Down by the riverside

It takes a special attraction to bring my neighbor Dédé Repellin down to Pont-en-Royans, and get him leaning over the stone parapet and staring down into the Bourne like a run-of-the-mill tourist.

Here's the special attraction:

This huge mobile elevator work platform enabled a couple of workers to install a plastic tarpaulin trough along the stone wall. Repair work will soon start on this section of the wall, and the purpose of the trough is to catch fragments of old stone and mortar instead of letting them drop down onto the vegetation on the banks of the Bourne. In other words, the future stone craftsmen will be able to work cleanly (no doubt from cables hung down over the parapet) without making a mess of the surroundings. Incidentally, the installation of the tarpaulins demonstrates the extent to which environmental issues are handled seriously these days. Not so long ago, workers would have simply let their rubbish fall down into the river.

Specialists in the domain of mobile work platforms (which is not my case) will recognize immediately that the device is not being used here in an orthodox fashion. The telescopic boom is designed to take the platform up in the air to a maximum height of some fifty meters, whereas it's being used here to attain a "negative height" (expression employed by the operator) whose maximum value is merely ten meters.

The French truck-driver operates the platform. The two fellows installing the tarpaulin were Portuguese and Polish, and they didn't appear to speak a word of French.

This stretch of the Bourne appears to be turbulent, but the volume and behavior of the water vary constantly, depending on the recent meteorological conditions up on the Vercors plateau. For the last few days, there has been no rain here, and this is a view of the Bourne this afternoon, taken at approximately the same spot:

Behind the big square rocks in the foreground, the waterfalls have disappeared. So, what is actually happening here as far as the river is concerned? To answer that question, we need to move upstream some fifty meters, to a point just above the patch of white frothy water in the upper right-hand corner of the previous photo. Here's what we find:

As you can see, somebody has built a small primitive dam here. The river is channeled into what looks like a tiny cavern, where it promptly overflows, as shown here:

Normally, the stream of water created by the dam should flow along the channel cut into the cliff, which you can see distinctly in the above photo. The problem is that a big chunk of the stonework has fallen out of this channel, creating a big hole that allows all the water to escape… whence the white frothy stream.

Exceptionally, the other day, when I was taking photos of the mobile platform, there was a huge volume of water in the Bourne. Consequently, some of the water leaving the dam actually got past the hole at the start of the channel. Then, however, it encountered a section of the rock channel where a dozen meters of the stone wall have disappeared, as seen here:

The waterfalls that I photographed the other day were caused by water spilling through this big break in the old channel.

Now, what was the intended purpose of the dam and the stone channel? A century ago, a local engineer built this system in order to canalize part of the flow of the Bourne into a narrow tunnel through the rock. At the point where this falling water rejoined the Bourne, a hundred meters downstream, it drove a turbine to generate electricity for the village of Pont-en-Royans. In the following photo, you can see the rusty remains of the equipment used to regulate the volume of water about to enter the tunnel.

But, because of the damaged channel, no water has entered this tunnel for half a century.

Today, down below the famous dwellings attached to the cliff face, visitors to Pont-en-Royans probably wonder why the ugly red-brick structure in the middle of the following photo is left standing.

This building, located at the exit of the tunnel, housed the turbine and other equipment for the generation and distribution of electricity. As far as I know, it's still full of archaic hardware. Meanwhile, it remains an element of the riverside landscape of Pont-en-Royans, protected automatically by the French national heritage authorities. So, even though the structure is unattractive and has been useless for ages, it's likely to be around for a long time to come.

Miracle of Cana

Rowan Atkinson is good in the role of an Anglican parson.



This sketch is quite brilliant in that it highlights the role of Jesus (if indeed he existed) as a showman performing demonstrations of magic.

BREAKING NEWS: An article in today's The Australian, entitled Catholics reach back to church tradition, indicates that a new English-language version of the Roman Missal corrects the revolutionary colloquial style introduced after Vatican II. The article contains a delightful misprint: "… the new translation was in accord with the Church's 1963 text Constitution on the Scared Liturgy." I imagine liturgy that's frightened to hell because it's so audacious. Seriously, this is yet another case of Ratzinger's desire to move backwards. In any case, I prefer the liturgical style of the Reverend Rowan Atkinson.

Birds have moved in

In my article of 26 February 2010 entitled Building for the birds [display], I described my construction of a nesting box for mésanges (common tits).

A couple of weeks ago, when my ex-neighbor Bob caught sight of this object attached to a thick branch of one of my linden trees, he immediately started to make fun of it, claiming that no self-respecting bird would ever decide to build a nest in such an artificial contraption. Bob was particularly troubled by the small interior balcony, saying that the parents would be afraid that their babies would climb through the hole and fall to their death. I tried to convince him that experts point out that this kind of balcony is a luxury that is greatly appreciated by the birds when they enter or leave the box. Apparently it gives them a place to rest for a second or so while they're summing up the situation and deciding what to do next.

Over the last couple of days, I've noticed that a male mésange has been flitting around the box in a regular pattern, as if he were standing guard over it. He can be seen in the background of the above photo. This afternoon, I finally discovered that he was periodically entering and leaving the box.

In the above photo, he is clinging to the edge of the circular hole and taking a rapid look inside to make sure that everything's OK. (The green haze in these photos is caused by out-of-focus leaves on branches moving in the breeze.) I imagine that, down at the bottom of the box, his female companion is already nesting.

Bob was finally interested to see that a couple of birds have accepted this abode. I explained to him that I had deliberately installed the box at a certain distance from the branch in order to prevent small rodents from trying to enter the bird house and eat the eggs.

Raped by a parrot

This amusing video shows Stephen Fry and the zoologist Mark Carwardine in an encounter with a fat flightless parrot called a kakapo, which is almost extinct.



Travel warning. Don't be foolish enough to try to smuggle a copy of this porn video into Australia. These images were shot in New Zealand, which (as everybody knows by now) is a depraved land as far as fornication with animals is concerned. We don't know if the parrot had attained the legal age limit for consensual sex. In any case, this sort of behavior in an outdoor setting, where innocent children could pass by, is quite indecent. Your electronic equipment is likely to be seized by Australian customs officers, and you could be sent to a convict colony on Norfolk Island while their investigations are under way.

Lego life

Back at the time I became interested in so-called artificial intelligence, and started work on my book entitled Machina Sapiens, I did not imagine that the most direct link between computing concepts (such as programming) and human beings would be established, not through attempting to simulate what we think of as intelligence, but rather by synthesizing life itself. Craig Venter has just made a gigantic breakthrough in this domain.



Obviously, this activity is Promethean. Man is starting to play with the fire of the gods, and nobody knows where this work will lead. But it's unthinkable that it could be halted.

Cycling tragedy

I'm applying the word "tragedy" to the personal case of Floyd Landis. After getting over the initial shock of his turnabout, I'm left with a puzzling query: What has caused Landis to make his confession, nearly four years after his personal eviction from the Tour? Although I don't claim to have any firm answers to this question, I believe that we're confronted with an individual who's probably in a dark state of both anguish and anger.

I've heard (without being able to verify such things) that Landis has lost his fortune, his home and his family while trying to prove that he was unjustly deprived of his Tour title. Meanwhile, last year, he saw the organizers of the Tour de France invite his old teammate Lance Armstrong back into the legendary race. Not only is Armstrong present as a welcome guest, but he's surrounded by an aura of veneration through his sporting determination and longevity, and through his work in the domain of cancer care. To say the least, Landis is surely bitter, and an observer might well imagine that yesterday's sensational turnabout was inspired by rage and revenge.

Up until the last moment, the organizers of the Tour de France will retain the right to exclude certain riders, or even an entire team, from the event that starts on 3 July 2010. Decisions at that level will surely represent the moment of verity of this whole affair, because the organizers probably have a pretty good idea, by now, of where the truth lies… and where the future interests of the Tour de France lie. If the Tour organizers say it's OK for Armstrong to participate, then the Texan will be permanently vindicated, and Landis will be cast more deeply than ever into outer darkness.

Maybe, though, I should not have included the word "permanently" in that last sentence. The evolution of technical knowledge and experience about doping and relevant testing is advancing in ways that remind me (metaphorically) of the progress of DNA tests in forensic medicine. If physiologists have the impression that certain situations still remain suspicious, they'll certainly retain the urine and blood samples while science and technology strive to catch up with the breakaway bunch.

For Armstrong, yesterday was an eventful day, in more ways than one:



The latest news is that he didn't break any bones in this crash in California.

This morning, I came upon a interesting American viewpoint on the Landis revelations: an article by Michael Rosenberg entitled Latest accusation makes it hard not to believe Lance Armstrong doped up [display]. The journalist concludes: The American people seem to believe Lance Armstrong is a cancer-fighting activist instead of another athlete who used performance-enhancing drugs. But you know what? He might be both.

Talking about invisible things

Nowadays, my children Emmanuelle and François do a lot of traveling, often for professional reasons. I think back with nostalgia to the days in 1978 when I suggested that they might accompany me on an excursion to England and Scotland when I was working on my future tourist guide. One of the highlights of our trip was a car journey alongside Loch Ness. Naturally, the children quizzed me at length for precise information concerning the monster. My 9-year-old son digested all these explanations in silence, obviously trying to form his own personal analysis of the affair. When his words emerged, they were a splendid summary of subtle psychology, bordering on existentialist philosophy.

FRANCOIS: "Papa, suppose the monster exists, hidden in the depths of Loch Ness. Do you think he worries a lot about whether or not we tourists exist?"

WILLIAM: "No, I don't suppose so."

FRANCOIS: "Well, if the monster isn't worrying a lot about whether or not we tourists exist, then why should all of us be wasting our time talking about whether or not the monster exists?"

I seem to recall that this line of thought corresponds to an argument in one of the appendices of the wonderful novel by Rebecca Goldstein, which I described recently in an article entitled God travels incognito [display]. In blunt negative terms: If God doesn't give a damn about us, then why care about Him? My son's question reminds me, above all, of the ad on the atheist bus:

Normally, we humans are on firm grounds when we talk about "things" that we can actually see, like our homes and our neighborhoods, our families and friends, etc. Past memories (like the story I've just told) are almost in that visible category, because we're absolutely convinced that we did in fact see the people and places we describe, once upon a time. On the other hand, there's a big category of "things" that we talk about regularly, without ever having seen them… like the Loch Ness monster. The "things" I'm thinking of are… thoughts in the minds of other people. This is an intriguing branch of contemporary psychology designated by an unusual but nevertheless precise expression: the theory of mind. Here's a tiny video masterpiece that sums up this subject very nicely:



Robert Seyfarth has done a wonderful didactic job in presenting these sophisticated notions so tersely. Recently, by chance, I've noticed quite a few references to this kind of intellectual inquiry, which seems to be currently fashionable. Somebody pointed out that, in the narrations of an "ordinary" novelist such as Jane Austen (it goes without saying that she's in no way "ordinary"), the convoluted descriptions of what is said to be going on in the minds of her characters are extraordinarily complex. Indeed, on the reader's part, it takes a high degree of intelligence and concentration to be able to keep track of what's happening.

In French, a delightful little expression designates all this invisible stuff that is so vital in human relationships. It's referred to as the non-dit: the things that are "not said". Maybe the title of this article should be Talking (and NOT talking) about invisible things.

Optical illusion

This amazing little video was produced by pointing a camera at a real-world scene composed of four tracks that guide the movements of rolling marbles:



As soon as the table is turned around, providing you with a view of the scene from the opposite side, you can immediately see the tricks behind the illusion. The tracks simply slope downward towards their intersection, and they're designed in such a way that, when viewed from a certain angle, they seem to slope upward. The creator of this excellent illusion is Koukichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for the Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan.

Vercors bike business created by English couple

In the charming village of St-Jean-en-Vercors, Roger and Teresa have created a high-quality gite, called Vélo Vercors, for cycling enthusiasts who would like to ride through the magical landscapes of the Vercors.

[Click the photo to access their website.]

The Vercors is a fabulous place, which should ideally be visited in a leisurely style. What better solution than a bike?

Be wary of Aussie customs

I found this cute image on the web:

It seems to have something to do with customs (the second dog has apparently detected something smelly), but the connection is fuzzy… much like Aussie customs.

Over three years ago, I wrote an article entitled Rambo caught with his pants down [display] on the subject of zealous customs officers in Australia. I still laugh whenever I think of my friend Geoff getting all his precious cans and jars of foie-gras confiscated. "Jeez mate, you don't realize what you're doing: the possible harm you could have caused. French shit like that could kill our local farmers and poison the Australian food and agriculture industries."

Back in 2006, when I last visited my native land, I took my MacBook with me, which enabled me to remain in contact with my French family through emails. (I didn't start my Antipodes blog until a few months later.) Today, in the unlikely event of my deciding to revisit Australia, I would be wary of entering the country with my portable computer, because the nation seems to have gone all wowserish in a "Big Brother" fascist fashion. The customs people would be capable of finding undesirable stuff on my hard disk: I don't know what (since I don't collect child porn), but I wouldn't trust them. Maybe they would find rude references to Stephen Conroy, or shit of that kind. In other words, they could easily decide to "do a Goossens" on me.

Click the banner to read an article on this subject in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald. Prying into a visitor's computer is a shocking example of the abuse of civil liberties, which I find intolerable. Every nation ends up with the kind of society it deserves. But I wouldn't wish to live in such a degenerate society.

Bitter champagne

On the eve of the Tour de France in 2006, there was a vast dope-oriented cleanup. The organizers published a short list of undesirable riders: the Italian Ivan Basso, the Spaniards Francesco Mancebo and Oscar Sevilla, and the German Jan Ullrich. Finally, the Tour was won by an American, Floyd Landis, who seemed to be as clean as they come. Wasn't he brought up in a pious Mennonite environment in a rural village named Farmersville in Pennsylvania?

The champagne had a bitter aftertaste. Tests revealed that Landis had been doped with EPO, and he was stripped of his victory in the Tour.

A report in The Wall Street Journal has just revealed that Landis has finally admitted that he used dope. He also made accusations concerning former teammates Lance Armstrong and George Hincapie. This long-overdue mea culpa is surely going to stir up a lot of shit during the weeks leading up to the forthcoming Tour de France.

People interested in the case of Armstrong should consult a lengthy in-depth interview (that dates from 2009) with the Australian EPO specialist Michael Ashenden, who gives me the impression that he knows what he's talking about. [Click the photo to access this interview.]

Kitsch roundabout

In my recent post entitled France can be disfigured [display], I evoked the subject of decorated traffic roundabouts. This gangrene has just infected the neighboring village of St-Laurent-en-Royans.

In the mind of the "artist", this ridiculous Disneyland monstrosity (located alongside a dull low-budget housing zone) is intended, no doubt, to evoke a nearby masterpiece: the ancient Chartreux Bridge.

This splendid bridge was built over the Cholet by the monks of the Carthusian monastery of the Val Sainte-Marie in Bouvantes, to facilitate their journeys to and from the vineyards of Choranche.

René Magritte's celebrated painting of a pipe bears an intriguing caption: This is NOT a pipe. Maybe we should erect a sign on the ugly kitsch roundabout at St-Laurent-en-Royans stating: This is NOT a Chartreux bridge.

There might be a more conclusive solution. My old Young friend Bruce Hudson [sort out the sense of that enigmatic designation], who picks up all sorts of comical stuff from the Web, sent me this lovely image:

My archaic Citroën is not intended to run forever… well almost. Although it's a perfectly usable vehicle (the proof: I use it all the time), its current resale value is zero, and I'll inevitably have to get around to replacing it one of these days… once I've erected a car shelter on the recently-constructed ramp [display]. Wouldn't it be a lovely departing gesture if my old automobile, impregnated with the historic aura of a former Choranche vineyard (through being left outside at Gamone in rain, hail and snow), were to end its life by making a tiny symbolic act of an anti-Disneyland nature…

Jazz at Presles

On the rare occasions that I encounter a hitchhiker on the road below my house, I feel obliged to halt and see if I can be of help, particularly if it's a moment, like this afternoon, when there aren't too many vehicles in the vicinity. The young lady named Nina, from Katoomba (Blue Mountains, Australia), was more than happy to share the front seat with Sophia. She had made a booking to spend a few days up at Presles, with intentions of maybe doing a bit of rock climbing.

Nina had found the best address in the world, chez Ezio.

My wonderful friend Ezio is transforming his place, in an idyllic mountain setting, into a celebrated temple of modern jazz.

It's just twenty minutes up the road from Gamone. Yet I've never got around to attending Ezio's concerts… through laziness, Internet addiction, and my perfectly-understandable wintry-evening habit of snuggling into a cozy fireplace spot and watching TV.

I promised Ezio that I'll abandon these apathetic habits for a concert at Presles next Friday evening… and maybe even a long weekend of jazz. What a wonderful cultural environment, here in the wilderness!

Mysterious visitor

Last November, acting on advice from the Blogger guru Chuck [display], I installed a flag counter at the end of the Antipodes blog. This amusing gadget has revealed, for example, that I appear to be receiving more and more visits, proportionally, from US readers (over a third, which pleases me greatly).

This morning, the flag counter looked like this:

Here, the Union Jack simply indicates that another British visitor dropped in this morning. It's the information on the right that puzzles me: the presence of a visitor, on Saturday, whose flag was unknown! I've been trying to imagine the possible origin of this mysterious visitor. The most likely explanation is that he/she belongs to one of the lesser known autonomous territories [display Wikipedia list] whose flags have not yet become familiar. Another plausible possibility is that my blog was visited by a citizen of a so-called micronation [display Wikipedia article] such as the celebrated Province of Bumbunga in South Australia, founded in the 1970s by a mad Englishman.

Finally, there are more exotic possibilities. I've been wondering whether Saturday's visitor might have been, say, a Martian, or even an envoy of the Holy Ghost, beamed in on a divine laser, with his unknown flag floating in the photon breeze.

The most frustrating aspect of this mysterious visit to Antipodes is the shocking fact that the rude bugger didn't even leave us a comment.

Barriers to my zeal

Readers of the Antipodes blog will have noticed that my enthusiasm for the ideas of Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins is such that I have a tendency towards evangelism: a constant wish to spread the Good Word. Well, at times, I've run into problems. Recently, in the course of an impromptu lunch-table conversation with Natacha and Alain, I drifted unthinkingly into a spontaneous presentation of the basic facts of Darwinian evolution. I chose an unlikely creature as the hero of my demonstration: the parasitic tick that attaches itself to mammals such as dogs and humans, and sucks blood.

A friend once told me about tick behavior. Since then, I've remained fascinated by the strange lifestyle of this creature, whose destiny appears to be invested in the tick equivalent of a perpetual grand lottery of a Zen Buddhist variety. More precisely, a young tick has a one-track mind, and that track leads to the tip of a branch of weed where the creature sets up its residence. There, it hangs upside-down, motionless, day and night, with its outstretched claws facing the heavens, like a religious hermit in a trance, waiting for a godsend: namely, the chance arrival of a warm-blooded mammal to which it can immediately attach itself, to suck blood. If such an animal arrives on the scene, then the tick can survive, indeed thrive. If not, it dies. Now, from a Darwinian point of view, that sounds like a good story. But Natacha (whom I had imagined naively as a Darwinian) turned out to be reluctant to allow me to pursue joyfully my storyteller's role.

NATACHA: "William, have you ever actually been in close contact with a tick, in the kind of situation you're describing?"

WILLIAM: "Well, not exactly, because the ticks are out there in the open fields, perched on their weed stems, waiting for a beast to pass by. But we can't necessarily see them."

NATACHA: "You seem to be describing a horde of goblins…"

The bottom fell out of my didactic presentation of a tick-oriented Darwinian case study. It never took off. The ticks are still waiting there, patiently…

Later, I was under the charm of the Dawkins presentation of dam-building beavers, which constitute a spectacular case study in The Extended Phenotype (which the author seems to think of as his major scientific publication). Basically, the general idea is that a beaver's genes result in the existence of dams in exactly the same way that my friend's genes, say, produced her blue eyes. There's an obvious difference, one might object. The blue eyes are actually an intimate part of my friend, whereas nobody would seriously suggest that the gigantic log constructions are bodily appendages of their beaver builders. Dawkins astounds us by saying no, there's no essential difference. The beaver's determination to build dams and my friend's blue eyes can both be considered as phenotypes of the individual's genetic heritage. The fact that the color of my friend's eyes is inside (her body), as it were, while the presence of the beavers' dam is outside (their bodies), changes nothing. The blueness and the "damness" are perfectly comparable consequences of the phenotypical effects of genes.

Well, in much the same way that I had wished to transmit my Darwinian enthusiasm to Natacha, I found myself obsessed by the challenge of telling my son François about the wonders of beaver dam-builders, as explained by Dawkins.

WILLIAM: "François, imagine a young beaver who gives the impression that he's about to decide what he's going to do with his life. Is it imaginable that he might be in a position to choose between a traditional dam-building existence and some other lifestyle that has nothing to do with building dams?"

Retrospectively, I realize that the wording of my rhetorical question was silly, falsely naive, indeed awkward and wrong to the point of offering my son an invitation to produce the following delightful scenario, entitled The Emancipated Adolescent Beaver, which annihilated instantly my zealous didactic pretensions:

FRANCOIS: "Yeah, man, I'm a young beaver, and I decided I don't have no time for all that old shit from my parents about buildin' dams. They been doin' it for ages, but it don't get them nowhere. Ain't no sense in it, believe me. They been doin' that out in the wild country. Me, I moved into the city. Shit, man, on a Saturday night, do you see me tellin' the brothers and sisters that I ain't gonna stay with them, coz I got a mother-fucken dam to build? Fuck that, man. I'm an emancipated beaver…"

Obviously, I'm in need of better Darwinian/Dawkinsian examples.

Special spire

In the village of Choranche, our church is humble but ancient. It was one of two churches in the commune of Choranche, mentioned for the first time in a financial assessment [pouillé] carried out by the diocese of Grenoble in 1104. In that document, the village church was referred to in Latin as ecclesia Beata Mariæ de Chauranchis : the church of Saint Mary of Choranche.

The stone structure that we see today has resulted, no doubt, from numerous modifications to the primitive church over the centuries. The square church bell-tower, of a distinctive Dauphiné style, is surely quite ancient. Its squat red-tiled spire is surrounded at the base by four short stone pillars, standing like sentinels at the points of the compass. Now, you have to walk around to the other side of the church to discover that this red spire of the tiny church of Saint Mary of Choranche has an unexpected feature that maybe makes it unique among all the countless village churches of France.

As you see, the spire of our ancient church has a square skylight, of the modern velux variety, to let in the light of the Holy Spirit. Tineke tells me that the decision to install this roof window resulted from a municipal vote that was carried out a couple of decades ago, when the mayor of Choranche was Jean-Louis Salazard. But nobody, today, seems to be able to throw light upon the precise technical purpose of this velux. As far as we know, the spire has never been the abode of a dwarf Quasimodo. So, we have no idea why the municipality decided, once upon a time, that light was needed in this remote extremity of the ancient church. Let's call it a Christian mystery.

God said: "Let there be light."
And there was skylight.

Australians in action

Over the weekend, the world has witnessed three splendid victories of Australians. First, there was the arrival in Sydney of 16-year-old Jessica Watson, who had just sailed non-stop around the globe.

Then there was the impressive victory of world champion Cadel Evans in a stage of the Tour of Italy.

Finally, there was the stunning victory of Mark Webber in the Grand Prix of Monaco.

In each of these three domains, the hero/heroine was backed up by solid sponsors with tons of cash, but their achievements were nevertheless heroic at a sporting level, and they deserve our admiration. Besides, one has the impression that, for each of these three exceptional individuals, even greater victories await them…

Tineke's portrait of Sophia

From time to time (but not often), I've met up with gifted artists capable of creating portraits. On such occasions, I've always wondered naively: How do they do it? This skill has intrigued me greatly in the case of my Choranche neighbor Tineke Bot, with whom I've had countless fascinating conversations about the ways in which she perceives the world around her. I've had opportunities of noticing, often in trivial contexts, that Tineke's awareness of the physical environment of forms and colors in which she exists is surely many times more subtle and sensitive than my own vision of these same things. At times, she reminds me of the proverbial Eskimo with his dozens of words for all the many kinds of snow. The other day, on the telephone, I was deploring the fact that the current abundance of wetness and scarcity of sunshine at Choranche have given rise to a uniformly green environment in which there are not yet any colorful flowers (apart from yellow buttercups in the fields). In this context, Tineke exclaimed her enchantment upon the discovery of such a vast array of subtly different kinds of greenness, forming a magical mosaic all around her.

As an accomplished artist (sculpture, painting, drawing, etc), Tineke demonstrates constantly that, not only does she see the world with fine sensitivity, but she can transmit her special visions through the works she creates… even in the case of a hastily-sketched portrait of my dog Sophia.

This morning, I took this photo of Sophia's head in about the same position as for Tineke's portrait:

Tineke obliged Sophia to participate in a sitting, as it were, as she needed to have the dog directly in front of her, staring up at her while she was executing her drawing. I was amused to find that Tineke's husband Serge has apparently become an essential collaborator in this kind of animal portrait project. He crouched alongside Tineke and distributed little bits of bread to Sophia throughout the sitting, in order to keep the dog more-or-less fixed in the necessary spot. If I understand correctly, Serge became patient and proficient in this technique with sheep, back at the time that Tineke was creating little masterpieces such as this one:

In the animal domain, Tineke has also done fine sketches of horses.

The brown horse, momentarily endowed with Tineke's colorful vision of the landscape, seems to be saying to itself, in amazement: "Wow, the Vercors is truly extraordinary today!"

We're alright, Jack!

Once upon a time, up until quite recently, there was a semblance of mutual concern, at a political level, between elected Australians and their counterparts in our dear "mother country". Over the weekend, the Aussie media has been enthusing about the budget joy of Laborites down under:

And they've been saying sweet fuck all (well, what might they say?) about the woes of their theoretical brethren in Britain:

This, to my mind, is as it should be. So, I won't cry crocodile tears and complain. Let me just shed a tiny nostalgic tear about the foregone era when we Leftists "of British blood" (please note the presence of my inverted commas) both mattered, together.

Views from the village

I don't spend much time in the village of Choranche, because it's a couple of kilometers up in the "wrong direction". What I mean to say is that, when my destination is Pont-en-Royans or Saint-Marcellin, not to mention Grenoble or Valence, I'm obliged to turn my back on the village of Choranche. Besides, there's not much to do or see there… unless, on rare occasions, I need to visit the municipal office. But I often drive into the village of Choranche out of curiosity, to see if anything has changed. In general, needless to say, nothing has changed there. I lay my head willingly on a block in saying that nothing could ever change in the village of Choranche. A village observer has the impression that everything stopped, long ago, with the following image:

Today, the village offers us a magnificent view of my magic mountain, the misty Cournouze:

In the opposite direction, we have the fabulous cliffs of Presles:

And, between these two geological masterpieces, there's a humble but beautiful stream, the Bourne:

From my lookout up on the slopes of Gamone, I sense constantly the mystical tellurian presence of these three great entities that dominate our landscape: the fairy-tale mountain to the south, the stark cliffs to the north, and the river in between. But it's a fact that Choranche village is a good place to take photos of these geological giants.

Nice key ring, noble NGO

I've always liked this key ring, which was given to me by my daughter Emmanuelle soon after I moved into Gamone and invited the young donkey Moshé (born in a neighboring valley) to join me.

At that time, this key ring was associated with a French-based NGO [nongovernmental organization]: Veterinaries without borders.

Recently, a reference to agronomists has been inserted into the NGO's title. [Click the banner to visit their French-language website.] Their noble goal consists of using agronomic and veterinary know-how in the planetary combat against hunger.

The donkey is an excellent symbol for the quest for durable solutions… if only because the beast itself might be thought of as a kind of living "durable solution" that has come down to us intact from African prehistory. Admittedly, here at Gamone, my two donkeys happen to be living in an exceptional environment, where there's always something to eat… even in winter, when there's half a meter of snow on the slopes. For their ancestors in parched lands, life was surely much harsher.

Out of line

In general, the weather here is not too bad, but there's a tendency towards dampness. Admittedly, we don't live in a monsoon zone, fierce storms are rare, and we don't have the kind of nonstop drizzle that characterizes, say, Brittany. Nevertheless, it's rare, at this time of the year, to be able to work outside in perfectly dry conditions for more than a few hours. I realize now that the only way of accomplishing a reasonable amount of outdoor work at Gamone consists of being constantly prepared, like a conscientious Boy Scout (that's to say, primarily, being dressed permanently in working clothes and boots, even though I might be seated in front of my computer), and dashing into tasks as soon as there's a break in the wetness.

[At the moment I was writing that last sentence, while dressed in muddy green overalls, I suddenly heard the sound of a wall of rainwater beating down upon Gamone, punctuated by flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. The electric power went off. Since I could no longer do anything useful here, I decided to drive into town to buy food at the supermarket. On the way, I saw places where torrential rain had washed away roadside embankments, and formed vast puddles of water. At two spots, emergency road crews were already in action trying to clean up the mess. Truly, I should have never written the above paragraph!]

Over the six months or so, much of the preparation of my garden has been carried out in such conditions, by taking advantage of suitable time slots before or after falls of snow or rain, and when it's not freezing cold. Consequently, certain operations were performed hastily, sometimes too hastily. Yesterday, Bob pointed out to me that the square garden plot in the far right-hand corner is not in precise alignment with its neighbors. He claimed that it's some 5 centimeters in advance of its correct position. Now, up until Bob's remark, I had never noticed this, although I recall that I had a lot of trouble with this last plot, mainly because I was adjusting it in poor weather conditions. (It's convenient to be able to blame the weather, rather than my incompetency.) Well, in the wake of Bob's criticism, I found the error sticking out like a proverbial sore thumb. Yesterday, every time I glanced down at my garden, I was aware of this alignment discrepancy. Finally, during a calm slot in the weather, I got to work digging, with a view to bringing the wooden frame into correct alignment. Here's the present situation:

But it's still too wet to pursue the job...

Awards to ingenious inventors

Everybody in France has heard of the Concours Lépine, which has become part of popular (people-oriented) French culture. Started in 1901, it's an annual competition aimed at promoting ingenious inventors. Louis Lépine was a lawyer with extensive experience in regional administration. Appointed police prefect of the Seine in 1893, he created several fundamental entities that still exist today. For example, he organized the first service for handling lost-and-found objects. He inaugurated a unit of river police in boats on the Seine, and a unit of police on bicycles. He imagined the excellent idea of equipping Paris policemen with a white baton and a silver whistle. He installed hundreds of emergency phones enabling the public to contact firemen and policemen. He invented one-way streets, just as he was the founder of a forensic police service and even a police museum in Paris (where I was able to carry out interesting research into a notorious English personage named Clotworthy Skeffington, held in debtors' prisons in Paris until his escape on the eve of the storming of the Bastille in 1789). As for the idea of starting a competition for inventions, Lépine was motivated by the necessity of doing something to revigorate the lethargic state of the manufacture of toys and small hardware items by Paris craftsmen.

This year's award acclaims a device named Top-Braille whose purpose is so praiseworthy that it's strange it wasn't invented ages ago. It's possible that the idea has always been in people's minds but, to make it a reality, inventors needed to wait until the necessary technology was available. The device simply scans written text and translates it either into Braille dots or an audio version.

Great inventions that were initially award-winners at the Concours Lépine include the ballpoint pen, the two-stroke motor, the steam iron and contact lenses.

Disconnected tomorrow, Tuesday, May 11

A couple of young guys just dropped in to inform me that, all day tomorrow, the electricity will be cut in the neighborhood while they clear tree branches that could fall onto the electric cables. The main threat of this kind at Gamone is due to a group of four or five aged walnut trees, which have been withering away for ages. I asked the guys if, instead of merely lopping off branches, they would be prepared to cut down the entire trees in question. That suits them fine, so long as I clean up the mess afterward. No problem. I'll be able to do that with my chainsaw as soon as the weather's dry, then I'll burn the wood.

So, tomorrow, I'll be without Internet and telephone.

Snail mail

In last Saturday's article entitled Sophia photo update [display], I explained that I had found a colony of baby snails a hundred meters up the road, and that I've been bringing some of these tiny creatures back to a place near the house. Well, my Swedish friend Eric M Nilsson has just sent me an email in which he reacts with astonishment to this news. Here's my translation of Eric's email:

So, you've been bringing snails back to Gamone! We've got lots of them in our "garden", thousands of them, and it's impossible to get rid of them. They proliferate by impregnating themselves! King Gustav III introduced them into Sweden, at Drottningholm Palace, more than a hundred kilometers from where we live. By now, the snails have invaded the entire southern part of Sweden. It's said that ducks of a certain race eat snails. As for the snails, they eat everything.

Eric's email gave me a lot of pleasure, in that I suddenly saw myself engaged in the same majestic preoccupations as a great Scandinavian monarch. On my last snail excursion, I imagined myself accompanied by a throng of sexy blond Swedish maidens who were dancing with joy at the head of the great snail procession, alongside their noble king and his gracious dog, Lady Sophia.

I should explain that what I've been doing could well be illegal, since a French law prohibits the collection of Burgundy snails during the breeding months of April, May and June. Apart from the fact that I'm not sure that these are indeed Burgundy snails rather than the ordinary garden variety (but I think so), I've been checking that there weren't any gendarmes at Gamone during my excursions. Besides, I'm not really collecting these snails. Most of them were wandering around on the macadam or roadside gravel, and I've been simply moving them a hundred meters down the road, to a nicer environment.

I take the opinions of Eric very seriously, because we've been collaborating and agreeing about almost everything since over 35 years ago. Besides, Eric knows my Gamone property quite well. He even made a short video here back in December 2004, at a time when my billy-goat Gavroche was still alive and Moshé was my only donkey.

[Click the photo to view the Nilsson video on Gamone.]

Finally, there's an interesting technical point. It's true, as Eric suggests, that snails—which are hermaphrodites—can be impregnated indiscriminately by any other snail. But there's a limit to this notion of indiscriminate impregnation. A snail can only be impregnated by the sperm of another snail… but never by its own sperm! Otherwise, just imagination the turmoil. Every time a solitary snail happened to derive innocent pleasure from a bit of masturbation, it would suddenly find itself pregnant!

POST-SCRIPTUM: I've already spoken of snails in my articles of 2007 entitled Busy Sunday [display] and Pet snail [display].

Morals

I know this is going to sound silly, but I'll say it all the same. Ever since my youth, I've been intrigued by the philosophy of morals. A child's first introduction to the notions of right and wrong is based largely upon punishment. It's wrong to poke your tongue out at an old man, even though he looks like a scarecrow. So, if the child does so, it's normal that he's likely to be spanked by his mother or father. It's also wrong to play with safety matches, but the punishment is of a different kind. Instead of a spanking, your fingers get burned. Although both actions—making fun of old folk, and playing with dangerous devices—are things that a child "should not do", the child soon starts to feel that there's a difference between these two categories of bad deeds. In the first case, the wrongness consists, as it were, of doing unto another something that you maybe wouldn't wish to be done unto yourself. In the second case, it's simply a matter of not accepting sound advice from experienced oldies who've already made those same mistakes and paid the price in pain.

Within the territory of right and wrong, good and bad, there are a striking number of loopholes, or rather patches of no-man's-land, particularly when other partners step into the picture: social customs, the influence of peer groups, the law of the land and, above all, religions. The territory is transformed into a vast muddy field, where youthful adventurers soon get bogged down… particularly when sex raises its naughty head. For example, young people generally feel that fornicating is good stuff, even when they haven't yet reached the so-called 'legal age" for acts that were referred to, in Australian law, by a delightfully exotic and erotic expression capable of giving a young man an erection: carnal knowledge. Screwing was not explicitly forbidden in the Ten Commandments (except in the form of adultery). Admittedly, if the partners in such a timid crime happened to forget about contraception (often because they didn't know what it was all about), then it could resemble the case of innocent children playing with safety matches.

For all these reasons (and many more), I signed up for a course in moral philosophy at the University of Sydney, in the context of my science studies. There, the naive 16-year-old country boy from Grafton was confronted immediately and inspired immensely by a wise old man from the past named Socrates.

After asserting that "the unexamined life is not worth living", he was put to death for allegedly corrupting the youth of Athens. Clearly, there were diabolical dimensions in the quest for the truth about morals… if such a truth existed. This became more and more obvious to me when I finally had a chance of looking at what had happened in Auschwitz… which had never been a noteworthy event, curiously, back in my hometown circles.

The classes of an obscure professor of moral philosophy named Alain Ker Stout [1900-1983] were an intellectual catastrophe, because he didn't have much to say, and his way of saying it was sadly comical. Funnily, though, I've retained, not only most of the little he told us, but also three of the books upon which his teachings were based.

They still carry my antiseptic ex libris, which looks as if it were written by a lad fresh out of Sunday school… which was in fact the case.

The philosophy of so-called utilitarianism is even dumber than the term used to designate it. Apparently, we should strive to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number of good people. (I'm simplifying.) What does that have to do with utility? Today, only somebody with a mind like that of George W Bush, say, would find this idea "philosophical". To be truthful, I don't know whether or not Bush ever studied John Stuart Mill [1806-1873].

G E Moore [1873-1958] was a brighter analyst… whom I respect for his associations with my two greatest philosophical heroes: Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] and Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]. But he, too, seems to end up telling us that he doesn't really have anything more profound than common sense to tell us about right and wrong, good and evil, and that stuff.

The well-written little book by Patrick Nowell-Smith [1914-2006] has been a primer for countless readers (Penguin sold more than 100,000 copies) who were intrigued by the idea of a logic-based approach to the philosophy of morals. (It would be more correct to speak of logical positivism rather than logic in a broad traditional sense.) But the interest of this book, today, is mainly historical.

So, what are we left with? Well, unfortunately, we're left with a widespread opinion that, somehow, you need to believe in religion before you even have the right to talk about morals. The antiquated enemies of secular thinking attempt to spread the notion that society would disintegrate into a vast anarchic cesspool of savage depravity if ever the little gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were to be removed from the current scene. It goes without saying that these rumormongers are stupid liars, who seek to bully innocent folk into accepting religion in order to save society from barbarian turmoil. But it's the evil liars who are the New Barbarians.

Basically, thinkers such as Richard Dawkins remind us constantly that human nature is what it is, for the better and for the worse, and that the alleged existence of a deity is a totally irrelevant speculation. It's not because the god Jupiter went out of fashion that assassination attempts upon mothers-in-law, say, suddenly spiked. On the contrary, people are starting to believe, these days, that if the gods were finally stacked away in wardrobes with all the other skeletons of human history, there would surely be a drop in crime statistics ranging from raped schoolkids up to kamikaze operations.

In this general context, the brilliant US atheist Sam Harris has succeeded in surprising many of his friends by suggesting that there might indeed be objective links between science and morals. In February 2010, he spoke on this subject at the prestigious conference known as TED [Technology, Entertainment, Design].



In the face of many reactions, Sam Harris has just clarified his thinking in an article entitled Toward a Science of Morality [display]. I like to think that Harris might be onto a good goal: the idea that, somewhere deep down inside our inherited structure of thought, there are inbuilt neuronal circuits (or something like that) that work nonstop at promoting the principle that Auschwitz and countless other barbarian acts were wrong, and that helping little old ladies to cross the busy street in bad weather is a morally good act, for which you deserve to win brownie points. [Remind me to tell you the joke about a pub artist who plays a miniature piano.] For the moment, I would conclude that Harris is not necessarily wrong, but that he nevertheless doesn't need to be right in order for societies to evolve morally in a "well-behaved" fashion.