Monday, August 15, 2011

Religions are thriving… and so is atheism

For me, ever since my first stay at Tinos in August 1964 [see my French-language web page], I've always recalled today's Christian feast day through its name in Demotic Greek. They simply refer to this hallowed day as the 15th August (phonetically, to thekapende ahvgusto), as if no fitting words could be found to refer to the marvels that once took place at this date. Indeed, this feast day celebrates a totally crazy alleged happening. The mother of Jesus suddenly drifted up into the clouds, like a hot-air balloon, and disappeared forever. The terms used in English to designate this event are somewhat comical. The Roman church uses the word Assumption, as if believers are expected to assume that things happened as described. The Orthodox church uses the word Dormition, which sounds like an official term for "lights out" in a school dormitory.

Apparently, at Lourdes this morning, 30,000 pilgrims attended a mass celebrated conjointly by 200 priests. Last Saturday, at that same place, the theatrical director Robert Hossein staged a holy play, A Woman Named Mary, for an audience of 25,000.

In another corner of south-west France, the Dalai Lama has arrived in Toulouse for a three-day visit, and thousands of people have booked seats at his seminars on "the stages of meditation" and "the art of happiness".

In the USA, religion has been getting a lot of publicity these days through a disturbing clone of George W Bush: the Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry.

He's the loony who once isued an official proclamation summoning the citizens of his drought-ridden state to pray for rain. More recently, this same nincompoop—who could theoretically become the next US president—organized a prayer day intended to shepherd the American nation out of its financial crisis.

Islam, when it seeks to right wrongs, resorts to harsher methods than prayer. In the charming Provençal town of Miramas (which I visited, a year ago, with Christine), a devout Muslim wasn't happy with a 17-year-old member of his family who was not respecting the fast of Ramadan. So, the young fellow was thrashed and then tied up… until his screaming caused neighbors to call the police and fire brigade.

Now, the funny thing is that, behind these various religious manifestations, it's hard to imagine the presence and guiding force of a single god. On the surface, it would seem that every religious body on the planet must surely believe in the existence of its own unique god. And clearly, this situation is ridiculous.

The truth is considerably simpler: there are no gods whatsoever, not a single fucking god anywhere in the Cosmos! In other words, all the above-mentioned folk (to whom we must add Jews, Mormons, Pastafarians, etc) believe in magic stuff and fairytale things that simply do not exist. Today, every lucidly intelligent individual knows perfectly well that all religions are total bullshit!

Now, if you've got a spare moment, and you want to see what a hundred renowned intellectuals (from all walks of life) think about religions, I invite you to watch these two amazing and inspiring videos from the Richard Dawkins Foundation:

50 famous academics and scientists talk about god

another 50 renowned academics speaking about god

And here's a third collection of reactions:

similar video, from Canada, with lots of ordinary folk

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Dog loves books

I like to be surrounded by all kinds of books, so that I can pick them up at random whenever I feel like reading something different. And I've always found that one of the most convenient places to store the books that surround me is on the bedroom floor. Well, my dog Fitzroy seems to share my tastes at this level.

Sophia's joints have become a little too old for climbing up the stairs to my bedroom, but Fitzroy seems to like this place, and he dashes up here whenever the doors are open. He's capable of taking a nap there in the middle of my books, without ever bumping into any of them. But, after a while, he feels that it's time for action. So, he'll suddenly jump up onto my knees, occupying all the available space between me and my computer. When this happens, my only solution is to lead him downstairs, where he's happy to romp around with Sophia on the lawn in front of the house. Then I close the doors, and get back up to my computer.

Gamone fish recipe

This recipe for cooking a fish is extremely simple, but you need to have a garden with herbs. The fish in question happens to be a common sea-bass, which I bought at the local supermarket.

The general idea is that you stuff and surround the fish with everything you can find in your herb garden: thyme, rosemary, chives, sage, fresh bay leaves, etc. Above it all, sprinkle a lot of freshly-ground pepper, dried oregano leaves and a bit of olive oil. Then you simply roast it slowly in a mildly-hot oven (180°), until it looks right. Once it was cooked, I removed the charred herbs and served up the fish with Ebly wheat rice, covered in parsley.

This simple style of cooking reminds me of memorable fish dinners, long ago, in outdoor restaurants on the Greek island of Tinos.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Redevelopment of Paris riverbanks

The 61-year-old Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, seems to be succeeding in persuading citizens of the City of Light (so-called, primarily, because of the intellectual force of the Enlightenment), including elected city councilors, to accept and encourage a vast project aimed at redeveloping 15 hectares of the Seine riverbanks.

He is the man behind the rent-a-bike project named Vélib.

Delanoë is also the man behind the summer transformation of the banks of the Seine into an urban "beach": the Paris Plages operation.

Let us examine the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project. The Seine flows from the east to the west through Paris.

In this map, you can see the two islands that constitute the heart of Paris. The bigger one is the Ile de la Cité (with the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris), and the smaller one is the Ile St-Louis. The Arc de Triomphe is indicated by the blue dot in the upper left-hand corner, the Louvre is located in the middle of the map, whereas the Eiffel Tower is located in the lower left-hand zone of the map at the place labeled Champ de Mars. With respect to the direction of the river, the upper part of the map designates the Right Bank region of the city, and the lower part, the Left Bank. The riverbanks redevelopment project concerns 9 sites, 4 of which (in green) are located on the Right Bank, and 5 (in red) on the Left Bank.

A basic goal of the redevelopment project consists of reducing the presence of automobiles inside Paris, and transforming this precious Seine waterfront territory (Unesco World Heritage site) into an attractive environment to be appreciated by pedestrians and cyclists. On 4.5 hectares (30% of the global area of the project), automobile presence will in fact be reduced to zero, while the flow of automobiles will be channeled and controlled stringently in the remaining zones covered by the project. Needless to say, various professional bodies in Paris are already starting to complain about problems likely to be encountered when trying to use a private motor vehicle in the city.

The project will not be terribly costly: a basic investment of 35 million euros followed by yearly operational costs of some 5 millions euros. By comparison, the budget of the Barangaroo development project in Sydney, covering an area that's 50% greater, is 6 billion Australian dollars, which is over a hundred times the cost of the Paris riverbanks redevelopment project. Admittedly, no skyscrapers will be built in the middle of Paris!

The Paris municipality launched the project a year ago, in July 2010, and this was followed by an intensive four-month period of public presentations, debates and workshops. In-depth studies were carried out during the first half of 2011, and a vast public inquiry into the project is under way at present. Actual work on the project will be carried out during the first half of 2012, during which time Paris will inevitably be transformed into a vast construction site. And the new facilities will be opened up to the general public in the course of the second half of next year. So, if you happened to be visiting London for the Olympic Games, you might even be able to drop across the Channel to take a peek at the new face of Paris/Seine. (Clearly, I'm an optimist.)

Retrospectively, we can say that the riverbanks of Paris were largely sacrificed to the goddess Automobile during the presidency of Georges Pompidou, from June 1969 to April 1974. This gentleman from Auvergne—a former Rothschild banker—used to get around in a Porsche. I remember running into him in 1969, out in the village of Houdan, to the west of Paris, where Christine and I had rented a farmhouse. Pompidou, who had a property in nearby Orvilliers, was buying his weekend stock of cigarettes.

At that time, the French people in general were enchanted by automobiles, and they liked the idea of driving into the heart of Paris along a two-lane riverside highway.

It wasn't until much later, when environmental issues came to the forefront, that people started to think that maybe there were better things to do with a lovely river such as the Seine, on its way through a magnificent city such as Paris, than to cover its banks in macadam and transform them into an urban autoroute.

But the damage had been done. So, today, it's a matter of seeing whether it can be undone.

Since it's not yet easy to obtain English-language information concerning the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project, I thought it might be worthwhile if I were to devote the rest of this blog post to a kind of virtual visit of what we might discover in Paris in a year or so's time. So, let's imagine that we've come from Normandy or Brittany, and that we're driving into Paris from the west, along Pompidou's right-bank highway. I propose that we stick to the Right Bank, and that we visit the four sites numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the above map of Paris. Then we'll leave the Right Bank, cross over the eastern tip of the Ile St-Louis and drive back along the Left Bank, visiting the sites numbered 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. So, let's go! Incidentally, all the architects' images that you are about to see can be enlarged by clicking.

We're traveling on the Right Bank to the east, in the same direction as the white automobile. So, this first image points back to where we came from. We've already driven past the Eiffel Tower, located on the Left Bank, which can be seen in the background on the other side of the Seine. As of next year, if we stop here [site n° 1 on the map], we'll have access to several great museums, including the new modern-art space that will be opened in the Palais de Tokyo. The pedestrian Debilly Footbridge, built over a century ago, enables us to walk across to the Left Bank.

On the Left Bank, we can visit the recently-inaugurated museum of the Quai Branly, dear to the heart of former French president Jacques Chirac, concerning the civilizations of Africa, Asia and Oceania (including our Australian Aborigines). But let us return to the Right Bank and continue our journey towards the center of Paris.

Here [site n° 2 on the map], we are within walking distance of the world's most illustrious museum: the Louvre. But we only have to stroll across the Seine to meeet up with the Orsay Museum of painting and sculpture from the period 1848-1914. Let us continue eastwards.

At the level of the Paris city hall, the Hôtel de Ville [site n° 3 on the map], we encounter a couple of joyful barges, the first of which is designed for kids, while the second is a floating bistrot.

We move towards the final Right Bank redevelopment zone, which is in fact a riverboat station, named Célestins [site n° 4 on the map].

At that point, we cross over the Seine to the Left Bank, and head back in a westerly direction.

At the level of the Orsay Museum [site n° 5 on the map], we encounter what might be thought of as the spiritual center of the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project. Materially, it is a giant aerial staircase descending towards the sacred river. The architects label it a place of meditation… whereas the wary mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, has the pragmatic courage to admit that we still do not know if such a fabulous structure can indeed be built! Let's hope that solutions will be found, enabling us to visit this magic place of an evening.

Back at the level of the Concorde [site n° 6 on the map], but remaining on the Left Bank, we encounter a magic archipelago of floating islands.

Next, there's the illustrious Alexandre III Bridge linking the Place de la Concorde to the French parliament building [site n° 7 on the map].

Moving towards the Eiffel Tower, we meet up with a hitherto undistinguished place where barges deposited gravel, known quaintly as Big Stone [site n° 8 on the map].

Then we move into the Left Bank territory of the Pont d'Alma [site n° 9 on the map].

I hardly need to point out that, at the Right Bank extremity of this peaceful bridge, Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997.

Now, what must we think about this virtual journey through Paris/Seine riverbank places that will only become meaningful next year? Well, if I can speak as a former longtime resident of Paris, I would not hesitate in saying that it sounds fabulous… and I heartily congratulate Delanoë on his imagination and courage (because, as you might imagine, there are detractors).

Paris, of course, is priceless, beyond measure. And must be preserved. Bravo Bertrand!

Monday, August 8, 2011

My paper on symbolic arrows

I've finished a short article on the arrow symbol—comprising a copy of a personal letter from Sir Ernst Gombrich—which is now stored in the commentary section of the Gombrich Archive at the University of Birmingham [access]. I was happy to collaborate on this task with Richard Woodfield [Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Art History at the University of Birmingham], who built the Gombrich website.

Alternatively, you can click the image to download directly a PDF version of my paper from a personal webspace.

I never actually got around to completing my research in this fascinating domain, which would have involved months of investigations. As I suggest in my paper, things have changed greatly today because of the existence of the Internet, and I would be thrilled if a young researcher (maybe in the field of graphic design) were to take up the challenge of presenting a global story of symbolic arrows.

Jingle cash bells

Regular readers of my Antipodes blog will have noticed that I often go out of my way to give a friendly helping hand to needy causes that appear to be worthy of my patronage.

So, that's why I've decided to throw in this small plug for a time-honored department store in London. In using the adjective "needy", I must admit that I'm merely judging the present state of this prestigious shop on the basis of a somewhat disturbing news item… although I must add that I haven't had time to drop across to the other side of the English Channel to verify personally this news. Apparently they've decided to install, at the height of summer, their Christmas 2011 displays. My only guess is that they're desperate for cash, and that their dire straits force them to adopt this incongruous marketing solution.

I'm particularly enticed by a delightful article that is indeed presented on their Christmas 2011 web pages [display]. I'm talking of a deluxe version (a little less than 80 quid sterling) of Freddie, the Harrods 2011 Christmas Bear. I'm thinking of ordering a specimen in the next few days—before the store runs out of bears—so that I'll be able to send it out to my Australian family in December. I reckon that a Christmas bear that can be acquired in the Old World at the start of a sultry month of August will be just right for transportation to Australia during the sweltering Antipodean celebrations of the birth of Jesus.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Ireland finally attacks the pope

Enda Kenny is the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. On 20 July, in the Dáil Éireann (lower house) of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament), Kenny delivered an extraordinarily virulent speech motivated by the recently-published report concerning the failure of the Catholic diocese of Cloyne to handle cases of sexual abuse of children by 19 priests. He castigated explicitly the Vatican in a style that would have been unthinkable up until recently.



This amazing speech will surely go down in Irish history as marking the moment when the once almighty church was finally brought to reckoning.

Religions are failed sciences

That's a great slogan, and the US neuroscientist Sam Harris is a brilliant lecturer. Besides, his clean-cut charisma echoes that of his English friend Richard Dawkins.



Sam makes everything sound so totally obvious… which it is, of course.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

In those days, even the Nasa wrote letters

I continue to talk about my past interest in symbolic arrows… which I've already evoked in three blog posts: in May, June and yesterday. The reason why I'm somewhat obsessed by this subject is that I've been working on a summary designed to clarify my brief exchange of letters about arrows with Ernst Gombrich, in 1976. This summary is almost completed, and I'll be announcing its existence shortly, in the form of a downloadable PDF file. Meanwhile, let me evoke briefly one of the most notorious symbolic arrows of all time: the curved trajectory that was engraved in the plaque aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes.

As you can see (at the bottom of the image), a curved line with an arrow-head at its right-hand extremity is intended to indicate the trajectory of the space vessel from its departure point, the planet Earth, to the vicinity of the orbit of Saturn. The question that springs into the mind of a skeptical earthbound observer is: Would extraterrestrial observers necessarily grasp the sense of this symbolic arrow? I sent a letter concerning my doubts to Nasa:

[Click to enlarge]

And I got a prompt and informative reply (curiously undated) from Charles Redmond, their public affairs officer in Washington.

[Click to enlarge]

Regardless of the objective content of our exchanges, I remain nostalgic today concerning that epoch, just a few decades ago (but before the Internet), when a simple individual such as myself could communicate directly with a fabulous organization such as the Nasa. At that time, needless to say, there were numerous indicators towards the future.

I often wonder retrospectively which (if any) of these paths towards the future I followed… leading to my solitary installation here at Gamone.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Back in the days when people wrote letters

In my May article entitled Voices from Vienna [display], I evoked my exchange of letters with the great Viennese art historian Ernst Gombrich. Then, in my June article entitled Symbolic arrows [display], I started to evoke the motivations behind my preoccupations with symbolic arrows.

Three decades ago, when I was eagerly pursuing this arrow subject, I tried to analyze every specimen I encountered. For Americans, the most famous bundle of symbolic arrows (exactly 13) is clenched in the left talon of a bald eagle, on the Great Seal.

That bundle of arrows symbolizes US military strength, whereas the olive branch in the eagle's right talon symbolizes cherished peace. I was intrigued by another illustrious blazon based upon a bundle of arrows.

These are the arms of the Rothschild family: the world's greatest and wealthiest dynasty of international bankers. Well, back in those days before personal computers and the Internet, I was curious to learn why the Rothschilds might have incorporated arrows in their coat of arms. So, I simply sent off a letter to the family in Paris.

I received a prompt and friendly reply from the chief himself: Baron Guy de Rothschild. At that time, he was the 72-year-old patriarch of a distinguished French family and the discouraged head of a great bank that had been nationalized by the socialist government of François Mitterrand. I've often wondered, since then, why Guy de Rothschild took time off from his tribulations to explain to a naive Australian why there were arrows in the family's coat of arms. My personal explanation might sound simplistic and corny, but I'll give it all the same. Guy de Rothschild sent me that personal letter [see below, click to enlarge] because... he was a gentleman.

This is a photo of the old man not long before his death, four years ago:

In his letter, he evoked the idea that the arrows represented the five sons of the patriarch Mayer Amschel Rothschild [1744-1812].

Today, this association between the bundle of five arrows and the sons is indicated explicitly in various web articles about Rothschild history. The prestigious US magazine Forbes considered Mayer Amschel Rothschild —who grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt—a "founding father of international finance", and ranked him 7th in their list of "the twenty most influential businessmen of all time". The Rothschild patriarch probably discovered his metaphorical sense of arrows, evoking down-to-earth advantages of sons, in Psalm 127:
Sons are a gift from the Lord
and children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the sons of one's youth.
Happy is he
who has his quiver full of them;
someone like that will not have to back down
when confronted by an enemy in court.

The following chart mentions individuals in the English and French branches of the family:

[Click to enlarge slightly]

The 48-year-old man whose name appears in the lower right-hand corner, Benjamin de Rothschild, is said to be the richest of the living Rothschilds.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Princely potion

Here in rural France, I buy groceries in plebeian places such as Leclerc and Intermarché supermarkets. On the other hand, if I were to settle down in England (which is not one of my current projects), I would make a point of residing in the vicinity of a Waitrose shop, because they have a reputation for offering top-quality foodstuffs. Besides, they have royal warrants to supply groceries and alcoholic beverages to both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles. And, as I've always said, what's good enough for the Royals is bloody good enough for me.


The Scottish economist Adam Smith [1723-1790] once claimed—long before Napoleon appeared on the world scene—that Britain was "a nation that is governed by shopkeepers". Well, even Kate Middleton's father-in-law seems to have got himself involved in retail business activities, under a most regal name and logo, which look as if they've come straight out of Burke's Peerage.

The branch of Duchy that markets herbal products proposes a nice little black bottle containing a mysterious potion named Detox Tincture, made from thistles and dandelions. For the moment, I haven't got around to trying it out, and discovering its health-inducing benefits. On the web page concerning this product [access], there's an inspiring description of Prince Charles, who "has always been an advocate of a requirement for fundamental reappraisal of the way we view health. He believes poor health does not exist in isolation, but is in fact a direct consequence of our lifestyles, cultures, communities and how we interact with our environments. He is passionate about adopting an integrated approach to health, as well as exploring how safe, proven complementary therapies can work in conjunction with mainstream medicine."

Not everybody in the kingdom is convinced that Charles is acting correctly from a medical and ethical viewpoint. An article in the Guardian in March used the ugly term "quackery" [display]. A more recent article in the same newspaper introduces an even more down-to-earth expression: "snake oil salesman" [display]. All I can say is that, if Charles or members of his family happened to read my blog, I would be most grateful if they were to ask the Duchy company to send me a few samples of their health-inducing products, and I promise to try them out rapidly, both on me and my dogs, and to describe the outcome for my readers.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Heritage aviation remains a dangerous affair

This unique modern replica of the airplane of the Wright brothers is referred to as the Wright "B" Flyer Silver Bird.


Its first test flight, which took place just 6 weeks ago in Ohio, is presented in this interesting video.


Last Saturday morning, the Silver Bird went down suddenly, killing its pilot and passenger.
I dedicate this blog post to the memory of my friend Adrian Lyons, 43, and his guest pilot David Sayers, 41, who were killed exactly 12 years ago—on August 1, 1999—when the Jet Provost trainer belonging to Adrian and his wife Patricia Tomkins crashed in a cornfield at Staverton, 20 miles from Gloucester Airport (UK).