Philipino church should rent this fellow out, to earn money for the poor

Click here to see a spectacular priest who has the makings of what might be designated as an ecclesiastical sandwich board. The Church might look into the possibility of getting him canonized (in the future, of course, after he leaves his earthly skating rink) as Saint Hoverboard. Maybe his miracles can't cure cancer, but I'm convinced they can patch up broken bones.

Rétrospective 2015

Presentation by French TV of the year 2015 that was. Between the atrocities of Charlie and those of the Bataclan, it was indeed a grim year for France. But the nation and the French people have survived magnificently, stronger than ever. And that's what makes me so happy and proud to be here, a naturalized French citizen in France.

My children's ancestors, the Gauls

French school-children have always heard the expression "our ancestors, the Gauls"... without knowing too much about that civilization, wiped out by Julius Caesar in 52 BC. Everybody is aware of the existence of a prestigious Gallic leader named Vercingétorix, who led the Gallic tribes in their final disastrous battle against the Romans, in Alésia.

We're all aware that this courageous warrior, when he realized that he had been defeated, threw his arms at the feet of Caesar.

But most people's ideas about the Gallic society are vague, because much of their history seems to have disappeared. And many of our ideas about the Gauls are derived from the Astérix comic-books.

So, last night's excellent animation film on the defeat of the Gauls filled in a lot of holes.

In particular, I was greatly impressed by the technological imagination and inventiveness of the creators of this astounding animation film. It's understandable that the team members who performed this amazing work are not going to reveal all the production secrets they've invented and tested, because they'll be using them now to make similar movies, and earn tons of Caesar's coins.

End of our Gallipoli centenary year

This year, my native land celebrated the centenary of the fateful Australian landing at Gallipoli (in modern Turkey) that started on 25 April 1915. Over 8 thousand Australians died there. In Australia and New Zealand, we have always thought of this disastrous battle as our initial military engagement.

Click here to listen to Lemmy Kilmister, of the Motörhead rock group, who died yesterday, singing about young soldiers in that horrible war.

Few folk are interested in science

The US writer-director Matthew Chapman is the co-founder and president of ScienceDebate.org, an organization trying to get the American presidential candidates to hold a debate on science. He has just published an interesting blogpost on this theme through the Huffington Post.

In the USA, presidential candidates have brought up many important kinds of current-affairs subjects, but they never attempt to talk about science, and rarely about technology. Few Americans appear to be convinced that science and technology will have a greater impact upon future society than most traditional political themes. Recently, the Paris conference COP21 on global warming put certain branches of science and technology in the limelight, but world leaders still do not talk regularly about such subjects.

In France, the situation is similar. I wrote a blog post recently [here] about a distinguished French thinker who believes that mathematics is not being considered with the attention it deserves. Science in general receives no more popular attention, here in France, than mathematics. I must admit however that the state-owned TV channels in France often provide us with excellent shows concerning, or based upon, science/technology methods. This was the case last night, when we were offered an amazing animated movie concerning the final years of the Gauls, before their definitive annihilation by the forces of Rome.

An Oxford lady named Sarah Outen

In the website of Richard Dawkins, there's a charming presentation of a smart and adventurous young Oxford lady, a graduate in biology, named Sarah Outen [click here].

In July 2009, while rowing across the Indian Ocean, she sent Dawkins an email, indicating that she liked to listen (when her solar-powered batteries were operational) to the professor and his wife reading The God Delusion. Dawkins thanked her with a poem:

I’ve received a splendid email

From a most courageous female.

Battling onward to Mauritius,

Lone among the flying fishes,

Albatrosses, giant whales,

Turning turtle in the gales.

To hell with Health and Safety rules,

She’s in tune with tuna schools.

She’ll dance, while others dance in bars,

With pilot fish and Pilot Stars.

I have not the faintest notion

How to brave the Indian Ocean

In anything that keeps afloat,

Let alone a rowing boat.

But Sarah takes it in her stride,

And going with her, for the ride,

A book, or audio CD

Read by Lalla and by me.

To speed her trip to its conclusion

We’re reading her The God Delusion!

All godly tripe and tosh she’s doubtin’

So raise your glass to Sarah Outen.

I find these communications between Oxfordians most pleasant and stylish.

French president's determined attempt to legislate on the possible annulation of citizenship for terrorists

In a recent blog post [here], I expressed my shock at finding out that François Hollande imagines seriously that terrorists with dual nationality should be deprived of their French citizenship. This idea seems to go against the grain of the nation's sacred motto:

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

But on second thoughts, the president's unexpected suggestion is nowhere near as bat-shit crazy as I first imagined. In a nutshell, it's surely Hollande's intricate plan to achieve three goals simultaneously:

1 — Make it clear to everybody (including terrorists) that France's Left will go to all imaginable ends to destroy our enemies, including methods that were recently unthinkable.

2 — Invent a trick to annihilate the Extreme Right of Marine Le Pen.

3 — Use that same trick to enable François Hollande to return to power.

When Hollande and his prime minister Manuel Vals first announced the déchéance theme (removal of citizenship), most people were caught unawares, because we weren't quite sure what it was all about. We now realize that this kind of action has already been used, on rare occasions, in French history... with no lasting negative effect upon the moral principles of the nation. We shall see exactly what the president has to say in the context of his televised New Year's speech. The chances are, I think, that he'll throw in a powerful formula, to justify his idea of déchéance :

« A situation exceptionnelle, mesures exceptionnelles »

(when faced with an exceptional situation, adopt an exceptional solution)

Why not? We all recall the terrible terrorists acts of last November, which shocked everybody immensely and meant that nothing would ever be quite the same again. We saw European citizens, some of whom were born in France, taking out weapons to kill young French citizens. And there are no limits to what we must do to combat this exceptional kind of evil.

Back to the future shopping hoverboard

Here's exactly what I need to do my shopping:

It appears to be safer than a cute two-wheeled gadget that caused a pile of accidents over the Christmas season, when it was given as a gift [see here]. This powerful vehicle is the ArcaBoard, presented here.

From an esthetic viewpoint, the device could be improved to look more like a curved surfing toy than a floating tombstone. I'll publish an appraisal as soon as I return from my first shopping excursion.

Well preserved

In the German town of Schöppingen, near the Dutch border, three fellows used explosives to tear apart a metallic distributor of preservatives, in the hope of stealing money. After lighting the mesh, they dashed into their nearby vehicle, to protect themselves from the blast. But they left a door open, and one of the fellows was hit on the head by a fragment of metal. Instead of picking up 14 euros in small coins (the total contents of the distributor), they rushed to a nearby hospital, where they told the staff that their mate had fallen down the stairs. The poor fellow died soon after... and the police discovered the scene of their tragic operation.

The victim surely deserves a Darwin Award for this courageous method of ensuring that society would be well preserved from his procreation of a stupid offspring.

Even on the Internet, today’s Christmas messages are not always as stupid as some of yesterday’s

Look at the absurdly ugly drawing, and the utterly idiotic text:

A hearty Christmas greeting

Four jovial frogs a-skating would go

They had asked their mamma

But she'd sternly said no

And they all came to grief in a beautiful row

There’s a sweet Christmas moral for one not too slow

Must go!

The individuals who created such rubbish, not to mention the folk who sent and received such brain-damaged messages, must have been sick in an old-fashioned sense.

Are humans truly smarter today than they were yesterday? I'm an optimistic humanist, and I usually think so...

Devastated Ramadi, formerly a Daech stronghold, is liberated

The Iraqi army has just announced that Ramadi, occupied since May by Daech, has been totally liberated.

This is a major news item. The town is a couple of hours by road to the west of Baghdad. Apparently the operations were conducted solely by Iraqi forces, with no participation of Shiite militia. At the latest news, no more civilians are being used as protective shields by fleeing Daech forces, but there are risks of booby traps inside the deserted city.

Here's a map that I found in the Libération website:

Click to enlarge slightly

Daech remains present throughout a big borderline zone between Syria and Iraq, but it's dwindling fast, and their end is surely near (I hope). I would suspect that the next Iraqi mission is to reconquer Mossoul.

Magic of mathematics

I've always been thrilled and amazed by the extent to which my ex-wife Christine continues to offer me various books that give me deep joy... even though I suspect that most of these books would not appeal to Christine herself. Her Christmas gift was a little masterpiece in this domain: Eloge des mathématiques by Alain Badiou.

The 78-year-old author is a renowned professor at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris.

In his tiny book, Badiou explains that mathematics have declined in popularity and esteem in France since the 1960s (shortly after my arrival in France), when philosophy seemed to replace both science in general and mathematics in particular as the most fashionable subject to tackle at university. Personally, I've always had the same impression. French society was no longer fascinated by mathematicians.

Badiou quotes a vulgar statement apparently made by the fashionable philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre :

"La science, c'est trou de balle. La morale, c'est peau de balle."  

It's hard to translate. Maybe: "Science is an arsehole study, whereas the pursuit of moral philosophy has balls."

In any case, Badiou makes a wonderful case for the praise of mathematics, which he associates with claims to almost magical achievement at several levels of truth. Mathematics proposes a coded language for all humans, but the discipline of mathematics remains unattached to any particular human language. The existence of mathematics made it possible for science to become a universal human preoccupation. Badiou goes much further than the mere domain of science. He considers that the arrival of mathematics in society made it possible to create principles of a political nature, and he even suggests that the presence of mathematics enabled humans to envisage new social relationships that gave rise to the future theme of courtly love.

Personally, I would love to think that literary intellectuals, politicians and creative artists, not to forget business and industrial leaders, are likely to be so charmed by the arguments of Badiou that French citizens will surely get around to electing a mathematician as the next president. But I wouldn't bet on it...

Family visits to Gamone

Little by little, members of my Australian family have got around to visiting Gamone.

This was my sister Susan Skyvington, who dropped in for lunch with a Belgian lady friend on 17 May 2015. A month or so later, I slipped down the stairs inside my house... and entered a lengthy period of convalescence, which I spent mainly in Brittany with Christine and our son François.

Worse than a crime, the removal of an individual's nationality is a moral fault

What's gone crazy in the mind of our president, who's normally so calm and intelligent? The idea of introducing a constitutional change that would enable France to deprive a citizen of his/her French nationality, as a punishment for terrorism, simply doesn't add up.

This idea is almost as abject as reintroducing the guillotine. In any case, I imagine that the nation, as a whole, will reject this absurdity.

Terminology: The French term déchéance might be transcribed into English as the downfall (of a person's official nationality). Does François Hollande imagine that, once France has officially deprived a terrorist of his/her French nationality, we'll be able to "export" that downfallen individual to another nation ?

Libération suggests that this decision represents the downfall of the president's credibility. I'm afraid I agree.

Holy Savior Christmas Prize

In my recent blog post here entitled These people give me goose pimples, I was unkind, because the poor fellow I spoke about was actually killed, while playing a Father Christmas role, when he fell off an ancient stone edifice in Douai (France). This time, I intend to express myself charitably in a Christian spirit.

Accidents happen at all times of the year, but I would like to draw attention to those that happen during the Christmas season, and in what would appear to be a Christmas spirit. I'm thinking in particular of grave accidents that nevertheless avoid a mortal end, maybe because of a last-minute role played by a guardian angel or even thanks to the Holy Savior in person. I believe that a fortunate individual in this situation should be rewarded by a prize, to be known as the Holy Savior Christmas Prize.

In the Norman city of Caen, the town hall is located on a square called Holy Savior Place... which has inspired this seasonal blog post, of a most Christian motivation. On this square, the local municipality had installed their Christmas tree... composed of synthetic materials that I would have preferred not to mention.

For reasons that only the Holy Spirit understands, a 21-year-old local lad decided, during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, to climb to the top of this giant artificial tree, to a height of about ten metres. Needless to say, the synthetic branches were not designed to support the weight of a sturdy youth, and the lad was gravely injured when he fell to the ground, alongside the Old Holy Savior church. Apparently he survived nevertheless. And that's why I would like to suggest that he be the recipient of an award. Maybe, to reduce the risks of injuries, this small Holy Savior Christmas Prize could be made out of colorful synthetic substances such as foam rubber and felt.

Is genealogy all about genes?

That's not meant to be a trick question, but it is surely a tricky question. And I'm not at all certain that I can indeed reply correctly and intelligently. Both the ancient term "genealogy" (study of generations of ancestors) and the relatively modern biological word "gene" (one of the many molecular elements of an individual's DNA) are inspired by the same root: γενεά ‎(geneá, "generation, descent"). So, the obvious answer to my question is yes: the study of genealogy is surely concerned by some kind of an examination of an individual's DNA. Having made that point, I'm obliged to say that, for the moment, the concrete associations between conventional family-history preoccupations and modern genetic methods are not at all obvious.

It's well known that many everyday family-history enthusiasts are tempted to pay fees to US laboratories specializing in genetic enhancements to everyday genealogy, usually of a complex nature. I made this decision several years ago, without fully understanding the exact advantages that I might (or might not) acquire. I can now say that I derived few avantages of the kind I was expecting, and nothing proves to my mind that the alleged missions of such companies are as sound as they make themselves out to be. On the other hand, an unexpected family-history event enabled me to discover that this kind of enhancement of ordinary family-history research can give rise to a startling result. I'm talking of the extraordinary Courtenay affair concerning the chance discovery of my paternal great-grandfather.

http://skyvington.blogspot.fr/2014/08/chromosomes-reveal-truth.html

On page 48 of The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins, there's a precise and brilliant explanation of "a telling difference between gene trees and people trees". Here, for example, is a "people tree" of my own childhood family in Australia:

That's me on the middle left, then my brother followed by our three sisters. Now, the questions introduced by Dawkins could be put as follows: In the case of a specific gene that's responsible for such-and-such an aspect of the character of a particular child, did that child inherit that gene from our father or from our mother, and was it the same gene that was inherited (from the same parent) by the other four siblings?

The answers to those two questions astonished me greatly when I first encountered them, and I'm sure that many people might be surprised, for they prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that siblings in a sole "people tree" do not necessarily acquire their specific character traits from the same "gene trees". To put it bluntly, brothers and sisters do not necessarily share identical character traits. Let us imagine, for example, my brother's genes that played a role in making him behave character-wise in a particular fashion. It is perfectly thinkable that none of Don's siblings had inherited comparable genes. Don's gene might have come, for example, from the father of Enid Kathleen Walker, whereas my corresponding version of this gene might have come, say, from the mother of King Mepham Skyvington.

This appears to me as a highly significant and fundamental law of inheritance, which should not be ignored.

For the moment, the general public knows next to nothing about this affair

Normally, a blogger has better things to do than to write a post (as I am doing) stating that, for the moment, the general public knows next to nothing about such-and-such an affair.

What we do know is that a French organization named the Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (Senior body examining transparency in the public domain) has requested enquiries concerning Marine Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. It would appear that this body has stated that there exists a "serious doubt concerning the completeness, exactitude and good faith of their declarations" (statement translated approximately from French into English by the blogger William Skyvington).

I repeat though that, for the moment, we know nothing more on this subject. Besides, if indeed this lack of knowledge were to persist for more than a day or so, I promise to remove the present blog post. But first, let's see if we can obtain more information...

http://www.lepoint.fr/politique/jean-marie-et-marine-le-pen-soupconnes-d-avoir-sous-evalue-leur-patrimoine-21-12-2015-2004403_20.php

Easter Island imagines its independence

World-famous Easter Island was annexed by Chili in 1888. One might imagine that the Polynesian inhabitants, known as Rapa Nui, might be happy to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their Chilean citizenship. On the contrary, these people would like to acquire their independence from their distant "owners" on the other side of the Pacific.

In fact, the islanders simply wish to recover their ancestral territories, home of the famous ancient statues known as moaïs.

This blog post was inspired by an article in Ouest-France by Léonie Place and Sylvain Clément. The blogger William Skyvington has taken the liberty of borrowing certain photos, created by these journalists, that are contained in the article in Ouest-France. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/data/651/reader/reader.html?t=1450718022433?utm_source=neolane_of-eds_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=lienarticle&utm_content=20151221#!preferred/1/package/651/pub/652/page/4

The blogger William Skyvington thanks Ouest-France and the above-mentioned journalists for having borrowed their work.

What indeed was happening here?

Try this link to a French media website that has picked up some kind of a US crime story: http://video.lefigaro.fr/figaro/video/usa-un-reporter-assiste-a-un-braquage-en-direct/4663241302001/

Crime stories and news reporting in the USA appear to be too complicated for me. Maybe I'm not very bright at this level. So, please let me know if you can figure out what indeed was happening there.

And here, if you're still interested, is another mystery TV interview from the USA: http://video.lefigaro.fr/figaro/video/bagarre-en-direct-entre-deux-journalistes-de-la-television-americaine/2359651042001/

Final days of the terrorist Abaaoud

Today, there's a short but superb article in the French newspaper Le Parisien describing the final few days of the terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, hiding like a running bushranger on the northern outskirts of Paris before being disintegrated by guns of French police in the ancient suburban city of Saint-Denis. This is the first time that we have a chance of understanding how in fact the police found the evil fellow and finally destroyed him.

http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/attentats-du-13-novembre-20-h-13-le-mardi-abaaoud-sort-de-son-buisson-20-12-2015-5388857.php

Recall the dates of events. The terrorist atrocities took place in Paris on Friday, 13 November 2015. By the end of the weekend, French police were convinced that the ring-leader was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, but they feared that he had probably fled already from France, just as stealthily as he had arrived.

No, he was still well and truly located in France, hiding in scrub in the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers. That dull zone would be the terrorist's rough hideout for his final nights of earthly existence. On Monday, 16 November, a witness became aware of the terrorist's hiding-place, and told the police. The next day, on Tuesday afternoon, 17 November, the police had installed a camera in the area. Just after 8 o'clock in the evening, a young woman arrived at the spot, and started to use her phone. Police recognized instantly the angular profile of Abaaoud's cousin Hasna Aït Boulahcen. During the next five minutes, two men emerged from the bushes, one of whom was clearly Abdelhamid Abaaoud himself: the most wanted man in France.

The police received orders from their headquarters to follow the trio stealthily, without daring to intercept them. Clearly, Abaaoud was wearing a thick vest that surely contained explosives. So, the detectives stood by calmly while the fugitives hailed a taxi, to take them to the nearby suburb of Saint-Denis. There, the trio found their way, at 22 h 14, to the door of a sordid squat.

The rest is known history. For hours, during their last night on earth, the three terrorists were smothered constantly in a hail of police ammunition, and blown to bits. One wonders if they ever realized what had hit them. The next day, disfigured dust-covered bodily remnants of the terrorists could only be identified by means of their DNA.