Thursday, September 22, 2016
Crazy Christian
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Dates
• Wednesday 21 September 2016 was the first day of spring in Australia.
• Tomorrow, Thursday 22 September 2016, will be the first day of autumn in France.
• And Saturday 24 September 2016 will be my 76th birthday... in both Australia and France, of course!
• Tomorrow, Thursday 22 September 2016, will be the first day of autumn in France.
• And Saturday 24 September 2016 will be my 76th birthday... in both Australia and France, of course!
India buys French Rafale fighter planes
India has confirmed the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter planes, totally made-in-France by Dassault. Details of the deal have not been made public, but it's probably in the vicinity of 8 billion dollars.
Morandini in police custody
Flash is about to disappear
Once upon a time, Flash was the coolest kid on the block. I worked hard to master it. Most of my old websites of which I'm most proud today were created in Flash. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined for an instant that all these websites would disappear in the near future, simply because no navigator was prepared to display them.
I've just heard that, soon, neither Safari, Chrome nor Firefox will be prepared to display Flash websites.
Theoretically, I might be able to retrieve images from my Flash websites, before they disappear forever, and then rebuild them in HTML 5. I plan to examine this idea, but I'm not sure that it's both easy and worthwhile. Here, for example, are several typical French/English websites that are due to disappear: Master Bruno.
A similar calamity occurred with the Apple Pages tool, which subsided into a brain-damaged state a few years ago, losing many of its major capacities, because its owner wanted to propose a common denominator of talents that could be demonstrated, not only on an iMac, but also on an iPad or iPhone. Personally, I find that goal ridiculous. It's akin to taking a schoolboy and an Olympic athlete, and asking them to be trained together to run the hundred metres in much the same time. One gets pepped up with pills; the other gets castrated.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Making babies without female eggs
A gigantic biological breakthrough overthrows a 200-year-old golden rule for making babies. According to the old rule, the only way to make a baby consists of encouraging a male sperm to penetrate a female egg.
Well, we learn today that there might be another way of starting the baby-building process, with no need for a female egg. Now, don't get me wrong. A male/female person who wants to become the father/mother of a baby still needs to get a little help from a friend. More precisely, from the girl who's going to carry the fœtus in her womb for nine months. But this lady doesn't collaborate initially by donating an egg, and she will therefore not be a parent of the future child.
Let's examine this gestation that doesn't start with a female egg. We might use a skin cell, from either a male or a female.
To simplify the graphical presentation, we show merely eight chromosomes. To start the process, half of the cell's chromosomes are removed: four. In the next step, the halved cell receives a male sperm.
At this point in my description of the process of babies whose gestation doesn't start with an egg, I'm reminded of a joke about an inspired inventor who's creating a miraculous aircraft. "It looks fabulous, with its swept-back wings and narrow tubular fuselage. And its jet engines are designed to take it rapidly up beyond the speed of sound. There's just a single problem that I still have to solve. How do I get the bastard to fly?"
That's where we are with our bundle of four chromosomes and a sperm cell in the above illustration. Without going into details, let's say that the group of biologists who've announced this new process claim that a simple cell formed by a sperm injected into half the chromosomes of a skin cell can indeed be made to evolve into an embryo. But how? Well, the biologists who are promoting this idea have published an article revealing how they were able to bring about the birth of healthy mice. A little imagination and faith is then required in order to see how a human male or female might get together with a male sperm-donor to build a baby. In fact, my dear Watson, it's rather elementary...
Google respects the private lives of cows
Google's famous Street View gadget has been reprimanded, from time to time, for displaying roadside individuals who are easily identifiable. A jealous husband might discover, say, that his wife was photographed in a conversation with a male neighbor further down the road. And that might create problems. So, people's faces are blurred, to make them as unrecognizable as possible. In most cases, this technique works well.
Google seems to have decided that the same process should be applied to dairy cows, so that no jealous bull would ever see red.
Fitzroy, who often roams around the neighborhood to visit his lady friends, told me that he would feel more at ease if Google were to extend their privacy blurs to cover, not only cows, dogs and cats, but the entire range of four-legged creatures. I suspect that, from time to time, my dog might be boring into attractive young wild boars, and he doesn't want this news to spread around Choranche and Pont-en-Royans.
Google seems to have decided that the same process should be applied to dairy cows, so that no jealous bull would ever see red.
Question that no longer concerns me
Click here to access an article, in a distinguished medical publication, suggesting that my above-mentioned brilliant surgeon should not necessarily be praised for having saved my life. Be that as it may, I'm still alive. That's all that really matters.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Abbott tells Europeans how to run the world
The Sydney Morning Herald tells us that former PM Tony Abbott addressed an Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in Prague on Saturday night. If you want to see everything he said, don’t hesitate to click here. Otherwise, I can give you the gist of his words, which didn’t impress me greatly… to say the least. He expressed his opinions concerning Europe's treatment of unwanted immigration… as if all European nations were looking upon this phenomenon in the same way. He said that it looked like “a peaceful invasion”. I wonder what Abbott really suggests by his juxtaposition of those two unrelated terms. It's murky Down Under English, along the lines of his rough-and-ready "Look, I'm going to shirtfront Mr Putin ... you bet I am."
France is happy to have earned a lot of cash by selling submarines to Australia. We’re grateful for that business, of course. And we don’t expect Australia to be more generous towards France by telling us (or any other European nation) how to handle the delicate and difficult problem of out-of-hand immigration. If France wanted to put a brutal end to such immigrants, Tony Abbott surely knows that the French navy could use one of our submarines. So, why doesn't he simply shut up?
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Names and photos of 238 victims of terrorism in France since “Charlie”
Click here to access a block of 238 photos, in alphabetical surname order, with links to brief descriptions of victims of terrorism in France since the massacre at the Charlie offices in Paris on January 7, 2015.
Friday, September 16, 2016
Beautiful song by Francis Cabrel
Click YouTube for a full-screen version
Juste un peu plus d'amour encore
Pour moins de larmes
Pour moins de vide
Pour moins d'hiver
Puisqu'on vit dans les creux d'un rêve
Avant que l’amour ne touche nos lèvres
Nous on voudrait leur dire
Les mots qu'on reçoit
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Il faudra leur dire
Facile à faire
Un peu plus d'amour que d'ordinaire
Si c'est vrai qu'il y a des gens qui s'aiment
Si les enfants sont tous les mêmes
Alors... il faudra leur dire
Les mots qu'on reçoit
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Il faudra leur dire
Facile à faire
Francis Cabrel was the object this evening of a wonderful documentary on French TV. It's amusing to discover the extent to which this intelligent and sympathetic fellow exists far away from the usual throng of media and music-hall people. He seems to be totally devoid of "skills" enabling him to become a selfish arsehole imbued by his talents and popularity. He remains as pure (and shy) as on the first day he ever sang in front of an audience. So, those beautiful kids who are accompanying Cabrel in the song "Il faudra leur dire" (They Must be Told) are on a perfect par with the great songwriter and singer. He is truly one of them, and the children seem to "know" that this is the case.
Click here for a streamed version of this song
Since early this morning at Gamone, this music—which mesmerizes me—has been playing non-stop on my Macintosh. Light rain is falling, and my dog Fitzroy is sleeping alongside my desk. Meanwhile, I spent much time this morning by trying to tell one of my Australian sisters that I look upon her Wordpress blogging activities as puzzling, to say the least. Click here to judge for yourselves. I keep saying to her: Why don't you write an Australia-based blog along the same lines and in the same kind of spirit and style as my France-based Antipodes ?
PAROLES DE CABREL
Si c'est vrai qu'il y a des gens qui s'aiment
Si les enfants sont tous les mêmes
Alors il faudra leur dire
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Juste un regard
Facile à faire
Un peu plus d'amour que d'ordinaire
Un peu plus d'amour que d'ordinaire
Puisqu'on vit dans la même lumière
Même s'il y a des couleurs qu'ils préfèrent
Nous on voudrait leur dire
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Juste un regard
Facile à faire
Un peu plus d'amour que d'ordinaire
Même s'il y a des couleurs qu'ils préfèrent
Nous on voudrait leur dire
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Juste un regard
Facile à faire
Un peu plus d'amour que d'ordinaire
Juste un peu plus d'amour encore
Pour moins de larmes
Pour moins de vide
Pour moins d'hiver
Puisqu'on vit dans les creux d'un rêve
Avant que l’amour ne touche nos lèvres
Nous on voudrait leur dire
Les mots qu'on reçoit
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Il faudra leur dire
Facile à faire
Un peu plus d'amour que d'ordinaire
Si c'est vrai qu'il y a des gens qui s'aiment
Si les enfants sont tous les mêmes
Alors... il faudra leur dire
Les mots qu'on reçoit
C'est comme des parfums qu'on respire
Il faudra leur dire
Facile à faire
Europe ready to discuss Britain's departure
At the Bratislava meeting, European nations revealed that they would like to start discussions with the UK as soon as possible on the subject of Britain's departure from Europe. Click here to listen to Donald Tusk, president of European Council.
Silly ideas form in my imagination
Two days ago, I was working calmly on my iMac when the electricity suddenly disappeared, just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon. There were no vehicles on the road down alongside the River Bourne. An hour later, the electricity had not reappeared in my house. Crazy ideas started to form in my imagination. I wondered if terrorists might have blown up a nuclear power station. Frankly, I was quite worried. I strolled down the road with my dog, but this didn't ease my mind at all, since the neighborhood was in total silence. Finally, I heard the church bells of Châtelus ringing at 6 o'clock. I dashed back into the house, where I was relieved to find the electricity restored.
Yesterday, my neighbor Jackie told me that a road-works machine, further up along the valley, had accidentally destroyed an electricity pylon, causing an extensive blackout.
All the news I hear about terrorists has twisted my mind...
Yesterday, my neighbor Jackie told me that a road-works machine, further up along the valley, had accidentally destroyed an electricity pylon, causing an extensive blackout.
All the news I hear about terrorists has twisted my mind...
Proud to be British
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Australian magpies
I've always been surprised by the fact that French people seem to know nothing at all about our Australian magpies.
Our birds Down Under look a litle like the French bird referred to as a pie, pronounced pee.
So, French people imagine that they're basically the same creature. Few people know that our Australian magpies, in their nesting season, attack children on bicycles by diving down at their heads. This kind of attack used to terrify me when I was a boy in South Grafton.
An Australian child on a bicycle, when attacked by a wild magpie, is capable of bending his head, looking down at the road, and maybe running into an approaching vehicle. If the bird uses its heavy beak to hit a child on the skull, this can cause a nasty wound
For French readers : The name in French of our possibly-vicious Australian magpie is the Cassican flûteur (Gymnorhina tibicen).
Our birds Down Under look a litle like the French bird referred to as a pie, pronounced pee.
An Australian child on a bicycle, when attacked by a wild magpie, is capable of bending his head, looking down at the road, and maybe running into an approaching vehicle. If the bird uses its heavy beak to hit a child on the skull, this can cause a nasty wound
For French readers : The name in French of our possibly-vicious Australian magpie is the Cassican flûteur (Gymnorhina tibicen).
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Dinosaur for sale in France
An American owner has decided to put his excellent dinosaur up for sale in France. Before the auction takes place, the skeleton is on display in a French railway station. The future auctioneer believes there'll be a big crowd of prospective buyers, because it's rare to find a top-quality dinosaur up for sale in this corner of the world.
I would like to put in a bid. I'm sure that my dog Fitzroy would love to have such a friend at Gamone. But the dinosaur is surely above my budget. I'll make a point of providing readers with details when the sale takes place. And, if ever I raked up enough cash to clinch the deal, Fitzroy and I will throw a dinosaur party at Gamone.
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Going, going… gone
David Cameron, 49, ex-PM of the United Kingdom, has announced his intention to abandon his current job as a Tory parliamentarian. He explains that it’s not possible for a former PM to become an efficient political representative (of the everyday variety). Cameron resigned on June 24 following the Brexit vote.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)