Latest Dawkins book

This year, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. And it so happens that the world has just been introduced to Ardi, our most ancient identified ancestor with most of her bones available for inspection. So, the time is perfect for another book by Richard Dawkins, presenting the evidence for evolution.



It's utterly amazing that countless Americans, today, still consider stupidly that evolution is a mere theory, in which they refuse to believe. That's to say, they ignore that evolution has become an established element of contemporary science.

Collection of papers on Ardi

Science is a journal published by the AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science], founded in 1848, which describes itself as "an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association". The stated mission of the AAAS is to "advance science, engineering and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people".

This journal has assembled a splendid collection of papers concerning the creature Ardipithecus ramidus, and this collection can be downloaded in PDF form. All you need to do is to register (free) at their website, which can be accessed by clicking the above banners. I've downloaded all their 15 files, and I find them relatively easy to read and totally fascinating.

Loose language

I've already evoked the brilliant books of the Canadian-American psychologist Steven Pinker. He's best tackled, I believe, by The Language Instinct (1994), which explains simply—as its title suggests—that we humans have an instinctive relationship (as if anybody ever doubted it) with the gift of the gab.

From a Pinkerian point of view, my blog title, Loose language, is abominable, since human language is a constantly-evolving process that should never be described as "loose". Lame, lost or lousy, maybe... but never loose, since it remains a mysterious archaic art that experienced human practitioners are constantly perfecting.

This afternoon, I was momentarily surprised to see an exhortation on the cover of a popular French science magazine: Mangez sain. Translated literally into English, that reads: Eat healthy. In grammatical terms, the adjective "healthy" has been placed into a slot that normally receives an adverb such as "healthily". Now, is this a problem that should upset me? No, not at all.

I was vaccinated by the publicity of my favorite computer company:

Apple wasn't suggesting that we should think differently in the same way that you might ask somebody to reply rapidly, to talk calmly or to argue intelligently. The "think different" exhortation simply urged viewers to adjust their thinking to a different context: that of Apple products. That's to say, it was shorthand for: Do your thinking in a different context. So, no major grammatical crime was committed.

The most striking Pinker book, to my mind, is How the Mind Works, which is guaranteed to send shivers down the spine of old-fashioned adepts of Freud. Pinker adopts a totally "mechanistic" explanation of the human mind... where my adjective in inverted commas designates everything that has been happening in computer science and brain research over the last half-century. In a nutshell, everybody knows by now that humans are magnificent machines, neither more nor less. So, why carry on talking as if there were mysterious ghosts in the machines?

As for Freud, he has been thrown out wordlessly and unceremoniously with the slops. Maybe it would have been nicer, more polite, if Pinker had pronounced a wordy eulogy concerning this well-minded Viennese quack doctor who fascinated the Western intellectual world for a century or so... and still does. History has its charms. But time wasted in talking about what we now know to be obsolete nonsense would be better devoted to catching up with the fabulous realities of contemporary science.

Grandma, maybe you should put your clothes on

Her given name, Ardi, is short for Ardipithecus ramidus, which was a hominid species that lived about four and a half million years ago in present-day Ethiopia. As I deigned to point out recently, with a touch of romantic despondency, in a nostalgic letter to a maternal aunt in my native continent of Australia who's madly passionate about family history, it was almost like yesterday that we humans branched away from our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. I'm sure Nancy agrees, but she hasn't replied yet... Meanwhile, what must we think of naked Ardi?

She looks fine to me: the sort of woman that a maternally-dominated male such as me would like to discover as a future bride. But maybe she should put her clothes back on, because we modern descendants are no longer accustomed to nudity. To talk frankly, I don't really mind the hairy belly, thighs and genital zone. On the contrary, as I've indicated explicitly in the porn-taste fields of all my social websites, I'm fond of that kind of stuff, provided I don't run the risk of getting lost in the jungle. But let's not get led astray...

What were we saying? Truly, this is a fantastic discovery. Ardi is indeed our probable grandma. I love her already. In gazing fondly at her image, in the deepest regions of my loins, I seem to sense the same archaic attractive tingles that might have caused Grandpa to move in firmly, and finally make me what I am today. Good on you, Grandpa! What a wife! What a sexy ancestor!

Flatland creature

I'm sure you won't believe me, but I'll nevertheless reveal, tardily, the truth. As an adolescent, about to start university studies, I imagined for a moment that I might apply to be trained as a fighter pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. It sounded like a fascinating occupation... although I must admit that I had never, at that time, flown in anything bigger (as a thrilled passenger) than the tiny yellow Tiger Moth belonging to a distinguished South Grafton gentleman named Eric Hudson, father of my childhood friend and current blog-commentator Bruce Hudson.

Retrospectively, I believe that this professional choice would have been a mistake, even though I love to get into big airplanes of the kind that fly between Paris and the Antipodes. I know today that I'm essentially a flatland creature... in the spirit of my ancestors who moved around over the flat grasslands of Africa and later the steppes of Asia. Back in those days, our archaic brains had to be good at detecting the presence of wild beasts, edible plants and nubile females. Since none of these entities hung around in the air, our brains (if I can speak for all humankind) had no reason to get adapted to bird's-eye views of things.

Today, there are two environments in which this inherited weakness hurts: mountains and seas. Here in the Vercors, I'm often stunned to realize just how hard it is for me to comprehend the topography of the landscape in which I reside. To put it bluntly, mountains seem to move, not only sideways, but up and down. A peak that looks tall when viewed from Saint-Jean-en-Royans becomes a pimple at Pont-en-Royans. Distant summits that lie far apart when seen from Saint-Marcellin nudge closer to one another when I get up close to them... or maybe the opposite. It's all very disconcerting, particularly the weird phenomenon of neighboring summits that change their respective altitudes, depending from the place and angle of view. Somebody said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. He might have added that geographical coordinates seem to behave exactly like beauty. It's a kind of idiot version of Einstein's theory of relativity. When I drive from one village to another, or when I stroll on foot from one vantage point to another, mysterious space-time dilatations—contractions and expansions—come into play. Up until now, I've never bothered contacting the scientific world to let them know that I've made these observations. So, you might consider this blog article as a personal coming-out. Others take pride in announcing that they're homo, hetero or travelo. As for me (big news), I'm basically flatto: a flatland being.

A case in point. In recent articles, I've evoked the newly-acquired cliff-top property of my son François (also known as Chino in his ancestral Breton territory):

• Rapid trip to Brittany [display]

• Ocean silence [display]

• Virtual dream house [display]

My son's place lies somewhere in the following bird's-eye view of the region:

But, even with highly-enlarged satellite images, I find it hard to determine exactly where my son resides, and what kinds of inaccessible beaches lie at his doorstep. What I really need is a new-fangled high-tech system of powered wings—à la Nicolas Hulot–that would enable a flatland creature such as me to explore at ease these questions, from the skies of Brittany. Or maybe, simply, a boat.

Ireland wants to stay aboard

It's tremendously encouraging to see that a popular vote in Ireland has confirmed the nation's desire to accept the Lisbon treaty and stay aboard the boat of Europe.

The central issue was, of course, economic. Were Ireland's political leaders simply telling lies and trying to scare the people when they suggested that the almost bankrupt nation would be in dire straits if ever it rejected the treaty a second time? Many shortsighted citizens believed this persistent rumor.

Let's see now how Poland and the Czech Republic react to Ireland's yes.

BREAKING NEWS: Allow me to get a kick out of translating from French into English the words of our most European president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom this Irish vote was a major milestone:

This vote—which crowns the efforts made in particular by the French presidence [of the European Union] in order to answer preoccupations expressed by the Irish—is a great satisfaction for all Europeans. It will allow us to take a decisive step towards the actualization of the Lisbon treaty. France hopes that states that have not yet done so [proclaimed their allegiance to the Lisbon treaty] will accomplish as soon as possible their ratification so that the Lisbon treaty can become operational before the end of the year, which is the engagement of the 27 [nations that have already ratified the treaty].

Obnoxious Jap

Back on 10 July 2009, I published an article entitled Winning or losing concerning Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France.

[Click the photo to display the blog article.]

For reasons I don't understand, this inoffensive article has been polluted by regular "comments" from an obnoxious Jap whose link leads back to a vulgar porn website. When I say "vulgar", I mean that the home page of this guy's website has even less erotic appeal than a crude manga image. Pure dull shit.

I was hoping naively that this pest would simply disappear... but he's still there. So, I've finally got around to indicating his presence to the Blogger forum, to see if somebody can tell me how to eliminate this obnoxious intruder. What I really need to find, I guess, is a link to an attractive website containing incitations to commit hara-kiri.

BREAKING NEWS: For problem-solving, the Blogger forum is most efficient. A wizard-level contributor named nitecruzr has kindly told me how to react, by means of a sort of Hiroshima button (which I simply hadn't noticed up until he pointed out its presence to me). Normally, all the Japanese comments have disappeared forever, along with the evening rays of the imperial sun. But I wouldn't be surprised if the pest reappears in future unexpected kamikaze attacks on my Antipodes. At least I know now how to gun him down.

New Google gadget

There's a new Google gadget called sidewiki. To be able to use it, you need to equip your browser with the latest version of the Google Toolbar. Click the banner on the left to visit a website that invites you to obtain and install this Google Toolbar.

For the moment, I'm playing around with this new gadget, to get a feeling for its behavior. My first impression leads me to see this new Google thing as an extremely potent device, since you can apparently attach your humble "side stuff" to any website you visit. But I haven't yet figured out how they plan to control the risk of pollution, spam, etc. We'll see. Normally, you should be able to test this gadget upon the present blog. So, go at it!

Liberate Gilad Shalit

It's marvelous to see that the Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit appears to be in perfect shape. He must now be liberated, absolutely, as soon as possible, at the same time as Palestinian prisoners. That's the only way that Gaza might be able to start its long road towards becoming a livable land.

Crime and punishment

Dostoevsky's novel has nothing to do with the crime of an adult male's sexual encounter with a 13-year-old girl, and the punishment that should be meted out, in a law-abiding society, to the offender. Certain observers consider that a crime of this kind was apparently committed, three decades ago, by Roman Polanski. And Californian "justice" has finally used archaic under-the-belt tactics, in collusion with Switzerland (which has always been a "neutral nation", as we all know), to catch up with him. That's to say, they caught this distinguished gentleman in a trap, as if he were a wild beast.

If there's a trial of Polanski, we'll surely learn all the explicit details about what the hell his young "victim" was doing, with her naked ass posed in a Hollywood jacuzzi in the company of the "predator". Was she just strolling around in the neighborhood when she suddenly decided to take a bath? Talk about laughing out loud...

At a technical level, brilliant highly-paid lawyers will soon be supplying the planet's media with juicy details about the technical process of sodomizing an unwilling girl at the deep end of a jacuzzi. Indeed, there's a certain amount of explaining to be done at that bathtub level. Meanwhile, wise parents should prevent their 13-year-old daughters from ever watching a Polanski cinematographic masterpiece such as Tess, because you never know what ignominious things might happen when the poor child's back is turned.

Communications infrastructure

We often tend to imagine that a technology such as the Internet simply arrives magically in our homes like water in the kitchen sink, or electricity, or TV. In fact, in rural areas, the installation of a high-performance Internet infrastructure is a major task.

For the last few days, road traffic between Pont-en-Royans and the neighboring village of Saint-Jean-en-Royans has been interrupted at Sainte-Eulalie-en-Royans because of improvements to the local Internet system. This road sign announces proudly that regional authorities are building a network in the Ardèche and Drôme départements to handle data flows described as "high-volume and very high-volume". I love their "very" (which is like the Super in Superman). It sounds great, but I'm not sure what it actually means. It's a little like the true clocked speed of Speedy Gonzales.

The photo is amusing in that the building on the left has a barely-readable old sign on the outside wall indicating that it was once the local railway station, many decades ago, for a tiny steam train (often referred to as a tram) that ran between Pont-en-Royans and Romans (in the Drôme).

[Click the image for a larger photo.]

The telecom boutique of my ISP [Internet service provider], Orange, is located in the former terminal city of the little train. So, I like to think that the soul of the lovely little train [What? You didn't know that trains have souls?] has been reincarnated in my Internet connection. Meanwhile, instead of fixing up railway lines, workers are busy at Sainte-Eulalie installing cables for the Internet network.

Don't let this photo mislead you into thinking that all the trenches are being dug manually. If I understand correctly, they only call upon human diggers when the Internet cables are located in the vicinity of existing infrastructural elements such as power lines, water ducts or sewage pipes. The rest of the time, most of the digging and cable laying is done by the following remarkable beast, whose powerful teeth (like those of a mythical prehistoric rodent such as a giant rat) could convert your front garden into a cable network in less time than it takes to down a hamburger and consult your emails at MacDonald's.

The latest models of mini-shovels are acquiring the look and feel of sports cars. [My blog friend Paul might not agree with me on that question.] The guys drive them as if they were powerful toys.

All these land-moving operations are directed from a civil-engineering base camp at the foot of the mountains.

The place where I took these photos this morning is about a minute, by automobile, from Pont-en-Royans. The antiquated steam tram took a quarter of an hour to make the journey from the bridge over the Cholet (seen in the earlier photo) to the terminus at Pont-en-Royans. As for the Internet, these words and pictures will be reaching the Antipodes, after I publish them on my blog, within a few seconds.

This Internet-oriented blog article is dedicated to the soul of the dear departed old train between Pont-en-Royans and Romans, whose rusty remains repose today, anonymously, no doubt, in some kind of graveyard for mechanical puffing elephants. If only I knew its address, I would love to send it an email. But do dead trains read their email?

Prodigy

The 67-year-old Israeli pianist and orchestral conductor Daniel Barenboïm has always appeared to me as a brilliant star of hope in our troubled heavens: the kind of fellow who makes me feel that there might be rare reasons to love my humankind.

The former child prodigy has taken up the piano once again, playing the Chopin concertos at the Salle Pleyel with the Orchestre de Paris. His personal masterpiece remains the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded in 1999 with a Palestinian academic, Edward Saïd, and composed of young Israeli, Arab and Iranian musicians.

The word "prodigy" comes from a medieval Latin term meaning omen. In the minds of his admirers, Barenboïm remains no doubt an omen of future peace in the Middle East. But I fear that countless discordant sounds will have to flow under the many bridges of hateful dissent before we hear any kind of harmonious finale.

Virtual dream house

During my week in Brittany, the focal point of my attention was my son's recently-acquired house on the cliff tops at Plouha.

To a casual observer (such as me), it looks already like a real house surrounded by vast grounds with luxuriant greenery (including a cluster of maritime pines and half a dozen rhododendron trees).

But it remains a virtual home in the sense that François is devoting his imagination and energy into transforming this simple abode into a cozy cocoon of intimate harmony. The present symbol of this ongoing transformation is his newly-constructed attic, with windows looking out onto the wonderful waters that separate France and England.

My son's dreams, over the last year or so, have embraced the idea of moving around on a moped to create movie documentaries about exotic faraway places such as Madagascar, Burkina Faso, etc. That was his primary dream, and it has become a reality in that, at present, his movies are indeed being produced and screened. By the same token, his place on the cliff tops of Plouha can be thought of as a dream house in the sense that François discovered this amazing site at exactly the same moment that he learned that his project of moped movies had been accepted. Call it a double dream come true.

Here's another ordinary view from the field in front of his house:

While speaking with genuine enthusiasm about my son's dreams, I have to admit that my own dream home at Gamone has become, by the force of things (as they say wisely in French), a project that concerns, henceforth, only me. This is normal, in the modern world, where a son is no longer expected to inherit, let alone develop and bring to fruition, the dreams of his father. If my son doesn't mind, I'll borrow the title of this blog article, Virtual dream house, and make a lukewarm attempt, with a wisp of paternal sadness, to convince my readers that I was thinking, in fact, about my humble home at Gamone.

Ocean silence

My short trip to Brittany is drawing to an end. Yesterday afternoon, we returned to the cliffs of Plouha to inspect the work being carried out by François on his future home. He hasn't yet completed the electrical wiring and plumbing, which means that he carries on residing at Christine's place in nearby Gommenec'h. Meanwhile, he has built a totally new upper floor, which will be his bedroom and office. He has installed a pair of large roof windows, which open out onto a magnificent ocean view. François has already set up a chair and a makeshift table on which he has posed a telescope, purchased for ten euros in a second-hand shop. Clearly, he has spent quite some time peering out over the waters, because he seems to have acquired precise knowledge concerning the appearance and daily behavior of the small boats that drift around there for one reason or another.

There's an atmosphere of misty solitude, silence and peace… which reminds me of my cliffs and mountains at Gamone.

The path along the top of the cliffs used to be the regular itinerary of customs inspectors on the lookout for smugglers. François tells us that local folk are aware of the existence of tracks, hidden beneath the ferns and bushes, that lead down to the edge of the water, but it would be dangerous to search for them, since the cliffs are often abrupt.

Moving cautiously to the edge of the path, you can glimpse a tiny pebble beach alongside jagged rocks that are the home of cormorants and gulls. But the only access to this beach would be from the water.

This tiny rocky island has a curious name, Mauve, which has nothing to do with its color. It's funny to think that, beyond the horizon, the English Channel is one of the world's busiest ocean itineraries.

For the Skyvington family, the custom officers' track is rapidly becoming one of our busiest photographic itineraries.

On the way back to house, I made the remark that it's a setting I would like to rediscover in winter, when the sea and sky are the color of steel, and the fields are icy.

I've spoken of silence. In fact, one hears constantly the soft eternal sound of water lapping up rhythmically against the rocks. One imagines this magnificent site, too, in a tempest. I have a sudden vision of the past, with uniformed customs men slipping and sliding on the damp stones as they pursue, shouting, a fleeing smuggler, who finally disappears into the thicket. Truly, it's a place that stirs constantly the visitor's imagination.

He is the champion

I'm happy to see an Australian road cyclist achieving a major victory, and I'm tremendously pleased that the victor should be Cadel Evans, who has had a rough time this year. I hope he'll have a better employer next year, and that he'll be present in Geelong (Australia), in a year's time, to defend his rainbow jersey.

Seaside excursion

In yesterday's blog, entitled Castle in Brittany [display], I briefly presented the Roche-Jagu castle, on the banks of a tidal river called the Trieux. Here's a splendid view of the site [photo © Olivier Chapuis]:

Motorists cross over this river near the lovely port of Lezardrieux:

The estuary of the Trieux is located a few kilometers to the north at the village of Loguivy.

Small boats based at Loguivy place lobster traps out in the Manche [the French name for the English Channel].

After leaving Loguivy, we drove to the secluded beach village of Bréhec. I took the following photo of this tiny poem of peaceful Breton beauty from the slopes of a neighboring promontory:

François took Christine and me to lunch at the Safran: a small restaurant near the beach.

It's an excellent place, with fine simple dishes. I was amused to learn that the friendly woman who runs the Safran actually migrated to Bréhec, not so long ago, from the mountain town of Villard-de-Lans… just up the road from my home in Choranche. As they say in the classics: It's a small world.

Castle in Brittany

Christine took me to a nearby castle named Roche-Jagu, high above the River Trieux on the edge of a vast wooded domain.

This castle, which dates from 1405, is owned and managed by the regional council of the Côtes d'Armor, which has perfectly restored the ancient edifice and planted flowers and vegetation.

At present, the castle houses an exhibition of the paintings of Maurice Denis [1870-1943], who lived not far away, in Perros-Guirec.

The global effect of the castle, the paintings, the gardens, the river and the surrounding landscape is superb. In the midst of the history, the culture and the sheer beauty, there's a huge accent, too, on ecology. I was overwhelmed by the splendor of the place.

Dog with a ball

Christine's dog Gamone (daughter of my Sophia) is enraptured by this soft rubber ball… which once belonged to Natacha's dog Jojo.

She takes it around with her and deposits it at the feet of anybody who's likely to toss it away, so she can race after it. That is truly Gamone's idea of bliss.

Gamone is capable of chasing after that ball until she's totally exhausted, almost to a life-threatening degree. This happened recently when a visiting child carried on throwing the ball for half an hour.

I built this pine-wood kennel long ago for my first dog, named Bruno. Then I brought it up to Brittany in my trailer, and it has become Gamone's rainy-days shelter.

Christine told me a delightful story. At the seaside, her dog loves to swim. At a nearby beach, orange buoys are attached to lobster traps. Gamone has got into the habit of swimming out to such buoys to make sure that it's not her rubber ball that's floating out on the water. After taking a moment to verify that this is not the case, she swims calmly back to the beach. I wonder what Gamone must think when she sees a reddish moon rising over Gommenec'h.

Old-time Brittany

Christine lives at Gommenec'h. Yesterday morning, François drove me to a splendid little village, not far away from here, named St-Jacques. Alongside the church, in the middle of the village, there's a typically Breton stone calvary.

There's also an ancient holy well.

Following a local custom, François and I threw coins over our shoulders, into the well, while making wishes. Later, my son took me to a grocery shop, run by an old lady named Madeleine, in the nearby village of Le Faouët (not to be confused with a town of that name, elsewhere in Brittany).

We had a beer there, in a setting that looks as if it has emerged from the 19th century.

It's the kind of universal village store in which you can buy bread, fruit and vegetables, newspapers, cigarettes, etc.

In fact, it reminds me of country stores that still existed in Australia when I was a kid… with, of course, one big difference. In my native land, it would have been out of the question to sit down at a table and drink a beer.

Rapid trip to Brittany

The weather at Gamone has been damp over the last week, preventing me from carrying on work in my future rose garden. So, I decided to leave my dog Sophia in the excellent boarding kennels at Alixan, just alongside the Valence TGV (high-speed train) station, and to spend a few days in Brittany. Truly, crossing France in a TGV is a luxurious experience, which is not only rapid but relatively inexpensive (compared to a car trip).

Yesterday afternoon, as soon as Christine picked me up at Guingamp, we visited our son's recently-acquired property at Plouha, where he is busy restoring the house. The view of the calm English Channel from this field of cauliflowers in front of his house is truly breathtaking.

François happens to have settled in what can be described as a genealogical setting. His mother's Breton ancestors have lived for centuries in the nearby farming country, while his father's Skyvington ancestors came from Dorset, on the northern edge of the waters you see in the above photo.