French cycling legend

Saint-Denis-de-l'Hôtel is a sleepy village on the right bank of the Loire, opposite Jargeau, not far from Orléans, in the heart of the Val de Loire region that was inscribed in 2000 on the list of Unesco World Heritage sites.

The population of the village is less than 3000, but they can boast of a fine velodrome, which was spruced up for this year's French track championships.

Yesterday, on that track, Jeannie Longo won her 59th national title: female points-race champion of France.

Jeannie—who lives on the outskirts of Grenoble—is 52 years old. In other words, when she was born in Annecy, I was still a teenager out in Sydney. She has won 13 world championships, and is thinking about competing in next year's Olympic Games in London. Jeannie Longo also happens to be a skilled pianist, who competed six times (between 1969 and 1975) in the annual piano competition at Besançon.

Poet assassinated

Last night in Guatemala, the celebrated 74-year-old Argentinian composer-singer Facundo Cabral was gunned down by unidentified assailants in a passing motor vehicle.

In the 1970s, Cabral was made famous by his poem No soy de aqui, ni soy de alla (I am not from here, nor from elsewhere).

During the military dictatorship in Argentinia [1976-1983], Cabral was exiled in Mexico. Then he wandered throughout the world as a troubadour. In 1996, Unesco named him a World messenger of peace.

Why is a poet assassinated? A poet of peace. Adios, amigo.

Planning for emergencies

Thankfully, here in France, we don't have to worry too much about the end of the world, programmed for 2012, because we can simply drive down to the magic mountain alongside the village of Bugarach, which will be saved from the Apocalypse.

[Click the photo for an English version of the fairy tale.]

I still feel it's a little too early to release the news officially, but I have strong reasons to believe that there has been an error in the geographical calculations of the people who started to talk about Bugarach. The true magic mountain that will be saved from Armageddon next year is in fact the nearby Cournouze, just opposite my home at Gamone.

Be that as it may, there's another emergency situation that must be handled urgently. I'm talking of zombie invasions.

I've just heard that the city of Bristol in England—home of my pious ancestor John Harris [1722-1801], who may have dabbled in the notorious slave-trading industry—has announced a plan to deal with zombie contingencies.

[Click the image for an English article on this theme.]

With all these nasty threats looming on the horizon, it's a bloody shame that News of the World will no longer be available to provide our dear English cousins with reliable in-depth information.

Good riddance to rotten reporting

Although I've never been proud of the fact that my native land has bred a fellow such as Rupert Murdoch (whom I'm incapable of admiring, to put it mildly), it would be illogical and indeed wrong to equate him with the tabloid that he himself has just boldly eliminated.

Over the last few years, the behavior of some of the people at News of the World has apparently been frankly disgusting at times. Here in France, I have the impression that various "crash barriers" exist, making it unthinkable that would-be "journalism" could ever sink to such a degrading level, with certain operations akin to sadism.

POST-SCRIPTUM:


Click the photo to access a short article that tries to explain who's who in this fascinating family.

Franco-American movie script

The casting, up until now, has been superb. At the center, the villain is a prosperous and powerful French Jew, operating in the sphere of international finance. And his wife is an immensely wealthy French celebrity journalist. The victim is a poor Manhattan maid from Africa. And the accuser is a Wasp whose celebrated Daddy got him his job. The villain is defended by a Manhattan Jew whose son's a rabbi in Israel. And the victim is defended by a wild black guy who likes to do his crazy lawyer act brilliantly in the street. All that was missing was a naive romantic touch… which is henceforth supplied by the fragile Tristane, a Parisian writer (?) who's determined to tell the world how she almost got sodomized by the monkey-like villain some eight years ago.

There'll be a challenging transition in the movie script, when the story has to move from Miss Banon having her pastel panties ruffled in Paris to the tough stuff of Nafissatou getting grabbed by the cunt and spitting out sperm in Manhattan. Ideally, the scriptwriters will need to insert a few intermediate scenes and victims… who should be easy to find. In any case, the primary rule in porn scriptwriting is that you've got to invent plausible actions to draw out the story, and make it flow. Between the moment when the main character is tearing off panties in Paris and when he's splashing out sperm over New York hotel carpets.

On this 4th of July

Bernard-Henri Lévy (often referred to as BHL) is a brilliant French intellectual who has played a political role in several international contexts of a conflictual nature.


In The Daily Beast, BHL proposes
5 Lessons of the DSK Affair.

Levitating Chinamen

We're all accustomed to incredible demonstrations from Chinese magicians of all kinds. So, we shouldn't be surprised, let alone annoyed, by the following photo:

Chinese officials have developed an extraordinary technique enabling them to inspect a newly-laid road while the macadam is still warm and sludgy. Like Jesus walking over the waters of the Sea of Galilee, these fellows are phloating fotoshopically over a new Oriental Highway of Truth. For God's sake, don't stick a pin in the image. It might burst, and the inspectors would fall onto the steaming macadam.

Femme fatale

This photo reappeared this morning on the website of Le Parisien, alongside an article by Jean-Marc Ducos revealing the "doubts" of the Guinean community in the Bronx concerning Nafissatou Diallo, the alleged victim of the DSK affair. It's a photo that was published for the first time, three weeks ago, on the cover of Paris Match. Curiously, for reasons of which I'm unaware, this portrait has now disappeared from the above-mentioned article in this morning's Le Parisien.

Over a month ago, in my blog post of May 26, 2011 entitled Golden nail in the coffin [display], I stopped just short of evoking a prostitution/extortion scenario in the case of Nafissatou (referred to, at that time, as Ophelia):

I persist in believing that DSK's lawyers are likely to find sufficient evidence to demolish entirely the credibility and claims of "Ophelia", the plaintiff. I've heard rumors, over the last day or so, that she may have been perfectly aware of the identity, reputation and wealth of DSK, and that she attempted naively to use her charms, followed by a rape scenario, to extort money from him.

Yesterday, I was pleased to discover that the New York Post has got around to talking exactly the same language as me.

What's more, that warm-blooded Manhattan daily was apparently so happy to receive a comment from France (a land they love) that they placed my naive questions at the top of a vast list of comments.

So, there we have it. Everybody, little by little (in spite of our respective prejudices), is getting around to calling a spade a spade (or a cat a cat, as they say in France). My questions have not yet received any answers, but they are fundamental. Is it thinkable that hotel management might have been aware of Nafissatou's operations? If so, is it thinkable that occult anti-DSK forces might have guided the prostitute towards the room of our hero, à toutes fins utiles (for whatever useful benefits that might ensue)? That's a summary of the present state of my DSK cogitations… and I'm not alone in thinking such thoughts.

FLEDGLING CONSPIRACY THEORY: We're likely to be hearing more about the Sofitel New York Hotel and its owner, the French group Accor, "the world's leading hotel operator".


BREAKING NEWS: A courageous Socialist lady, Michèle Sabban, has been evoking various things, in the primordial context of the DSK affair, that simply don't add up.

From the very first instants of the DSK affair, French observers were intrigued by the rapidity of pertinent on-the-spot communications between Manhattan and Paris. Today, retrospectively, these amazing coincidences have not yet been explained satisfactorily.

Friends advise me to stay indoors

What people like Madeleine and Dédé are actually saying is that I should think twice before stepping out onto the slopes of Choranche equipped with a chainsaw. I remain nauseated by thoughts of what happened to me the day before yesterday, and traumatized above all by thoughts of what might have happened to me. So, I ask my readers to forgive me for not going into details. Let's summarize by saying that I made four huge blunders, simultaneously:

1. I went out onto the slopes to cut wood, without informing anybody of my intentions.

2. I failed to carry my iPhone with me.

3. I used my chainsaw to slice through a branch of a fallen tree, without realizing that the branch in question was keeping the huge trunk in equilibrium on the slopes.

4. When the huge trunk started to roll towards me, I was on the wrong (valley) side.

I prefer to refrain from describing the hour-long terror of being pinned beneath the trunk, and screaming for help. My Choranche neighbors Michèle Berger and Jackie Ageron were directly responsible for saving me. I enjoyed on-the-spot treatment from my wonderful doctor Xavier Limouzin, and a group of friendly firemen from Pont-en-Royans, followed by a ride to the hospital at Romans in the back of an emergency vehicle, followed by X-rays and medical examinations.

Today, I have almost recuperated all my physical faculties, and I'm thankful to be alive. No bones were broken. Just a few sore bruises. The dogs, too, seem to express their gratitude for my continued existence. Tineke and Serge have been like guardian angels.

I realize that there are certain "ordinary" activities at Gamone that must be banned totally, permanently. Thankfully, I love to work in front of the computer in my bedroom.

Lady lies

I know little about typical values and attitudes within the US legal system, but I've always had the impression that they don't like liars. Besides, once a person is caught out lying about little things, they're considered capable of lying about big things.

Last night in New York, "questions surfaced about the believability" (as the Los Angeles Times put it) of the 32-year-old woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape. I'm amazed to observe that US media persist in refraining from ever stating the woman's name, Nafissatou Diallo, and that Aussie media seem to parrot mindlessly this habit. There is no law behind this refusal to indicate the plaintiff's name, and no obvious moral justification… in a society that was adamant about justifying the degrading post-arrest perp walk of an accused and handcuffed individual such as DSK.

The lady apparently told investigators that her application for asylum in the USA mentioned a previous rape allegation. When the investigators examined Diallo's asylum documents, however, there was no such mention. The lady had lied. And this could well be one "rape" too many. She also told investigators that her asylum application mentioned the fact that, back in her native Guinea, she had been the victim of customary genital excision… but the actual documents contained no such story. So, once again, the lady had lied. Add to this the fact that Nafissatou Diallo appears to be closely attached to an incarcerated drug dealer, to whom she appealed by phone, the day after the DSK affair, for financial advice.

This afternoon (French time), we'll see what happens during a rapidly-convened confrontation between DSK and the judge Michael Obus. Meanwhile, in France, supporters of DSK are thrilled by this unexpected evolution of the affair. People are even starting to dream about the remote possibility that DSK could emerge in time for next year's presidential election. If ever the case against DSK were to be attenuated or even dropped, we must hope that the personal career of the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance would not suffer adversely, so unfairly, just as we should hope that visceral anti-Americanism would not go viral in France.

REMINDER: Over the last few hours, articles on this latest bombshell in the DSK affair all cite the New York Times report that broke the news: Strauss-Kahn Case Seen in Jeopardy [access] by Jim Dwyer, William Rashbaum and John Eligon. Funnily enough, the latter two journalists were among the seven professionals who contributed to an earlier article, From African Village to Center of Ordeal, enhanced by a romantic image of the kind of simple dwelling in which Nafissatou Diallo (unnamed, of course) was born.

[Click the photo to access the earlier NYTimes article.]

This earlier article painted an idyllic image of the Rousseau-like blank-slate fairy-tale existence of the innocent village girl who was finally brought face-to-face with evil, personified by an illustrious Frenchman, in Manhattan on May 14, 2011. How come the seven NYTimes professionals failed to find anything whatsoever of an alarming nature in the background of their pure unnamed creature named Nafissatou Diallo? Clearly, their capacities as investigative researchers fell far short of the talents of people employed by George W Bush who revealed, once upon a time, the likely existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

AFTER THE HEARING: In speaking to journalists in front of the tribunal building, the defense attorneys William Taylor and Ben Brafman were calm and brief. Brafman even slipped in a word of praise for the courage of Cyrus Vance, and concluded poetically by saying that, on July 4, Independence Day, there would be celebrations concerning the "personal independence" of DSK and his family. Wow, that's a distinguished reference applied on American soil to a newly-liberated Frenchman! I was half hoping that he would go one step further and declare that, shortly after July 14, Bastille Day, the former prisoner would be freed definitively from the yoke of injustice. When the Afro-American lawyer Kenneth Thompson stepped up to the microphones, I wouldn't have been unduly surprised if he had broken into a moving oration on the abolition of slavery.

Instead of that, he started to develop a forensic explanation of the violent ways in which DSK is alleged to have attacked the innocent maid, designated systematically as the victim. To add a dramatic effect to his description of DSK grabbing the maid's breasts, Thompson mimed that act on his own chest. He was a top-class showman. At one stage, the black lawyer made such a vivid presentation of the way in which the strong hands of the aggressor had groped the victim's vagina that listeners were surely ready for almost anything in the way of nasty details. Were we about to learn that the aggressor's fingerprints were clearly etched on the smooth dark skin of the lady's loins? Worse still, on the scale of horrors, was the lawyer going to tell us that this part of the lady's anatomy had been rendered fragile by the excision operation, and that an entire vulval section had been ripped away from her body by the rapist, whose physical force was akin to that of a champion wrestler?

No, Kenneth Thompson didn't actually say that. Instead, he thought it preferable, after his clinical descriptions of the alleged crime, to accuse some of the prosecutor's men of having dealt roughly with the victim. He even declared: "Our concern is that the Manhattan district attorney is too afraid to try this case. We believe he’s afraid he’s going to lose this high-profile case." To what audience was Kenneth Thompson addressing his dramatic performance out in front of the court building? To me, that's a mystery. He couldn't have been pouring out all those dirty details for Cyrus Vance, since we can suppose that the district attorney has already heard everything that can possibly be said about what might have happened. Maybe he was talking to TV viewers who might influence—directly or indirectly—a future jury decision. Or maybe he was simply talking to nobody in particular, merely because he felt he was expected to say nasty thinks about the accused. Maybe he has his back to the wall, and he needed to let off a bit of steam.

Brilliant French lady becomes IMF chief

This afternoon, Christine Lagarde was still in Paris, working at her everyday job as minister of Finance in the government of François Fillon. When a French TV news phoned her concerning the imminent announcement of her appointment as head of the International Monetary Fund [IMF], Lagarde replied with typical elegance that she was hoping that the announcement would be made in time for the evening TV news, so that she would be able to share her limelight with another splendid French woman: the Socialist chief Martine Aubry, who had indicated today that she would be a French presidential candidate. Lagarde's behavior was exemplary in a gentlewomen's spirit, in that Aubry is an opponent of Nicolas Sarkozy, who could be considered (up until today) as Lagarde's superior.

[Click the photo to access an Al-Jazeera video announcing Lagarde's appointment.]

I was surprised and disappointed to learn that my native country, Australia, had backed the Mexican candidate Agustin Carstens for this job. At a moment when the eyes of the world are turned towards the financial problems of Greece, in the context of the European Union, I believe that Australia's choice reflects the political naiveté and lack of economic vision of prime minister Julia Gillard and her advisors.

Tragic sense of life

As a young man in Paris, I was impressed by this book by a great Spanish writer, which I used to read in an elegant English translation. The small volume is still present in my bookshelves. These days, however, I rarely reopen this category of old-fashioned stuff.


Initially, the title alone had seduced me: Del sentimiento trágico de la vida. Then I admired the art and skill with which Miguel de Unamuno—a resolute aficionado of Don Quixote—could juggle with reverential references to Jesus Christ, Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Ávila without ever telling us explicitly whether he did or did not believe in the god of Christians. Today, of course, it would be unthinkable for a popular philosopher to remain so wishy-washy, no matter how noble his prose. Unamuno signed his masterpiece in 1912, before the madness of the Great War. He died a quarter-of-a-century later, in 1936, a broken-hearted witness of events, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, after a violent public confrontation with the Falangist general José Millán Astray concerning the terrible oath "¡Viva la Muerte!".

In a different context, at a later point in time, Unamuno might have evolved into an Albert Camus. Instead, he remained an elusive Basque observer of a world that had become too complex, too chaotic and too terrible for him to understand. Nevertheless, he stood up firmly and courageously, like a matador awaiting the charge of the black toro. Finally, though, a las cinco de la tarde, the blood stains on the sand of the arena of History were those of Unamuno's Romantic "philosophy". Six months before Unamuno's death in Salamanca, the 38-year-old poet Federico García Lorca had been shot stupidly, on 19 August 1936. Yes indeed, in those days, life had assumed a tragic sense.

So embarrassed

Back at the time I took my daughter and son out to my birthplace for the first time, they were greatly amused by a conversation they had overheard between giggling Australian schoolgirls. After relating a trivial anecdote that terminated in an innocuous remark from her boyfriend (I forget the details of what they might have been talking about), the story-teller exclaimed to her impassioned listeners, in a peculiar drawn-out Aussie accent: "I was so embarrassed!" For years afterwards, whenever my daughter alluded to amusing personal relationships in Australia, she would punctuate her stories with that exclamation, pronounced appropriately: "I was so embarrassed!"

Well, that's what I felt like saying when I saw this demonstration of an Aussie TV talk-show host, Karl Stevanovic, who made a failed attempt to tell an insipid joke to the Dalai Lama. Somebody found a delightful adjective to describe this TV guy: goofy. I know nothing about Karl's culture and credentials, but his behavior in front of the Dalai Lama was stupid, indeed vulgar. It's tactless to tell a silly joke in the presence of, and about, a distinguished visitor from a different social community, particularly when that joke uses Down Under vernacular.

The supposedly hilarious theme of the joke (which to me, a native speaker of Australian English, isn't the least bit funny) is the idea of the Dalai Lama saying to a pizza man: "Make me one with everything." Already, in a genuine pizza context (with which the Dalai Lama may or may not be familiar), this vague "with everything" request would be stupid. Pizzas come in countless varieties. In Australia, you can even find so-called gourmet pizzas with kangaroo and crocodile meat. The uninspired creator of the silly joke was thinking rather of a takeout (takeaway) hamburger or meat pie situation in which the purchaser can request extra sauces or vegetables such as fried onions or mashed potatoes. In that narrow context, the "with everything" request might be meaningful, indicating that all the extras are to be included. Years ago, I got into the habit of making that kind of request in the Rue des Rosiers in Paris, where I used to buy Israeli-style falafels.

From a religious viewpoint, it's not at all certain that the Dalai Lama would ever imagine the idea of praying to a divinity and including a naive request: "Make me one with everything." To my mind, that doesn't sound like Dalai Lama talk, more like Aussie media talk.

If I'd been in the position of the goofy TV guy, and felt an urgent need to tell the Dalai Lama an Aussie joke, I would have chosen my pie story.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when Australia had a huge intake of immigrant laborers for massive civil-engineering projects, many of these so-called "New Australians" spoke little English. In the case of Luigi, from Sicily, his English was so poor that he was ill-at-ease about entering a shop to buy something to eat. Fortunately, his compatriot Aldo was able to help Luigi by teaching him how to say "apple pie".

[Part of the funniness of this joke, when told aloud in an Aussie pub setting, stems from Luigi's awkward pronunciation of this expression: "ah-pull pah-ee".]

In the beginning, Luigi was thrilled to be able to step into shops and ask for an "ah-pull pah-ee". But soon he was fed up with dining exclusively, for days on end, on apple pies. So, he asked Aldo to teach him another expression. Aldo told him how to say "meat pie"… which Luigi pronounced quaintly as "mit pah-ee". So, Luigi stepped confidently into a shop in the hope of obtaining a meat pie. But the reactions of the shop lady were unexpected…

[This is the part of my joke that links up with the incident concerning the goofy guy's joke. In the case of my joke, I would have to explain to the Dalai Lama a trivial Aussie habit. Some people eat their meat pies daubed with tomato ketchup, whereas others prefer their pies without this sauce. So the person selling a meat pie would ask the client to indicate his/her preference. Now, this was such a familiar aspect of the Australian meat pie situation that the sales person would often simply ask: "With or without?"]

SHOP LADY: "With or without, love?"

LUIGI (not understanding the lady's question): "Mit pah-ee."

SHOP LADY: "Yeah, I understood you, love. But with or without?"

LUIGI (totally baffled, repeats his request): "Mit pah-ee."

SHOP LADY (annoyed): "Jeez, would you mind telling me, with or without?"

LUIGI: "Ah-pull pah-ee".

I authorize Karl Stevanovic, if he so desires, to try out my pie joke on the pope, when he next visits Australia.

Smoked donkeys

This morning, I started to burn some of the dead wood that has been lying around for ages down in the donkeys' paddock.

An hour later, I was surprised to find the donkeys standing out in the sun alongside the smoldering wood, with smoke often wafting over them. I think I know what's happening. The smoke from the dry walnut wood is not particularly acrid: neither for me nor, I suspect, for the donkeys. But it seems to keep flies and other insects away from the donkeys. The proof: they're not even wagging their tails, as they normally do, constantly, to brush away flies and insects. OK, it's surely not an ideal solution, but the donkeys appear to find it efficient, at least for a while.

Sudden surge in readership

A counter located in the right-hand column informs me that my Antipodes blog usually receives about a hundred visits a day. On Friday evening, I happened to notice that this counter had started to surge abruptly, in an exceptional fashion. Yesterday (Saturday), the counter continued to indicate an unusually high volume of visits, so I started to investigate what might be happening. My immediate reaction was that it might have something to do with my blog post entitled Hacking [display]. Maybe certain Internet authorities had decided that I might be mixed up with groups of hackers, and they had broadcast some kind of directive asking their investigators to follow me. Maybe it was Badger who had ordered his international matrix of groupies to invade my blog. Maybe the Aussie minister of communications was using his hounds to find evidence of unAustralian thoughts in my blog, enabling him to put me on his blacklist (if ever I weren't there already)...

In fact, I soon discovered that the surge in Antipodes readership had been brought about by my short blog post about a tribe of natives in Papua New Guinea who had been filmed during their first encounter ever with pale-skinned visitors from the outside world [display]. Basically, this story—which I had picked up in a French news website—was an excellent candidate for Antipodes, since the fabulous theme was universal, while the background information existed apparently only in French. Yesterday, observing that my readership was still mounting (up to over 1500 by the end of the day), I struggled to correct factual errors that had existed in the French source, while rapidly supplying my readers with summaries of two basic French-language documents concerning this affair. Meanwhile, there was a lot of discussion on the Internet (which I had helped to provoke) about whether this "first encounter" had been a genuine event or rather a fake happening staged for the production of a spectacular video.

During my investigations, I was alarmed to discover that, back in 1997, a prominent critic of the video had been convicted of slander. Although I didn't know the circumstances in which such a trial had taken place, I decided immediately that I should abandon this subject on my blog, while backtracking concerning any suggestion that the video might not have recorded a genuine event. I realize that my reaction surprised certain readers, but that's simply because they're not familiar with the French legal system. Unfortunately, here in France, we do not have total freedom of speech of the kind that exists, say, in the USA. Consequently, if a distinguished anthropologist were to deny, say, that any unknown stone-age tribes remain hidden in the jungle, then he could be attacked for slander by somebody who declared that such tribes did exist. Now, that is the kind of legal battle that's lost in advance by the deniers, because it's logically impossible to produce evidence proving that such-and-such an alleged entity does not exist. We're in the domain of Bertrand Russell's famous celestial teapot that has been orbiting the planet Earth for ages.

If somebody were to claim rashly that this artificial satellite is a figment of the imagination, which does not exist, how he could he possibly prove his negative belief? Teapot believers would simply point out that the non-believer had never been at the right observation point at the right time, otherwise he could not have avoided seeing the teapot gliding along its itinerary through the heavens. These days, atheists have imagined a kind of divine variation on Russell's teapot theme: the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

If I were to declare that this creature does not exist, and that anybody who believes in it is surely crazy, then members of the Congregation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster might decide to take me to court for slander. I would explain to the judge: "How do you expect me to prove that this creature doesn't exist? That's a logically-impossible task." And the judge might reply: "My poor fellow, you've misunderstood the sense of this trial. We don't expect you to prove that the creature doesn't exist. Besides, the plaintiffs know that no such proof could be forthcoming, for the simple reason that they're absolutely convinced that the creature does exist. But I would like to see you condemned nevertheless, because your harsh denials have gravely offended and distressed the innocent members of the Congregation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by implying that they lack intellectual discernment."

Normally, caricatural situations of that kind don't arise in our everyday existence. But there have been exceptions. And, when such a situation arises, there's no sense in trying to defend yourself, or even argue, because your opponents simply don't believe fully in logic. Personally, in such a predicament, I find it advisable to shut my mouth and get the fuck out of the place.

Curious seventh singer

Some of my readers are likely to wonder whether I found this story by hanging around sleazily on websites about Japanese adolescents. In fact, it was a tweet from the British New Scientist magazine that provided me with the initial link, since the technological feat in question is quite astonishing, along with its artistic and cultural repercussions.

That's a photo of the seven members of a Japanese girls' band named AKB48. In the middle, you have the lead singer, named ‪Eguchi Aimi‬, whose harmonious facial features can be admired in this portrait:

For a while, the group was composed of only six girls. Then they were joined by Eguchi Aimi, and one of the first performances of the enlarged group was a video ad for candy, seen here:

Fans of the AKB48 group were recently flabbergasted to learn that the charming lead singer ‪Eguchi Aimi‬ is in fact, not a real human being, but rather a synthesized screen-only creation. In other words, a virtual singer. But the most amazing thing of all is the way in which this artificial singer was assembled. The design team "borrowed" features from each of the real singers, and then scrambled them all together to give birth to ‪Eguchi Aimi‬. For example, the eyes of Eguchi (on the left) come from the real-life young lady on the right:
Eguchi's sensuous mouth has been taken from another member of the group:

Her nose comes from yet another genuine singer:

Here's a fascinating video that provides you with a taste of ‪Eguchi Aimi‬'s talents as a performer, while showing you briefly how she was put together:

 

In any case, she's an attractive girl, she sings quite well (using God only knows whose voice), and she's certainly a natural seventh member of the group. If Eguchi Aimi didn't exist, it would surely be a good idea to invent her…

CORRECTION: Since writing this blog post, I've discovered that AKB48 is not simply a small girls' band, as I mistakenly imagined, but an entire cabaret company of some 60 performers, with their own theater in Tokyo. The Japanese are so well-behaved that no Japanese cabaret audience would ever dream of standing up and crying out for a live on-stage appearance of Eguchi Aimi. Fortunately...

Is seeing believing?

Let's see if you can successfully guess the nature of an individual by simply examining a portrait.

Don't click this photo yet. Wait until I've provided a few trivial explanations. I'll let you know when you should click the photo. This woman's name is Aude Oliva. Try to guess what sort of a person she is. For example, what sort of work might Aude do to earn her living?

Now, look closely at the following picture:


As you can see, Aude Oliva actually created this artwork. (Don't jump to the conclusion, though, that Aude is simply a talented graphic artist with Photoshop experience.) Most viewers will agree, I would imagine, that it seems to be a portrait of Albert Einstein. OK? Now, leave this Einstein photo sitting on your computer screen, get up from your chair, and move back about a meter from your computer screen. Does the portrait still appear to be that of Einstein?

If you click on the portrait of Aude Oliva, you'll find her professional titles: Associate Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a Principal Investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And you'll be able to find details about the spectacular so-called hybrid images that she creates.

Wild goats

I dedicate this blog post to the dear memory of my lovable Gavroche, who was immensely smart, anything but wild (he seemed to imagine himself as a male donkey), and whom I miss greatly.

It's probably your smell, Gavroche, that I miss most, because it defined you so beautifully. You were that smell. That smell was you. Who else on Earth would have accepted it, let alone wanted that terrible but wonderful smell? I trust that readers of Antipodes will not be tempted to misunderstand vulgarly my deep sentiments and words when I say that you taught me so much about sexuality, dear Gavroche, in that I soon concluded that it had been terribly cruel of me to bring you to Gamone without also inviting along a female companion of your species. But neighbors warned me that you were such a prolific little sex machine that Gamone would soon be peopled by a horde of your offspring… and I didn't have the courage to face such a demographic challenge (which may or may not have been realistic). So I condemned you to enduring a solitary frustrated existence… which never seemed to attenuate your natural behavior of masturbating grotesquely (sperm jets directed into your own face) and attempting vainly to screw sheep, donkeys and even Sophia. Retrospectively, I'm sure that I should have tried to organize for you a more decent sex life, but I still don't know how. Frankly, Gavroche, at times, your libido astounded and almost frightened me. You were the Primeval Prick.

Today, dear Gavroche, you are dust… but this doesn't stop me from admiring and loving you. I would even say that your dustiness makes me admire and love you more than ever… because I see you as an eternal cosmic goat. The stars above Gamone trace the cosmological form of a galaxy named Gavroche. And I worship you, dear goat.

Today, though, I wish to talk of other goats: your remote cousins. More precisely, specimens of Capra ibex. Here's a fabulous photo of a Slovenian female specimen:

And here's a male—bouquetin in French—in the Vercors:

I'm told that, in the vicinity of Gamone, there's a colony of a few dozen specimens of this ancient animal. Apparently, they live on the summits of the two mountains that I spoke of in a recent blog post: the Baret and the Trois Châteaux.

I took this photo from a spot on the famous chemin du Vert (green path) that runs along the crest above my house at Gamone. This is the ancient public path that the mayor of Choranche is talking about privatizing. In remembrance of Gavroche and his archaic Ibex cousins, I shall do everything that's imaginable (which probably won't amount to much, because everybody agrees with this thinking) to maintain this path as a part of our cultural heritage, since it would appear to be an ideal itinerary for spying upon our wild goats. I must admit that I haven't yet armed myself with a pair of powerful binoculars and set out to investigate this lovely idea, just above my head.

Meanwhile, Gavroche, dear goat of Gamone: Requiescat in pace.

Human contacts

This is an amazing and beautiful video of initial contacts, back in 1976, between Papua New Guinea natives and a white-skinned visitor.

We dream about meeting up with Martians. Meanwhile, some of our close cousins have met up with Martians who were simply… us!

CORRECTION: Sorry to disappoint my readers! This charming video is in fact a fake, which has nothing to do with Papua New Guinea. The white man you see in the video is a Belgian moviemaker, Jean-Pierre Dutilleux. The "Papua New Guinea natives" were in fact members of the Toulambi tribe of indigenous Amazonian "Indians" (what a silly word for people in South America). This fake "first encounter" between the natives and a white-skinned visitor was filmed around 1999. Before then, these excellent actors had played similar fake roles for at least three ethnologists: Jadran Mimica (in 1979), Pierre Lemonnier (in 1985) and Pascale Bonnemère (in 1987). Maybe, with the help of an imaginative film director such as Baz Luhrmann, this document might inspire acting careers among my Aboriginal cousins down in Australia. The only sad thing about this otherwise joyous document is that the Toulambis lived in a malaria-stricken zone of the Amazon jungle, and that Jean-Pierre Dutilleux might have been acting in a more humane fashion if he had paid his actors (most of whom have since died) with massive supplies of quinine tablets.

SECOND CORRECTION [Saturday, June 25, 2011] : I must apologize for an error in my interpretation of the French-language source of this story. The Toulambi tribe does in fact inhabit Papua New Guinea (not the Amazon, as I wrongly stated). But this error has no bearing on the fact that anthropologists have been shocked by this video, in which the Toulambis appear to be acting. I have heard, too, that they were in fact supplied with certain pharmaceutical products in payment for their acting. I should add that most of the individuals participating directly in the controversy stirred up in France by this video are anthropologists, with in-depth knowledge of Papua New Guinea, its peoples and its problems. As for me, I am not an anthropologist and I have never visited Papua New Guinea. So, I do not intend to pursue the question of this controversial video any further.

Hacking

Back in the days when I was working in the professional software domain, the term "hacking" was employed regularly in a perfectly respectable context. This metaphor evoked an axe.

Anybody who has tried to remove shrubbery, say, by hacking away at it by means of a small axe such as this knows that it can be a messy and strenuous operation, particularly if you're intent upon getting rid of the roots. In the software domain, the term "hacking" designates a trial-and-error approach to a fuzzy problem or challenge.

One of my earliest hacking tasks was carried out back in the early '80s for the French company that was starting to market Apple computers. I was given an Apple II floppy disk containing a demonstration of Microsoft's Multiplan spreadsheet application, and my task consisted of trying to transform it, as far as possible, into a French-language version. I was not provided with any explicit technical information concerning the way in which this demo disk might have been created, and how its data was structured. So, I had to work out from scratch what it was all about, and invent ways of substituting French terms for the English. It was as if I were a Sherlock Holmes investigating a crime committed in England, with the ultimate responsibility of telling French authorities what had apparently happened.

A hacking context is quite different to the standard environment in which professionals develop software. Compared with hackers, the latter folk are armed with chainsaws, which are designed to slice effortlessly through every obstacle they encounter. The gist of what I'm trying to say is that, once upon a time, the term "hacker" was used to designate a particularly bright and imaginative computer-language expert. Today, this is surely still true in the case of an exceptionally gifted guy such as Julian Assange.

And what about the individuals who operate clandestinely in the context of mysterious associations such as Anonymous and Lulzsec (which are said to be collaborating)?

Are they too exceptional individuals… in spite of their being branded as irresponsible delinquents? Personally, I have every reason to believe that they are indeed smart folk, who are perfectly aware of what they're doing, and why they're doing it. I don't believe that they're simply a bunch of dumb assholes intent upon stirring up shit. As Shakespeare put it, there's method in their madness. They're not merely breaking rules for the fun of it. They're attempting to invent new rules for societies that have discovered the immense power of computers and communication networks. For the moment, though, they are generally misunderstood by their elders, who are often still surviving in an era of antediluvian moral principles and political thinking.

Click the following photo to access an informative interview aired by ZDF Mediathek concerning the birth of political awareness back in Assange's adventurous hacking days: