Practical questions

It was only a few years ago that I started to become obsessed by asking various practical questions, and attempting to find answers. Our modern life in society often leads us to ignore many fundamental questions of a practical nature, as if they weren't important enough to merit our attention. For example, countless urban youngsters eat hamburgers regularly without fully understanding all the steps that go into the production of such foodstuffs. For all they know, hamburgers might grow magically on MacDo trees.

When I revisited my native land, ten years ago, I was quite impressed by the widespread presence in Sydney of sushi products, all over the city. My first reaction was to wonder how it came about that so many Australians had acquired the skill of producing sushi. Had they all gone up to Japan and back, for a few weeks, to attend training courses? Had they then installed many modern Japanese kitchens in Sydney, to create these products? The truth of the matter is that all these sushi products were no doubt manufactured by a single firm, in one small factory, and then delivered throughout the city by small vans, in the early hours of the morning.

Over the last few days, I've become fascinated by a trivial practical question concerning the small town in Australia where I grew up, South Grafton. I had received an e-mail from a young man who informed me that his mother had been the daughter of our village baker, named Allan Gregor. It was easy for me to detect the building in which the bakery had existed (when I was a child), for its facade was crowned by a sheaf of wheat. And customers entered the bakery through the left-hand door, behind the reddish automobile.

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I was instantly intrigued by an obvious question. That bakery must have comprised an oven fueled by wood. So, how did the baker take delivery of wood for his oven, and flour for his dough? For hours, I studied GoogleMaps images, trying to figure out where the wood and flour could have been delivered. It took me some time to realize that there used to be a narrow lane to the right of the bakery, where a tree and a whitish vehicle are located in the above photo. I don't know whether the lane was big enough to allow the presence of a vehicle, but that's a minor question. In the early hours of the morning, a truck could have halted outside the lane, and the baker could have then used a trolley to cart wood and flour along the lane, to the rear end of his bakery.

Vernal equinox, first day of spring

In our northern hemisphere, 20 March 2016 is the vernal equinox: the first day of spring.

I've always liked that woodcut of a fellow poking his head through the celestial vault... but I realize, of course, that it's meaningless nonsense, and a silly choice of an illustration intended to evoke the start of spring.

Castle in Spain

Ever since the 9th century, the castle of Matrera stands proudly on a hill near Cadix.

But the ancient castle suffered from heavy rain in 2013, and was in need of restoration. This work was carried out by a Spanish architect named Carlos Quevedo Rojas. The problem, alas, is that the restored medieval castle now looks like a modern concrete building.

The architect is nevertheless convinced that he did a good job. Click here to access a short video of the massacre. An observer is reminded of another notorious restoration job in Spain: the Ecce Homo fresco at Borja carried out by an unskilled 82-year-old lady.

Smart bird

A 30-year-old fellow was judged in Arras for the possession of cannabis, along with an undeclared firearm.

Handling his own defence (with no assistance from a barrister), he explained to the tribunal that his pet canary had used his beak to plant cannabis grains in the soil just alongside the bird's cage.

JUDGE: "You're saying that you simply failed to notice the rows of cannabis that the bird had planted alongside its cage? They grew freely in total liberty, with no help from anybody? Not even the canary? Some of those cannabis stalks were nevertheless over a metre in height."

ACCUSED FELLOW: "Yes, that's what I'm saying."

If I understand correctly, nobody accused the canary of having acquired the unregistered firearm. The bird might be keen on weed, but there's no way in the world it would get mixed up in illegal weapons.

Capture of Salah Abdeslam, alive, in Brussels

I'm watching live coverage of police operations in Molenbeek (outskirts of Brussels) where the terrorist Salah Abdeslam was apparently arrested alive about an hour ago. Helmeted riot police are strolling around, accompanied by police dogs, and the atmosphere is electric.

Breaking news 19 h 15. 

Biological test has confirmed the identity of Salah Abdeslam.

Click on the following link to access a video clip of the capture:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2016/03/18/01016-20160318ARTFIG00400-capture-a-molenbeek-abdeslam-detient-les-secrets-du-13-novembre.php

That live capture was great news!

Meanwhile, it's important to get this fellow extradited to France as rapidly as possible, so that he can be safely protected, not only from his friends and enemies, but from himself above all. It would be a terrible pity if he were to be carelessly injured or lost simply because French authorities weren't taking sufficient care of him. In our combat against Daech, this ugly guy is a priceless French asset.

A fellow who's mad as a hatter and inebriated can get out of trouble

The story started up in the sky, on a jet liner traveling from Algeria to France.

After a few drinks, a merry young chap started to become boisterous. He insisted upon ordering more alcohol, and he wanted to carry on smoking. When the cabin crew tried to calm him down, he decided to piss on them. So, they overpowered him while the flight commander obtained an authorization to land rapidly at Lyon.

Apparently the fellow will not have to face justice, because specialists in Lyon concluded that he's legally irresponsible for his acts, since he suffers from severe psychiatric afflictions. So, one day, with a bit of (bad) luck, you might find yourself on the same flight as this passenger. And, if I understand correctly, he'll be obliged to wear neither a straight-jacket nor even a striped penitentiary T-shirt with flashing red lights and warning signs.

Fitzroy has received a pharmaceutical gift in the mail: a luxurious beauty product

Emmanuelle sent him this gift from Paris. But Fitzroy hasn't yet discovered the contents (not, of course, meant to be consumed).

It's a high-quality shampoo. Emmanuelle assures me that this product should be able to eradicate the nasty smell of a dead wild boar, which has been encompassing my dog for the last fortnight.

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.

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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.

Hard disks were born in 1956

Hard disks were created for the first time by IBM in 1956, half a century ago, at about the same time that I started to learn computer programming. The first model was called Ramac, and it was bulkier and heavier than a grand piano.

Personally, I was aware of the existence of such storage devices, but I never actually used one. Seeing the clumsy way in which they were transported by a tiny team of human workers, I imagine that these fragile devices were surely in a state of breakdown for much of their existence.

It's interesting to see that the familiar acronym "ram" existed already: random-access memory. This was an annoying term, because it gave the impression that the contents of the storage device were not in fact accessed in a strictly determined fashion, but a little like throwing a dice. That, of course, was not really true. The adjective "random" was an example of primordial IBM marketing buzz.

What made the patriarch so batshit mad?

This old fellow—the Extreme Right-wing founder Jean-Marie Le Pen—looks as if he’s about to burst a valve in his backside:

What kind of event might have made him so angry? Imagine that the patriarch has just heard the vice-president of the Front national, Florian Philippot, announcing on France 2 that their party will no longer be celebrating the Joan of Arc festival on May 1.

Incidentally, it's reassuring to discover that the Extreme Right-wing Front national party no longer succeeds in trying to steal a dearly-loved French historical symbol such as our Joan of Arc.

Local weather report: makes me shiver

Here at Gamone, winter weather reports are often alarming. And the press photos accompanying such reports often make things worse.

I've just discovered, for example, an orange-level warning for four departments, including Isère, starting at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, and lasting until tomorrow. There'll be abundant snow, icy roads and even avalanches.

If their weather-report service were ideal, it should have been accompanied by an explanation of the following kind:

If you happen to be living down in the valley, at an altitude of a few hundred metres, then we apologize for this scary weather-report, and ask you to ignore it completely.

Meanwhile, during the next 24 hours, I'm likely to receive calls from friends who wish to know whether I'm surviving. And I'll be pleased to inform them that everything's perfectly calm here, that I'm watching TV from alongside my excellent wood-burning stove, while my lovely dog Fitzroy is sleeping on the floor, and that the weather is quite warm, without the slightest sign of snow, ice or avalanches.