Best invention since sliced bread

Self-lacing shoes from Nike:

If the manufacturer wishes to send me a pair (size 43) for testing

(to be followed, of course, by an in-depth blog post), my address is

Mas de Gamone, Choranche 38680, France

Prehistoric Twitter bird icon

French archeologists have made a fabulous discovery. A fragment of silex found near Bergerac (Dordogne) contains an engraving, produced 35,000 years ago, of the famous Twitter bird icon.

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This discovery probably suggests that the French government might look into the possibility of acquiring this prestigious company and declaring it a part of France's national heritage. That would mean, of course, that all tweets, from then on, would have to be written in classical French, and approved by the Académie française.

Captain Kampf has left the vessel

The Frenchman Serge Kampf [1935-2016], a commercially-successful businessman in the arena of the management of personnel for software development, was a native of Grenoble who used a good part of his personal wealth to promote rugby.

Our paths crossed during my early years in France, simply because Kampf succeeded in purchasing the French company named CAP (Centre d'Analyse et de Programmation), which had been one of my first employers. After that buyout and the subsequent disappearance of the original company, Kampf retained preciously the CAP acronym, which soon acquired a new meaning that had nothing to do with the original sense of "Centre d'Analyse et de Programmation". And that's why I've decided to designate the late Serge Kampf as "Captain".

My first employment with the original CAP company took me to Brussels, where our daughter Emmanuelle was born. After a trip out to Australia with Christine and our baby, I was called back to Paris by the CAP company, to set up their in-house training department, with the aim of producing computer programmers. Then I abandoned completely this activity in order to spend a few years in the French broadcasting world, with Pierre Schaeffer at the Service de la Recherche de l'ORTF.

Later, I moved briefly into the new CAP domain that Serge Kampf had started to build up. One of Kampf's key subordinates, a certain Jean-Pierre Descendre, had the impression that I would be the right man in the right place to handle an outlandish adventure that would consist of creating a computerized teaching laboratory for the Shar of Persia and his wife Soraya. I was on the point of accepting naively this crazy mission. Fortunately, Kampf was alert enough to realize that Descendre was surely leading the company (not to mention me too) into a mine field. So, he stopped the project instantly. Thanks, Serge, for saving me from the magic carpets of Persia...

Scottish Kangoo from my sister Susan

When my sister Susan Skyvington dropped in rapidly at Gamone last year, she met up with my Renault Kangoo automobile. In this morning's mail, I received a nice gift from Susan, who offered me a Scottish Walkers version of my Kangoo.

And it's full of my favorite Scottish shortbread biscuits!

Thank you so much, Susan, for that delightful little gift.

Old octopus stories in the Antipodes

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Trump on Tonight Show, not very laughable

Here are two old Donald Trump spoofs from the Tonight Show:

When I compare these US political specimens with typical spoofs created here in France, I find them totally trivial, and devoid of any kind of in-depth humor. They don't really make me laugh. In the course of a typical evening of French TV, I would normally discover several times more stuff that's far funnier. In any case, I have the impression that US authors of political humor have simply lost their touch. In the above specimens, they have gone to a lot of trouble in their attempt to simply imitate Trump, whereas authentic humor would attempt to magnify reality and make it more absurd. For example, the authors are surely proud to have dressed their would-be Trumps in exactly the same necktie as the real-life Trump, and given him an identical hairdo. Their Trumps remind me of characters in typical US "historical" movies. Why don't they try to twist the real-life necktie and hairdo to make them outlandish and truly funny? Their necktie might, for example, have been knitted in mauve wool by one of Trump's admirers. His hairdo might be composed of a barely visible nylon net surrounding a hilarious mess of pink knots (including a mislaid hairclip).

I believe that the ghosts of Laurel and Hardy would shudder in boredom if they were to watch the Tonight Show.

Crater of dinosaur doom

This is an artist’s impression of the Chicxlub crater, buried beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, whose rings are located at a depth of some 20 km beneath the surface of the sea.

(D van Ravenswaay/Science Photo Library)

The following video provides us with an idea of the possible appearance of the site, after the impact:

Events triggered off by this impact may have been responsible for the disappearance of dinosaurs.

Later this month, a scientific vessel will arrive in the vicinity of the Yucatán Peninsula, sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, with the aim of building an exploration platform at a depth of 17 metres. This should enable geologists to study the formation of the ancient peak rings, which remain hidden beneath half-a-kilometre of limestone rubble.

If all goes well, this research might provide us with a better idea of the circumstances in which the dinosaurs left the stage forever... leaving room for the evolution of alternative animals (much later on, of course) such as me and my dog Fitzroy.

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:

Click the YouTube icon

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.

Click the YouTube icon

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.