Georges Moustaki [1934-2013]
I saw him for the last time at the Festival Jacques Brel in St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse in the summer of 1993.
A retired couple of Californian tourists are visiting an Eskimo settlement in Greenland. They strike up a conversation with a woman alongside her igloo.The excellent science writer Carl Zimmer—author of the fascinating little book about viruses that I mentioned in a blog post in June 2011 [display]—has written an article in The New York Times [here] on the subject of canine cognition.
ESKIMO: My son works in a Californian university.
CALIFORNIAN: Really! What's he studying?
ESKIMO: No, he's being studied.
NOTE: Method for getting around paywalls. Copy the title of the desired article. Paste it into Google as an argument. This usually works. [Don't tell anybody I told you.]Here in France, funnily enough, I constantly run into situations that have encouraged me to remain abreast, as best I can, of current events in Australia. You see, every time I open my mouth, French people realize that I speak with a curious accent (my Franco-Australian daughter and son have always disagreed), and they often ask me where I come from. And, as soon as I say Australia, French people inevitably wonder out loud why on earth any sane individual (?) with an Australian passport would have left his native Antipodean paradise for a harsh land such as France... where taxes are astronomical, the economic climate is disastrous, young folk can't find jobs, the sky is constantly overcast, people are arrogant, mustached males eat smelly cheeses and frogs' legs smothered in garlic, nobody speaks English, etc... It would be ridiculous to suggest (even if it were true) that I was attracted to France, long ago, because of all the wonderful women. These days, thanks to the Internet and YouTube, French people know that Australia, too, has superb female creatures such as Jesinta Campbell.
[...] in Straya, we don't give a dead dingo's donger about academics. Universities make a perfect target because, like few other Western countries, Australia hates thinkers. In contrast to France, where philosophers often grace the covers of Le Monde, and England where Slavoj Zizek writes regular columns in The Guardian Weekly. In Australia, we have Peter Hartcher on anti-Gillard autopilot and the bile-flecked bleating of shock-jocks like Alan Jones.Getting back to the personal question of why I reside in France rather than in my native Australia, the most honest and meaningful answer is, of course, that the three members of my family live here (in Paris and Brittany).
[...] The problem is that as a country we are hostile to those who are well-educated. We prefer home-spun wisdom to years of research. Our language is peppered with vitriol reserved for those who think for a living: "chattering classes", "latte-sipping libertarians", "intellectual elites" and now Nick Cater's most unlovely term "bunyip elite". If we want to emphasise the importance of something we say that the issue "is not just academic". Any idea that takes longer than a nano-second to understand is howled down.
[...] There's no doubt that Australia is a vast, sunny, intellectual gulag. The question is why. It's certainly not for want of thinkers.
[...] Perhaps there's a link between the myth of Australian egalitarianism and anti-intellectualism. Australian history is popularly told as a story of democracy, equality and classlessness that broke from England's stuffy, poncy, aristocratic elitism. We're a place where hard yakka, not birth, will earn you success and by hard yakka we don't mean intellectual labour. Although, of course, equality is a great goal, we've interpreted it to mean cultural conformity rather than a redistribution of wealth and power. The lowest common denominator exerts a tyrannical sway and tall poppies are lopped with blood-soaked scythes. Children learn from an early age that being clever is a source of shame. Ignorance is cool.
[...] There's also no room for cleverness in our models of masculinity or femininity. For women, intelligence equates with a dangerous independence that doesn't sit well with your role as a docile adoring fan to the boys at the pub. It's equated with sexual unattractiveness. And for men, carrying a book and using words longer than one syllable is a form of gender treason. It's as good as wearing bumless chaps to a suburban barbecue. Real blokes have practical wisdom expressed through grunts and murmurs. Real Aussie chicks just giggle.
E coli bacteria in the Lower Clarence water supply systemOn the other hand, I wish to criticize their ill-informed journalist who wrote the following statement:
E. coli itself is generally not harmful but its presence in drinking water indicates that the water may be contaminated with organisms that may cause disease.The presence of Escherichia coli indicates, almost certainly, that the municipal water supply has been contaminated by sewage: possibly human fecal matter. The journalist writes as if this bacteria were a mere indicator: some kind of biological litmus paper. He/she doesn't seem to understand, or doesn't wish to say explicitly, that it's the E coli bacterium itself that "may cause disease". A more serious article would have indicated the actual levels of E coli that have been detected.
Trees
I think that I shall never seeThe US musician Oscar Rasbach [1888-1975] wrote music for Kilmer's celebrated poem, and our local radio station 2GF in Grafton used to play constantly the version sung by the Austrian-Jewish tenor Richard Tauber [1891-1948]... whose Teutonic accent irritated me almost as much as the syrupy sentiments of the song.
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Blogs are written by fools like me,My words don't have the same poetic impact as those of Joyce Kilmer. What's more, they're not entirely true from a clinical viewpoint, since they neglect the theme of what we used to call "test-tube babies".
But only an adult lemur couple can make a baby lemur.
It was now late and the boat was already well out on the water, while he was alone on the land. Somewhere between three and six in the morning, seeing them labouring at the oars against a head wind, he came towards them, walking on the lake. He was going to pass by them; but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But at once he spoke to them: 'Take heart! It is I; do not be afraid.'According to Matthew 14:28, Peter decided spontaneously to have a go at this feat, and it seemed to work for a few seconds. But his faith collapsed almost instantly, and he started to sink into the water.
— Mark 6:47-50