river. If ever his encounter with the bump had left him with a split second for philosophizing, he might have realized that he was face-to-face with what you could call an existential decision.

Online clothes

For the first time ever, I've just purchased clothes on the Internet. It wasn't such a big deal: just a few quite ordinary T-shirts, some of them black, and the others white. And not particularly expensive.

It might be thought of as a small step for the blogger in front of his Macintosh, but it'll be a huge step for William parading through the village streets wearing sexy T-shirt gear purchased online through La Redoute. If ever I were to obtain any breathtaking visual scoops on this affair, I would of course let you know.