Cartooning for Peace

A nice tweet from an admirable organization: @CartooningPeace

 

Click to enlarge slightly

For  reasons I don't understand, it took me some messing around to include both the Twitter name of the organization and the cartoon. Everything on the Internet is becoming more and more difficult...

Ancient history of my paternal family

It's a long time since I've mentioned my ancient ancestors in the Leicestershire village of Skeffington. I devoted considerable energy to the publication of my books A Little Bit of Irish and They Sought the Last of Lands. Today, I'm tremendously proud of both books, but I believe that I should no longer remain attached to such subjects. Nevertheless, I remain intrigued by ancient paternal genealogy, particularly since I persist—for reasons of genealogical genetics—in seeing myself as a rare survivor of the earliest imaginable patriarch in Leicester. If I were particularly energetic (which I'm not, particularly since falling down the stairs a year ago), I would pursue an interesting line of my paternal genealogy: namely, research into the identity of the Norman fellow who settled in the English place that came to be known as Skeffington.

When I left this subject, prior to falling down the stairs a year ago, I was particularly intrigued by the case of an ancient Norman family called Verdun, who were closely attached to the village of Skeffington. There's even a chance that my earliest male ancestor in Leicestershire might have been a member of this Verdun family.

So, I am still interested in contacting living descendants of this ancient family, to see if they have any Y-chromosome data they could show me (so I could compare it with mine). But there's a major unexpected hitch. The most prominent living Verdun descendant happens to be the husband of... Christine Dupont de Ligonnès. And I don't intend to start asking those people if they might assist me with DNA research.

Two different young politicians with a similar viewpoint

Click here to see François Baroin talking about Manuel Valls on the subject of Islamic head attire for females. It’s reassuring to find youthful French politicians, on opposite sides of the fence, sharing similar views concerning the challenge of chasing obscurity from modern France.

Just a star away

A stone’s throw ? Not exactly. A little bit more. Aim your stellar pebble in this direction.

Jeanne Moreau sings “Le tourbillon” on March 2, 1969

I don’t know whether this movie clip loads easily. It probably takes time, but it's worth waiting. When Jeanne Moreau recorded this song, my son was still a six-months-old fœtus in his mother’s womb. The man alongside Jeanne was the former journalist Pierre Lazareff, who had become a press baron and producer of variety performers.

Weavers all gone

Fred Hellerman, 89, the last member of The Weavers folk group, has finally left the stage forever. In this old video, he's the seated chap.

Trivial sad story

Male penises are never totally tamed. No matter how we try to teach them refined behavior and nice manners, they have a habit of remaining wild and savage, hard-headed, ready to attack their owners. They can become as mad as a dog with rabies. If the worst gets to the worst, a rabid penis may have to be lobotomized or even euthanized. In most cases, fortunately, they can be tranquillized by pharmaceutical drugs.

François Bayrou (à gauche) et Robert Rochefort,

le 19 mai 2014 à Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). (GAIZKA IROZ / AFP)

A distinguished French political fellow was found masturbating publicly, last Wednesday, near children. Robert Rochefort, 60, is a political companion of the president of the MoDem party, of François Bayrou, mayor of Pau. The alleged wrongdoer—who apparently recognized his act, but then claimed that the words were untrue—has been asked to resign. It’s terrible to observe the career of Rochefort stagnating, if not culminating forever, in this sad fashion. But such is life. Such are mad penises.

Festival of drones on the Champs-Elysées

Tomorrow (Sunday), more than 100,000 spectators are expected to attend the inaugural Paris Drone Festival on the Champs-Elysées.

photo signed DR from Le Parisien

Dozens of tiny aircraft, piloted by their ground-based owners, will race up and down the famous Paris avenue beneath a gigantic canopy, 140 metres long and 17 metres wide. This big “tent” will be located near the top of the Champs-Elysées. At the same time, the entire avenue, 2 km from Concorde to Etoile, will be closed to road traffic, and no doubt protected by massive police forces.

Meanwhile, it’s interesting to note that big brothers (or rather American cousins) of these elegant little Parisian drones will continue to work in faraway places, attempting to shoot to death Islamic criminals.

Ratification of the COP21 treaty

This morning, we've heard that both China and the USA have finally ratified the COP21 treaty. Laurent Fabius will be happy, of course. And so will everybody.

Identity of Banksy

A new theory has arisen. Maybe the street artist Banksy is in fact the leader of the Massive Attack group, Robert “3D” Del Naja.

France’s political establishment has always been constipated

Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte seem to be exerting a wonderful laxative effect upon many French groaning and farting observers. They do things that most serious French political figures never dream of doing. For example, they smile. Not a Sarkozy grin. Nor a Hollande giggle. Nor a Le Pen smirk. And certainly not a sinister Balkany baring of the teeth to bite you. No, believe it or not, the Macron couple actually smile, as if they’re happy. My God, there must be something wrong with them. Are they crazy? We must be careful!

French presidential face book

Everybody on the planet Earth (and maybe beyond) knows what a face book is. Did you know that this kind of document (a collection of face portraits of class students or business colleagues) is referred to in French as a trombinoscope ? That word comes from trombine, a modification of bobine, meaning a human face. Click here to access the trombinoscope of all the 82 current candidates for next year’s French presidential election.

It's a little too early to print out and frame this beautiful array of splendid heads. It's more than likely that I'll soon be publishing a revised version, both bigger and better.

Nice French political people

Patrick Balkany and his wife Isabelle. You can see from their smiles that they’re contented. They have a son, Alexandre Balkany, who also has a childish variant of his dad's smile. God only knows why...

Alexandre has just had his passport confiscated, for an affair about helping his parents hide a luxurious villa in Morocco from taxation authorities. Smart smiling family.

When will they drone the big bastard?

The removal by drone of Abou Mohammad al-Adnani is great news.

Abou Mohammad al-Adnani

Over a period of five months, he was the third Daesh boss to be zapped. I often wonder if people in either the US or Russia will be rewarded the cash that has been placed upon the heads of such guys. Amazingly, the biggest bastard, Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi, is still at large.

Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi

I would imagine that drone pilots are surely looking around for him day and night, and that he has to be most careful about the life he now leads. But it's mathematical that he’ll be located and drone-zapped in the near future.

What a privilege to be a French citizen in France today!

It's a privilege to be a French citizen living in this splendid country. Those words came into my mind spontaneously as I watched, on my Macintosh, the news from France's new TV channel. It's not that event in particular that prompted my patriotic thoughts, but rather a whole series of reasons. I'm tremendously proud to have a French passport, to own a French house, and to be living in France. For the moment, the only negative affair is the current plague of disgusting moths! But I have faith in French science and technology to find a solution.

New French news channel

 

You might be interested in clicking here to see if you can pick up this new TV channel. It's rather buggy for the moment, but it should be a powerful broadcasting vector when it works smoothly and correctly. You might be wondering why I don't try to insert the channel directly into my blog. Don't be bloody stupid!

This anchor fellow, Louis Laforge, is a TV celebrity in France:

For the moment, he's reappearing regularly to explain that there's a slight technical hitch. (We could have worked that out all on our own.) In fact, the quality of this inaugural demonstration (it goes into operation tomorrow) is very good indeed.

Their brains might teach us a few tricks

An article by Nathaniel Herzberg in Le Monde says that dogs capt the sense of human words and tones of speech. I've just told my friend Fitzroy that he should take a glance at this article.

« Les travaux récents ont montré que les bases de l’empathie, de la coopération, de la cognition, du maniement des nombres existent bien au-delà de l’espèce humaine. Nous nous inscrivons dans un arbre évolutif qui nous dépasse très largement et qui impose des contraintes. Une sorte de naturalisation de la culture. » Le chien, assistant du philosophe ?

Lionel Naccache, neurologue à l’hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière

Blind man loses his cane

The cane bore a name : Macron.

Moths across the world

The moth plague is bad at Choranche, but click here to get glimpses of a similar plague that took place a few years ago in Australia. Just as Australia is a much bigger land than France, their moths are bigger too. My sister told me that Aborigines have cooked and eaten them for ages. There's even a local chef who serves up moths to his customers.

 
Our moths at Choranche have such a nasty stench that a lot of ketchup would be necessary, to make them tasty.

Emmanuel Macron has resigned

Serious rumors have indicated throughout the day that Emmanuel Macron was in the process of resigning from his job as Minister of the Economy in the French government. An hour ago [I am writing at 19:20], his resignation was confirmed.