Non-standard food product

These days, consumers are accustomed to highly-standardized food products. If you make two quite separate purchases of a foodstuff X, at two different stores, on two different dates, you generally expect to obtain quasi-identical products... except, maybe, in the case of fresh fruit and vegetables. That being the case, I find it almost an exciting privilege to discover that my favorite everyday cheese—a local variety of Saint-Marcellin—appears to be quite different from one week to the next, even though its name, packaging and price remain constant.

One week, it's soft and creamy [as in the above photo]. A week later, it can be hard and chunky. The taste, too, evolves slightly, while remaining essentially constant. [Fortunately, my Saint Marcellin never gets around to tasting like Norman camembert or Swiss gruyère!] I like to think that these variations reflect in fact the changing seasons and weather, which influence naturally the quality of the fodder on which the local cows are grazing.

It's funny to think that, while industrialists in most fields make huge investments in order to produce standardized goods, consumers can look upon the surprises offered by non-standard products, such as my cheese, as a latter-day luxury.

I'm reminded of an anecdote in a quite different domain: hand-weaving. Many years ago, a fashionable Parisian department store had decided to employ Breton craftsmen with their spinning wheels and handlooms for a marketing gimmick. After a day or so, however, the manager realized that there was an unexpected problem concerning a charming old fellow who spent his time carding wool from a greasy fleece in a wicker basket on the floor, and then spinning it into a fine regular thread. In fact, his woolen threads were so regular that they looked as if they might have been produced by a modern machine... and that, of course, was not what the customers were expecting. They wanted hand-spun wool to look as if it had been produced by hand... with lumps, knots and all the irregularities that you expect to find in this kind of old-fashioned production. When the manager asked the old guy whether he could maybe work a little more carelessly and roughly, the craftsman was rightly offended. He had spent all his adult life mastering the art of wool spinning, so that the quality of his work was now impeccable, and now he found himself face-to-face with an employer who was asking him to work deliberately in a sloppy manner!

I hope they don't get around to introducing sophisticated quality control, one of these days, at the local cheese factory.

No time to lose

In the words of Edith Piaf:

Quand il me prend dans ses bras,
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose.

[When he takes me in his arms, and speaks to me softly, I see life with a rosy color.]

The new Madame Sarkozy once made it known that she supports the French Left. In other words, this wealthy young lady (the French press quoted a global figure, today, of over 18 million euros) used to see the world, from a political viewpoint, with a rosy color. Naturally, in the course of the last 71 days [since her encounter with the French president], she may have changed her political outlook. Everybody has the right to evolve, and to see the world in whatever color they desire. In any case, it will be interesting to hear for whom she votes in France's forthcoming municipal elections.

A short article on this romance in the New York Times stated that the public relationship of Nicolas Sarkozy with an Italian-born heiress—once involved with a variety of males such as Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and former French Socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius—struck many French observers as "lacking taste". I love that fuzzy notion of mild disparagement, which sums up the situation perfectly. On the other hand, it's a fact that French polls reveal a spectacular drop in the president's popularity, and it's not unlikely that this negative result can be attributed to Sarkozy's apparent failure to halt the decline of purchasing power in France, combined with his running around ostentatiously with an Italian pinup.

High-speed tra-la-la

Click the following banner to visit an exotic French-language website that appears to have something to do with high-speed trains, because it carries the French railways SNCF logo. But I warn readers that they might not understand anything whatsoever in this website, above all in the animated films that you're invited to watch. I say this, not because the website is allegedly in French, but because of what you might call its "style". Above all, don't search around in this website if your aim is to book a seat on a French train. By the time you start to fathom out what this website is all about, your train will have blown its whistle and left the station. On the other hand, enlightened adolescent viewers of all backgrounds [not necessarily French] will probably find this stuff perfectly comprehensible, indeed ingenious and awesome.

Need I say more? Or more exactly: Am I capable (even though I understand the French language) of explaining things to any greater extent? Well, I can at least provide you with a few superficial clues, but I wouldn't claim that they'll help you in understanding the profound sense of this website.

— First, the website has been created by folk who call themselves iDTGV. Here, the final three letters stand, of course, for train à grande vitesse: high-speed train. This acronym is so familiar now that it even exists in the standard English dictionary of my Macintosh. The first two letters, iD, would appear to be an Apple-inspired way of evoking the French word idée: idea. So, iDTGV is no doubt a group of creators with ideas for marketing train travel to adolescent clients. And the website and its animated videos starring Zen and Zap are probably their first major production.

— The hero Zen is a young male, and the heroine Zap a young female. They happen to be traveling in the same high-speed train, but it goes without saying that they would have never met up personally were it not for the creative efforts of the nice and thoughtful iDTGV folk.

Well, that's as much help as I'm going to give you [as I'm able to give you]. You should be able to take it away from there. I vaguely suspect that, through iDTGV, adolescents on train trips will be able to make their presence known, get in contact with other adolescents on the same train, and participate in all kinds of high-speed tra-la-la during their brief time in the TGV. Awesome, no? Let me know if you've understood the situation differently or better than I did.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 1

I've decided to distribute my novel All the Earth is Mine through the Internet in the form of freely-downloadable PDF files, one chapter each week. In all, there are 16 chapters, so the full distribution will take several months. You can read these files directly on your computer, using a PDF tool such as Acrobat, but I think it's preferable—more comfortable from a reading viewpoint—to print them out on A4 paper, even though this will finally result in 300 printed pages.

Today, I'm releasing chapter 1 of my novel. To obtain it, click the following button, which takes you to the novel's website:

The main action of this initial chapter, entitled Origins, takes place on a magnificent antipodean island, Rottnest (which I know quite well), off the coast of Western Australia.

Readers will meet up with the hero of the novel: a student of geology and mining technology named Jacob Rose. In choosing his family name, I was no doubt influenced by my recollections of a splendid place in Jerusalem called the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, created with funds from a US philanthropist named William Rosenburg [1899-1966]. I liked, above all, the way in which this name might be interpreted as if it were the opening words of a prophetic declaration: Jacob rose in the midst of his brethren!

Besides Jacob's brother Aaron, we meet up with their cousins Leah and Rachel Kahn. And we hear of the recent history of the Rose and Kahn ancestors who fled to Australia from Nazi-dominated Europe and went on to become prosperous industrial leaders in the mining field.

Above all, this initial chapter of All the Earth is Mine sets the maritime tone of the entire novel, which might be described in a nutshell as a fable about sailing.

Saying sorry to indigenous Australians

The antipodean continent chosen by the British authorities as an excellent abode for social outcasts had been inhabited for many millennia by a vast community of Aborigines whose tribal culture and pantheistic religion were exclusively oral.

These innocent and relatively peaceful natives were no match for the European invaders—convicts and settlers—who simply snatched the plains, rivers and mountains away from the indigenous Australians, using violence, if need be. Later, the colonial authorities stole, not only the natives' land, but their children too, in view of an absurd eugenic principle according to which the only survival strategy for this people would consist of educating them in a European context and inter-breeding them with white individuals.

Today, it would appear that the prime minister of Australia is at last about to apologize officially to the so-called "stolen generations" of indigenous Australians, victims of cruel acts perpetrated in the past by white Australians. It's far from easy, of course, to decide upon the most effective and morally just way of making such a formal apology... and this explains, no doubt, why it has taken such a long time for this event to become a reality. We current Australians tend to say, or at least think, that our ancestors, not us, were responsible for these crimes against the Aborigines. So, why should we say we're sorry for acts that we didn't actually commit, personally?

Although the respective situations and tragedies are profoundly different, Australia's forthcoming apology to the Aborigines reminds me of the French government's complex relationship with Jewish citizens and residents of France during the terrible Nazi period. Justifications of a similar kind were advanced for decades to postpone the fateful act that would consist of saying explicitly: The nation, today, is sorry for all that happened!

Whatever we might say concerning the errors and foibles of former president Jacques Chirac, we must give him credit for being largely responsible for this official act of contrition, on 16 July 1995, at the former location of the notorious sporting stadium (the so-called winter cycling track of Paris) where Jews arrested by French police were assembled before being deported to concentration camps. In a fortnight, in the Antipodes, Kevin Rudd will be performing a solemn act of the same order.

As the duke said to the actress

Cate Blanchett is accustomed to playing the part of a monarch. She was the elf queen Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Recently, she portrayed the great Tudor queen Elizabeth, for which she has received an Oscar nomination. Apparently, though, Cate's talents at being a queen have made no lasting impression upon a man who's quite at home in this domain. Upon being introduced recently to Prince Philip, Cate told him that she worked in movies. Philip must have thought that this pregnant woman was some kind of a technician, for he immediately started to tell her about his DVD player: "There's a cord sticking out of the back of the machine. Might you tell me where it goes?"

Cate was obliged to point out that her specialty in movies was acting, not handling machines. [I can't help imagining that Cate, if she were less of a lady, might have told the duke exactly and curtly where he could put it: this dangling cord.]

I recall a similar misunderstanding on the part of an old lady in the flat next to mine in Paris, back at the time I was making science shows for French TV. "Monsieur William, you work in TV. Would you mind having a look at my set. The image is all blurry."

Facts versus fantasy

Before rushing to sit down for a meal such as last Saturday's annual lunch for the senior citizens of Choranche and Châtelus, I like to spend a little time observing who is seated where, to make sure that I'll be surrounded optimally by charming fellow citizens. The kind of lunch-table neighbors I attempt to avoid are those who have the habit of talking enthusiastically as soon as their mouth is full of food such as sauce or vegetables. My appetite disappears instantly as soon as I find that my face or plate is getting spat at. There can also be problems concerning neighbors who have either too much to say about uninteresting topics, or nothing to say about anything at all. Consequently, the choice of a table and chair is the outcome of a series of rapid observations and decisions. Above all, I avoid sitting down alongside or opposite chairs that are not yet occupied, because you never know who might slide into such an empty slot. In general, for a single person such as me, sitting down in the midst of married couples is a fairly sound strategy, because you can usually count on them—if the worst comes to the worst, as it often does on such occasions—to talk among themselves. But this kind of situation is risky, because you can never be certain beforehand that individual members of the various couples will soon get around to talking to one another, which means that you can be caught up in the crossfire.

Skillful hosts and hostesses at bourgeois dinner evenings place potentially sympathetic individuals alongside one another, in the hope that congenial communications might ensue. The French publicity chief Jacques Séguéla revealed his mastery of this art when he recently invited along to his Parisian apartment two single individuals named Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni for a dinner among smart friends. As far as we can ascertain, the conversation was lively, and no one complained afterwards about getting spat upon.

Getting back to last Saturday's lunch at Le Jorjane in Choranche, I made a beeline for an empty chair between two couples, diagonally opposite the mayor of Châtelus. This jovial fellow amuses me. Besides, I had heard a rumor that he would not be contesting the forthcoming municipal elections, and I thought he might be prepared to come out with some frank talk about his years of experience of local politics. Things got off to a good start when I asked him if he was affiliated to a political organization, whereupon he made it clear that he was a fervent socialist. He immediately asked me where I stood at a political level, and he appeared to react positively when I told him that I too was a partisan of the French Left. But then, all of a sudden, my hopes for an interesting discussion were demolished by his next out-of-the-blue statement (which I shall translate into English): "William, you're Australian. Well, you could never guess what I'm reading at present. One of the most fabulous novels I've ever unearthed: The Thorn Birds. Last night, I reached the turning-point in the story where Ralph de Bricassart finally gets into bed with Meggie Cleary!"

This intriguing saga crammed with outback passion has attained fame in France through the movie version. Exceptionally, the French title is more catching than the original. A thorn bird is described by the author, Colleen McCullough, as a magnificently-plumed creature that impales itself on a spike and sings beautifully while it dies. In French, the expression "birds who hide to die" evokes a mysterious elephantine graveyard, and attracts readers to a great fable. The only minor fault of this exceptional literary work is that many readers (such as the mayor of Châtelus, for example) are likely to believe that tales like that really unfold in a commonplace fashion in Australia. In other words, readers end up imagining that a handsome Catholic priest in a desolate outback setting could indeed inherit a vast fortune from an infatuated female parishioner, and then use this newfound wealth within the context of his employer, the Church, to purchase eventually a title of cardinal... while seducing, along the way, a young lady of the "ranch" (American term used by McCullough to designate what we Australians call a sheep or cattle station). Funnily enough, this popular TV series (aired regularly in France) that is supposed to present viewers with an awesome vision of outback Australia was actually shot in California!

Personally, I've always been bored by most literary constructions set in my ancestral land. I far prefer authentic Australian biography, history and (in my privileged case) genealogy. My attitude is summed up perfectly by these words from the great American writer Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain [1835-1910]:

Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange that it is itself the chiefest novelty the counry has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.

If Twain's judgment is correct (as I believe), then, instead of The Thorn Birds or Riders in the Chariot (Patrick White), we would be better off reading ordinary factual stuff such as Kings in Grass Castles (Mary Durack), Squatter's Castle (George Farwell), Islands of Angry Ghosts (Hugh Edwards) or simply The Fatal Shore (Robert Hughes) and The Great Shame (Thomas Keneally), not to mention The Bloodiest Bushrangers (John O'Sullivan). The only problem is that none of the books I've just mentioned could be adapted easily, preferably by Americans, into a movie that would be immensely popular, say, in France.

Amazing song-writing experiment

The blog of Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) is a constant source of surprises.

Recently, Adams evoked the nonsensical nature of the lyrics of many popular songs, including those of the Beatles. He went on to suggest a collective experiment in song-writing. To start the ball rolling, Scott proposed two delightful lines of nonsense:

She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.
My heart heard a dream like ten thousand mittens.

Then he asked his blog readers to submit similar couplets of amusing gibberish, to complete the lyrics for a song. Scott weeded through all the stuff that reached the blog in the form of comments, and ended up with plausible lyrics [display]. A few days later, a German group named Rivo Drei composed music for these lyrics, and recorded the song. As of today, there's even a music video:



Personally, I'm highly impressed by the style and outcome of this amazing song-writing experiment... even though it's imperfect. I'm convinced that it proves something, but I'm not quite sure what.

Truffle story (continued)

Sunday's yield of truffles from my lawn amounted to 67 grams, but even this small quantity would cost a hundred euros or so if I purchased them at a truffles market. I stacked most of them in rice (to eliminate moisture) and put them in the freezer.

Yesterday, I cooked myself an excellent truffle omelette, and today I used a couple of small truffles in a pâté made from grilled fowl livers and onions fried in goose fat (Jewish recipe).

There are no spices or condiments whatsoever in this pâté, merely the truffles. I've just tasted it. Absolutely delicious! All in all, I eat very well here at Gamone... in spite of the fact that I don't have a loving little wife to prepare my meals.

Don't eat red tuna!

The WWF [World Wildlife Foundation] has demanded that the sale of red Mediterranean tuna be halted, so that fish colonies have time to get back to a satisfactory level. It was a reassuring surprise to learn that several European supermarkets have agreed to enforce this recommendation: Auchan (France), Carrefour (Italy), Coop (Italy and Switzerland) and ICA (Norway). European supermarkets are not however the major outlet for this product, which is a basic ingredient in Japanese sushi.

Google is good for you

I never set out intentionally to take control of the title of my blog: the term Antipodes. Consequently, I'm amused to discover that, when you use Google with the expression antipodes blog, six of the ten findings on the first page refer to my blog. The explanation, I think, is obvious: the Antipodes blog is in fact hosted by Google. So, by drawing attention to my blog, Google is kindly keeping things in the family, as it were. Thank you, Google! In politics, I believe that this phenomenon is called nepotism.

Incidentally, since I'm talking about the term Antipodes, I take this opportunity of pointing out explicitly that I do not limit the sense of this word to its conventional usage, as a synonym for Australia and New Zealand. To my mind, this term designates "the other side of the globe". The Greek etymology is "having the feet opposite". That's why I tend to use the adjective "antipodean" to designate generally any kind of upside-down situation. What this means is that, for every spot on the planet, there's a specific place on the other side of the world that could be referred to as its Antipodes. When I was a youth in Australia, I imagined (rightly or wrongly from a strict geographical viewpoint) that the Old World of Europe was my Antipodes. And now that I actually live in this particular Antipodes, the term has reverted in a sense to its familiar meaning: the Australian continent. For me, I like to consider that my birthplace (Australia) and my present homeplace (France) are linked by means of an antipodean relationship... which is often of an upside-down nature.

Death of a bloody Asian dictator

I was amazed and sickened to find a reputed journalist in The Australian coming out with a lengthy and laudatory obituary for Indonesia's Suharto. In praising the way in which Suharto slaughtered opponents after he came to power in 1965, Greg Sheridan writes: "It is difficult to imagine what Australia might have been like had Indonesia become a communist nation in the mid-1960s. Everything we know of Southeast Asian development and success would have been absent from history, and tyranny and social failure on a massive scale would have replaced it. Australia’s defence budget over three decades might have been three or four times as high as it was. We could have developed as a fearful, isolated and perhaps even militaristic society. This is all speculation, but a communist Indonesia would have fundamentally changed Australian history."

What a curious style of thinking aimed at justifying retrospectively the emergence of a bloody tyrant. Sheridan paints a depressing picture of Australia standing apathetically on the sidelines and applauding the efforts of a dictator doing his appalling dirty work in a neighboring nation. Is that really the spirit of foreign affairs in Australia?

Truffles at Gamone

I hesitated for a moment before writing this article, because I don't wish to find myself obliged to use my vicious self-defense gadget to chase away intruders who might decide to start digging up my lawn. Maybe, one day, I'll write an article about this gadget, which happens to be perfectly lethal at point-blank range. There was even an article in the local press, following an accident, asking why such a weapon should be authorized. I was so disturbed by this article, and my personal testing of the weapon in question, that I went down to the local police station to make doubly sure that I was in fact legally entitled to possess such a gadget, and the gendarme said yes.

Let's get back to the story, which is quite amazing. A fellow dropped in at Gamone this afternoon and asked me if I would allow him and his two dogs to wander over my ten acres of sloping land in a search for truffles. Knowing that he's a descendant of an old Choranche farming family, I immediately said yes. A few hours later [during which time I completed my new electric fence for the donkeys], the fellow returned to my house, and we started talking about odds and ends. Suddenly, he asked me: Do you mind if I take my dogs under your big linden tree? I replied laughingly that the idea of searching for truffles under my bedroom window was a little like looking for fairies and elves under the flowers in the garden. Well, I was wrong.

The splendid little Pyrenees shepherd dogs [a mother and daughter] halted a minute later with their snouts fixed to the ground. The fellow used a screwdriver to unearth a first truffle just a couple of centimeters underground. Within a quarter of an hour, my lawn had produced the following yield:

After each discovery, the two delightful dogs would sit up proudly to await a reward from their master, who had a little bag of goodies in his pocket. My dear Sophia got the message immediately. Realizing that she was in on a good affair, Sophia raced around with the two shepherd dogs, searching for an ethereal but undefined treasure. Each time a truffle was unearthed, Sophia would line up alongside her two companions to receive a reward.

After this fascinating session of truffle discovery, I was disappointed to find that I had run out of eggs. So, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to stock up on eggs and cook my first truffle omelette.

Celebrations

On this 26th day of the month of January, my parents were married.

Armed with this date, smart readers will be able to calculate that the foetus whose presence would erupt upon the universe under the name of William Skyvington, on 24 September 1940, was already a few weeks old (bless the poor little bugger) when Dad and Mum walked up the aisle at Christ Church Cathedral.

On this twenty-sixth day of the month of January, in 1994, I signed the legal documents concerning my purchase of Gamone. So, I've been here for fourteen years.

This afternoon, we oldtimers of Choranche and Châtelus got together for our annual dinner. Among other things, I got back in contact with my English friend Patricia, CEO of Photonic Sciences, widow of our friend Adrian who piloted his jet aircraft into the English earth a few years ago [a long and touching story, which I must relate one day].

For me, personally, it was a momentous day of celebrations. Somebody said it's called Australia Day.

Aussie cowboys

In the space of a few days, Australian media have displayed images of two local cowboys. Heath Ledger, co-star of The Secret of Brokeback Mountain, was found dead in Manhattan last Tuesday. Today, in a more joyous context, country singer Lee Kernaghan was proclaimed Australian of the Year. And here's an old photo of an authentic Aussie cowboy:

This is my brother Don Skyvington (a year younger than me) at Wave Hill cattle station in the outback, in the company of Aboriginal stockmen. This photo was taken in the early '60s. Don has had major health problems for most of his adult life, possibly as a consequence of hepatitis that he picked up out in the bush. He now resides in Brisbane (Queensland) in a fine and friendly home with disabled Aboriginals, which I visited when I was out in Australia in 2006.

Prick in the works

In my article of 4 December 2007 entitled Subliminal phallic stuff [display], I described the curious TV publicity of a French bank named Société Générale. In their ads, an animated thing, the same size as a human being, is supposed to be a friendly thumb, constantly giving a helping hand to bank customers. To me, though, this alleged thumb has always looked more like a big prick. Well, it would appear that my hunch was right. Within the context of this major French bank, there was indeed a prick—a so-called rogue trader—who succeeded in stacking up losses for the bank of 4.9 billion euros ($US 7 billion).

Funnily enough, in the case of this astronomical spiral of losses, there is a winner: the little-known business college in Lyon that had trained the trader. On TV last night, one of their female professors, as proud as punch, explained that, to teach students how to manipulate effectively the banking system in the hope of helping their employer to earn colossal amounts of money, these same students are obliged to acquire knowledge that might enable them, theoretically, to operate as crooks. QED. It's rare, these days: teaching establishments that offer a sound education in this kind of domain. I'll bet that college will be inundated with enrollment requests next year. Serious youth who want to learn how to become pricks.

Fences

When I was a child in South Grafton, and my father was developing his initial beef-grazing activities at a nearby property named Deep Creek, I had the impression that he was obsessed by the challenge of building and repairing fences. I felt that, if my father were truly a cowboy, then he should be spending far more time on horseback. Instead of that, he was perpetually digging holes to plant eucalyptus posts, and tightening barbed wire. Today, my small property at Gamone has taught me a lot, retrospectively, concerning my father's preoccupations at Deep Creek. And I too, at my humble level, have often been concerned by the all-important question of fences.

Yesterday, I finally got around to using steel rods to support the electric fence, instead of wooden posts or plastic spikes. The advantages are their robustness and low cost, combined with the fact that they're easy to plant and move from one spot to another. By the end of the day, my two donkeys were fenced in behind a ribbon supported by steel rods. But I didn't have time to connect the electricity to the new fence.

In the middle of the night, I was woken up by Sophia's furious barking. Looking out the bathroom window, I distinguished the silhouette of a large animal in the dark, and I imagined that one of my donkeys had broken through the new fence. Later on today, I discovered that this was not the case.

Neither of my donkeys had broken out. On the contrary, a neighboring animal had broken in! This mare was tired of eating hay and being alone in a wooden cubicle up at Bob's place, so it broke loose and came down to visit my donkeys and dine on real grass. The animal belongs to a charming young lady named Angélique, who's a producer of goat cheese in Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne. She's wondering why her elegant mare would wish to join up with a pair of lowly donkeys. As for me, I like to think that this fine animal came down to Gamone in the middle of the night because it wanted to be there, as soon as the sun came up, to admire my new electric fence.

The future first lady is a tramp

When the citizens of a great republic elect their president, the future first lady is part of the packaged deal, at no extra cost... particularly if the president himself has lots of wealthy friends with jet planes, luxury yachts and Mediterranean mansions. Normally, voters can't complain if they were to discover that the first lady likes to be photographed in all kinds of interesting situations.

In France today, there's a minor irregularity in the sense that voters had no idea that the president they were electing would be switching first ladies during his first six months in office. So, a disgruntled citizen might grumble bitterly: "We thought we would be getting lady X, and now you're forcing us to accept lady Y." But, as I said, only a miserly voter would lodge such a complaint, because the nation gets the first lady for free (in theory), as part of the global bargain.

There's another approach to this question. Few people would feel like leaving their children in the care of a couple who've never succeeded in keeping their own kids off the street. How should we feel about confiding an entire nation to a guy who apparently can't keep his female off the front covers? And a female who can't keep her clothes on?

Shockumentary film

In 1962 [the year I arrived in Paris], I was greatly impressed by a weird and notorious Italian movie, Mondo cane [dogs' world], which presented viewers with an anthology of all kinds of exotic and more-or-less shocking cases of human behavior throughout the world. Part of the charm of the movie came from its romantic theme music: the famous song entitled More [play].

It was in this film that I first heard of a fabulous belief system in the Pacific island of Vanuatu: the so-called cargo cult, whereby the natives had transformed their recollection and interpretation of recent military US military operations in the region into the foundations of a mythical religion. Their adoration of a mysterious American hero known as John Frum is amazing.

An article in Télérama reminds me that documentary films have been produced recently on this fabulous subject. The idea that the great US war machine could give rise to a religious cult, with all the appropriate symbols and iconic paraphernalia (including mock weapons and aircraft), appears to me as a modern page of Greek mythology.

Major environmental decisions in Brussels

A draconian plan for climate action was presented today in Brussels by the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. Basically, the proposed challenge will consist of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases by the year 2020. Theoretically, the annual cost of achieving this result should amount to half-a-percent of the GDP [gross domestic product], but it is likely that the true cost will be double that figure. José Manuel Barroso stated that the plans proposed by Brussels constitute "the most complete package of measures in the world". Europe—the so-called Old World—wants to be the world champion in saving the world.