Augmenting intelligence

To augment your intelligence, you need to be stimulated, indeed shocked. Your brain needs to receive a burst of energy that makes it cogitate. A bolt of cerebral lightning. If that doesn’t happen, then you’ll finish the day no more intelligent than when you woke up. In certain places, at certain times, there might be so few flashes of cerebral lightning that your brain might even go into hibernation. This happens, I believe, in binary situations where crowds are watching win/lose happenings such as sporting competitions. The brain is not really being stimulated in a cognitive manner. It is simply being turned on to applaud in joy, or turned off to weep in despair. People in such situations are being manipulated like pigeons in a Skinner box, designated technically as an operant conditioning chamber.

The ancient Romans believed in a protective spirit of a place, known as a genius loci. In certain wonderlands, the spirit of place can operate in a way that makes passers-by more intelligent. It all depends on what’s available in the way of cerebral surprises. The other evening, I watched a TV documentary about the huge sewage canals beneath Paris. Crowds of onlookers in the street were behaving feverishly because workers digging up the street had asked them to step back a little… to make way for an emerging boat. When people are told that a boat is about to appear from beneath the street pavement, their brains are indeed capable of going into overdrive. First, you imagine that somebody is cracking a joke, and making fun of you. When you do indeed grasp the image of a big flat-bottomed vessel being hauled up from the bowels of the City of Light, your neurons go wild, and start to chatter like a Geiger counter in a nuclear fallout zone. I should explain that the above vessel is simply used in Paris sewage canals to pick up solid rubbish. It needs to be taken out of the water from time to time and brought up onto dry land, to be cleaned and repaired.

For understandable local reasons, often historical or purely incidental, there are more chances of a spirit of place becoming excited in the streets of Paris than in a dull Antipodean neighborhood, regardless of the sunny weather. The sewage canals are more ancient and complex.

It's all a fraud

Don't waste time comparing one fraud with another. One book of lies is no better than another book of lies. They're all shit. Lies are lies are lies. Only truth counts.

Incidentally, the organization that created the following pleasant poster is Catholic.

So, don't fall into the trap of imagining that they know what they're talking about. Catholics simply cannot ever really understand all that they're talking about. Those folk talk with God and angels, and they believe in magic. They got themselves brain-damaged long ago, and they've never really succeeded in escaping from that accident, which they like to call Original Sin. They might appear to be nice folk, but they're merely a mob of nutty fruit-cakes. Shit, they "pray"... Do you see what I'm saying? Catholics actually believe that they can chat away with a guy who lives up in the sky, who once built the universe. As I said, they're totally crazy. Raving lunatics. Mad as cut snakes.

Probably our next president

The candidate is Alain Juppé, currently mayor of Bordeaux : our likely future president.

Click here for a short announcement of a TV documentary by FOG (Franz-Olivier Giesbert), which France will we watching this evening. If I wanted to be "sarkastic", I would say that Juppé’s major merit is that he’ll save us from Sarkozy.

Eternal silence

Frequently on French TV, several times a week, exceptional movies describe the universe, just above the horizon. Without such splendid reminders, I would surely shrink up and die.

Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.
— Blaise Pascal

Children speak the language of Pascal, but differently.

And a tweet from Bold Atheism transmits that language.
Through the Cosmos ? Yes, forever.

Getting their act together

The slogan alongside Theresa May is curious. Who exactly is included in the "everyone" for whom Brexit Britain is working? Why is Britain working for her citizens? Wouldn't it be more logical, inversely, if her citizens worked for Britain? Is the country really working for the huge proportion of citizens who didn't want the Brexit at all? How exactly is this "work" being conducted? The formula is fuzzy.

This morning, on the BBC and in the Sunday Times, Theresa May reassured the world that the UK plans to activate article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, to obtain a divorce settlement with the European Union, before March 2017. In that case, the UK would normally be able to leave Europe around the start of 2019. Not too soon...

This afternoon, she'll open the congress of the Conservative Party in Birmingham.

Blog gem : If it be Your will

Browsing through old blog posts, I often come upon an unexpected gem. It’s a post entitled Freedom of speech, published on May 10, 2011. It contains a link to an article by a great man, Christopher Hitchens, still alive at that time. (He died seven months later.)

Then Hitchens pointed us to another great man: Leonard Cohen. Click here for the post.

Nobody owns me

Since yesterday, the administration of web names, carried out by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), is no longer under the control of the US Department of Commerce. Icaan is henceforth in the hands of a private non-profit organization (NPO). In spite of its name, an NPO is not obliged to avoid making profits. It’s simply an organization with no owners. Wikipedia informs us: A nonprofit organization uses its surplus revenues to further achieve its purpose or mission, rather than distributing such money to shareholders as profit or dividends.

Have you understood? Will this change affect ordinary web-users like me, for example? Decide for yourselves. For me, this change might be superficial, but I find it fine. I never like to be owned. Particularly by the US Department of Commerce.

Sale of French submarines to Australia

The French press has just spoken briefly about the contract with Australia for the sale of submarines. Click here to access an article (in French) published by the Mer et Marine news organization.

Why did I want to become a Blogger ?

I decided to become a Blogger almost ten years ago. [I prefer to use the term that designates people who work on the blogging platform made available by Google.] Here is my very first post, which attempted to answer the same question that concerns me today:

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Why have I created this blog?

I often find myself saying more or less the same everyday things in e-mails to several friends. Consequently, this blog could be a good way of avoiding such repetition. This doesn't mean that I intend to abandon the idea of sending e-mails to friends. It merely means that certain stuff can be outlined here publicly in my blog, and I can then talk about specific behind-the-scenes things in my personal e-mails. Another down-to-earth reason for this blog is that some of my friends have faulty e-mail systems, which often block my messages because they're judged to be spam. [This is notably the case for Australian customers of Big Pond.] Finally, another good reason for this blog is the possibility of my being able to express freely my feelings in domains that some of my friends judge to be taboo: for example, Aussie politics. So, I'm hoping that this new vector of expression (new for me, that is) will prove to be effective and pleasant to use.

Do I have any better answers today than in 2006? Yes, I do. At Grafton High School, a wonderful teacher named Edith Crane (whose later married name was Bennett) taught us how to understand and appreciate an Australian novel about rural folk who lived in a cyclical fashion. That’s to say, their existence went around constantly in a loop. Instead of moving into new challenges, they would simply return to their point of departure, and start a similar cycle, without ever being aware that they were always moving in circles. Today, I'm convinced that Edith Crane's teaching about that novel was largely responsible for instilling in me an eagerness to become a published writer. And later, a Blogger. I've never thought of trying to make money through my writing. Nor have I ever been interested in having numerous readers. I merely wish to talk about my existence. And a bit about the universe that surrounds me. Above all, I like the idea of moving around in circles. You might say that I resemble the mythical giant bird that flew constantly in circles of an ever-decreasing radius... until it finally flew up its arsehole and disappeared.

End of Rosetta

Click here for a rapid summary of the role of Rosetta

Maybe this blog post should disappear into oblivion along with Rosetta.

Flight MH17 destroyed by a Russian missile

On 17 July 2014, a Boeing 777 bound from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew. The Ukrainian army claimed that Russia was responsible for this crime, but Russia blamed Ukraine. Undeniable data confirms that the Boeing was indeed destroyed by a Russian missile. Click here [Pardon the publicity].

Birds of death are disappearing

Human idiots in Africa are destroying these wonderful birds, which are a vital link in the chain of Nature that cleans up my fragile planet.

Rafale jet fighters leave the Charles-de-Gaulle

Here in my bedroom at Gamone, about two hours ago, I received this photo of Rafale jet fighters leaving the Charles-de-Gaulle in the eastern Mediterranean, bound for Mosul. Real-time news of the departure of the planes came from a France 2 reporter aboard the aircraft-carrier. Click here for the article. Amazed by the speed at which we can follow this first French strike against Daesh, I shall now await news of the return of the fighters. I sense that all is well...

TIMING : Here's the time at which the article reached my computer, transmitted by the franceinfo service :

A tweet on the subject wasn't published until an hour later.

Clearly, the news reached me well before Twitter picked it up.

Big tweets

from Bold Atheism
and Atheist Quote Bot

Bound to strike the buggers

The French aircraft-carrrier Charles-de-Gaulle is about to sail towards a major target: Daesh. Alongside its 1,900 marines, the giant vessel will house 24 Rafale jet fighters. And it will be accompanied by a German frigate and a US destroyer. Its task is to chase the Daesh enemy out of Mosul.

Sailors, we’re all convinced that you’re sailing towards success. Towards a big battle… followed by peace in Syria and Irak. Happy sailing.

My brain hides unpleasant memories

This morning, unexpectedly, I suddenly found one of my favorite French songs floating through my brain, but I couldn't pin it down. Little by little, the melody started to shimmer in my memory, along with a few words, and accents of the singer's voice. But the singer's identity and the title of the song still failed to clarify themselves.

I immediately said to myself that some kind of a psychological obstacle was preventing me from obtaining a complete picture of this data stored in my brain. But there are ways to bring it back into view. Readers may have noticed that my brain has been working in overdrive for several months, simply because it has been “remastering” links that got messed up when I fell down the stairs last year. I promptly decided to start digging... as systematically as possible. I was convinced that, if I handled the situation calmly, but with determination, I would soon discover all the missing elements. So I simply lingered in the warm autumn sunshine and waited patiently, leaving my brain to search, like an obedient computer.

Within a few minutes, the singer's surname flashed onto my cerebral display screen: Moustaki. Fair enough, i remember being fond of this Greek-born singer, who made a name for himself in France.

But why would memories of this sympathetic singer lead to any kind of psychological obstacle in my brain? I recalled that, in 1993 (well before the singer's death in 2013), I had in fact attended a concert in which he performed, at St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, as part of the village's annual festival in honor of the great Belgian singer Jacques Brel, who had lived there for a short while. In my memory, I tried to turn on an image-retrieval system that might provide me with a photo of Moustaki as I had seen him that evening. No feedback...

All of a sudden, red lights started to flash in my brain, and buzzers made nasty noises. I realized immediately that I had made a hit... but it had nothing to do with wonderful artists such as Moustaki and Brel. Instead of their images, I picked up a cerebral snapshot of a unpleasant fellow named Merri. Here's a recent real picture of this comic artist:

I understood rapidly how this Merri demon had entered my mind, and why he was blocking the works. Let's see if I can explain to you what was happening. Better still, let me point you to a blog post I wrote, ten years ago, which includes a short account of the way in which Merri appeared for an unpleasant instant in my life. It's amusing to see that, in this blog post, I didn't even mention the fact that, on that same evening, I had been listening to Moustaki. I was so disturbed by Merri that I completely forgot about Moustaki. It was only this morning that the two fellows made an unexpected appearance, side by side, in my brain. Here is the 10-year-old blog post, which I urge you to read.

The name of Merri brought together both the name of my son's primary school, Saint Merri, in the heart of Paris, and my fond memories of the blue jacket that François had inherited in Fremantle, which he gave me later on. I remember being happy to wear this elegant jacket in St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, alongside nice local friends. Then Merri stepped into the picture, and screwed up everything... right up until this morning in the autumn sun at Gamone. I must make a conscious effort to zap him. I wonder if psychological devices such as cerebral drones exist.

Inherited aptitude in logical thinking

Over the last few days, I've been insisting upon a new belief: Most of my major interests and skills were surely picked up by reading. But I believe there's one exception: my alleged aptitude (call it an obsession, if you like) in logical reasoning. I'm convinced that it helped me, in an IQ test, to be considered as a perfect candidate for a job as an IBM computer programmer. Well, I happen to observe a capability in mathematical logic in a line of recent Skyvington ancestors.

• My charming ancestor named Frank Skyvington [1845-1916] was no doubt reacting to a taste for unusually rigorous logic when he decided that his two deceased wives should be buried in the same tomb.

• His crazy son William "Courtenay" Skyvington [1868-1959] used his aptitude for logical thinking to confirm that it was rather easy to behave as a scoundrel. His operations as a con-man were based upon the application of rigorous logic.

• My grandfather Ernest Skyvington [1891-1985] used smart logical subterfuges to abandon his unpleasant childhood universe of London and start a new existence in the Antipodes. He even used his skills in logical reasoning to escape from the threat of being killed as a soldier.

• My father "Bill" Skyvington [1917-1978] used smart logical thinking to acquire his first agronomic property and to join the war effort in an acceptable manner. His most ingenious statement of poetic logic was when he tricked me in a mild way (I was about 15) by suggesting that his bush paddock was in fact his personal "cathedral".

That last incident had a profound lasting effect upon me. More than anything else, Dad's statement led me here to Gamone... where I look constantly upon the giant Cournouze mountain as my spiritual "bride", my Joan of Arc.

If anybody were to imagine a similarity between "Cournouze" and "Courtenay", I would be obliged to say that it's a pure coincidence.

Permanent imprint

On 9 January 2015, this printing-house at Dammartin-en-Goële in the French countryside (Seine-et-Marne) made an unforgettable impression upon TV-viewers throughout the world. It was the arena of a spectacular standoff between police sharpshooters and two defiant brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, perpetrators of the murders at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January 2015.

The battered building has been totally renovated. The sparkling premises were inaugurated this morning by François Hollande.

Trying to find ancestors who made me smart

A few days ago, I was trying to solve the enigma of a charming ancestor named Frank Skyvington [1845-1916] whose son named William Skyvington [1868-1959] turned out to be a scoundrel. I kept saying to myself that it was strange to find a father and his son who were clearly so different. Why did this madness appear suddenly, before disappearing just as suddenly. I searched around intensely on the web to find an explanation of the ways in which chromosomes of madness might suddenly come into existence, maybe introduced by a baby’s mother. But every article I found on this genetic question was prefaced, as it were, by a huge warning: Be careful. Don’t assume that genes play any role whatsoever in the situation that concerns you. Maybe the factors that interest you were acquired, not from nature, but through nurture.

For ages, that sort of advice always infuriated me. It was unthinkable that environmental causes might have made me interested in science, then computers, then France, etc. To put it bluntly, nobody in my surroundings could have possibly persuaded me to get interested in out-of-the-way passions such as science, computers, France, etc. The only plausible explanation was that one of my ancestors must have supplied me with the necessary “good genes”.

Well, that last statement is utter nonsense. The only causes that make somebody smart come from the people who talk to him, the books he reads, the stuff he learns, etc. There are no magic genes in our bodies that turn on brightness as if we were an electric lamp.

It has taken me a long time to reach this simple conclusion.

Not as bright as I thought I was

I’ve always considered myself as relatively intelligent. That’s what people told me when I was a kid at school. Later, I thought I was bright when I became a computer programmer with IBM Australia. I simply failed to understand that I was merely the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time. Then I thought I was bright when I moved to France, married, raised a small family, and finally became a French citizen. Once again, as in Sydney, I was simply the right Australian in France at the right time. More recently, I started to think of myself as bright when I used my Macintosh computer at Gamone to publish a couple of family-history books. The truth of the matter is that I would have been silly to not take advantage of that excellent environment to produce those books. In any case, their existence doesn’t suggest for an instant that the author/publisher might have been in any way bright, merely fortunate.

A few days ago, for the first time in my life, at the august age of 76, the truth hit me with a bang. I’m not particularly intelligent. Purely lucky. The good old game consists of being in a convenient situation at exactly the right moment. Right place and right time. There’s a tiny bundle of convenient talents in my brain, but nothing whatsoever of an extraordinary nature.

It's high time that I made this clear! To myself, above all.