God's dull clowns

At both extremities of my personal Antipodes (Australia and France), God's dull clowns seem to be playing their roles by using comparable scripts. Dignitaries of the Church bend over backwards to protect randy members of their clergy who got caught dipping their wicks into the oil of youth. And the protectors' performances are similarly sickening. The latest dignitary to be embroiled in such a situation is the archbishop of Lyon, cardinal Philippe Barbarin.

Whenever such noble fellows are caught up in dubious protection rackets, they're probably convinced personally that they're behaving correctly, at least in the eyes of God. But perspicacious observers tend to see them, when they fail to denounce sexual offenders, as advocates of the Devil. And, when the victims are innocent youth, society labels the weakness of these dignitaries as "failure to protect young people in grave danger".

Cryptography

The Turing Award, organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, is often described as the Nobel Prize for computer specialists. Its early winners included two pioneers of artificial intelligence: Marvin Minsky (1969) and John McCarthy (1971). The most recent winners were Whitfield Diffie, former Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems and Martin Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. In 1976, they invented the fascinating subject of public-key cryptography, which enables users of the commercial World Wide Web to communicate in total safety. This subject is not easy to understand, but it concerns us in such an everyday fashion that it's worthwhile making an effort to see how it works. I therefore recommend that you study carefully the following excellent video:

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You might need to watch this video several times, while taking notes, in order to understand clearly the principles of public-key cryptography.

Beautiful penguin story

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As they say in French, the carrots are cooked

That nice old-fashioned French saying designates a situation in which failure is just around the corner. And that's the current situation of the Korean Go player Lee Sedol in his match against an AI (artificial intelligence) known as AlphaGo. In the following photo, Lee is on the right, whereas the fellow in front of him has the job of carrying out the moves requested by the AI opponent.

Well, after two matches, the AI has defeated Lee Sedol in both games. So, the AI only needs to clinch one more game to win the tournament.

Needless to say (although I insist upon making this point, without attempting to go into details), this man/machine competition is more exciting and intellectually meaningful than the recent competitions involving a question-answering AI from IBM known as Watson.

If Trump wins, the human species will be in very deep trouble

Those words come from the US intellectual Noam Chomsky.

Click here to access a short article on this scary warning.

French president communicates with the god of rain

Ever since François Hollande arrived at the Elysées Palace, observers have been impressed by his apparent contacts with a mysterious deity: the God of Rain.

It's difficult to identify this deity, and learn his exact name, because there are many possible candidates, in several theological domains. But we have witnessed numerous situations when the president was in a profound state of communication with his deity.

Many French citizens do not seem to realize that we could be taking bad weather risks when we imagine the possible refusal to usher in a second presidential term for Hollande. If ever the God of Rain were offended by our vote, the land might be smitten by his wrath. There could be terrible droughts, and the rivers of France might run dry.

Here at Gamone, since the start of winter, there have been so many days and nights of chilly rain that I've often felt we were being inundated with warnings. Maybe the god is becoming angry. We should take heed... or maybe pray.

When my dog leaves home for an hour or so, I never know what kind of a life he's leading

Up until a year ago, the favorite destination of my dog Fitzroy was a farm-house over in Chatelus, on the other side of the Bourne: the residence of his female lover. But, over the last year, I've noticed a significant change in Fitzroy's behavior. He has developed the habit of racing to the crest of the hill behind Gamone, and disappearing for an hour or so. But I've never been able to determine the destination of his excursions. So, this mystery remained unsolved... up until today.

A fortnight ago, as soon as I let Fitzroy off his chain so that he would come inside the house, he set off immediately to the crest of the hill behind my house. When he returned home, an hour or so later, he had a nasty smell. Since then, it has been too wet and cold to give him a bath. Consequently, I've been obliged to get accustomed to living with the nasty smell. Yesterday, when Tineke and Serge visited me, they were immediately conscious of my dog's disgusting smell, and they preferred that I leave him chained up outside, alongside his kennel. Tineke insisted upon the probability that Fitzroy had in fact been rolling around on the corpse of a dead animal. And I agree... although I've probably grown accustomed to living with this horrible smell.

When Martine arrived this afternoon, I warned her not to touch Fitzroy, because he was surely carrying traces of a dead animal. Through her job as postwoman, Martine is aware of everything that's happening in Choranche. She started to inform me that one of my closest neighbors, René, has an unusual pet: a wild boar that lives on the property like a domesticated animal. One day, the boar went out into the woods and became pregnant. It returned home with a litter of half-a-dozen piglets, and René started to feed them. Unfortunately, a fortnight ago, one of the little piglets appears to have died.

Hearing that tale, I immediately obtained a likely explanation of Fitzroy's escapades. For my dog, René's property is no more than a jog of 5 minutes up along the crest of the hill behind Gamone. Fitzroy has surely been racing up there often, to play with René's dog and the litter of wild boars. So, the mystery of Fitzroy's frequent escapades has a logical explanation. Likewise, Fitzroy's dirty smell is almost certainly the odor of a dead piglet.

Since putting together those explanations, which are quite logical, I'm less annoyed by the nasty smell.

Road-racing champion

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As a child in South Grafton, I was often terrified by wild magpies that would attack me when I was riding my bike to and from school. In the case of this ostrich, I can't guess what it had in mind. Was the animal behaving aggressively? Or did it simply want to go for a training ride with that team of professionals? An observer made an interesting remark: If the animal can run so fast, all on its own, imagine the speed it might attain if it had a bicycle. I wonder if the organizers of the grand prix in Dubai would accept this competitor.

World Drone Prix, Dubai

This fabulous racing track has been designed in Dubai for the World Drone Prix:

International Women's Day

Suffragette being arrested in London

French women who make things change

Click here to discover 9 French women who make things change.

Drone killers

No sooner had I seen the arrival in society of small drones, than I made an elementary prediction:

In the near future, a lot of so-called bright people are going to design evil toys whose unique aim is to destroy those nice little drones!

Well, drone killers have arrived. Here's a nasty specimen:

Discovery of a ghostlike deep-sea octopod

This charming little beast was discovered in the Pacific, near Hawaii.

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Within a few days, the creature became one of the most popular octopods in web history, viewed by countless people throughout the world. I wonder how we might let the little beast know that he/she has a vast crowd of friends from one end of the globe to the other. I wonder too how scientists might convince imaginative young web users that this is (I believe) an authentic real-world video document, and not merely a work of virtual animation art.

Hard disks were born in 1956

Hard disks were created for the first time by IBM in 1956, half a century ago, at about the same time that I started to learn computer programming. The first model was called Ramac, and it was bulkier and heavier than a grand piano.

Personally, I was aware of the existence of such storage devices, but I never actually used one. Seeing the clumsy way in which they were transported by a tiny team of human workers, I imagine that these fragile devices were surely in a state of breakdown for much of their existence.

It's interesting to see that the familiar acronym "ram" existed already: random-access memory. This was an annoying term, because it gave the impression that the contents of the storage device were not in fact accessed in a strictly determined fashion, but a little like throwing a dice. That, of course, was not really true. The adjective "random" was an example of primordial IBM marketing buzz.

What made the patriarch so batshit mad?

This old fellow—the Extreme Right-wing founder Jean-Marie Le Pen—looks as if he’s about to burst a valve in his backside:

What kind of event might have made him so angry? Imagine that the patriarch has just heard the vice-president of the Front national, Florian Philippot, announcing on France 2 that their party will no longer be celebrating the Joan of Arc festival on May 1.

Incidentally, it's reassuring to discover that the Extreme Right-wing Front national party no longer succeeds in trying to steal a dearly-loved French historical symbol such as our Joan of Arc.

Local weather report: makes me shiver

Here at Gamone, winter weather reports are often alarming. And the press photos accompanying such reports often make things worse.

I've just discovered, for example, an orange-level warning for four departments, including Isère, starting at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, and lasting until tomorrow. There'll be abundant snow, icy roads and even avalanches.

If their weather-report service were ideal, it should have been accompanied by an explanation of the following kind:

If you happen to be living down in the valley, at an altitude of a few hundred metres, then we apologize for this scary weather-report, and ask you to ignore it completely.

Meanwhile, during the next 24 hours, I'm likely to receive calls from friends who wish to know whether I'm surviving. And I'll be pleased to inform them that everything's perfectly calm here, that I'm watching TV from alongside my excellent wood-burning stove, while my lovely dog Fitzroy is sleeping on the floor, and that the weather is quite warm, without the slightest sign of snow, ice or avalanches.

Alone in an old lighthouse at the tip of Brittany

Marc Pointud isn't getting paid to look after the ancient lighthouse of Tévennec for two months, nor was he washed up here after a shipwreck.

No, he took the initiative of asking maritime authorities to enable him to reside here for a while, with the unique aim of spreading information about this extraordinary place... and maybe persuading philanthropic companies to participate as benefactors in the restoration of the site.

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Click here to access the TV website about this adventure.

Video on Van Gogh

This trailer introduces a pleasant video called Loving Vincent:

Click here to visit the movie's website.

Planning for a major flood in Paris

During the two decades of my life in Paris, I can recall no alarming case of flooding of any kind. But many people believe that a gigantic flood will surely occur there, at some unknown time, sooner or later. So, experts are in fact making plans for such an event, which could give rise to gigantic damages throughout the city.

During the period March 7–18, with the help of the European Union, the Prefecture of Police in Paris will be organizing a vast operation called EU Sequana 2016, to test people's reactions to a big flood situation in the French capital. Many organizations will be participating, including hospitals,  the national electricity supplier, transport providers, communication companies and police forces. Even neighboring countries such as Italy, Spain and Belgium will be participating in this simulation of a major once-in-a-century flood crisis. The "big one"... to borrow California's earthquake expression. Not surprisingly, most Parisians probably refuse to believe that such a catastrophe could really take place in their beloved city. All the more reasons for a dramatic and plausible trial.

As recently as 2011, the residents of Montmartre were alarmed by a torrent that flowed down their famous stone steps.

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The most devastating recorded flood in the history of Paris took place over a century ago, in 1910.

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Is another great flood of that kind awaiting us? Nobody knows. But this possibility cannot be denied.

So hot in Australia that a koala used a bicycle to get a drink

Yesterday in the Adelaide Hills, a thirsty koala climbed to the top of a bicycle wheel to get a drink from a cyclist's water bottle.

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Passing cyclist Nick Lothian stopped to take a photo of the event. The koala was still drinking when the photographer reappeared on his return journey, half an hour later.

Fauna Rescue volunteers were called in to collect the one-year-old female, who spent the night recovering at the Adelaide Animal Hospital. The animal was due to be released, in an excellent state of health, later in the day.

Story sent to me by my childhood friend Bruce Hudson.