Gamone water puzzle

Urban folk often forget about water... unless their administrators happen to inform them suddenly that the municipality might be running out of water. Here at Gamone, I've always been interested in the water situation. In 1994, I was the first resident in my small neighborhood to be connected to the municipal water supply. Before then, my Gamone predecessors had to depend upon a spring, fifty meters beyond the house. Since my arrival, I've taken advantage of this spring water to water my garden. Unfortunately, it ceases to flow during certain dry periods of the year. A local acquaintance—René Uzel, younger than me, who lived here at Gamone for several years when he was a child—told me that, during the dry periods, they had to drive down to the village to bring back water for the family.

These days, at Gamone, it's wet periods that create a problem. I've been troubled by a puzzle, illustrated in this diagram of my spring:

Spring water accumulates constantly in a small pool up above my house, surrounded by high banks. A concrete tank, marked captor, collects the spring water. This tank, with a steel lid, is located well above ground level, just outside the banks of the spring pool. This captor tank is perfectly accessible, and I can verify constantly that it's functioning correctly simply by wandering up to the Gamone spring and lifting the captor's lid. At the outlet marked spring, a garden hose takes the water down to a sprinkler on the lawn alongside my house. Consequently, for many months during the year, my lawn is watered non-stop by the spring... even when it's pouring rain!

In this idyllic context, the only problem is the existence of a massive spill (as indicated in the above diagram) whenever there's a lot of rain up above Gamone. This spill is of a brief duration (no more than a week, two or three times a year), but the excess water hurtles down the slopes in the form of a small but powerful torrent, particularly since the municipality has laid a bitumen road above Gamone, crossed by steel gutters that focus the flow. Recently, the spill from Gamone's spring has started to provoke minor landslides below my property.

Now, here's the puzzle: Is this spill water in fact a subterranean overflow from my spring, which might be collected by reconstructing the present captor? Or is it maybe an autonomous underground channel [unlikely hypothesis], unrelated to my spring? The most intriguing item of information is that, when the spill ceases, the captor continues to supply spring water to my lawn. Obviously, if the spill were fed by leaks down at the bottom of the pool marked Gamone water, then the spring and the spill should be synchronized, as it were. As soon as one stops or starts, the other should stop or start at almost the same time. So, how can we explain the puzzle? Why does the spill only occur after heavy rainfall above Gamone, and why does the spring continue to supply water well after the spill has ceased?

Yesterday, for the first time ever, our municipal employee Pierre Faure ventured a logical answer to this puzzle. The spill is the outcome of leaks, not at the bottom of the pool, but around its upper edges.

Pierre's simple explanation enables everything to fall into place (including the water, you might say). After heavy rain above Gamone, the level of the spring pool rises, due in part to ground-level rivulets. When the surface of the pool reaches the level of the external fissures around its perimeters, the spill starts. I insist upon the fact that this phenomenon is not clearly visible. There are no obvious signs that the pool, surrounded by high earthen banks, might be overflowing.

So, now that the spill puzzle has been elucidated, what should we do to handle the situation ideally? Observing the huge spill, local folk such as René Uzel and Pierre Faure, not to mention the mayor Bernard Bourne, have often said: "William, maybe the captor of your spring is not adequate." In general, I've scoffed at their remarks, since the sprinkler on my lawn has always proved, to my mind, that the captor is working perfectly.

Today, I'm forced but happy to admit that their remarks are uncannily spot-on. My spring captor (built many years ago by René Uzel's father) is simply inadequate, in that it fails to handle an excessive volume of water in the pool. An ideal captor (a big concrete cistern) would be ten times the size of the present one, and it would have two outlets: a tap at the bottom for watering my lawn, and an overflow pipe at the top for calmly conveying excess water down to Gamone Creek. So, yesterday evening, I raced down to the bar in Pont-en-Royans where I can always be sure to find certain local tradesmen at the end of their working day, and I said to René Uzel, who runs his own little earth-moving business: "Come up to Gamone as soon as you've got time, and tell me how much it'll cost to rebuild your father's captor."

It's lovely to see that affairs of this kind evolve in an old-fashioned context of rural awareness and experience, in which newcomers such as me need time in order to comprehend what the native dwellers are trying to tell us. We should never believe wholeheartedly what they seem to be saying, for their conclusions are often fuzzy, nor should we ever reject entirely what they have to relate. It's fun finding the truth, which is inevitably somewhere in between.

Obamazing victory

Well, the miracle has happened. I didn't sleep a lot during the early hours of our European morning, because I was glued to CNN on my wide-screen TV, watching history unfolding.

After getting accustomed to the TV color code (blue for the Democrats, red for the Republicans), I was amused by this striking image of the new first family, evoking the title of Stendhal's great novel, The Red and the Black. For Stendhal's hero Julian Sorel, the color red designated the army, whereas black evoked the clergy. Last night in Chicago, I had the impression that the red symbolized Barack Obama's constant theme of leftist change, whereas black was of course the color of the skin of this new American statesman and leader. Maybe, those splashes of red in the Chicago evening were intended to indicate Obama's desire to reach out towards his former Republican opponents in a bipartisan spirit. The simplest explanation, of course, is that Barack Obama's wife and elder daughter felt like wearing bright clothes to celebrate, and that nothing's brighter than red. In any case, it's unlikely that their bright clothes cost them thousands of dollars.

Revolution in the world of books?

I've put a question mark at the end of my title, because I really don't know with certainty what's likely to happen in the near future. Meanwhile, I urge you to take a look at the present state of the Google Book Search service. To do so, pull down the Google menu labeled more and choose the Books item.

[Alternatively, you can simply click the above banner.]

It's a surprising service. Google seems to be aware of the existence of a vast quantity of published books, both ancient and modern. But don't expect to be able to download many of them, because either they're under copyright, or maybe they haven't been fully scanned yet, or there's some other reason preventing their downloading. I have the impression that what we see today provides us with no more than a taste of what's to come. It's all rather complicated, because Google is obliged to come to terms with the two great poles of the book industry: publishers and authors.

The current state of this confrontation is well described in the celebrated TidBITS website, which provides Macintosh-oriented news. Click the banner to display an excellent in-depth article on this subject by Glenn Fleishman. The article is so full of pertinent information that you might decide to print it out, as I've just done.

I have the feeling that Google might be about to revolutionize many aspects of the conventional book world. Then there's all the current talk about electronic books...

Open Google Book Search and type in "william skyvington". You'll discover that Google is convinced that I've written a book about contemporary Iran. This is really quite hilarious, because I know almost nothing about Iran. I've never been there, and I've certainly never written a book about Iran. As I've already pointed out, I've known for some time that the true author of this book on Iran happens to be the fellow who once published my book on Great Britain. For reasons I ignore, something got short-circuited when Google was examining the books published by the French Jeune Afrique company, and they decided that I was the author of two books, not just one. So, even Google can make mistakes, but the gigantic company is such a behemoth that I have no idea how to go about correcting this silly error.

The Rising

Yesterday, in Cleveland, the second of Barack Obama's three appearances in this major swing state, 80 thousand spectators were warmed up by Bruce Springsteen with these powerful words: "Senator Obama, help us rebuild our house big enough for the dreams of all our citizens. I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back." Then, as Obama came onto the stage, Springsteen and his musicians broke out with their stirring hymn:



I too hope that, within two days, Americans and their friends throughout the planet will be able, at last, to come on up for the rising.

Birthday offering

For French Catholics, November 2 is the Day of the Dead. People visit cemeteries and place flowers on the tombs. Within our tiny family, November 2 is quite the opposite. It's the birthday of Emmanuelle.

Last night on TV, I watched the Elizabeth I movie: the 2005 creation with Helen Mirren as the queen, which preceded the production on the same subject starring Cate Blanchett.

I found it moving... and I'll be looking forward, one of these lazy days, to seeing the more recent version of this famous epoch. [It's hard for an ordinary viewer to keep up with all the royal stuff that's coming out.]

Inspired by the movie, and before slipping off to sleep, I browsed through my familiar Kings and Queens of England by Antonia Fraser to check up on the background information concerning the Virgin Queen's passion for her "Robin", Lord Leicester. In the context of descriptions of suitors for the queen's hand, I was promptly alerted by a phrase that had escaped me during my past readings:

Another English candidate was Sir William Pickering, a diplomat...

I was startled in that I have a paternal ancestor named William Pickering [1843-1914]: an Oxford-trained surveyor who designed the future city of Auckland in New Zealand. When I was a child in Grafton, my grandmother had often talked to me with pride about her father, from whom I derived my Christian name.

This afternoon, I took out my folder of Pickering files, which has been full of genealogical holes since the beginning of my research, a quarter of a century ago. For reasons I can't explain, this Pickering line is the last genealogical vector that I've got around to exploring seriously... although I've often imagined it vaguely as maybe the richest source in my genetic makeup.

In spite of all my research in this domain, I've rarely felt that I "relate" deeply to the Skyvington lineage from Dorset [display], and less so to the confused Irish context on my mother's side [display]. But I've often experienced a gut-level certitude that I'm a chip off the genetic block of my paternal grandmother Kathleen Pickering.

After a strenuous and marvelous afternoon of in-depth research on the web, I finally succeeded amazingly in filling in all the genealogical gaps on the Pickering side of my ancestry, enabling me to get back directly, in a remarkably short line, to my 16th-century ancestor Nicolas Wadham, founder of the college that bears his name at the University of Oxford. And this lineage passes alongside a celebrated personage: Jane Seymour, the second wife of Henry VIII, father of the heroine of the movie I was watching on French TV last night. Basically, my family history moves from Wadham to Martyn, then on to Latton and finally Pickering.

So, here is my birthday gift to my daughter: an image of the ancient arms of a major branch of her English ancestors, the Wadhams.

Needless to say, I intend to put all this newfound stuff into clear writing as soon as possible.

Stuff that appears to be unintelligible

At first sight, the following text (sent to me by a friend) appears to be unintelligible, but in fact it turns out to be perfectly readable:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are. The olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses, and you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelms. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Talking about apparently unintelligible stuff, you might contemplate the following delightful case (also sent to me by a friend):

If you click the image, you'll be offered a baffling French-language video [requires the Windows Media Player]. In case you imagine that a knowledge of spoken French would enable you to know what it's all about, I'm afraid I must inform you that this is not the case. Even for somebody who understands perfectly all that is said in this video, the affair still remains highly mysterious, indeed incomprehensible. But here are few hints about what seems to be happening. The fellow is building this space vessel in his backyard with the aim of setting out on an astral voyage. The high point of the video, towards the end, is when his mother gives us a glimpse of the vessel's electronic guidance device, which will be controlled by the guy's mind, using parapsychology.

Five good reasons why I dislike lists

1. Whenever I see somebody's list, say, of 5 good reasons why McCain should be elected president, I can be almost certain that it'll be followed shortly after by a list of 5 good reasons, maybe formulated by the same person, why Obama should be elected.

2. It's a fact that, in our computer-oriented society, we're accustomed to numbered lists of items. [I myself am a culprit at times concerning the use of lists in my writing.] We should realize however that, while this linear style of expression might appear to be clear, it is not necessarily valid or convincing. The basic problem with a list of alleged good reasons is that it should ideally be read at the same time as a list of bad reasons, or opposite reasons.

3. A list of N reasons why something or other should be done, or believed, smacks of smugness, as if everything has been summed up nicely and completely in an itemized fashion. Reality is a far more fuzzy affair, in which almost every alleged "reason", if pushed to its limits, is of a borderline nature.

4. If God has intended us to think in terms of lists of reasons, He would have been far more explicit concerning this style of expression. Among other things, He would have provided us with a list of reasons why we should adhere to His list of 10 commandments. Furthermore, He would have told us how many items there should be in a typical list before we can get around to considering the case closed. For example, I can think of one good reason why I don't believe in God, namely: He doesn't exist! But this list is surely too short.

5. The final reason for my disliking lists is the existence of further reasons, not included in the present list. Etc...

Romantic Australia

I see that a new packet of romantic Down Under hype is about to hit the fan. I'm referring, of course, to the much-awaited Australia saga by Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.



Personally, if I saw an anemic Nicole Kidman on a cattle station, I would have doubts about the quality of their beef. Can she survive the dusty heat and the burning sun? She looks like the sort of tasty fair creature who would attract flies, mosquitoes, spiders, snakes, etc... and it would be a frantic life-or-death affair getting her to a doctor in time. Funnily enough, sticking to facts, we hear that it was angelic Nicole who actually saved Hugh's life during the shooting by using her delicate fingers to remove a scorpion from her partner's leg. So, maybe I should shut my mouth and wait for the movie before saying anything more.

There's a funny spoof trailer:



Once again, this movie will no doubt be capable of persuading countless hordes of fatigued New Yorkers and Parisians to think about packing up their bags and moving out to the exciting El Dorado that awaits them Down Under. I can already imagine such innocent folk stepping into an antiquated subway train at Wynyard, on their way out to Mascot, to board bravely a Qantas plane bound for Darwin... where they'll be thrilled to discover that the damage from Japanese bombing and cyclone Tracy has all been cleaned up spotlessly.

Favorite magazine stoops to intelligent design

In my mailbox this morning, I received a nasty trick, stuck away in the cobwebs of the back pages of the latest issue of Scientific American.

I'm referring to an unexpected article about a Dominican priest who happens to deplore the conflict between Darwinism and Christian faith. It's not a habit of mine to behave like an offended reader and send letters to the press... except, maybe, in the case of a pretentious Fascist female journalist who works for The Australian, who regularly drives me up the wall. [The Aussie newspaper usually succeeds in "mislaying" my emails from France, so they don't get published.] But I was so shocked by the presence of religious rubbish in my favorite US science magazine that I immediately sent off a letter to the editors:

There is no place in your excellent time-honored magazine for an article such as "The Christian Man's Evolution" by Sally Lehrman. I would imagine that readers come to your magazine today for a broad and in-depth perspective of scientific achievements and goals, not for journalistic stuff about a fine fellow such as Francisco Ayala, whose religious beliefs cannot possibly concern us. I am afraid that the presence of this article is a promise of worse to come, next year, when the scientific world will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's masterpiece. If Scientific American intends to give fair, if not equal, coverage to Darwinian evolution, creationism and so-called intelligent design, then I am dismayed to realize that I have subscribed to the wrong reading. Between science and all the rest, there is no such thing as fair coverage.

I see this article (which even evokes the beliefs of Sarah Palin) as a breach in the great traditions of Scientific American, and I shall no doubt refrain from renewing my subscription to the magazine.

Incidentally, I've thought it well to add a final seven-word explanation to my simplistic blog profile, which now reads as follows:

After working in various computing jobs, I retired to an old farm property on the edge of the French Alps, where I spend my time writing, playing with the Internet and wandering around on the mountain slopes with my dog Sophia, admiring the beauties of Creation... in the scientific sense of this concept.

It scares shit out of me, in a Halloween spirit, to imagine that any of my friends, acquaintances and anonymous readers of Antipodes might imagine for an instant that my vision of Creation (with a capital C) could be anything other than Darwinian, Dawkinsian, poetic and artistically fuzzy, but purely scientific...

The world is afraid

Here in France, many people are holding their breath, anguished by the thought that something might happen in the unpredictable USA, between now and next Tuesday evening, to prevent Barack Obama from becoming president. In browsing through the Internet press, I have the impression that the Western world at large shares this same fear that something might go wrong at the last minute: either electoral fraud or simply the unspoken refusal to elect a black man. The most terrifying scenario of all, as many commentators have pointed out, would be the election of McCain, followed closely by his death, resulting in the appointment of Mrs Moose to replace him.

Concerning Sarah Palin, there would appear to be no limits to her ignorance and stupidity, combined with a stubborn belief in herself. She's the proverbial dumb bitch, capable of making even George W Bush look like a bright guy. She accompanies her hot air with winks, no doubt believing that common folk will find her smart and cute. And a lot of other dumb Americans probably do find her smart and cute, because she reminds them of the nice fuzzy image they have of themselves. In a policy speech on what she thinks of as misdirected federal funds, Palin wrinkled her silly forehead while looking for examples of wrongful spending, and blurted out: "Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not." [Note the archaic teenage colloquialism, meant to make her sound savvy.]


Research exploiting the insect in question, Drosophila, has contributed greatly to modern genetics, and so-called vinegar flies are still playing a role in this domain. The US embryologist Thomas Hunt Morgan used these tiny red-eyed creatures to investigate mutations, and he was the first geneticist to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in 1933, for his discoveries on the role of chromosomes in heredity.

Palin is such an idiot that she can't even realize that research in genetics might one day put an end to trisomy 21, from which one of her own kids suffers. Appalled by Palin's words, the White House correspondent for Newsweek, Richard Wolffe, said: "This is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there has been a lot of competition for that prize." Personally, I would prefer to give Palin the jackpot prize for her beliefs in so-called creationism: you know, all that shit about Adam and Eve walking around with dinosaurs some six thousand years ago. In any case, no matter what outstanding stupidity awards we give her, that woman is clearly an American catastrophe.

Bionic heart will soon start throbbing

The old-fashioned American gesture of holding a hat over one's heart is hilarious, like the opening of some kind of Stetson song-and-dance routine in a musical comedy.

To my mind, it's ridiculous. It doesn't correspond to any reality, not even symbolically. On the other hand, I can imagine a society in which a male, swearing an oath of allegiance in the name of his biological forefathers and offspring, would be expected to place his hat over his genitals. But the ideal symbolic place for a hat, in such a ritual, would be up above his brain, in its normal position, sitting on top of his skull. As far as solemn oaths are concerned, that's where all the action takes place, rather than in your gut or your genitals or even your heart. Many common folk still seem to respect the medieval belief that the heart is the origin of human sentiments, whereas the brain is merely a cold calculating organ. But it's time to abandon antiquated symbolism such as hats held over hearts, which is just as silly as astrology, superstition and religious ritual. I'm not suggesting that laws should be passed to prohibit such behavior. I'm merely saying that antiquated antics of this kind should be interpreted by intelligent observers as external signs of relative stupidity, like fumbling with rosary beads, or making a sign of the cross on your breast.

The heart is in fact a rather simple pumping gadget, of a vastly lower order than the brain. These days, in a surgical environment, the usual work of the heart can be taken over by a machine that looks like this:

Needless to say, neurosurgeons have no equivalent machine to replace the patient's brain during an operation. On the other hand, the problem with a typical heart-lung machine is that a patient can't expect to move along the hospital corridors with the apparatus trailing along behind him. Before leaving the operating theater, a patient has to get back to using his own patched-up heart, or maybe a donor's revived organ. Obviously, what we need is an artificial heart that a patient can "wear" in his chest in much the same way that you might walk around carrying a portable computer in a bag thrown over your shoulder.

The design, production and installation of such an artificial heart has been the constant challenge of the 75-year-old French cardiologist Alain Carpentier, who founded a company with the aim of developing such a prosthesis. [Click the photo to see the Wiki article about this celebrated international medical figure.]

Today, Carpentier's invention has reached the stage of an operational prototype that has been tested successfully in animals:

Often, we hear people say despondently that, if only their leaders were to invest as much money in medical research as they invest in aeronautics, space and defense, then citizens would lead far better lives. Well, Alain Carpentier's artificial heart is based, to a large extent, upon fallout from the domains I've just mentioned. Fifteen years ago, the professor struck up a partnership with Jean-Luc Lagardère, chairman (now deceased) of a vast industrial group that had evolved from the renowned French high-tech corporation named Matra, which manufactured a wide range of electronic products that included missiles and minicomputers. Professor Carpentier is a distinguished medical researcher, who was awarded the Albert Lasker prize in 2007 for his research on heart valves, which resulted in products made out of chemically-treated pig tissues.

When the latest white-skinned model of the artificial heart is placed upside-down on a table, so that its tubes are hidden, it looks a little like a freshly-prepared chicken ready to be roasted. Some chicken!

Clinical testing of the device on human patients will start in 2011, and it should normally be ready for real transplants by 2013.

If we telescope together the last three-quarters of a century in such a way that the US president behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to become a patient of Professor Carpentier, we create the setting for a fascinating philosophical question. Let's suppose that Harry Truman were to be fitted with an artificial heart. Would it still be appropriate for him to place his Stetson over the electronic device whenever he listened solemnly to the Star-Spangled Banner?

Final days of a man of sadness

Theoretically, George W Bush will of course continue to be the US president until the investiture of a new man—who, I hope, will be Barack Obama—next January. In a week's time, Bush will descend politically, however, from his present lame duck status to a dying duck level. After that, good riddance to bad rubbish. The world, at last, will be able to look forward to talking about this grotesque individual in the past tense.

He has been here. And I see no bravery.

[Click the photo to hear James Blunt's moving lament.]

The Bush years started at that 9/11 moment. Between the attack in Manhattan and the turmoil in Wall Street, seven years later, there was the bloody fiasco in Iraq and then, at home, the Katrina catastrophe. These Bush years will have been some of the darkest in US history.

The departing president will nevertheless be able to look back on certain rare moments of tenderness when special friends provided him with an illusion of endless love [display].

Australia apparently absent in Beijing

Last weekend, a major economic get-together took place in Beijing: the 7th ASEM [Asia-Europe Meeting]. This summit—which might be seen as a prelude to the forthcoming G20 meeting organized by George W Bush in Washington on November 15—drew together representatives from the 27 member nations of the European Union and the 10 members of ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], along with China, Japan, South Korea, India and Pakistan.

ASEM, embracing most of Asia and Europe, now represents almost 60% of the world’s population and 60% of global trade.

In this morning's The Australian, I learned that, according to a recent poll, "Kevin Rudd's stewardship of the Australian economy amid the global financial crisis has been endorsed by voters". But there seems to be no mention whatsoever of this weekend's 7th ASEM in Beijing. Weirdly [informed readers of my blog will correct me if I'm mistaken], Australia and our Mandarin-speaking prime minister do not appear to have been present in Beijing.

Exquisite mushroom

At this time of the year, I often find one or two specimens of this exquisite mushroom on the lawn beneath my bedroom window. It's the Coprinus comatus, commonly referred to as the shaggy ink cap mushroom. Its conical cap starts out smooth and white before becoming scaly and hairy. Then, within a day, black ink starts to drip from beneath the cap. Yuk! Normally, it's not my habit to eat exotic things of this kind, but I've made an exception with this mushroom, ever since finding them sprouting up at Gamone, and since learning that they must be eaten almost as soon as they appear. I've noticed that, whenever I step out onto my lawn in autumn, I automatically look around for ink caps. In fact, if I fail to pick them in the afternoon, my billy goat Gavroche discovers them in the early hours of the morning, whereupon he takes pleasure in destroying these delicate plants... which he doesn't even want to eat. Naturally, I studied the question of ink caps in my mushroom bible before daring to eat them for the first time. In the beginning, I used to fry them rapidly in butter, and eat them on toast. More recently, I've evolved to the stage of simply eating the young mushrooms raw, like fruit. There's even a recipe (which I haven't tried yet) about frying them rapidly in oil and then sprinkling them with sugar and cinnamon. The funny thing about this exquisite mushroom is that the Latin name Coprinus comes from the Greek word for shit! I wonder why it got such a name. It's true that, whenever I come upon the inky remains of shaggy cones lying half demolished in the grass after an attack from Gavroche, the global scene has a rather shitty look.

Bread and meat

It often pays to memorize an important principle in the vivid form of a vulgar proverb. In Australia, where we've always had a healthy habit of calling a spade a fucking spade, I learned, as a young man, that it's an error to look around for your meat in the same shop that provides you with your daily bread. [I can hear you correcting me. Supermarkets provide us today with almost everything we need. Meat, bread, sugar and spice and all things nice, you name it. OK, I'm old-fashioned.] Wise and experienced Aussie elders told me that, to succeed in a professional career, it's preferable to avoid trying to pick up office chicks [I'm talking from a male viewpoint]... unless, of course, you happen to be engaged in the honorable process of looking around for a legitimate spouse, in which case no legal behavior is barred. When I settled down in France, though, I had the impression that this great Australian proverb was largely unknown, or in any case unpracticed, no doubt because both French bread and French meat are, well, rather different to what I had been accustomed to eating in my native land.

Most people in France admire the Socialist politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, seen in the above Gala photo with his wife Anne Sinclair, a former TV journalist. When he left for the US to take up an appointment as director of the IMF [International Monetary Fund ], the first premature question that sprung into many left-wing minds—such as mine, for example—was: Will Strauss-Kahn be back in France in time to oppose the current president, if need be, in a future election? A couple of weeks ago, Strauss-Kahn spoke with authority on French TV concerning the current financial crisis. Naturally, his economic talents and wisdom, not to mention his role at the IMF, lend weight to his analysis of the situation. Then everybody was shocked to hear that DSK [as he's called in France] was accused of being on over-friendly terms with one of his female colleagues. Today, it's reassuring to hear that the IMF has concluded that there was no genuine misdemeanor on the part of DSK, merely a serious but forgivable error of judgment of a bread-and-meat kind.

New family property

That title is a little pompous. It sounds as if I'm about to evoke the latest Skyvington acquisition in the way of castles, manor houses and country estates. In fact, for our son François, this new place is likely to be no less magnificent than a castle, a manor house and a country estate all rolled into one... on the clifftops above the sea in northern Brittany, in a rural environment named Kerouziel, in the commune of Plouha (Côtes d'Armor). In this Google Maps image, our son's future property is located at the tip of the arrow, just a few hundred meters from the water's edge:

It has often been said that the three most important things in the case of a house in the country are (1) the view, (2) the view and (3) the view. That's true, for example, in the case of my house at Gamone. It's even truer still in the case of the future house of François... which he won't actually own officially before next January. Here's the view, towards the sea, from his front door:

The ancient smugglers' path along the clifftops is located just beyond that field of cauliflowers. In the following photo, Christine and Emmanuelle are seated on the rocks just down from the house and looking out over the sea:

Looking north-westwards from that observation point, up towards the exotic little port of Gwin Zegal, you have this fabulous misty view of the bare rocky coast:

In the opposite direction, they look down over the charming little beach of Palus Plage, with the elegant port of Saint-Quay-Portrieux further to the south-east:

In the following photo, Christine and Emmanuelle are strolling back to the house. In the background, you can glimpse the tiny "island"—a mere outcrop of rocks, not far from the shore—that is visible in the top right-hand corner of the Google Maps image.

The house itself, small and modest, is ideal for François. It's no doubt the perfect place for him to look out over the waters and dream up creative ideas.

In fact, the primary merit of this house is the fact that it exists. Nowadays, it would be unthinkable for the authorities in charge of the shoreline land to allow any kind of construction at such a site. But existing constructions are, of course, perfectly legal. Owners are permitted to modify and even extend existing houses in any reasonable way, but they would not be allowed to demolish an existing construction and build a new house in its place. Finally, here's a photo of the land attached to the house:

I should add that this affair came up quite rapidly, more or less by chance. So, I myself haven't even had a chance of seeing the place yet. On the other hand, François has already extended an invitation to me and Sophia to stay there, on the romantic Breton clifftops, whenever he's away at work in Paris or elsewhere. That's a nice idea, and I'll surely accept his invitation one of these days. Here at Gamone, we don't see much of the sea, since there are too many mountains blocking the view... which is otherwise excellent.

Big Banksy is watching you

This is the most recent and probably biggest ever work, on a post office wall in central London, of the secretive British graffiti artist Banksy [about whom little is known]:

[Click the image to visit Banksy's fascinating website.]

It depicts a small boy on a ladder who is finishing a huge sign—whose message is "one nation under closed-circuit television"—while a security agent and his dog stare up at him. Banksy created this painting in April. He worked so rapidly and stealthily—first erecting three-story scaffolding during the night, and then concealing himself behind a plastic sheet while he did the painting—that nobody was aware of the artist's presence before the work was completed and unveiled. The most amusing aspect of the affair is that the area is watched over by a TV surveillance camera, which can be seen in the middle of the wall.

Unfortunately, dullish London authorities consider that such a work must be thought of as vandalism, and Banksy's masterpiece will therefore soon be painted over.

Moose rap

I'm including this photo just in case you've been out beyond the Solar System over the last few days, without Internet access:

Funnily enough, few commentators seem to be aware of the exact circumstances in which John McCain struck this intriguing pose... so I feel obliged to set things straight. You see, for the last week, Sarah Palin and her boss have been rehearsing secretly a song and dance routine called the Moose rap, which Sarah had intended to present on last weekend's Saturday Night Live show. Well, either McCain was totally obsessed with this rap number, or he simply decided to surprise everybody by a sneak preview of Sarah's act. Whatever the reason, at the end of his debate with Barack Obama, McCain suddenly amazed everybody by breaking spontaneously into a stand-up presentation of their Moose rap. The security guys and medical personnel jumped onto him instantly, just after this shot was taken. They thought he was having a fit, or preparing to do something beastly to Obama. A police officer told journalists that McCain's opening antics were so stunningly moose-like that there were irrational fears among onlookers that Palin might be in the audience, and that she might suddenly whip out a gun and shoot the Republican candidate.

In the wake of this incident, Sarah herself decided that the Moose rap was dangerous stuff to perform, so she thought it preferable to hand over the words and music to other artists, as she explains here:



Truly, in the context of phenomena such as the Moose rap, the US presidential campaign is attaining deliriously high levels of intelligence, artistic sophistication and political perfection.

Hitchhiker

Towards the end of the morning, I started to drive down towards Pont-en-Royans with the intention of posting a letter. No sooner did I reach the main road, a few hundred meters down from my house, than I saw a young guy by the roadside, with a backpack, trying to hitch a lift towards the village. I couldn't understand where he might have come from, because the road up towards the Vercors plateau has been blocked for ages, because of seemingly never-ending roadworks in the Gorges of the Bourne. As I pulled over, I noticed that he was using a portable phone to take images of my familiar mountain, the Cournouze. His destination, he told me, was La-Chapelle-en-Vercors. After a train trip from his home in Montpellier, he was dismayed to discover that there were no bus services from the Isère valley up onto the Vercors plateau. Moreover, the road was blocked, so he didn't know what to do. He explained rapidly that he was a so-called acrobatic worker: the experienced mountain climbers who haul themselves up on ropes to repair edifices such as church steeples, or to install metal nets on slopes where rocks might fall onto roads. He told me that he had to be in La-Chapelle for a practical exam concerning the evacuation of injured rock climbers. As we drove down through Pont-en-Royans, I was amused to see that he was in fact communicating constantly on the phone with his wife back in Montpellier, telling her how he was having trouble reaching his destination, but also describing with the enthusiasm of a mountain-lover the landscape through which I was driving him. He was such a nice friendly guy, and his excursion was so important to him, that I couldn't simply drop him off at Sainte-Eulalie, at the start of the road that leads up to the Vercors plateau. Besides, I'd been intending for weeks to drive up there to see the recently-opened three-kilometer tunnel. When I informed him I could drive him all the way to La-Chapelle (less than half-an-hour up the road), he was absolutely thrilled, and got back into excited explanations to his wife, informing her how he had been picked up by such a kind gentleman...

As for me, this was an excellent pretext to see the new tunnel, which has replaced a spectacular and dangerous cliff-hanging road, which my children and I have driven along on many occasions:

My passenger told me that his mother was Italian, and his father Tunisian. He had an enthusiastic Mediterranean personality. As we approached the village of La-Chapelle, he was taking photos of everything he saw, even signposts and roadside cows, and explaining excitedly to his wife that it was the most beautiful spot on earth. When I dropped him in the middle of the sunny village of La-Chapelle-en-Vercors, he couldn't find words enough to thank me, and suggested that surely some kind of divine intervention had led to such a fortunate solution to his problems. With or without God's presence, it's a fact that there were so few vehicles moving up onto the Vercors plateau today that he could have been left standing by the roadside for hours.

On my way back down to the valley (where I posted my letter an hour or so later than planned), I felt elated at having been able to assist this fellow and take personal pleasure, at the same time, in a bit of tourism. Above all, I was amazed and thrilled to discover that, thanks to the new tunnel, I'm truly less than 30 minutes away from some of the most magnificent mountain scenery you could ever imagine. If only I had a wife, I'm sure I would have felt like phoning her enthusiastically and telling her this great news.

Weighty endorsements

Barack Obama recently received the endorsement of three great US newspapers: the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. And I wouldn't be surprised if the New York Times were to come out explicitly for him in the near future. Besides, it has just been announced that one of the four well-known individuals in the following photo has endorsed the Democratic candidate. Try to guess which one.

Hint: It's not the guy at the microphone, nor the lady. Another hint: The fellow in question once made a lot of stupid blunders concerning Saddam Hussein. Final hint: His military rank is General.

During the next few weeks, if Obama encounters any more nonsense about his alleged inability to handle the job of commander in chief of the planet's most powerful nation, he'll be able to retort: "It's funny you should feel that way, because Colin thinks I'm OK for the job." With that kind of weighty endorsement, Obama won't normally need to dress himself up in a fighter-pilot costume and get himself flown down onto the deck of an aircraft carrier.

This morning, Colin Powell referred to John McCain as a "friend of over 25 years" before stating that the Republican presidential candidate "was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems we're facing". Apparently, the former US secretary of state has no such qualms about the aptitude of Obama. As for Sarah Palin, Powell said curtly: "I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States." To my mind, that's an understatement... a bit like suggesting, say, that I'm not ready to be pope.