Memorial oak tree planted on the Place de la République

Crowds gathered early at the Place de la République to commemorate the recent victims of barbary in the City of Light.

As the sun went down, candles were lit
all around the statue of the République.

The celebrated motto of Paris
— Fluctuat nec mergitur —
was illuminated once again.

Branches of the memorial oak tree were lit up.

The colossal bronze statue of Marianne, 9.5 metres tall, was erected here on 14 July 1883. It stands on a stone base, 15 metres in height, accompanied by allegories of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.

The square was now in darkness.

Meanwhile, the trunk and branches of the oak tree were
shining like the tungsten filament of a lamp.

One Autumn in Paris

This short video presents the singer Louane and the trumpetist Ibrahim Maalouf, who have recorded a powerful memorial song entitled One Autumn in Paris, distributed freely to young students. The poetry comes from the Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf.

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Cherry time

Extracts from the newspaper Le Rappel, 7 September 1870,

quoting words spoken to the crowd by Victor Hugo.

I've tried to translate Hugo's powerful words:

Saving Paris is more than saving France.
It's saving the world.
Paris is the actual centre of humanity.
Paris is the sacred city.
Those who attack Paris are carrying out
a mass assault upon the entire human race.
Paris is the capital of civilization.
It is neither a kingdom nor an empire.
It symbolizes the entire human race, past and future.
And do you know why Paris is the city of Civilization ?
Because it's the city of Revolution.

Citizens, Paris will triumph,
because she symbolizes the idea of Humanity
and represents the instincts of the People.

Here is a version of a celebrated song,

Le Temps des cerises, written in 1866

by Jean-Baptiste Clément. This popular song has

always been associated in French history and culture

with the Commune de Paris in 1871.

Bushfire in Western Australia eliminates an entire village

Sometimes, when a bushfire is about to attack a small rural village in Australia, the inhabitants are capable (thankfully) of rushing to safety. But their lovable village cannot save itself. And the terrible flames might then reduce it to sad devastation.

Footage from the Channel 7 helicopter shows the small village of Yarloop, 110 km south of Perth (Western Australia), after it was engulfed in a bushfire fanned by strong winds. The town lost nearly a hundred buildings, including precious historical constructions.

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The bushfire has just taken the town away...

BREAKING NEWS: Police announced that two bodies were found in burnt-out houses in Yarloop.

They found a rock in the mud of Lake Eyre

In the desert environment of Lake Eyre (South Australia), this muddy guy with a rock in his right hand is overcome with joy.

Phil Bland, a researcher from Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia), accompanied by his colleague Robert Howie, just succeeded in digging up a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite that fell here a few months ago. Although they were assisted by data from several devices that had followed the falling meteorite, their discovery was nevertheless an amazing needle-in-a-haystack success.

The USA has invested billions of dollars in voyages to the moon, enabling their scientists to obtain precious samples of meteorites that came from far away. In Australia, to obtain such an extraordinary sample, these two fellows simply drove their quads into the parched outback and started digging around in the mud with their hands.

Flying Frenchie has come down to rest in the Drôme

Tancrède Melet, known throughout the world for his spectacular aerial exploits as the « Flying Frenchie », was killed on Tuesday in a trivial accident in the Drôme.

Here's a recent video of a stunt in nearby Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet.

When the accident occurred, Tancrède was holding down a hot-air balloon, which dragged him over a small cliff, to his death.

In the following video, Tancrède was planning a wing-suit drop down to Chamonix: a journey that would normally, on the ground, take a couple of hours.

Beware of bugs

Back in the days when I earned my living as a computer programmer, we coexisted constantly with bugs. I believe that such tiny evil spirits still exist, even though a lot of publicity talk tries to give the impression that they've been eradicated forever.

Click here to see the presentation of a marvelous little drone, made in China, called the Ehang 184, priced somewhere between US$200,000 to $300,000. It's designed for a personal owner, who isn't necessarily a licensed pilot, who has to get somewhere in a hurry. The above publicity photo seems to suggest that the owner lives in a romantic spot—in the vicinity of trees, statues and rusty old boats—alongside the water.

Charging the drone with electricity takes a few hours. The owner can then press a magic take-off button and set out on a trip that lasts for 23 minutes. The Ehang's automated flight systems will manage tasks such as communication with air traffic control and other aircraft, obstacle avoidance and navigation. In other words, if the drone doesn't collide with a tree (or anything else in the vicinity), that's because it's a smart machine... with no bugs whatsoever. In other words, faultless.

Well, thanks for inviting me to borrow your drone, to drop in at a nearby place. It's nice of you... and you assure me that your aircraft is both simple and perfect. But I prefer to travel romantically, by bicycle.

A year ago today, France became forever Charlie

Click here to access the website of Le Parisien, which commemorates the start of a year of terror in France.

Can we "enhance" humans by means of customized genes ?

I've preferred to leave the verb "enhance" in inverted commas, because geneticists are frankly playing at behaving as a divinity, and nobody knows with certainty yet whether these scientists are God or the Devil. Or maybe a bit of both. Consequently, many observers consider that it's still too early to say whether or not we have the right to perform so-called human gene editing.

A conference on these questions took place in Washington on December 1–3, sponsored by Britain’s Royal Society, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the US National Academies. Click here for a Scientific American website on this subject.

In my recent blog post about the French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier [display], I mentioned a celebrated method known as the CRISPR–Cas9 system, for which she was a contributor. This technology has made DNA modification so simple that amateur biologists working in home laboratories are starting to fiddle with it, and to "hack genomes". Not surprisingly, the CRISPR-Cas9 method appears to have played a central role in the Washington conference.

Cameron and his team are as wet and warm as a cup of tea

David Cameron has just told his ministers that they're all free, individually, to adopt whatever attitude they like to the forthcoming referendum about whether Britain should or should not remain in Europe. In other words, with respect to this all-important question, Cameron and his team have no common policy. As on a sinking ship, it's every man for himself. What weird behavior for an alleged government! To my mind, with this lukewarm approach to decision-making, the UK is moving closer and closer to Brexit.

Click here for a BBC video : "UK and the EU — How to make a Brexit" which mentions the exit of Greenland after a referendum in 1982. Here is their conclusion : "Divorce can sometimes be painful [...] but it did not have to be messy. The secret to breaking up is the same for states as for people — good planning, good sense and an ability to learn how to live and trade together in a shrinking world."

My Internet provider wants to become a banker

This is amazing news. My French Internet provider, named Orange, is about to buy a bank, which will make it possible to carry out all the ordinary financial transactions that an Internet provider might wish to perform. At the same time that Orange is looking into the idea of acquiring a bank, they're also talking about purchasing one of their Internet rivals (Bouygues).