Australian magpies

I've always been surprised by the fact that French people seem to know nothing at all about our Australian magpies.

Our birds Down Under look a litle like the French bird referred to as a pie, pronounced pee.

So, French people imagine that they're basically the same creature. Few people know that our Australian magpies, in their nesting season, attack children on bicycles by diving down at their heads. This kind of attack used to terrify me when I was a boy in South Grafton.

An Australian child on a bicycle, when attacked by a wild magpie, is capable of bending his head, looking down at the road, and maybe running into an approaching vehicle. If the bird uses its heavy beak to hit a child on the skull, this can cause a nasty wound

For French readers : The name in French of our possibly-vicious Australian magpie is the Cassican flûteur (Gymnorhina tibicen).

Dinosaur for sale in France

An American owner has decided to put his excellent dinosaur up for sale in France. Before the auction takes place, the skeleton is on display in a French railway station. The future auctioneer believes there'll be a big crowd of prospective buyers, because it's rare to find a top-quality dinosaur up for sale in this corner of the world.

I would like to put in a bid. I'm sure that my dog Fitzroy would love to have such a friend at Gamone. But the dinosaur is surely above my budget. I'll make a point of providing readers with details when the sale takes place. And, if ever I raked up enough cash to clinch the deal, Fitzroy and I will throw a dinosaur party at Gamone.

Going, going… gone

David Cameron, 49, ex-PM of the United Kingdom, has announced his intention to abandon his current job as a Tory parliamentarian. He explains that it’s not possible for a former PM to become an efficient political representative (of the everyday variety). Cameron resigned on June 24 following the Brexit vote.

Google's latest voice is not bad at all

Click here to access a short French-language article about Google's latest achievements in synthetic voices. Samples start with well-chosen words: "aspects of the sublime".

Do dolphins use an advanced language?

The Russian scientist Vyacheslav Ryabov, of the Crimean marine station in Karadag, affirms that the language of dolphins is just as complex as human language. Click here to access his article on this subject in the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University Journal: Physics and Mathematics. This specialist in marine biology and animal communication draws attention to the fact that dolphins have existed on the planet Earth for a much greater period of time than humans. So, they've had sufficient time to become as smart as us. I don't know whether that reasoning is valid, but it sounds good to me. I would be thrilled to discover that dolphins—even though they don't appear to publish books, set up scientific laboratories or carry out political elections—are as bright (?) as the brightest humans.

My readers might not know that the French region in which Gamone is located is known as the Dauphiné. That term is related to the French word for "dolphin", and it's closely linked to the word dauphin, designating the eldest son of a French king.

Arms of the Dauphin of France

But why would dolphins be evoked in the name of a region so far from the sea, and in the nickname of a prince? If you're interested, I'll make a point of telling you—one of these days—my "theory" on this question...

World butchery championship in Australia

A short news article in the French press reveals that the world butchery championship was held in Australia, but it indicates neither the date of the event nor the name of the city in which it took place. Guess who won. France, of course. Here’s a photo of the French entry for the preparation of beef, the preparation of lamb, and minced beef rolls. The French team was composed of three butchers from the Loire region.

Plantu cartoon

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French police-woman

Dramatic interview of a brave young French police-woman, Magali, who was obliged to fire back at a terrorist at the wheel of a big truck in Nice on July 14, 2016. Clearly, Magali is still suffering deeply, and it's not certain that she'll be able to carry on her career.

Today, as the world looks back at September 11, and relates that terrible day to more recent happenings in Europe and elsewhere, I realize more than ever that the lives and thoughts of countless human beings throughout the world have been changed forever by our awareness of the horrors of terrorism. We must never forget.

Egodates

An egodate is a political candidate with no chances of being elected, who's purely on an ego trip. In France, they're rampant at present. In French, such a person would be called an égodat. Let me introduce you to two outstanding French egodates: Nadine Morano and Jean-François Copé.

Nadine Morano in the company of Alain Juppé [photo AFP]

It's not very honest of me to refer to Nadine Marano, today, as a genuine egodate, for she was knocked out of the race a week ago, at La Baule, by her right-wing parliamentarian brothers and sisters, who refused to endorse her candidacy. Now, why would they? There's no way in the world that she could ever receive more than a handful of votes at next year's presidential election. I assume therefore that Nadine has been on a purely selfish ego trip. So good riddance, my dear lady. You're no longer needed here.

Jean-François Copé might be described as an outstanding professional egodate, with lengthy experience and laurels on his head. In athletic terms, he's a champion marathonian. In boxing terms, a punching bag. No matter how hard he's hit next year, and how few votes he collects, Copé will be back for more. No determined egodate ever gives up. That wouldn't be cricket. Above all, that wouldn't be Copé.

I nevertheless wonder why dull individuals of this ilk are letting off personal steam constantly in our complex world dominated by terrorism, poverty, racism, etc. Since they have nothing to say (apart from rambling on about their personal careers), why don't they simply remain silent ?

BREAKING NEWS: Copé has just stated that his successful election next year would give rise to a “true rupture”. He wasn’t talking about some kind of nasty medical attack that might affect him. He was simply saying that he would destroy all contacts with “the band of four”. Was he referring to leaders in some remote Communist nation? No, he was simply using flamboyant egodate’s language to designate four fellow-politicians: Sarkozy, Juppé, Fillon and Le Maire. Regardless of what they actually say (which doesn't matter greatly), egodates need to be good at loud talking.

MORE BREAKING NEWS: Copé lost little time before making another attack upon Sarko.  « Il est un colosse qui dispose de tous les pouvoirs et de tous les moyens, un colosse réputé invisible, lance-t-il. Ceux-là ont oublié la belle histoire de David contre Goliath. Il est des colosses dont les pieds sont en argile. »  Copé's hatred of Sarko is virulent. In comparing himself with the biblical David, Copé demonstrates that he has a screw loose. This has been my personal impression for ages.

STILL MORE BREAKING NEWS: Nadine refuses to keep her silly mouth shut. Admire this extract from Le Point. She, too, seems to have a screw loose. I have the impression that this weakness is common to egodates such as Nadine and Copé. They see themselves as God's gift to society. They simply cannot imagine that they bore most folk.

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The Falling Man

This silent image of a single individual dropping to earth, taken by the news photographer Richard Drew, symbolizes every human being who died that day. The Falling Man has never been identified.

Fitzroy is back outside, in the dark

Last night, I was happy to go to sleep with Fitzroy lying on the bedroom floor, in his elegant little sleeping bag, which I had withdrawn from his kennel. The house adventure didn't last for long. This afternoon, Fitzroy made it perfectly clear to me that he did not intend to repeat the in-house procedure. I have my house, and Fitzroy has his... his own little private residence. And there's no sense in trying to combine them. It's amazing that a dog can get this complex message across in a perfectly clear manner, without the slightest word.

There's a wonderful story about a talking donkey, the friend of a little boy. The child wants to demonstrate the donkey's extraordinary talents to people in the village, but the animal refrains from uttering a single word. Afterwards, when the village people have stopped making fun of the child, and they've all gone home, the boy asks the donkey: "Why did you refuse to speak in front of the village people?" The animal explains: "I don't like to speak with all those dull folk, who wouldn't understand me. They bore me. I only take pleasure in rambling on with you."

I often feel that Fitzroy is a bit like that donkey. One of these days, my dog will inform me that he doesn't mind listening to my voice, but that the things he might say to me are so extraordinary that a fellow like me simply wouldn't understand.

France has all kinds of exotic things

Even genuine Communists. Here's a typical specimen: Pierre Laurent, 49, French journalist and politician, senator, former editor-in-chief of the newspaper L'Humanité, and national secretary of the PCF (Parti communiste français) since June 2010.

Crowds of dinosaurs are gathered together this weekend, with their friends, at the Fête de L'Humanité : a time-honored festival organized by the French Communist newspaper. I hardly need to stress the fact that all these nice folk are perfectly respectable. They wouldn't use a hammer and sickle to hurt a flea. I don't know whether they're aware of the state of Communism in other parts of the world, including Russia. They probably don't care too much about such matters. Please don't hurt their feelings by bringing up subjects like that. On the other hand, I'm sure they collect Soviet postage stamps, postcards of Moscow, and antique editions of books by Marx (Karl, not Groucho). And they surely love to sip vodka while listening nostalgically to balalaika music.

An ordinary day, September 11, 2001

With no warning, Hell descended upon our lovely planet Earth.

The Devil and his evil archangels are still here.

But we'll soon eliminate the mad buggers.

An enormous responsibility: juror's job

Last night, on the Public Sénat channel, I watched a lengthy replay on a huge task that might fall upon any French citizen: becoming a member of a jury for a major criminal trial. Here's an interview with a French lady, Sarah Lebas, who made a documentary on this subject.

I can well understand that many ordinary citizens might be terrified and driven crazy by this frightening responsibility. The selected citizen knows nothing about the crime in question, the personality and background of the alleged perpetrator nor even the French system of justice. That's exactly how he/she is supposed to be: an ordinary citizen, totally uninformed, with no prejudices brought about by prior knowledge of the crime, the victims or the criminals. But this "ordinary citizen" is going to be asked whether the individual on trial was guilty or not. And, if guilty, how many years must that culprit spend in prison? A truly terrifying task, which might haunt jurors for the rest of their lives. Is there no more "professional" way of dealing with such questions? Surely not. We've got the finest and most time-honored system that can possibly exist: trial by jury. Those words seem to be understandable... up until you take a close look at what they mean at a practical level.

Excellent US cartoon

I'll let you read the text in the lower left-hand corner (if you can) to discover whom we should thank for this delightful political cartoon.

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Johnson looks as if he has just crawled out of a hole in a log. Clinton is trying desperately to suppress an approaching fart. Meanwhile, Trump is a happy as a contented toad. Does America really need to make one of these individuals their future president?

Late morning dream

Late yesterday afternoon, I prepared my old cylindrical vacuum cleaner for an evening attack upon the horrible Pyrale moths. Tineke and Serge had informed me that this technique works well, and it's less troublesome than using buckets of soapy water. Everything was in place, and I'd even protected the device and the power cables from a possible nocturnal shower of rain. I decided that it would be preferable for Fitzroy to spend the night inside the house, instead of in his kennel. I liked this decision, because I'm always happier for no clear reason) when my dog is near me, rather than out in the dark.

Everything was ready for the moths... but they simply failed to appear. If I understand correctly, their annual season is nearing the end.

Early this morning, Fitzroy used his snout gently to wake me up, and I took him out for a pee (which didn't take place). Then we came back into the house and I went to sleep again.

A hour or so later, I was awoken by one of my familiar computer-programming dreams, which are sufficiently unpleasant to be labeled nightmares. Unless you happen to be a computer programmer, it's hard to understand the gist of such dreams. In my nightmare, I have the impression that I've installed an arithmetic counter that needs to be constantly updated by newly-obtained numeric values. This counter is in fact installed, but it's clearly not functioning correctly. Instead of increasing regularly, it remains stuck at its initial value, as if there were a bug in the code. In real computer programming, this kind of error would be commonplace and easy to correct. In my nightmare, on the other hand, the presence of this bug troubles me considerably, because I can't understand how the error has occurred, or how I might trace it and fix it. Finally, I'm immensely relieved when I awake from my nightmare. First, I need a minute or so to grasp that no such bug exists. That I was merely dreaming. Then I'm in fine form. For a computer programmer, there's nothing better than knowing that your software is clean, free of bugs. That's how I was this morning, when I took Fitzroy out a second time.

Unfortunately, I'm not likely to chase such dream themes from my mind. It's already many years since I wrote code to update arithmetic counters, but all this experience has remained apparently in my brain. I wonder if I could do some kind of a reboot...

Autumn at Gamone

The piles of brown leaves at Gamone have fallen, not from my lovely old linden trees, but from a couple of maple giants. A few years ago, I thought of cutting down these trees, for I'm afraid at times that they could be blown over towards the house. But it's probably preferable to let them live.

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The next photo shows my apple tree, which has provided me with small fruit this year.

Fitzroy has found a tiny apple, which he is keenly inspecting.

These apples are tender and sweet, and free of insects and worms.

Stepping back towards devils and witches

I wonder at times whether our advanced societies might not be stepping backwards, inexorably, towards devils and witches. In particular, the ancient theme of witches has appeared in my mind. Last Sunday, in the early hours of the morning, an unusual terrorist affair was revealed in Paris. In the vicinity of the great cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris (where Victor Hugo had invented and placed Quasimodo, better known as the Hunchback), inside an old vehicle without number plates, six bottles of gas were discovered. Five young women have been arrested, and there are no doubts that they were planning some bad work. They were described in French as "radicalisées, fanatisées”. That  means, to call a spade a spade, that these women were determined terrorists, on the point of committing serious crimes.

Now, I don’t intend to delve further into the details of this affair, which is still the most prominent news story this evening. What I wish to do is to reflect upon the possible evolution of thinking in France on such an affair, and the possibility that our society might be faced with the birth of very nasty attitudes towards terrorists.

Is my thinking influenced by the fact that the culprits were women, that they were determined to cause severe damage, and that their project for murder used material (gas bottles) that can be purchased at the local supermarket ? Yes, you can say that I was biased by those simple facts.

I wish to add an additional opinion, which is terribly grave. I believe that, to put it bluntly, there is no hope for such individuals. The possibility that these women might be magically “improved” is practically zero. In other words, it would be preferable, from many viewpoints, if these women were to simply disappear from our society. We have no place for them. For the moment, the only legal way of making them disappear from our society consists of putting them in prison, and making sure they stay there. No matter what their crime, there is no death sentence in France. So, they are likely to survive in prison for many years, and there is little likelihood that their years of suffering will have any positive benefits upon anybody, neither the women themselves, nor most members of our society.

In ancient societies, women of this kind might have been considered as witches, and they would have been put to death without too many questions being asked. That is the technique being used today by the USA to combat Daesh devils. I have the impression that, as more and more terrorists emerge, approaches for removing them might soon merge. But I don’t see how intelligent humans could ever survive in such a harsh new world.

Village festival

Saint-André-en-Royans is just across the hill from Gamone. Their annual village festival will soon be taking place.

If could be accompanied by a charming rural miss, with a taste for this stuff, I would be happy to get dressed up and go. But I don't have any misses in mind. So, without a miss, I'll have to make a miss.

President Hollande's Wagram speech

 

Christophe Ena / AP

The French president speaks wonderfully well. Often, people in the Wagram hall broke into applause, interrupting the speaker. It's reassuring to see, once again, that our president has the oratorical talents of a great theatrical actor playing a kind of Shakespearean role. I believe that this Wagram discourse will go down in French history Here are some extracts of his great speech.

Le président commence son discours avec cette phrase forte. "Malgré la peur, malgré la souffrance, nous vaincrons. La démocratie sera toujours plus forte que la barbarie qui lui a déclaré la guerre" poursuit-il.

 "Au terme de la lutte, la démocratie triomphera."

 François Hollande s'en prend à l'Etat islamique, qu'il décrit ainsi : "Voilà l'ennemi, nous le nommons, il est redoutable. Et même s'il recule en Syrie et en Irak, il s'installe sur d'autres terrains. cette ennemi est cruel, il endoctrine, il enrôle, il est insatiable."

 "Partout, les musulmans ont été les victimes des islamistes, y compris en France", poursuit François Hollande, qui explique les raisons de l'engagement de la France contre le terrorisme. 

Dès le début de son intervention, François Hollande pose le cadre: c'est par la "liberté" que nous vaincrons le "terrorisme islamiste". La liberté vue comme un atout dans cette lutte, face à une partie de la droite qui envisage de restreindre les libertés pour mener cette lutte. 

 Le chef de l'Etat embraie désormais sur la réponse que doit apporter la France face au terrorisme.

"Je fais tout pour protéger les Français mais je leur dois aussi la vérité. La menace va durer. Nous devons donc l'affronter avec sang-froid. Nous ne devons jamais nous laisser emporter par la déraison."

François Hollande s'en prend, en les énumérant, aux mesures prônées par la droite pour contrer le terrorisme. "Ces reniements seraient autant de renoncements sans nullement assurer la sécurité des Français, tranche-t-il. Est-ce que l'adoption du Patriot Act ou le camp de Guantanamo ont protégé les Etats-Unis ? Non", tranche-t-il. 

 D'emblée, le président l'a proclamé : "Nous vaincrons. La démocratie sera toujours plus forte que la barbarie qui lui a déclaré la guerre".

Le président vise directement Nicolas Sarkozy, qui parlait cet été d'"arguties juridiques", quand le gouvernement a rejeté sa proposition de centres de rétention préventive. "Les principes constitutionnels ne sont pas des arguties juridiques", lui répond-il.

Après une attaque en règle contre Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande donne sa conception de l'action du gouvernement contre le terrorisme. "Nous avons fait en sorte d'agir avec le droit. Nous ne menons aucune opération de guerre préventive. Qui peut dire avec un peu de sincérité que nous n'avons pas tout fait pour protéger nos policiers, nos gendarmes et nos militaires ?"

"C'est parce que nous sommes forts, que nous pesons dans le destin du monde, que nous sommes attaqués", affirme le chef de l'Etat, défendant la démocratie face à "l'état d'exception". 

"Ce qu'il nous faut réussir, c'est la construction de l'islam de France", dit François Hollande, qui défend la création d'une Fondation pour l'islam. 

François Hollande appelle les musulmans de France à "prendre leurs responsabilité de citoyens". "Je leur demande, pas plus qu'à d'autres concitoyens, de le faire", précise-t-il. 

"Il est faux de prétendre que l'état de droit entraverait la lutte antiterroriste ou que les démocraties seraient impuissantes face à la menace", a martelé le chef de l'Etat. 

Le discours de François Hollande prend un tour plus politique. Le chef de l'Etat attaque la droite : "Ils pensent que l'élection c'est la primaire, que les Français viendront juste signer au bas de la page !"

Dans ce discours consacré à la cohésion nationale, François Hollande se pose en garant du "modèle social" français. Selon lui, il doit cependant être "modernisé, réformé, complété, pour pouvoir être adapté".

François Hollande s'en prend maintenant aux "extrémistes", qui "prétendent incarner le peuple contre les élites, dont ils sont généralement issus". 

Clin d'oeil appuyé aux échéances électorales à venir et à ceux qui en rêvent. "Ah, ce n'est pas facile l'élection... Il faut la mériter. Il faut s'y préparer. Et il faut respecter les citoyens." 

"La Ve République, face à la menace, donne les moyens d'agir. S'il n'y avait pas eu cette possibilité au président de la République d'intervenir au Mali, en Syrie et en Irak, il eût été trop tard", affirme François Hollande.

"Je mets en garde ceux qui voudraient remettre en cause la fonction présidentielle."

François Hollande dresse maintenant une liste de réformes institutionnelles à accomplir. Il annonce ainsi vouloir limiter le cumul des mandats "dans le temps". 

François Hollande liste les enjeux, selon lui, de la prochaine campagne présidentielle : "la protection des Français, la cohésion nationale, le modèle social, la conception de la démocratie, la place de la France en Europe et dans le monde."   

Que retenir de ce discours de François Hollande ?
• Le chef de l'Etat a livré sa vision de la démocratie face au terrorisme. Et défendu "l'état de droit" face à "l'état d'exception".
• Avec une tonalité très politique, il a beaucoup critiqué les propositions de la droite, se posant en garant des valeurs de la République et de la démocratie.
• Sans se déclarer candidat, il a laissé entendre qu'il pourrait ne pas en rester là en 2017. "Je ne laisserai pas la France être abîmée, réduite, son Etat de droit contesté, son éducation réduite et sa culture amputée. C'est le combat d'une vie", a-t-il déclaré.
• Se projetant vers 2017, le président sortant a décliné les thèmes qui, selon lui, seront l'enjeu de la campagne présidentielle. "La protection des Français, la cohésion nationale, le modèle social, la conception de la démocratie, la place de la France en Europe et dans le monde."