New chemical elements

 Dmitri Mendeleev [1834-1907]

While the world at large is preoccupied by ridiculous or uninteresting themes, I’m impressed to find that the Inorganic Chemistry Division of the IUPAC inserted officially, yesterday, four new elements into Mendeleev’s table:

          • Nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113,
          • Moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115,
          • Tennessine and symbol Ts, for the element 117, and
          • Oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118.

When I started my studies of chemistry at Grafton High School in 1952, this table terminated down in the vicinity of neptunium, symbol Np, whose atomic number was 93. Named after the planet Neptune, it came just after uranium, symbol U, number 92, named after Uranus.

A lot of radioactive water has flowed under the bridges of inorganic chemistry since then.

Humans are fascinated by outlandish crimes committed by celebrities

My friend Jean Sendy [1910-1978] said that society’s most murderous criminals were in fact interesting specimens who had harmed no more than the victims they happened to assassinate, while fascinating most observers. So, instead of being condemned to death, such criminals should be treated with respect. Sendy suggested that bicycle thieves, on the other hand, annoy so many citizens constantly that they deserve to be shot at dawn.

The attempted assassination of Arthur Rimbaud, 18, by his lover Paul Verlaine, 29, in Brussels in July 1873, has always fascinated enthusiasts of out-of-the-way crimes. Rimbaud had been upset by Verlaine’s intention of returning to his heterosexual marriage, and they got into a violent squabble. Verlaine fired two shots, one of which wounded the young poet in the wrist. Verlaine was arrested, and went to jail for 555 days.

The arm of the crime was a commonplace six-bullet revolver of the Lefaucheux brand. Its current owner put the old weapon up for sale, expecting some 55,000 euros. The dull revolver was auctioned off today at Christie's in Paris for eight times that amount: 434,500 euros.

Stuffed friends

My friend M drives me into town regularly for shopping. Today I had a few extra tasks: ordering reading glasses and buying lamps and an electric kettle for the bathroom. Here’s the third item, which will enable me to make tea of an evening without having to go down to the kitchen.

The splash-resistant bathroom lamps are particularly elegant. My future glasses, too, will be perfect for work at the computer, and I’ll keep my old ones as a backup.

An unexpected high point of our excursion was a drive through a nearby village whose name evokes a world-famous local cheese. I said to M : “I remember the time when the owner of that upper-level flat used to have the windows filled with an assortment of stuffed animals that could be seen by people down in the street. The beasts were of several kinds and the flat-owner changed them often, as if she wanted to impress passers-by.”

As usual, I didn’t have an opportunity of telling M anything whatsoever about local folk, because she seems to know everybody. So, I listened to M’s delightful explanations : “Yes, I remember the lady’s amusing assortment of stuffed animals, which were positioned in her three windows in such a way that they were clearly visible from the street. The local council ordered the lady to remove them, and they gave her those pots of geraniums that you see today.” William : “Why did the council want to remove the lady’s charming zoo ?” M, who knows about everything that happens in our delightful corner of the civilized world : “I’ve only heard this on hearsay from a local fellow, but it’s surely true. For many years, the owner has been working from her flat as a prostitute. Well, she used her stuffed animals as coded publicity and technical information for clients. I don’t know the details of her code, but it's familiar to customers in that domain. The lion indicated that prospective clients should stay away, because she was busy, and didn’t want to be interrupted. Then the long neck of stuffed giraffe meant that the lady was prepared to receive an eager client…”

Never, in my wildest imagination, would I have looked upon that menagery of stuffed beasts as sentinels for horny locals looking forward to stuffing the lady. For all I know, her potted plants might be used today to convey comparable coded messages.

Chernobyl enclosed in a French sarcophagus

Chernobyl saw the inauguration today of a big sarcophagus that hides the notorious reactor destroyed in 1986.

Designed and built by the French companies Bouygues and Vinci, the sarcophagus was mainly financed by European nations and the BERD : Banque européenne pour la reconstruction et le développement.

Will computers and the Internet improve people?

When specialized stores for art supplies sprang up in cities throughout the world, optimistic thinkers might have imagined that hordes of new Michelangelos would soon be appearing on suburban streets. But that was as silly as thinking that the existence of cheap typewriters would have given rise to many new Shakespeares.

A few years ago, I imagined naively that the presence of powerful computers and rich Internet facilities would improve society. Over the last decade or so, these devices have become as popular as TV, and people had the impression that this technology was enabling them to become smarter and indeed happier. Like would-be novelists, they could write anything that interested them, and show it instantly to readers. Alas, they failed to realize that they still had nothing much to say. Today, I’m starting to have my doubts. I feel at times that more and more ordinary people will move away from alleged “tools of the mind” and simply become run-of-the-mill users of gadgets for dummies.

A close-to-home affair convinced me that computers and the Internet would encounter problems when trying to get accepted in popular contexts. A friend told me she was looking into the problem of getting her domestic Internet installation improved. When she called upon a local specialist to look into the situation, she was shocked to find that he expected to be paid the same tarif as a local doctor called in to take care of a child with a cough. The lady found it outrageous that a computer fellow might imagine that he was dealing with more serious problems than the sickness of a child. In fact, her two sons were doctors, so she asked one of them to “fix up” her computer system… which he promptly did. In this way, her expenses were reduced to a minimum.

As far as I know, her computer is still working well… which proves that a good general practitioner can cure almost anything. Computers must never be thought of as more complicated than sick children.

Democracy seems to have the hiccups

A few days ago, the former Ecology candidate Jill Stein claimed that votes should be recounted in three states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. To obtain the necessary funds, she awaits the outcome of a national subscription appeal.

Far away, in the UK, former PMs Tony Blair and John Major are looking into the possibility of a second Brexit referendum, which is still vaguely thinkable.

Are such projects a mere expression of wishful thinking ? Or is the possibility of life after democratic death a real possibility?

Who’ll be the major icon of 20th-century "socialistas" revolutionaries?

 [photo d’Alberto Korda]

[photo Prensa Latina / Reuters]

New verb in a French website : “binge watcher”

If I understand correctly the title, there are three good reasons why you should binge-watch the Netflix series of the Gilmore Girls. I hope you understand what I’ve just said. Now, I’ll make an effort to teach you the pronunciation of the French verb “binge watcher”.

• binge is pronounced like barn-jeuh

• watcher is pronounced like wot-chay

The only information you’ll have to discover for yourselves is the actual meaning of this exotic French verb.

Serious examination of the English slang “binge”

The word “binge” (rhyming with “hinge”) probably comes from a 19th-century Lincolnshire dialect term meaning “to soak”. Example: Water that splashed onto the table was binged by means of a sponge. A heavy drinker might be thought of as soaking up alcohol. So, she/he might be described as a binge drinker. More recently, instead of being applied to alcohol consumption, the slang term “binge” has been applied to watching videos of a soap-opera variety. In other words, the verb “binge” now designates excessive indulgence in anything whatsoever. And last but not least: It has acquired linguistic honors by being moved into French, as if it were an ordinary verb of the category ending in -er, like "donner".

Alpha Jetman – Human Flight And Beyond

Skip the ad, then click on the YouTube icon

Extraordinary video. The Patrol of France and the three Jetmen—Yves Rossy, Vincent Reffet and Fred Fugen–fly together in an amazing aerial choreography.

Nice survival

Today, in the USA, is known as Black Friday. But I see that the Big Red Fellow is still alive and kicking. The dumb bastard is fitter than I'd imagined. But his time in office won't necessarily last long. I hope he's enjoying his existence, be it short or long.

I wish him all that jumps into the minds of good American Christians: health, wealth and prosperity. As for the rest, I have nothing to say.

Colors

Geneviève Delaisi de Parseval, a French psychanalyst, has written an amusing article (here) on the curious role of distinctive colors in certain political contexts. For example, the abominable American Donald Trump seems to be linked to red, whereas our gentle Frenchman François Fillon is often accompanied by blue. Are such associations (if indeed they are true) purely arbitrary? Or do they convey some kind of hidden meaning?

Bearing the unbearable

The verb “to bear” involves a minimum of understanding and acceptance. If a happening that concerns us is so removed from our normal existence that we cannot understand it, let along accept it, then it might be said that are faced with an absurd challenge: that of bearing the unbearable. In such circumstances, something has to break… often in the mind of the victim.

The common cause of this nasty situation is death. Animals—human animals in particular—have never understood death, and never will... particularly when it hits loved ones: a husband, a wife, a close and intimate friend, parents or, above all, innocent children. In such cases, the mind “explodes”, as it were.

In former times, individuals who were suffering from an unbearable happening might have sought comfort in religion or traditional social circles. Even the danse macabre was, in a way, a “solution” for bearing the unbearable.

But remedies of that kind have disappeared to a large extent. These days, strangely enough, the Internet can become an outlet for such an explosion of the mind. It serves as a hitherto unknown means of naming the unnameable.

How did giraffes come to have long necks?

I’m always thrilled whenever I rediscover by chance a typical Richard Dawkins gem like this one.

A nice old-fashioned answer is that God, knowing that He had cunningly placed the most tasty leaves at the top of tall trees, designed giraffes with extra long necks so that they would have no trouble in reaching this good food.

A less religious answer is that, over a certain period of time, Nature caused the necks of giraffes to grow longer and longer, because Nature was smart enough to realize that hungry giraffes would be needing bigger necks to attain leaves that were moving higher and higher.

Well, that god-free answer is closer to the truth, but we still need to improve the wording. We merely have to introduce a pair of freak events. So, let’s go. At a certain point in time, most giraffes had medium-sized necks, whereas a minority of freaky giraffes were born with slightly longer necks. At about the same time, during a few freak seasons, leaves happened to grow so high that all normal giraffes with shorter necks couldn’t reach them. These poor animals gradually died of starvation. Only the freaky longer-necked giraffes survived and bred children who, like their parents, had long necks. Longer necks had started out as just a random happening… but they soon became a matter of life or death.

Homeopathy is rubbish

No matter what science says, modern societies (including France and England) will always include a sufficient number of uneducated folk, fools and princes in order to believe that homeopathy is credible. And they keep this industry going by spending much money on quackery.

I was thrilled to learn this morning that efforts to fight homeopathy in the UK, headed by the Richard Dawkins Foundation [here] and the Center for Inquiry [here], appear to be bearing fruit.

City of Mosul is totally encircled

Iraqi soldiers hold a Daesh flag captured in Mosul

Islamic jihadists in Mosul—estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000—are now totally encircled by Iraqi forces, who cut the last Daesh link with Syria. Iraqi troops now control 40% of the eastern sector of the city of Mosul. The end of Daesh at Mosul is near.

My childhood newspaper amuses me

If I drop in periodically on The Daily Examiner in Grafton, it's merely on the off chance of coming across an item that's less boring than usual. Like today. The driver of a giant truck, carrying a load of authentic shit, hit the brakes... and his cargo, as they say in the classics, promptly "hit the fan". This story made me split my sides laughing.

Click to enlarge slightly

Marvelous photo. I have the impression that the fellow on the left is praying for divine help. Police asked the driver why it hadn't occurred to him that it might be a good idea to cover up his load with a batch. I can imagine his likely reaction: "A truck driver never thinks of taking precautions on such a short trip. And then suddenly, shit happens." Here's another photo, with different colors:

Final thought. [Australian readers will say, once again, that I'm knocking my native land... and that's perfectly true, because it's really a most knockable country.] I'm intrigued by the fact that Aussie journalism is so shitty, these days, that the editing staff didn't appear to realize that the technical specifications of the above photos are so different. Don't the editorial staff have access to run-of-the-mill photo-editing software that could have corrected those two images in such a way that they look at least as if it's the same truck in the same place on the same day?

Drop a ping-pong ball in the clown’s mouth

I've always looked upon Nigel Farage as an English amusement.

He reminds me of rows of fair-ground clowns that amused me greatly as a child in Australia. The heads swivelled constantly to the left and the right, and the trick consisted of guessing the exact moment to drop your ping-pong ball down the clown's throat, so that it ended up falling into the right spot and winning something.

Today, I don't think the prize would justify my efforts.
On the other hand, the ping-pong ball might shut up Farage.

Day without electricity

It's the first time I ever recall a total day at Gamone without electricity. The power went off this morning at 8 o'clock, and it didn't come back on until about 18h30. The outage was caused by strong winds in the valley, which are still blowing. Today, it's really weird to experience a whole day without electricity. It's like being thrown back into the Dark Ages. Even a simple operation such as opening the fridge to grab something to eat has to be calculated carefully, to avoid the entry of heat. An hour ago, I even took my dog Fitzroy out into the dark, so that he would enter his kennel for the night. Otherwise, I wasn't sure there would be enough light, later on, to find the path to the kennel.

Truly, in rural France, we have become innocent Children of Light.

Probably the next president of France

                                      [photo Albert Facelly pour Libération]

I can't see how François Fillon could possibly be beaten in the presidential course. His lead is enormous. From this point on, a new problem arises on the horizon. We must make sure that the extreme right-wing party, the Front National, sinks rapidly into oblivion.

Last of the Frères Jacques

When I met up with my future wife in Paris, our most adorable friends were Paul Faye and his wife Lulu, who lived in the Rue Servandoni. One of their close friends was Paul Tourenne, who was a member of the Frères Jacques group of music-hall artists. I often met up with him, and Christine and I were invited to their concert. Paul became very interested in photography, and I believe he went to live with his son Robin Tourenne in Montréal. I’m saddened to learn that Paul Tourenne, 93, has just disappeared from the scene.

Paul Tourenne is wearing light-gray.