Trivial family data that remains a mystery

Apparently my father "Bill" Skyvington, as a teenager in Grafton, had made friends with a well-known family, named Clunies-Ross. It was only recently that I acquired a little information on this friendship, from my father's sister Yvonne Tarrant, but I've never been able to obtain any confirmation whatsoever. My father himself never seems to have mentioned this friendship to any member of my generation. So, one might say that this alleged friendship is such a flimsy tale that I ended up looking upon it as an empty family legend, which somebody (not my father) had invented. Furthermore this friendship legend was trivial, unimportant. But I'll repeat the tale briefly here in my blog, in the vague hope that readers might offer me a little factual data.

Clunies-Ross history and facts

Click here to meet up with historical facts concerning the so-called King of the Cocos Islands. More recent information deals with a descendant of the family who was in charge of scientific research in Australia, and there is even an aged descendant of the family living today in Western Australia. But nowhere in this mass of data is there any mention of members of the Clunies-Ross family who might have become my father's friends.

Story of a phantom vessel in South Grafton, the Induna

On the banks of the Clarence River in South Grafton, rusty remnants of the iron hull of an old vessel, the Induna, are still visible today.

When I was a child, we could clearly observe the perfectly visible form of the celebrated ship that used to transport train elements across the Clarence River before the construction of the bridge in 1932. Click here to read this story, which even includes a vague mention of Winston Churchill.

There seems to be no doubt whatsoever that the vessel, after being towed from Sydney to the Clarence River by the tug Heroic, in late 1924, steamed upriver to Grafton under the command of a certain Captain T. Clunies-Ross. According to our family legend, the captain's family settled down in Grafton, and my father "Bill" Skyvington (born in 1917) made friends with the Clunies-Ross children. That's all I know: certainly not much of a story...

Silly fellow who thought he was funny

A humorous Jewish fellow decided to celebrate the Purim festival by getting dressed up in an Arabic djellaba, carrying a fake kalachnikov and wandering into an austere synagogue in Vincennes.

Once inside, he cried out "Allah Akbar". Ah, what an imaginative and joyous clown. He'll have an opportunity of testing his sense of humor upon a local law court.

Beethoven Ode to Joy in Brussels

Click here to hear Beethoven in Brussels.

For the last half-century, tears start to flow whenever I hear that music. Today is no exception...

This fellow's name is Malcolm Turnbull

He happens to be the prime minister of a rather dull country, Australia (where I was born in 1940), on the other side of the planet. Turnbull obtained that job last year, not because Australian citizens had elected him as their chief, but simply because he decided unilaterally to replace the existing party leader, Tony Abbott. Well, for reasons I fail to understand, this quite ordinary Australian fellow believes that, in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in France and Belgium, he has political lessons to give to the Old World. I obtained that information this evening, through a joke item on a French TV channel. I would be less embarrassed if Turnbull were to simply shut his dumb mouth.

POST SCRIPTUM Click here for a real challenge that Turnbull must face.

Radovan Karadzic, "the butcher of Bosnia", condemned to 40 years in prison

At the height of his notoriety, Radovan Karadzic was known because of his flamboyant hair style: which was not unlike that of a present-day US presidential candidate. Today, the so-called "butcher of Bosnia" received a 40-year prison sentence.

In the above photo, his ugly mate was Radko Mladic, who is still awaiting a trial.

When he was arrested in 2008, Karadzic had been a fugitive for ten years, disguised as a hairy monk.

Radovan Karadzic and Radko Mladic committed one of the nastiest crimes in modern history, the genocide of Srebrenica, perpetrated between 11 and 13 July 1995.

Great scientists receive their award in Paris

This afternoon, in Paris, two great scientists, the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, will be receiving the Oréal Unesco prize that they share for their discovery of the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 technology that is now applied worldwide in genetics research.

Many observers still have doubts about the ethical aspects of this technology.

"Before CRISPR-Cas9 might be used as a menu to build human babies, a lot of work would need to be done", states Emmanuelle Charpentier. "I feel that things are happening very rapidly. I think we should proceed step by step."