So here we are talking about science

Science and scientific methodology vs beliefs and emotion. Ten minutes long and excellent presentation!

So here we are reading the book without end

World without End by Ken Follet

In a nutshell, this is exactly the same book as Pillars of the earth (read review here) by the same author, only it is set 200 years later and is a bit shorter I think. Aliena is called Caris, Jack is called Merthin, William is called Ralph, the cathedral is a bridge and there is the plague.

The blurb: Follett sold and made millions with PoE so he kept exactly the same formula for this "sequel". Not so much a sequel as it does not take up where the last left, nor does it give any info on the characters of its prequel. Instead we follow the descendants of PoE's heroes (which can justify the very similar characters) much as we did their ancestors. The backdrop, depending on where you are in the book, is the building of a bridge, the social and economic devastation (and opportunities) linked to the plague and the usual politics of religion and power, only this time in the 14th century. Again we span 50 or so years of British history, from the invasion of France to the horrors of the plague, and from every point of view- nuns, evil knights, heartbroken builders, farm labourers and so on with a hefty dose of sex, rape and violence.

IMHO this book would have been OK if its prequel hadn't been almost identical. My mistake was probably reading Pillars of the Earth and World without End one after the other. Serious overdose. Again, the book is characterised by rather 2D (albeit enjoyable) characters, debatable historical accuracy and insane ups and downs in the people's lives. Fair enough, a couple of (sub)plot lines are original, but it's not really worth trawling through 1200 pages of WwE to get 90% rehashed PoE (already over a thousand pages). If you liked PoE definitely wait a while before reading this or it will all seem too familiar. If you didn't like PoE, then forget it. if you haven't read PoE, start with that.

So here we are laughing in French

Funniest joke of the year so far! Translation below.

Lorsque Dieu créa le monde, il décida de concéder deux vertus aux hommes de chaque peuple afin qu'ils prospèrent.

Par exemple il rendit :
-Les Suisses précis et pacifistes
-Les Anglais flegmatiques et ironiques
-Les Japonais travailleurs et réalistes
-Les Italiens joyeux et humanistes

Quant aux français, il dit :
"Les français seront intelligents, honnêtes et sarkozistes."

Lorsque le monde fut achevé, l'ange qui avait été chargé de la distribution des vertus demanda à Dieu :
"Seigneur, tu as dit que tu octroyais deux vertus à chaque peuple, mais les Français en ont trois. Est-ce pour cela qu'ils se placent au dessus des autres ?"
Et Dieu répondit :
"En vérité, Je te le dis, chaque peuple a deux vertus y compris les Français, car chacun d'entre eux ne pourra en posséder que deux à la fois.
Ce qui veut dire que :
-si un français est sarkoziste et honnête, il ne sera pas intelligent
-si un français est sarkoziste et intelligent, il ne sera pas honnête
-si un français est intelligent et honnête, il ne pourra pas être sarkoziste."


When God created the World, He decided to provide the men of every nation with two virtues so that they would prosper.

For example, He endowed

-the Swiss with pacifism and precision
-the English with composure and irony
- the Japanese with realism and the value of work
- the Italians with joy and humanism.

As for the French, He said:

-May they be honest, intelligent, and Sarkozy supporters.

Once the World was created, the Angel in charge of the virtues' delivery asked God.
"My Lord, why did you provide the French with three virtues when you said you were giving two to each people? Is that why they feel so superior?

And God answered:
In truth, believe me, the French, like all the others, will only possess two virtues, for they cannot possess more than two at a time. This means that
- if the man is honest and supports Sarkozy, he is not intelligent
- if the man is intelligent and supports Sarkozy, then he cannot be honest
- nd if he is intelligent and honest, then he cannot support Sarkozy!

So here we are fiddling the immigration figures

When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President in May 2007, he included in his government Brice Horetefeux at the head of the newly created Ministry of immigration, integration, national identity and co-development. The creation of this Ministry had been an election pledge and was designed to attract the far-right voters and butchly address the illegal immigration issue in France. There has rightly been a lot of fuss over this Ministry's policies and actions, and especially the "quota policy" instaured. In a nutshell, in 2008 the precise number of 28000 reconduites à la frontière (escorts to the border) were to be done. To do this, there has been a massive increase of random police checks for identity papers which has led to shocking news items : an old Chinese man arrested outside his granddaughter's school in full view of the children, several suicides by defenestration when people have thought the police were coming to get them in their homes, people with families (and children born in France) and who have been working here for decades suddenly back on the plane to Africa. People who do not have the magic papiers live in fear of being caught randomly in the streets (it is compulsory to carry ID on your person at all time) while they go to work or collect their kids from school.

This was all true over a year ago (see post here)

That's it for the background, so did Brice Hortefeux make it to 28000? Well yes he did, and more; the Minsitry and the Minister are congratulating themselves for having reached the figure of 29796 reconduites. Not only that, but they are applauding the fact that just over 10000 of these, so around a third, were voluntary.

This is where we pause. Not for subjective moral issues about repatriating almost 20000 people against their will but for accountancy reasons. This figure of 10000 voluntary repatriations needs to be a little more analysed. Indeed, it seems that a pretty hefty proportion of these (I'm not sure anyone has the real figure) are EU citizens. This does not concern carts of Brits departing from the Cote d'Azur, but mainly the Roms, the (semi) nomadic gypsies settled mainly in Romania and Bulgaria which, since January 2007 have been EU members.

This means the Roms can travel freely in the EU. "But!", one could argue, "why would they depart voluntarily, especially if, as it seems, all they do is come back?" Because, believe it or not, the French state gives a repatriation bonus to all those who leave voluntarily of around 300 euros and provide transport back. It would seem, that a vast amount of the "10000 voluntary repatriations" involve busloads of EU citizens being given 300 euros andcarted off, after which they simply return to France and do it again. There have been journalist investigations into this and human rights organisations are denouncing it, but that's about it, and certainly no sound from the government. Weird or what?

So here we are mourning the veggie box

Bloody farmers.
I will not launch in to a long rant against french farmers (oh go on then) who since the post war period, when parts of Europe were starving, have benefitted from enormous encouragement from the French state and the European Union. The common agricultural policy, of which France has long been the main beneficiary, is the main common policy to have survived and was designed at de Gaulle's insistence. Whatever, the bloody French farmers are used to healthey subsidies and tipping pig manure on the steps of the town hall but right now that is not why they are so annoying. Loic, the farmer who provides us with the vegetables we collect every saturday for the veggie box has decided to pull out, despite our signing elaborate contracts and paying him in advance for vegetables until March. After putting up with his muddy chard and mutant celeriac, HE has deided that our AMAP is not big enough and that we don't help out at the farm enough... Bloody hell, we are paying for the kolkhose. So hopefully we will get our money back and find a new veggie box distributor, one that doesn't require us to spend our January weekends digging up onions.

So here we are on the Oregon trail

A small part of history by Peggy Elliott

In a nutshell : In 1846, the extended Springer family join the Oregon trail - a collection of 20+ families who decide to go westwards from Missouri to start a new life in Oregon. Written from the point of the view of the women on the trail we follow the hardships they encounter as their wagons cover over a thousand miles of inhospitable lands, with all the trials one can imagine on the way.

The blurb : This book, which was inspired by a book called "Women's diaries of the westward journey" by Lillian Schlissel, is written exclusively through the eyes of the women who followed their men on these incredible westward journeys. Through first person narrative, diary extracts and third person omniscient narrative we are given an account of the journey that is more concerned with the practicalities of keeping families together -and alive- rather than the technical aspects of the trail. A sticker on my edition says "guaranteed to break your heart" and the huge difficulties accompanied by the massive deathtoll of those involved remind us of the truer story of the romanticised "pioneer 'n eldorado" accounts of the trails to the Pacific.

IMHO, this is a very interesting, albeit very chick-litt and sentimental novel. For those interested in the 19th century conquest of the American west, this women's account of an often male-angled part of history, is fascinating. The main interests of this book are seeing the neat separation of men and women's roles in society and in the household, and the gruesome realities of the trail: pregnancy, accidents, illness, friendships through necessity, grim conditions and so on make it run like a soap opera. That said, it reads well and the level of detail is captivating : despite being fiction this author has done her research and we imagine travelling alongside the wagons through the plains, lava deserts and mountains. This book is good for people who would like to read an adult version of "The long winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, who like this historical period and, though I hate to say it, are female.

So here we are reading the pillars of the earth

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

In a nutshell : This book is a little over one thousand pages of small print long so the nutshell is going to be quite meaty. Ok, here goes. In mid-twelfth century England a builder dreams of building a cathedral. He and his complicated, extended family settle in the south of England and the story of the cathedral over the next 50 years is recounted through the stories of all the different people involved, from monks to peasants, landowners and knights.

The blurb : this epic monster of a book spans half a century of turbulent Medieval English history and a cast of a dozen or so main characters spanning 3 generations and every social rank. The building of the cathedral is the background of the story and provides the reason for following monks, priors and bishops, stonecutters and masons, earls and knights, market traders and farmers against a backdrop of Civil War. It is a huge tapestry of a book with many connections between the characters and a nice amount of detail (those 1000 pages had to say something!) and by following half a dozen or so characters throughout their lives you have a good sense of time passing. Follett is a thriller writer and he uses time in a interesting way, speeding up some of the more important events (attacks, quarrels, walks across Europe) and slowing some of the more descriptive bits. This gives an interesting twist to the suspense, especially as Follett uses a lot of rape, violence and plain ol' nastiness to hook you.

IMHO this is a cool, addictive read. The characters are sometimes a little absent or incoherent, the dialogue is nothing ground breaking, the historical accuracy is debatable, the anacronysms blatant, the descriptions of medieval England are interesting but no more and the pace of the book sometimes feels a little odd but it is still an addictive whopper. The likeable/hateable characters are good, the plot charges around and people go from riches to horror and back again . The religious/royal politics described are gripping and the whole thing has a satisfying ending. That said however, ironically for such a huge book, the end feels a little rushed but the first 800 pages or so were very hard to put down. Recommended holiday reading.

So here we are thinking about numbers

Happy new year 2009! I am feeling happy we have left 2008 for 8, while being a favorite number in Chinese culture, has never really appealed to me : a fat little man who has no direction except in the face of infinity. 9 however... 3 to the power of 2! and, even better I turned 27 a couple of weeks ago, which of course is 3 to the power of 3, and 3 being my favorite number, well...

Paul Auster personnalises numbers, and puts it beautifully : "... each number has a personnality of its own. A twelve is very different from a thirteen (...) Twelve is upright, conscious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants. Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman, who likes tramping through woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what's he told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation (...)"

Some of this is cultural of course : thirteen is the traitor Judas and ten is the kid at school who always got top marks. But some numbers possess the extraordinary qualities and this is when we leave the biased lands of cultural associations and disappear down the rabbit hole of the study of numbers and their properties, which started with Pythagoras ("numbers are everything") and continues today to fascinate mathematicians and amateurs. Let's go back to twelve, Auster's natural leader. Twelve is a very useful number, as it can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, but that does not make it perfect mathematically. For this, as defined by the Pythagoreans, a number must be equal to the sum of its divisors. Six is the first perfect number as its divisors (1,2,3) add up to 6. Twenty eight is the next as its divisors (1, 2, 4, 7, 14) add up to itself.

Numbers which are equal to a power of two (4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and so on) are never perfect, but the sum of their divisors is always equal to the number minus one. For example : 2 to the power of 2 is 4 but its divisors (1 and 2) add up to 3. 2 to the power of 3 is eight but eight's divisors (1,2 and 4) are equal to 7. 2^4 is 16, whose divisors (1,2,4 and 8) add up to 15. Euclid established a link between perfect numbers and the number 2. It showed that every perfect nmber (6, 28, 496) is the product of a power of 2, multplied by the next power of 2 minus one.

ie 6 = 2^1 x (2^2 -1)
28 = 2^2 x (2^3 - 1)
496 = 2^4 x (2^5 - 1).

A cool derivation on perfect numbers are what Fermat called friendly numbers, of which he discovered 2 pairs: 220 and 284. the sum of 220's divisors add up to 284 and vice versa. In 1636 he discivered the pair 17296 and 18416. Same goes for 1184 and 1210, discovered by a sixteen year old Italian called Paganini, two hundred and fifty years later. Descartes discovered a pair in the 9 million region and Euler compiled a list of sixty two.

And despite 2009 being neither perfect nor friendly, I wish you both and more this year: Happy New Year!