Biggest marine show on Earth

Australia will be seated in the front row, as close as possible to the animals. The world’s greatest marine park will be located in Antarctica, just a short boat trip to the south of my native land. After years of difficult negotiations, the 25 members of the Commission pour la conservation de la faune et de la flore maritimes de l'Antarctique adopted unanimously the creation in Ross Sea of a marine sanctuary of a million and a half square kilometres.

Vertebrates are disappearing fast

The greatest show on Earth—the world’s populations of mammals, fish, birds, amphibians and reptiles—is disappearing like melting snow. In the short space of 42 years, between 1970 and 2012, over half their number has disappeared. Clearly, the show will soon grind to a halt, because the artists will no longer be there to keep it running. A few specimens will remain in zoos.  But that’s not Nature. We present-day spectators of wild life in natural surroundings will be thought of, by sad descendants of our children’s children, as the last lucky members of a disappearing world: a planet that is about to lose most of its spectacular inhabitants.

More powerful than a Japanese robot

Click here to see a spectacular video of a four-year-old Russian genius. I have no idea how they make kids like that. Have the manufacturers published a technical manual on this amazing product?

Healthy ecumenical breakfast food

from Think Atheist

Beginning of the end of the Cuban embargo

 

For the first time since the UN embargo against Cuba came into existence, 54 years ago, the USA has refrained from voting in favor of continuing the embargo. It’s not yet an all-out vote in favor of Cuba, but it’s no longer an expression of determined opposition. It’s as if the USA said “no problems”. For Obama’s nation, that’s almost like saying OK.

Let them eat cake

People who grew up in English-speaking countries often remember a school story about the French princess Marie-Antoinette. Hearing that poor people in France had no bread, the young lady said they should be told to eat cake. In the French version of this tale, "cake" is replaced by "brioche". Historians then inform us that the story is probably apocryphal.

The right-wing presidential candidate Jean-François Copé started the ball rolling recently.

Answering a journalist’s mundane question, Copé revealed that he was no longer aware of the price of the familiar children’s pastry known as a pain au chocolat (chocolate pastry roll).

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the execution of the Austrian lady on 16 October 1793 might have been connected in any way whatsoever with her words about bread or cake or any other kind of pastry.

But, just to clarify all possible misunderstandings, I take the liberty of strongly advising Copé to drop into a bakery shop and update his knowledge of current prices.

Darling little devil

A scientific report from Sydney University on the carnivorous marsupial known as the Tasmanian devil [Sarcophilus harrisii], found only in that Australian island state, reveals that the milk of this endangered animal contains an impressive antimicrobial arsenal. We humans possess a single variety of such a substance, whereas the charming little Tasmanian animal has six varieties. This means that its immune system is considerably more powerful than ours, and might even be used to guide future human-oriented research in this domain.

If the Tasmanian devil has developed such a powerful immune system, it’s because they’ve had to learn to survive in a particularly dirty environment in which its food comprises varieties of dead animals, mammals, fish and insects. Since baby devils are born prematurely, researchers simply couldn’t imagine how they managed to survive on such nasty food… and that’s why they decided to study their milk.

These days, the development of powerful bacteria capable of defending us against Staphylococcus is a major goal in medical research. The Review of Antimicrobial Resistance states that, in 2050, deaths from bacterial infections might occur at the rate of one every three seconds… which would be more than cancer deaths.

Dreamworld in Australia turns into a tragedy

A mortal accident took place in Dreamworld, the major aquatic theme park on the Gold Coast in Queensland. (Many years ago,  my grandfather from Burleigh Heads took my children and me to see a dolphin pool in an early version of the site.)  A few hours ago, four people—two 25-year-old couples—died at Thunder River Rapids in circumstances that remain unexplained.

Here’s a recent video of the pleasant raft ride, apparently far more dangerous than what innocent people imagined:

"Attention, riders : Please keep your hands

and arms inside the boat at all times."

Jungle at Calais is losing its people

The French government's plan to remove the so-called Jungle at Calais seems to be working well. Here are images from the early stages of the evacuation:

On Tuesday morning, observers had the impression that the evacuation had been carried out in excellent conditions. While it's still too early to know whether the evacuation process has been totally successful, I feel that French government authorities deserve congratulations on the professional harmonious handling of this affair.

It is indeed quite a big place

Click to enlarge slightly
Hubble Space Telescope view of thousands of galaxies made
during the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.
Credit M. Giavialisco/University of Massachusetts, Amherst and NASA

The more we learn about the universe, the less we grasp. It’s simply too big and too complicated to understand… and I’m not even sure that the words I’ve just written make any sense. In any case, the central premise of William’s Treatise on the Cosmos is that we humans were not designed to understand what it’s all about. We shouldn't even try to do so.  So let’s simply forget about that would-be question, best described as a non-question…

Phil Collins is alive and kicking

Next spring, he’ll be carrying out a small tour of France, Germany and England, accompanied by his son on drums. “I want to do some concerts. If the public’s happy, then me too.” Click here to access a French-language video.

Political opinion of a distinguished intellectual

Jean d'Ormesson, 91, believes that Alain Juppé will indeed be the next president of France, but that his presidency will not go down in history as a remarkable era. In a nutshell, nothing much will happen in France. The brilliant and alert member of the French Academy considers Juppé as a kind of Jacques Chirac. I tend to agree.

Cartoonist on Trump

Click cartoon to enlarge

Nicolas Vadot is Franco-British and Australian.

http://www.nicolasvadot.com/

Random morning message

There’s a nice French expression to designate a sudden urge: une envie de pisser [wish to pee]. That’s what happened to me a moment ago, leading up to the present message. It’s a philosophical viewpoint that has been pursuing me ceaselessly for a long time. So, here it is.

Our outlook on existence is totally biased by the particular dimensions of our observations, which define a mere window. We remain incapable of adopting windows that might be more macroscopic or microscopic.

• The first weakness means that, in spite of our gigantic windows out into space-time, we remain like ants who imagine their anthill as the entire universe.

• The second weakness means that, in spite of our fondness for elementary particles and string theory, we humans are not very good at dealing with things that are far smaller than what we see through our eye-glasses.

Besides, it’s funny that we introduce a direction into these two scale differences. What right do we have to say that, in the macroscopic case, existence appears to get bigger and bigger, whereas it’s smaller and smaller in the microscopic case? Maybe we should simply say that the differences are no more than changes in our two kinds of viewpoints, without claiming that one change is “bigger” and the other “smaller”.

For the moment, it’s primarily the second weakness that has inspired my matinal philosophy message… but nothing really changes when we move to the first weakness. All our human conclusions about what is good or bad, and what is right or wrong, have been concocted from within our familiar everyday window, at the level of human organs and our devices such as eye-glasses. For example, people use their normal viewpoint to encounter all kinds of happenings, from peace and love up to war and terror. This suggests that our above-mentioned human conclusions would no longer have the same sense if we were to modify our viewpoint, by moving in an up/down direction. In other words, morality is not a universal phenomenon. It’s rather a purely relative viewpoint-based affair.

Personally, I am both awed and frightened by this conclusion. For the moment, therefore, I avoid the temptation of accepting it completely.

Ah, if only our existence were to be nothing more than watching a rugby match! Sadly, at no instant in my existence has my life ever moved an instant into such a nirvana. That has always been my major problem...

New Yorkers love French art and France

Spencer Hays and his wife Marlene have just announced a huge future donation to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: 600 paintings from the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. This is the largest overseas donation to a French gallery since 1945.

Early arrival of a future Oscar winner

Click here to view a TV-studio performance

of Jean Dujardin in December 1996.

We all know that cheese stinks

So, why do we want to eat it? There must be some kind of logical answer. Well, there is… but it’s not necessarily a simple affair.

First of all, there are many people who love cheese. But there are also a great number of folk—roughly 6% of French society—who simply hate the stuff. So, what’s happening? Click here to access a French-language article and video on this subject.

Neuroscientists at the CNRS in Lyon and a biology laboratory in Paris have published a study, here, indicating that your appreciation or your hatred of cheese depends upon a small like/dislike gadget in the centre of your brain known as your globus pallidus. When your tastes are normal, the pallidus turns on a like icon. If not, it turns on a dislike icon. Now, insofar as your pallidus seems to work a little as if it were using FaceBook, I suggest that we refer to this cerebral organ as your CheeseBook gadget.

Iraqi forces at Mosul advance more rapidly than planned

Positive news from the Iraqi prime minister Haïder al-Abadi reached a high-level Franco-Iraqi meeting in Paris via a video link from Bagdad. An Iraqi diplomat, presiding over the meeting, warned however that victory in Mosul would not end completely the war against Daesh.

New DNA found

 Omar Raddad in 2008

Newly-analyzed biological traces related to the murder of Ghislaine Marchal data would appear to confirm the presence of a previously-unknown individual whose data existed already in the automatically-updated French National File of Genetic Profiles [fichier national automatisé des empreintes génétiques — Fnaeg]. The official outcome of this spectacular discovery will be released in the next few days. We can hope that the identity of the real murderer will at last be known, proving the total innocence of Omar Raddad.

Old and new

Yesterday evening, I watched a wonderful US documentary describing the construction of the Great Pyramid. It was simply unbelievable.

This morning, I read an article in The Daily Examiner describing the future construction of a new bridge alongside my native town in Australia. It’s simply unbelievable. Click here to access the article. Director Mark Stevenson outlined the $185 million project. The new bridge will be built in three days, and we are told that building operations will be “a sight to see”.

The rusty crumbling old bridge is supposed to survive for ages.