Absence of birdsong: Silent Spring

The American writer Rachel Carson [1907-1964] published her masterpiece Silent Spring in 1962, describing the nasty effects of pesticides on the environment. The sense of the book's title is that birds, poisoned by pesticides in spring, had ceased to sing.

Soon after starting to work for Pierre Schaeffer at the Service de la Recherche de l'ORTF in Paris, I had the privilege and thrill of attending the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (Sweden), from June 5–16 in 1972, which was the first major international event devoted to environmental challenges. I discovered that Rachel Carson's book had become a bible in this domain.

Last night, on French TV, I watched a fascinating and highly disturbing show concerning the present-day dangers brought about by pesticides in France. I realized with horror that the situation was indeed far worse today than when Rachel Carson first evoked the "absence of birdsong", over half a century ago. The following map (created by the TV people themselves) provides us with a good idea of the intake of pesticides in the various French départements :

It's sad to realize that the worst-hit zones are the celebrated wine regions, such as the Bordeaux area in the south-west. As for my Isère department, it's marked as light orange, which is not too atrocious. Here's a table (in French) indicating the toxic shit that hits our dear Isère:

Click to enlarge

Click here to watch a lengthy replay of the French TV show.

BREAKING NEWS: Today (Thursday, 4 Feb 2016), the French minister Ségolène Royal has reacted briefly but clearly and courageously to the alarming news evening on pesticides in France.

She started by revealing that she had often been in arguments with agrochemistry multinationals. "I ran into problems when combating the aerial spreading of pesticides. It was quite difficult." After mentioning her ban upon the Monsanto product Round-Up, described as a "very violent" pesticide, she concluded: "The lobby of the production of pesticides is very powerful in France." She then invited people on the land to reduce their use of pesticides "in their own interests, when we see the number of cancers among farmers who use pesticides." Then she concluded on a positive note: "We are now aware of the existence of substitution products in the case of dangerous pesticides. France could become the first nation for the production and consumption of substitution products that do no harm to public health."

Are Dutch policemen as smart as they think they are?

I've watched with amusement a small video that shows a few smart Dutch policemen using a trained eagle to attack and destroy a drone. If I understand correctly, no eagle has yet had its head chopped off by a drone propellor.

The policemen surely know what they're doing. But I think they're encouraging a deadly arms race. The next thing we know, smart drone engineers will invent some kind of eagle-killer device. Truly, this is not what I think of as the march of science and technology.

Happy birthday, Mr President

Last night, I spent the evening watching two excellent TV programs about American women who used to be weighed down by their famous husbands. The first one was Grace Kelly [1929-1982], who slipped into the real-life role of a fairy-tale princess which imprisoned her for life... up until a fatal car accident.

The second American lady was Jackie Kennedy [1929-1994], whose husband consumed sexual partners in the same way that an ordinary American might eat donuts, regardless of whether he's really hungry.

I suppose that Jackie may have been a little annoyed when she heard Marilyn Monroe warbling a sexy birthday song to her husband, in front of all America.

Here in France, my own birthday wishes to our 90-year-old ex-president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing are short and simple. Since Giscard has been around now for quite some time, his birthday provides me with a pretext to include his delightful farewell video (over 34 years old) in my blog:

I guess he imagined that all of France

would be weeping tears of blood...

Everybody roared laughing!

Mortal snow fun at night

In the upper left-hand section of that photo, you might notice that the concrete pylons of the ski lifts are surrounded by protective rubber mattresses, in case a skier happens to bump into them.

In the middle of the night, at the Deux Alpes station, three employees were celebrating the end of a happy day for the restaurant Le P'tit Polyte, which had just been praised in the Guide Michelin 2016. Maybe fueled by alcohol, they had decided to detach a protective rubber mattress and use it as a sled on the steep slopes. Alas, in the dark, they crashed into a tree.

The following photo shows how the body of one of the joyous trio was brought down into the valley.

Normally, sledding in the Alps is by no means a dangerous pastime, provided you've got good brakes.

Click to enlarge

British scientists get the green light for human gene editing

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in Britain—often referred to as the "fertility regulator"—has just given scientists a go-ahead to genetically modify human embryos. Research of a purely experimental nature will be carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Scientists will nevertheless be prevented from implanting such modified embryos into women.

Experiments will be carried out in the first seven days after fertilisation, using the developed structure of the fertilized egg called a blastocyst, composed of several hundred cells.

The concept of gene editing came into existence through an experimental method known as clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats, abbreviated as CRISPR, and pronounced as "crisper". It is generally referred to as the CRISPR/Cas system, where Cas is the name of a protein. The following short video provides us with a summary of this fundamental and all-important methodology in genetics.

Omo, a delightful white giraffe

Here's a fascinating photo of Omo, a white giraffe, from Paul Allen (philanthropist, investor, entrepreneur, author, Seahawks & Blazers team owner, guitarist, neuroscience supporter, space pioneer and Microsoft co-founder):

Hard to believe that this vessel can't be tugged

I know nothing about the task of attaching a cable to an abandoned ghost ship, the Modern Express, and then tugging it to a desired location. But I hardly imagined that it might be rocket science...

The vessel has been drifting around now for six days and nights in the Gulf of Gascony, and we're told that the weather has been too rough to grab hold of the stricken ship. There's a vague possibility, if the weather calms down, that a cable can still be attached to the Modern Express, enabling it to be towed away. If this is not the case, observers believe that the vessel is likely to run aground on a sandy French beach between Monday evening and the following day.

We're told that there'll be no oil spill, since the vessel is carrying a huge stock of timber (which surely shifted during the rough weather, causing the vessel to lean over) and merely 300 tons of fuel. Local people seem to be awaiting stoically, almost calmly, the impending shipwreck. And I keep on wondering what's going to happen to all that splendid timber, as soon as it floats ashore...

BREAKING NEWS [Monday 1 Feb 2016 14h30] The crew of a Spanish tugboat named Centaurus has succeeded in fixing a cable aboard the Modern Express, which is now being towed successfully in a westerly direction towards Spain at a speed of over 5 km/h.

Click to enlarge

English Channel seen from space

Here's a photo of the English Channel, looking towards the east, viewed from above the tip of Brittany. The image was obtained by the first official British astronaut, Tim Peake, aboard the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth at an average altitude of 350 km.

Click to enlarge

Here are some helpful geographical labels:

I'm not good at identifying landmarks in photos taken from space, but I would imagine that the big dot at the bottom of the photo, above the "o" in Astro, is lighting from the city of Brest. Above it, one of the dimmer dots on the coastline would indicate the city of Saint-Brieuc.

During my recent convalescence with my son François at Plouha (Côtes d'Armor), I was constantly intrigued by our splendid vision of the English Channel, whose waters lapped the base of the granite cliffs just a few hundred metres in front of the house. We were charmed by the presence of all kinds of small vessels: mainly pleasure yachts and fishing boats. But I often wondered why we never caught a glimpse of giant cargo ships and tankers moving along the busy lanes of the Channel. François showed me how to use my powerful binoculars to get a glimpse of an exotic place near the horizon known as the Roches-Douvres Lighthouse.

Inevitably, since this name means "Dover Rocks", I immediately asked my son a naive question: "Is that old lighthouse located in the vicinity of the English town of Dover?" François said no, not at all. So, I never understood (and still don't) why the name of this shelf of rocks, off the coasts of Brittany and Normandy (between the islands of Bréhat and Guernsey), should evoke the distant town of Dover. In the following map, the lower tip of the red blob indicates the location of the Roches-Douvres Lighthouse, whereas a green star marks my viewpoint at Plouha in Brittany.

Click to enlarge

This map of the English Channel makes it clear that, from my son's house in Plouha, I was unlikely to catch sight (even with powerful binoculars) of the stream of great vessels moving along the wide sea-lanes between France and England.

The fist-shaped peninsula of Cotentin, jutting out from Normandy, includes a pointed finger that seems to be saying "piss off" to any ship's captain moving too close to the French coastline. Fortunately, no courageous Allied commander was led astray by this warning on D-Day, 1944, when the outstretched hand formed rather a sign of V for Victory.