Michel Galabru, died during his sleep this morning.
Monday, January 4, 2016
Could God be looked upon as a dangerous assassin ?
To commemorate the terrible slaughter on 7 January 2015 at Charlie Hebdo, the resuscitated weekly will be using the following cover:
It reads: "A year later, the assassin is still on the run." And we see a blood-stained God Almighty with a Kalashnikov strapped to his back, racing madly away. The message is clear. Behind the human assassins who perpetrated the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, the ghastly cause was absurdly fanatical religious belief.
Is the assassin really still on the run? Yes, and this will remain true for as long as religious fanaticism infiltrates our societies. And that's surely for a long, long time. As we used to say in my childhood Australia: Up until the cows come home...
It reads: "A year later, the assassin is still on the run." And we see a blood-stained God Almighty with a Kalashnikov strapped to his back, racing madly away. The message is clear. Behind the human assassins who perpetrated the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, the ghastly cause was absurdly fanatical religious belief.
Is the assassin really still on the run? Yes, and this will remain true for as long as religious fanaticism infiltrates our societies. And that's surely for a long, long time. As we used to say in my childhood Australia: Up until the cows come home...
High-tech loo
For the first decade of my existence, I lived in a rural house in South Grafton (Australia) that did not have a so-called WC (water closet). This dull aspect of my early life has often appeared to me as exceptional: an extraordinary caveman anecdote that I'm including proudly in an autobiographical book on which I'm working. Like many lucky people, I tend to forget that, today, over two billion citizens of the planet Earth have no access to satisfactory toilets.
Click here to examine a project for a low-priced high-tech loo known as the Nano Membrane Toilet, invented at Cranfield University in England, to be put on trial soon, probably in Ghana.
Click here to examine a project for a low-priced high-tech loo known as the Nano Membrane Toilet, invented at Cranfield University in England, to be put on trial soon, probably in Ghana.
For more information, click on the following video:
Sunday, January 3, 2016
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi is authorized to combat dengue fever in three countries
The Aedes Aegypti mosquito, distributed in tropical zones throughout the world, is the main vector of both dengue and yellow fever viruses. When the female mosquito sups human blood, it often deposits the virus that causes dengue, and this can bring about some 400 million infections a year worldwide. Among children, in particular, this painful, flu-like disease can be fatal. And, up until recently, no truly effective prevention had existed.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Thinking rationally about terror
Here's a brilliant short New Yorker article on the subject of urban terrorism by the exceptional US physicist Lawrence Krauss.
His conclusion is sobering but appeasing:
His conclusion is sobering but appeasing:
... a mass killing like that which occurred in Paris would not significantly affect the death toll from guns in the USI take this opportunity of reminding my Antipodes readers that Krauss is the author of a momentous book on physics and philosophy: A Universe from Nothing. It reflects upon humanity's biggest question (which has often driven me crazy... at least for a moment or so): Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
Champion Frenchman at the wheel
This 41-year-old Frenchman, Sébastien Loeb, is the most successful automobile driver in the history of the World Rally Championship (WRC), having won it nine times in a row.
Having retired from WRC competitions, Loeb has decided to compete in this year's Dakar trial, which starts today from Buenos Aires. At the wheel of a Peugeot, he is accompanied by his faithful co-driver Daniel Elena. He should find the local road familiar, since Loeb happens to have won the Argentina rally eight times in a row!
I once spent twenty minutes or so watching a video created from inside Loeb's vehicle, along a quite ordinary mountain road. I soon had the distinct impression that Sébastien Loeb is infinitely more than a normal human animal like you or me. His visual system is surely some kind of extraordinary space computer coupled to his brain.
Having retired from WRC competitions, Loeb has decided to compete in this year's Dakar trial, which starts today from Buenos Aires. At the wheel of a Peugeot, he is accompanied by his faithful co-driver Daniel Elena. He should find the local road familiar, since Loeb happens to have won the Argentina rally eight times in a row!
I once spent twenty minutes or so watching a video created from inside Loeb's vehicle, along a quite ordinary mountain road. I soon had the distinct impression that Sébastien Loeb is infinitely more than a normal human animal like you or me. His visual system is surely some kind of extraordinary space computer coupled to his brain.
Manchester moments
This fascinating news photo has stunned the Internet world:
It looks like a staged image with actors, maybe a sequence from a movie in the making. In fact, it's simply a photo of an ordinary alcoholic scene of Manchester by night. Click on the word series to access photos of an interesting kind in the website of the Manchester Evening News. Scroll to the second gallery in this website, which is quite funny.
I've never set foot in that big British city, but I have the impression that it's not the kind of place where I would like to settle down.
It looks like a staged image with actors, maybe a sequence from a movie in the making. In fact, it's simply a photo of an ordinary alcoholic scene of Manchester by night. Click on the word series to access photos of an interesting kind in the website of the Manchester Evening News. Scroll to the second gallery in this website, which is quite funny.
I've never set foot in that big British city, but I have the impression that it's not the kind of place where I would like to settle down.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Let's start the year at the Moulin Rouge
On French TV during this festive season of the year, we can see a lot of French cancan, often with dancers from the Moulin Rouge in Paris.
Click here if you feel like watching a 6-minute presentation of a couple of authentic and delightful cancan girls from the famous "red windmill" going through their steps.
Trivial little places like that seem to have acquired a more intense and wonderful meaning since our discovery of the mad mob of terrorists who would surely wish to destroy all that. On the contrary, we'll destroy all those Islamic arseholes before they let themselves loose in France for another tragic operation.
Click here if you feel like watching a 6-minute presentation of a couple of authentic and delightful cancan girls from the famous "red windmill" going through their steps.
Trivial little places like that seem to have acquired a more intense and wonderful meaning since our discovery of the mad mob of terrorists who would surely wish to destroy all that. On the contrary, we'll destroy all those Islamic arseholes before they let themselves loose in France for another tragic operation.
Wishes from the French president
Click here to access the New Year 2016 speech from the French president François Hollande.
"My first duty is to protect you. I am proud of you. In spite of the drama, France has not given in. In spite of the tears, she remained upright. Faced with hatred, she revealed the force of her values, those of the République. I owe you the truth. We have not reached the end of terrorism. The threat is still present, at the same level."The president made his speech from the Napoléon III Room of the Elysées Palace. This was the same place from which he had spoken last January, after the attack against Charlie Hebdo, then in the middle of November, when a wave of terrorist crimes killed 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis.
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