Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Merely an imbecile… or rather a dangerous imbecile ?

For many years, in spite of tons of superb objects created by brilliant US corporations named IBM and Apple (which have changed and indeed dominated my existence), I’ve often had doubts about the quality of lots of the stuff invented in God’s Own Country. In the case of their latest curious invention, known as Donald Trump, I hear that my doubts are shared by many British politicians. In a nutshell, most of us tend to agree that this spooky fellow is an imbecile. But worse still, is it imaginable, as certain elected representatives in the UK fear, that Donald Trump might be a dangerous imbecile, capable of stirring up trouble with Muslims?


British politicians are aware that they have to combat this fellow who dares to treat Muslims as inferior citizens. But they must be careful not to talk about this big-mouthed nincompoop to such an extent that he might take advantage of the publicity. So, they prefer to limit their analysis of the Trump case to the question of hopefully barring his entry into the UK.

Reinventing the wheel: laceless football boots

Click here to see laceless football boots that the Lotto manufacturer was promoting several years ago. There’s a somewhat  déjà vu feeling attached to the invention introduced, today, by Adidas.

Hotel California has an empty room


The guitarist Glenn Frey, 67, a founder of the US band Eagles, world famous for its title Hotel California, died yesterday of pneumonia in New York. Their song was a splendid creation of what came to be known as California music.

Click on the YouTube icon

Human skydivers versus Airbus 380


This spectacular air stunt is senseless. It has no obvious purpose. And that, in a way, makes it all the more attractive… a little like those old-fashioned matches between a track cyclist and a trotting horse. Here's a short video of this weird winner-less non-match:

Monday, January 18, 2016

HAPS (high-altitude pseudo-satellites)

The expression HAPS (high-altitude pseudo-satellites) is a roundabout way of designating an unmanned aircraft (in other words a drone), flying very high in the sky, that can perform tasks of the kind that are normally in the domain of satellites. Now, one way of creating such an aircraft would be to start with a successful device, the Solar Impulse, and replace the human pilot by a small payload of the kind handled by satellites. And that's exactly what is planned, one of these days, by the Swiss owners of that illustrious aircraft.


On 3 July 2015, the pilots of Solar Impulse, André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, were obliged to terminate their last adventure at Hawaï. The aircraft had suffered considerable battery damage, necessitating major repairs, and their flight will not be resumed until April of this year. That lengthy delay seems to be giving them time to think about a HAPS project, for an unspecified date in the future...

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Holiday idea for spring tourists in Brittany

I've just heard that, for the first time since the creation in 1992 of the Breton King Scallop Festival (fête de la coquille Saint-Jacques), it will be taking place this year, on April 23-24, in the marvelous little port of Paimpol, in the Côtes-d’Armor department. That's in the home land of my son François, and my ex-wife Christine and her companion Michel, where I spent time convalescing last autumn.


This superb scallop, Pecten maximus, is a species of the edible saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Pectinidae. It is one of the finest foodstuffs in Brittany.


Its shell has always symbolized Christian pilgrims setting out on foot to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.

Tasty French pastry with junk inside

In France, this particular variety of delicious almond-flour pastry is prepared specially, once a year, for the Epiphany holiday, to celebrate the Feast-Day of the Kings (Adoration of the Magi).


The pastry is cut into slices by an individual selected as the leader of the ceremony (often a child), wearing a cardboard crown, who then offers a particular slice of pastry to each person. In one slice only, a porcelain token (in French, fève) lies hidden. Consequently, children are warned beforehand that they must be careful not to bite into this hard object. Well, customers of certain pastry shops in France phoned up to complain that they were not happy to have found an effigy of the right-wing politician Marine Le Pen in their Epiphany pastries.


As for me, in the fine pastry that my friends Tineke and Serge gave me, I was surprised to come upon an ugly little white and blue cylindrical object that looked like a tortoise. On closer inspection, I concluded that it surely represented a mysterious Star Wars robot, having landed on planet Earth with the intention of breaking human teeth. Maybe, certain innocent pastry-eaters came upon a terrorist...

I regret that we haven't stuck to nice old traditions such as porcelain tokens of the infant Jesus, or maybe a tiny chunk of gold, frankincense or myrrh.

Weird sea creatures

Like all living creatures on the planet Earth, they're our distant cousins. But there's no way in the world that we would invite them home for a cup of tea, because they live in the depths of the oceans. Click here to see a fabulous series of photos from the National Geographic.