Everything's right in America

Last Wednesday, in San Bernardino (California), six females and eight males were killed in a typical if not rather ordinary shootout in God's Own Country. Do the people of that nation really wish to put an end to sad events of that kind, or is that their accepted way of life?

At the same moment, a US firm has just announced its launch in January 2016 of a TV-shopping channel called Gun TV, dedicated to the sale of weapons throughout the land.

Violence due to gun conflicts apparently costs the USA some 229 billion dollars a year. That's a lot of money just to stand up for your rights and to protect (?) yourself.

My most successful Australian blog post

This was certainly the most successful (popular) blog post I ever made on the subject of Australia:

http://skyvington.blogspot.fr/2011/01/free-settlers-in-antipodes.html

And so it should be, because this blog post combined several different but related themes, including the amazing idea that the first free settlers in Australia included relatives named Rose from Dorset. This is more than likely, but I never got around to searching for some definite proof... and so I let this interesting question drop.

Young cousins in Australia could look into this subject, if they were motivated. As for me, I promptly inserted a fictitious version of the Rose family into my future Israeli novel All the Earth is Mine... where there were already so many themes of all kinds that this new one didn't bother anybody!

A snake at Gamone

I have some Australian readers, so here's a rare kind of Gamone news item that should interest them.

Yes, we have snakes here! In the case of this fellow, I was so busy taking out my Nikon to get a photo of him, and making sure that my dog didn't try to attack the serpent, that I hardly noticed when the snake turned back towards the reddish door (of a shed attached to my house, which was once upon a time a pig sty) and disappeared under the foundations.

Now what kind of a reptile could it be ? I can hear my Australian friends debating about whether it's some kind of deadly snake. Do these Aussies see me as silly because I didn't dash in with a spade to kill the creature ?

Now, I'm sorry to disappoint my Australian friends. I think that snake specialists would discover rapidly, if they magnified my photo, that the dangerous reptile is no more than a nice old greenish-colored carpet snake (check with Google) of the kind that eats toads and lizards... and wouldn't possibly do me any harm whatsoever.

I must point out to readers that this friendly old snake appeared on the Gamone scene several months ago, just before my accident. I hope he's still around... and ready to return next spring.

A silly thing I did as a genealogy writer

When you're working seriously on family-history research, and attempting to blend all the data together in the form of a pleasant book, it's fair enough that the writer should have a little bit of fun.

That typescript sort of exploded little by little in my face. First, I discovered that a young brother of one of my great-grandfathers said his family name was Latton, and pretended to descend from an ancient nobleman. Then I discovered that another great-grandfather said his family name was Courtenay, and also pretended to descend from an ancient nobleman. In both cases, this crazy make-believe gave rise to genuine offspring bearing the fake family names. Talk about my mad ancestors...

The only bit of innocent fun I had as a researcher/writer consisted of looking for proofs that one of my first-known X-great grandfathers (where the X can be replaced by a few dozen "great" terms) was in fact the Norman fellow known as William the Conqueror. At the time, I truly imagined this as a playful item that wouldn't bother anybody. But readers are inevitably impressed by such trivial facts.

Today, after ages of separation, I've just been brought in contact with a much-appreciated Australian cousin. And the first thing he did was to tell me that he was proud to be related to William the Conqueror. Maybe I should have never even mentioned this Norman war-lord in my otherwise serious family-history study.

Icebergs in Paris

Icebergs in Paris, in front of the elegant church of the Madeleine. Why not ?

That was the corner of Paris where I started work with IBM (in the nearby Cité du Retiro) in February 1962. All that's missing today is a polar bear or even an Eskimo...

Worse than that: I've confused the Panthéon for the Madeleine !

Britain will be helping us

A lot of UK politicians have decided to help France in the combat against Daesh (the most acceptable title of the terrorist organization that carried out terrible attacks in Paris).

We are obliged to realize that a considerable body of politicians did not vote to support the decision. However David Cameron is reassured.

I believe the House has taken the right decision to keep the UK safe - military action in Syria as one part of a broader strategy.

Great Britain has 8 Tornados GR4 stationed in Cyprus, and others will be mobilized shortly.

Blue trams are good for you

It takes a lot of smart thinking to transform our ordinary vision of a tramway into something excessively attractive. In Sydney, when I was a university student, the depot where trams were housed would become the site of the famous opera house, but that didn't make these noisy vehicles any more pleasant and comfortable.

I'm convinced though that everybody will fall in love with this sexy French vehicle called a Bluetram, which is essentially an elegant electric-powered bus.

These superb vehicles are being tested experimentally in Paris on the Champs-Elysées from now until the end of January 2016, along a nine-stop "tram line" between Concorde and Etoile. The only aspect of the Bluetram that makes it differ from an ordinary electric vehicle is the obligation to charge its battery automatically, for 20 seconds, at every "tram stop".

Hydrangea-covered slopes above the sea in Brittany

When my son François first drove me onto these slopes (which can be found in several different places along the coast), and told me the story of this spectacular horticultural entreprise, I was amazed.

It's a relatively recent affair, imagined by a single fellow. He decided that Hydrangea would grow well in such places, and that the flowers could then be picked, packaged and transported economically to various major flower markets. And the rest is a splendid success story. It's the sort of lovely story that makes me wonder: Gee, it's so simple; why didn't I think of that?

Back to good health with my Macintosh

There's no better way of making sure you're in good mental and physical health (of a psychological kind) than to decide to carry out an update to the latest version of the Macintosh operating system. So, as of the end of the afternoon, I've acquired (for free) the latest El Capitan system.

Did I really need this latest version of the Macintosh operating system ? Of course yes, it proves that I've still got basically the same cerebral system (mine, not that of my computer) as before I had my accident.

Living on water

This is an old version of the cover of my novel All the Earth is Mine, published by Gamone Press and available through Amazon.

To access it on the screen, click http://issuu.com/gamone/docs/earth.

This novel has several linked themes inspired primarily by my fascination with the Jewish state of Israel. One of the themes is the high-tech idea of building artificial islands on which people can live. In fact, this has become a reality. In Holland, for example, the idea of building your future house on water has become quite common.

People at the COP21 gathering have suggested that floating houses might be a means of avoiding the nasty threat of getting drowned by rising seas.

Renewable energy from Paris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV9ByfAgqaY&feature=youtu.be

Bad students of the class

For many years, the climate-change class has had two lazy and lousy students, who simply weren't making an effort to work hard enough to get near the top of the class. They're a pair of hill-billy nations, with exceptionally conservative governments of what the French refer to as the climato-sceptique variety. The names of these lousy students: Australia and Canada. They consume huge quantities of fossil fuel, and they take pride in polluting the rest of the planet. In the case of my native land, we even had an idiotic prime minister from 2013 to 2015, Tony Abbott, who suggested that climate change was bullshit, and claimed that coal was good for humanity. It was impossible to imagine a greater asshole.

China can perform wonderful magic tricks

Some magicians can get animals of all kinds to dance.

But China has a trick for getting vehicles moving along a highway to break into amazing dance antics.

http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/video/2015/11/30/l-etrange-levitation-de-trois-vehicules-cree-le-mystere-en-chine_4820770_3216.htm

In fact, all you need is a metal cable and some kind of a vehicle to throw the cable all over the road, in the way of innocent vehicles. Good trick.

This young Italian fellow can find the right simple words

Matteo Renzi, 40-year-old prime minister of Italy since 2014.

Culture is stronger than ignorance,

beauty is more powerful than barbarity.

Jonah ascends into the great white cloud

I found this French video clip on the web:

http://www.lemonde.fr/rugby/video/2015/11/30/hommage-et-derniers-hakas-pour-jonah-lomu_4820550_1616937.html

It's weird, like many things these days. This dead rugby giant is like one of the assassinated young people at the Bataclan a fortnight ago. There's simply no obvious way of fitting such a happening into the world order. The world seems to have fallen apart. There is no world order, only disorder. And immense sadness.

Everybody's rolling into climate action

The conference president, Laurent Fabius, has officially started the COP21 operations.

China has made a spectacular point by announcing an extraordinarily high level of air pollution in Pekin.

And here in France, citizens have just been informed that the sexy new electricity meter known as Linky will be installed free-of-charge to tens of thousands of customers as of tomorrow.

So, things are in fact moving forward. Thank you COP21 !

Hopes for our children, and for our children's children

The decisions to be made in Paris, from today until December 11, are no less an affair than writing the next chapter of the geological story of our planet. We're facing our primary possession: our unique framework of human life. For the coming decades, our decisions will determine the stability of societies, and the well-being and security of millions of human beings.

This is the goal and ambition of the unique international conference that is about to open in the French capital. It is unique, first and foremost, because of the huge company of people to be gathered together here: 150 heads of state and governments from the delegations of the 195 states that belong to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At the end of the Paris conference, their future agreement will replace, as of 2020, the Kyoto Protocol, which was a huge disappointment.

We know the figures. Today, the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (CO2), the major greenhouse gas created by human beings, is higher than ever since the Pliocene era, more than two and a half million years ago. The temperature of the present year will be, for the first time ever, more than 1°C above the pre-industrial level.

Throughout the coming fortnight, the international community will have to agree upon the ambition of reduced output, associated with the choice of economic controls that must be adopted in order to achieve the reduction.

Nothing can arise solely on the grounds of fear and hopelessness. We need to believe in the possibility of social and cultural innovation.

After the massacres of November 13, the French capital acquired world-wide compassion. Today, Paris is about to symbolize the target of immense hope for the future. Our children and our grandchildren will inherit, for years to come, the outcome of COP21.

[This blog post was inspired largely by today’s editorial of Le Monde.]

Start of the COP21 conference in Paris

The big climate conference COP21 will be opening tomorrow in Paris, and our French minister of foreign affairs Laurent Fabius will be playing the role of conference president.

The major goal of the conference attendees will consist of agreeing upon a common goal to reduce the global heating of our planet to less than a degree and a half (Centigrade) before the end of our 21st century.

To remain optimist, we might insist upon the fact that the conference of 195 nations is in fact about to take place really… which is already a giant success. But the big problem will consist of getting these 195 nations to reach a common agreement to prevent increased global warming.

Unfortunately, if the world’s nations don’t get their act together, there’s no plan B. To do so, they’ve got until the end of the conference on 11 December.

It was the UN secretary Ban Ki-moon who once said: “We’ve got no plan B for the simple reason that we’ve got no planet B."

Three quarters of a century old

I'm recovering slowly but surely from a nasty fall, and attempting to master details of writing and blogging that had disappeared totally from my mind.

Tomorrow is my 75th birthday. It's a nice opportunity to attempt to open up Antipodes after this long delay.

An Australian seeks refuge in France

Julian Assange has just written an open letter to French president François Hollande asking to be received in France. Click here to access the French-language version of that letter.

As a French-naturalized Australian-born citizen, I would be immensely happy if the French president were to respond positively to this request for asylum. I’ve always been convinced that Assange is an exceptional and exemplary case of a citizen of the world using his state-of-the-art Internet knowledge, political awareness and imagination in a constant combat, often of a spectacular nature, for the betterment of humanity.