What counts above all is belief

The day before yesterday, this nice-looking American cattle rancher named Cliven Bundy was arrested in Portland (Oregon). The Federal criminal charges against him were contained in a 32-page summary. It’s all a very American story, so I’ll let my readers use the Internet to look up the facts for themselves. In any case, I would imagine that Bundy will be protected and brought to salvation by a guardian angel of one kind or another, for he's a Mormon and he surely has God on one side… along with arms on the other.

Busy intellectual might calm down a little

I often have the feeling that our hero Richard Dawkins works too much. Why doesn't he set aside some of his multifarious preoccupations (for example, atheism) and simply calm down a little? Of course he surely knows personally what he's doing, and why.

This morning's news indicates that Dawkins suffered a mild stroke, last Saturday, leading to the cancelation of his planned trip to Australia and New Zealand. Readers might have noticed that Dawkins is already back on the Internet, suggesting that his stroke was fortunately quite minor.

Biggest declaration ever of big science

This afternoon (in France), we were told that the gravitational waves imagined long ago by Albert Einstein were indeed a reality.

I watched the press conference of representatives from the European team.

Birth of a black hole...

All the data concerning this gigantic discovery is amazingly complex and largely incomprehensible for ordinary people. We do however realize that our universe, an incredibly astounding entity, can be grasped by the minds of scientists. By the brains of godless human beings. And that alone is a thought that makes me proud to be an atheistic specimen of Homo sapiens.

French military liquor

That document was made available through the Gallica website (owned and operated by the national library in France). The alcohol-inflamed declaration dates surely from the end of World War I. Here's my attempt at translation:

Strong liquor, victory liquor

Anti-alcoholic weepers, with fake philanthropy and make-believe pity, have nothing to do with the opinions of our new France, victorious and ready to allow her armies to suffer inevitable revenge from the defeated.

Pinard and Gnôle are military liquors, ideal for French armies facing conflicts that will emerge inevitably from the rigorous application of peace treaties.

If the money owed to us by our former enemy is not in fact paid, then we shall never be moving towards peace. Liquor flasks from the military mess must not be filled with water.

Something got screwed up at the end of the jewellery holdup

Something went seriously wrong with a jewellery holdup in Paris. Click here to watch the video. Instead of taking French leave with the sack of treasures they had just unearthed, the two bandits got locked up in the cylindrical glass doorway. And this little problem drove them as mad as a couple of cut snakes. (Aussie slang, hard to explain.)

Let's hope they took advantage of the comedy, for they're unlikely to have an opportunity of participating in this kind of fun for the next 20 years or so, from inside their prison.

Year of the Monkey

I feel reassured (God knows why) by the fact that Chinese astrologers consider that we're moving into the year of the Monkey. Better still (although I'm not sure what it means), the year of the Fire Monkey.