David Madore's WebLog: 2003-07

Je regardais distraitement ce soir une émission à la télé sur l'alcool au volant. Interview de jeunes dans une boîte de nuit, pour savoir si dans chaque groupe il y en a bien un qui sera prêt à renoncer à boire de l'alcool pour pouvoir prendre le volant. Des témoignages ressort clairement ce que je savais déjà, mais qui me frappe toujours : à quel point « boire [des boissons alcoolisées] » est considéré comme une condition sine qua non pour pouvoir s'amuser.

Je ne bois pas (non pour des raisons religieuses ou médicales ni pour un principe quelconque, mais parce que je n'aime pas ça, et je ne tiens pas spécialement à acquérir le goût de l'alcool) : or je peux bien comprendre qu'on trouve agréable de boire, que ce soit ou non pour s'enivrer — mais je n'arrive pas à comprendre comment on peut trouver cela indispensable, comme si on ne pouvait pas s'amuser en boîte si on n'a bu que du Schweppes ou du jus d'orange. Et à mon avis, dans « celui qui conduit c'est celui qui ne boit pas », la corvée consiste à conduire (ramener tout le monde à la maison, même si on est crevé…), pas à ne pas boire. Il est vrai que je ne conduis pas non plus (je n'ai pas le permis).

Je pourrais comparer avec le fait d'être végétarien (je ne le suis pas) : les végétariens sont souvent regardés avec des yeux plein d'incompréhension de la même façon que ceux qui ne boivent pas d'alcool. (Ceci étant, la différence est qu'il y a probablement très peu de végétariens qui le sont simplement parce qu'ils n'aiment pas le goût de la viande. La plupart ont ou rajoutent une considération éthique à leur régime.) Y a-t-il des gens qui considèrent que la viande (ou le poisson) fait nécessairement partie d'un repas réussi ?

My router's power control block just failed. I'm cracking up.

You won't see this 'blog entry for a bit of time, of course…

Fortunately, I can “borrow” another PC's power control block for a few days, until I buy a new one. That's the advantage of having half a dozen computers in the same house. Now I have to gather the willpower to perform the organ transplant…

I hate and curse France Telecom! This time the fault is clearly theirs and it is not a technical problem: it is, the guy on the phone told me, a “scheduled hardware update”, but apparently not scheduled enough that they would inform their clients about it! So at 1:40AM (that's 2003-07-31T01:40+0200), poof, no ADSL any more. And I'm told (without any kind of apology) that it is to last the whole night. Now you might say, well, since it's past 2AM, all I have to do is now go to bed and things will be working in the morning; only it doesn't work like this: there are things that I just have to do tonight, and doing them with a basic analog modem instead of ADSL is going to take just about all night.

It's amazing how the “computer excuse” makes us accept what would be otherwise unacceptable levels of (mis)service: it would not for one second be deemed acceptable for an ordinary telephone line to be interrupted for five hours in a row, not even from 2AM to 7AM at the deadest of summer—unless it had a very good excuse like a natural calamity, the phone company would immediately be sued for damages. But an ADSL line they think they can cut with no prior notice. I think I'd better stop writing at this point, or I will be saying some very dirty words.

A question suddenly struck me: when was it that the twelve constellations of the zodiac were “invented”? I mean, anyone can divide the Sun's yearly course in twelve parts, with the equinoxes and solstices at cardinal points—but when was it that this and that groupment of stars were identified as a Ram, a Bull, Twins, a Crab, and so on?

Of course, I could ask more generally when it was that all the constellations got their names, not just the twelve (or thirteen, as the boundaries are now set) that lie on the ecliptic. Manifestly the names were set by a people living well in the northern hemisphere, since the southern hemisphere constellations have evidently “modern” names (like “the telescope”); but then, some northern hemisphere, or high southern hemisphere, constellations also have funny names (however did the “Shield of Sobieski” come to fill that little gap between the Eagle and the Serpent? Jan Sobieski lived in the XVIIth century, so this doesn't date from the Babylonians).

While I'm at it, how come is it that Dante, in the early 1300's, was able to describe the constellation of the Southern Cross near the southern celestial pole? (Purgatory, canto I, verses 22–24:)

 I' mi volsi a man destra, e puosi mente
a l'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
non viste mai fuor ch'a la prima gente.

Probably it is a mere stroke of luck, and not a very unlikely one at that, that there are, indeed, four first-magnitude stars forming a kite or cross not too far from the south pole. It may have been that this was a common conception at Dante's time and that when the stars were indeed first seen by Europeans, they were immediately associated with a cross (and not seen as part of a larger whole, like they could have). Or could it have been that someone who had seen these stars had told someone who had told someone who…had told Dante? But then, Dante says, just there, that the stars had never been seen except by the First People. Which is stupid anyway, as one doesn't need to go so very far south to see the Southern Cross: currently all four stars are visible from latitutes below 26°54′N; in 1300, taking into account the precession of the equinoxes, if my back-of-envelope computation with spherical trigonometry is correct, it could be seen up to a latitute of 30°47′N—and the latitude of Cairo is 30°03′N, so I guess at the deadest of a spring night in Cairo around 1300 all four stars of the Southern Cross could be seen on the southern horizon.

But as to the constellations of the Zodiac, who can say? Was it the Greeks who gave them names, or was it the Babylonians perhaps? Certainly anyone not as far North as the arctic circle (or as far South as the antarctic circle) can see them. We can get a hint as to when they were named, however, because the presence of the Sun in the constellation of the Ram has always been associated (by astrologers) with the first month of spring, and this was true roughly 1800 years ago, whereas 3800 years ago (always because of the precession of the equinoxes) it was the Bull that marked the first month of spring. Not a very conclusive interval, but it tends to indicate that it was probably not in the very first days of Egyptian antiquity that the constellation of the Ram was marked as the first sign of the zodiac.

Incidentally, the “New Age” or “Age of Aquarius” gets the latter name from the time, around five centuries from now or so, when the vernal point enters the constellation of Aquarius, the Water-Bearer. The present age should be known as the Age of Pisces (and before that we had the age of Aries, and even before that, Taurus). Of course, the limits of the constellations are completely arbitrary.

But enough astronomy. Another thing I can think of are the twenty-two major arcana of the tarot: it would be interesting to know what their story is (barring all mumbo-jumbo mysticism).

I am not at all a mystic, but I find that mystical constructions and correspondances form a nice template for literary work. This idea was very much to the taste of the “Oulipo” group and related writers. In fact, Italo Calvino, in Il Castello dei destini incrociati imagines a number of stories from an arrangement of tarot cards, read in various directions and orders. So I thought of the following idea (which quite possibly has been already used): write a novel consisting of twenty-one chapters, of roughly equal length, named The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, and so forth until Judgement and The World, each inspired by the figure of the corresponding major arcana; and the book should start with an introduction and conclusion, both named The Fool, and possibly word-for-word identical (but interpreted in a very different way at both extremes of the book). It might also be interesting (but probably far more difficult) to write a book with twelve chapters, The Ram, The Bull and so forth, given that the reader should be able to start with any of them and proceed cyclically. And yet another idea I had (less constraining, I guess) was to write a story with twelve characters in it, somehow clearly (but freely) identified as the twelve courts on a usual (non-tarot) deck of cards, perhaps divided in twelve chapters each one focusing on one of the characters (probably having a complex graph of relations with the others). In the same line of thought, it might be possible to conceive a book that follows the lines of a chess game, where each piece moved corresponds to an action of some character, but I'm not sure that would be very interesting, actually. (To be sure, Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass does this, but it takes considerable liberty with the rules of chess.)

Update: This later entry (in French) expands upon the same ideas.

I am pleased to announce an absence of change on my Web site.

Why should I be pleased to announce this, you ask? The thing is that after yesterday's all-day coding session, and a good number more hours today, I have finished the first fully working version of the C replacement for the XSLT framework that I used to process these Web pages.

In other words, the page you are currently viewing, and a number of its companion, which are generated from a source file that I write in a custom XML language, used to be produced by a XSLT processor, and now they are produced (from the same source, of course) by a C program I wrote, and the point is that you should see absolutely no changes due to this switch—no changes today, at least. Unless you actually view the HTML source (and it's not pretty, nor was it before I changed, and even then the changes should be hard to spot), there should be no visible difference at all caused by the work I've just done. If you see some, please let me know. (Of course, this applies only for the couple of hours after this entry is written, because afterward I will indeed start making some changes, that's the point, of course.)

Very soon I can start splitting this 'blog in little pieces so it won't stay in a huge flat file like it is now. Have a little more patience!

François Durand (francoisdurandensfr), aka « Fanfan », un collègue de l'ENS, mène avec le Laboratoire d'Économétrie de l'École polytechnique une expérience sur les modes de scrutin dans les élections. Comme c'est un sujet qui m'intéresse beaucoup, je me permets de faire de la pub : participez à ces petites enquêtes (il y a six votes différents, tous très courts ; certains ne sont probablement pas pertinents pour tout le monde, cependant ; par ailleurs il faut activer JavaScript pour utiliser ces pages).

Dans une des toute premières entrées de ce 'blog, je mentionnais déjà le système de scrutin de Condorcet-Nash. Il faut encore que je me décide à écrire une page de vulgarisation expliquant précisément en quoi il consiste et pourquoi il est le meilleur en un certain sens.

I've just spent something like twelve hours hacking (with only a short interruption to eat and watch the movie My Beautiful Laundrette that happened to be running on TV). I'm writing a C program to replace the XSLT framework that I use to generate the (“new style”) pages on this Web site (such as this one, and this one is indeed the main worry) following a template. But I've come to the limit of what XSLT can do, and this is why I now need to rewrite it all in C, using the eXpat XML parser; actually a posteriori I realize that using Perl instead of C would probably have been a wiser choice (or, at any rate, kinder on my nerves), but now that I've “almost finished” my rewriting in C, I am not doing it again in Perl. Anyway.

I really should avoid getting myself in this kind of coding marathon where I do nothing but type, type, type, and curse the conceptor of the foo library for not having implemented bar the way I would have liked, and then type some more, and promise to myself that I will have something to eat as soon as this function is written. I then find myself many hours later with a semi-working program, a totally fscked up brain, an urge to go to bed, and many things undone that I should have taken care of (some of which cannot be put up 'till later, such as, feed the cat—and the poor thing is certainly not responsible for my XML crisis).

Is there a book or a Web site somewhere that explains all about Mac OS X (and Mac hardware or firmare) for those who know already all (or almost all, or all that is worth knowing) about Unix? I understand the underlying BSD (“Darwin”) layer pretty well, but the functioning of the various toolkits built over it is very much obscure to me.

My immediate concern is that since I installed the latest “Mac OS security update” on my mother's iMac, it doesn't work any more: actually, after boot, it gives a completely blue screen (with only a mouse cursor) in which the login window doesn't display as it should, and doesn't seem to react to anything. It appears that the login program is constantly respawned and constantly segfaults. I suspect that a critical system library has been damaged, deleted or misplaced, and the login application won't start because of it; but since I don't know how to test this hypothesis, or, even if I were certain, how to recover the original file, I'm pretty stuck there. I don't even know how to force the Mac to reboot (other than by logging remotely and running the shutdown program). Even less do I know how to force a boot from a CD, and that's a trouble. Unfortunately, Apple's Web site is utterly useless: for example, a Google search for “boot from CD” on Apple's site returns only four useless pages—hello?

Je signalais que ma soirée promettait d'être chargée. Et je ne le regrette assurément pas, parce qu'elle a également été très agréable. Après m'être manifesté (vers 19h15) à la permanence hebdomadaire de >Dégel! (que je ne voulais pas manquer parce que je pensais que c'était la dernière avant la rentrée, en fait ce ne sera pas le cas), j'ai couru (vers 20h30) à l'anniversaire de mon amie Izys, que j'ai déjà mentionnée dans ce 'blog, et juste après le dessert, j'ai marché de Belleville à Ménilmontant (heureusement ce n'est pas loin) pour une soirée (vers 23h15) chez mon ami Daivy que j'ai également mentionné ici précédemment. Et je suis reparti vers 1h45 (25h45, écriraient certains) pour une petite heure de marche afin de bien digérer tout cela et retrouver mon chez moi.

Et j'ai pu ainsi bavarder avec une bonne vingtaine de personnes que j'apprécie, dont certains que je ne vois pas très souvent, et ce fut un plaisir (donc, merci à tous, notamment s'il y en a qui lisent ce 'blog).

Ciel, serais-je en voie de devenir sociable ? Voilà qui est inquiétant. Rassurez-vous, ce week-end je ne vais probablement pas adresser la parole à qui que ce soit, et je vais d'ailleurs me terrer à Orsay, chez mes parents, qui me confient la garde de leur maison (et surtout de leur chat) pendant qu'ils partent en vacances en Toscane. Mais j'en profiterai pour préparer un peu mon propre goûter d'anniversaire.

Macromedia (Shockwave and) Flash is one of the great woes of the modern World Wide Web: this despicable plugin makes Web sites with no notion of accessibility, and which are, basically, a pain to navigate. I also hate Flash because the plugin was badly written (by a million monkeys I suppose) so it makes my browser unstable. But when a site's main content is Flash, I suppose the pain must be borne (and I did, reluctantly, install the plugin on my browser) if I am to access the site's content (though I should probably write an insulting form letter to send to the webmaster of every Flash-using web site I encounter). However, when the site uses Flash in side advertising then my anger knows no bounds. For these stupid animations cannot be stopped! Imagine that: knowing their users are hostages, Macromedia does not provide a “stop animation” button on their Flash widgets. And there is nothing more distracting than a continuous side animation when one is trying to read neighboring (fixed) text; which is, of course, the intended effect: to distract the reader's attention toward the advertising.

Fortunately, the great and might Mozilla-blessed-be-its-name has come up with a partial solution: this “Flash Click to view” Mozilla extension, using the simplest and most elegant Mozilla code (thus illustrating its power and flexibility, besides) replaces Flash animations with a button that one must simply press to get the plugin started.

This is going to change my life!

I'm just much too tired now to write something in this 'blog, sorry. I'm not even sure I can make up for it tomorrow, because tomorrow and the day after should be busy days for me.

Voici quelques photos (toujours épouvantablement mauvaises, et presque systématiquement floues, comme d'habitude) que j'ai prises en me promenant sur Paris Plage, entre Sully-Morland et le Louvre.

Actually, precisely five minutes (according to system logs) after I commited the previous entry, my ADSL line was back up and kicking. I don't know whether this is the effect of my phone call to complain (or maybe someone at France Telecom is a real fan of my 'blog and reads it every minute?), but if it is I can for once praise France Telecom for being efficient at repairing things.

This also shows that two hours' Internet withdrawal is about as long as I can stand and still survive. Great.

Of course, it would be intersting to know what could have caused this. I would also like to know how in the world my dictionary, which was sitting nicely and quitely on its shelf and which I hadn't touched in the least for hours, suddenly decided to fall on the floor (with a very loud crash) just seconds ago. This is too weird.

At 21:55+0200 (meaning 9:55PM Paris time) this evening, my ADSL line suddenly, and mysteriously, ceased to function: the “line sync” light on the modem is constantly flashing, meaning it cannot achieve DSL synchronization (at the lowest level, so no data are being exchanged at all).

Right now I'm connected through an ordinary telephone line modem, and I find it unbearable: not so much because it's slow, but because every time I disconnect I suddenly realize I had forgotten to do one more thing while on line, and I just have to connect again. I've just become too accustomed to having permanent Internet access.

I hope this situation doesn't last. I called France Telecom after an hour of dysfunction, and they promised they'd call me back by tomorrow morning after having done something. They are capable of being anywhere from hopelessly clueless to pretty damn efficient, so I don't know what to expect.

I intended to write a 'blog entry about Paris Plage (“Paris Beach”) today, since I went to walk there and took some photos, but uploading the photos without ADSL would just take to long, so it will have to wait.

This is one of my recurring rants, so I'm surprised to find that I still didn't mention it on this 'blog. In short, I'm a frequent night-walker, and I'm sick of sodium vapor lamps.

This interesting page on types of lamps (in French) compares the following kinds: ordinary incandescent, halogen (incandescent), fluorescent (sometimes improperly called “neon”: true neon tubes emit a red hue and require very high voltage), mercury vapor, (low- and high-pressure) sodium vapor, and metal halide. Incandescent lights (essentially) emit a blackbody radiation, whereas the others have specific emission line corresponding to specific electronic transitions.

The characteristic orange emission line of excited sodium, and consequently the orange color of sodium vapor lamps, is very easily recognizable. Now a specific (visible) narrow emission line means that the lamp has a high luminance-per-unit-power efficiency (over one hundred lumens per watt, if I believe the page I just cited), and since sodium vapor lamps are relatively cheap to produce and last a long time, they are economically viable and have been used extensively in urban lighting. I don't know what it is in other parts of the world, but in Paris many places are lit almost exclusively with sodium vapor lamps. Unfortunately, their specific orange light greatly distorts (or even totally disables, in the case of low-pressure sodium vapor) normal color vision; furthermore, I find it terribly gloomy. It's all right to light highways with this sick orange light, but a city is a different matter. Astronomers may prefer the orange light of sodium vapor (because it's easy to filter out), but when I look at a moderately clouded sky I don't like seeing it pinkish: the sky was not meant to be pinkish, or orange, except perhaps at sunset.

Mercury vapor is hardly better: it is “white”, but it is some kind of sick, blueish-greenish white, and though this may not be very scientific, I find mercury vapor lamps just about as depressing as sodium vapor lamps. I think mercury vapor was used prior to sodium vapor, and is now being phased out. Fluorescent lights are a bit better, but they are not very well suited for urban lighting because their natural shape is in tubes (not easy to put in lampposts) and it costs more to have it in bulb-like shapes. Ordinary incandescent lights are all right in hue (and are often used within houses), but they don't give enough light to be used alone in city lighting (by modern standards, one lux or two is not enough even as lower bound); besides, they don't last nearly long enough.

Halogen lamps and metal halide lamps give a very “good” white (the closer it is to the daylight sun's stimulus the better the white; halogen is not quite as white as metal halide, but it gives a better rendering of colors since it has a continuous spectrum). In places where a good white illumination not distorting colors is a premium, these lamps are used. For example, in Paris, the Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) or Notre Dame are lit at night with such white hues (in the case of Notre Dame, ordinary incandescent lights have been used on the square in front of the church, and the façade is lit with a very subtly chosen palette of whitish or “cream” tones—I don't know exactly what kinds of lamps are used).

But cities would be so much more beautiful at night if we were willing to pay the money to have them lit with a combination of halogen and metal halide lamps (plus some incandescent and fluorescent lamps in specific places, and, of course, specially colored lamps for various artistic effects where desired) and greatly reduced the use of sodium vapor. (In some cases, sodium vapor is all right: for example, the Eiffel tower is lit with sodium vapor at night, and that sort of goes with the style; these days, for the first ten minutes of every hour of the night they have a special “flickering” display of white light on the tower, and the contrast between orange and white is rather nice.) As for mercury vapor, it should be banned altogether.

Ce vendredi (le 25, donc) je suis bien embêté par le fait qu'il y a simultanément trois soirées à toutes lesquelles je voudrais aller (notamment parce qu'elles me promettent de voir des gens que je prendrai plaisir à retrouver). Comment faire ? Mes talents d'ubiquité ne sont pas encore si perfectionnés (deux je pourrais encore faire, mais trois…). Je suppose que je vais diviser mon temps pour aller à au moins deux, mais je trouve toujours dommage de partir en cours de temps.

Il n'est vraiment pas possible de me cloner ? Ça pourrait être utile.

[100^e entrée dans ce 'blog ! Hourra !]

Aujourd'hui des amis m'ont fait visiter un petit bout de la Petite Ceinture, ces voies de chemin de fer qui font le tour de Paris à l'intérieur du boulevard périphérique, et qui sont maintenant désaffectées (sauf pour le bout qui a été récupéré par le RER C). Des longueurs importantes de voies sont encore en place, ainsi que quantité de gares et de ponts ; une bonne partie est en surface, et l'accès, bien que condamné par des grilles ou grillages, est possible en différents endroits. J'imagine que la Petite Ceinture, comme les catacombes (nettement plus dangereuses, cependant), a ses fans qui savent tout de la meilleure façon d'y aller ; en tout cas, les nombreux tags le long de la voie prouvent que des gens y pénètrent bien de temps en temps.

Nous y sommes rentrés par le parc des Buttes-Chaumont, où l'accès est assez facile : il suffit de descendre, à l'extrémité nord-est du parc (à l'ouest des voies, cependant), tout en bas, et il n'y a guère plus qu'une petite marche à descendre (la grille a été retirée) pour descendre sur les voies. De là nous avons pu parcourir le tracé au-dessus de la rue Petit, de l'avenue Jean Jaurès et du canal de l'Ourcq (avec une jolie vue sur la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie du parc de la Villette) jusqu'au niveau de l'actuelle station Corentin Cariou, où se trouve l'ancienne gare PC « Pont de Flandre ». À ce niveau-là, nous avons pu sortir par un point d'accès qui était d'une très grande facilité : le « sentier de la station » (voie privée, terminée par une grille qui n'était pas fermée à clé) relie l'avenue Corentin Cariou, juste en face de la station du même nom, à la gare PC, où une autre porte non fermée à clé donnait accès aux voies. Je fournis ces informations aux cas où des amateurs (à leurs risques et périls…) voudraient tenter la promenade en sens inverse.

La photo qui ouvre cette entrée représente le canal de l'Ourcq vu depuis le pont de la Petite Ceinture qui le surmonte, en regardant vers le sud-ouest.

Cette dernière addition que je viens de faire à la page de mes photos me rappelle distinctement le proverbe préféré de mon père : You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (On ne peut pas faire une bourse de soie avec l'oreille d'une truie) — qu'il aime beaucoup appliquer en parlant de moi, on se demande pourquoi.

Le bandana sur la tête est censé résoudre le problème de mes cheveux, qu'on ne voit donc pas ; certains me disent que j'aurais dû m'abstenir du logo Nike, mais je ne suis pas militant d'Attac, moi, et je m'en fous assez, en fait (de toute façon, le logo Nike, il est déjà sur mes chaussures et souvent sur mes chaussettes, alors…).

Quant au look général, il suit la philosophie que j'ai définie : éclectique. Donc, en l'occurrence, un mélange douteux de surfer, goth, racaille et pédé. Impressionnant, n'est-ce pas ? Je traduis quand même : surfer pour le tee-shirt sans manche Billabong, et pour la coupe du short / bermuda / pantacourt (je ne sais jamais ce qu'il faut dire, et de toute façon vous ne le voyez pas) ; goth pour le style d'écriture sur le tee-shirt, parce que le short est tatoué « Slipknot » (mais plus discrètement que le sweat dont j'ai déjà parlé) et pour la chaîne qui garde mes clés attachées, mais ça non plus vous ne pouvez pas le voir ; racaille (d'accord, c'est pas plausible ; mais on m'a dit que je ressemblais à Eminem, si, si — et je prends ça comme un compliment) pour le bandana et pour les plaquettes d'identification façon GI (sauf qu'avoir son numéro de sécurité sociale dessus, ça fait plutôt geek fou mais passons) ; et pédé pour le bracelet de force que vous ne voyez pas non plus à mon poignet droit, mais il semble qu'actuellement tout le monde dans le Marais en porte (y a-t-il un code subtil endre la droite et la gauche, d'ailleurs ? hum, j'espère que non — je porte le mien au bras droit parce que je suis droitier et que j'ai donc ma montre au bras gauche). Ça vous en bouche un coin, n'est-ce pas ? Mais pourquoi lisez-vous des choses aussi débiles ? Vous croyez vraiment ce que je raconte ?

Maintenant, le croiriez-vous, je me compose un look complètement n'importe comment, comme ça, et j'ai reçu des compliments (et ce n'était pas ironique, j'en suis presque certain) de la part de plusieurs inconnus dans la rue. C'est dingue, hein ?

Peut-être que je m'habille comme ça parce que c'est le genre de tenue que je trouve séduisante quand je croise des gens dans la rue ? C'est bien possible. En mélangeant un peu tout, bien sûr.

De toute façon, il est fort probable qu'avant la fin de l'été j'aurai changé d'avis.

When creating a novel, a writer often has a relatively small number of “key fragments” in mind which make up the essential structure of the story, and which it is eminently pleasurable to write; then there are parts which it is not so pleasant to write, and others which are positively boring for the writer (and sometimes, also, for the reader). No matter how good the book is, the writer can't be expected to have had fun all the time, to have enjoyed writing every line of it. (Of course, even the favorite parts may be a strain to write, but at least they are rewarding, whereas some parts aren't nearly so.)

Hence the question: why not write just such fragments, without any novel around them? A really well written fragment, perhaps even as short as a single sentence, should convey the impression that it belongs to a novel, that it has been taken out of a context that really existed before it was cut—and ultimately the reader's imagination should provide the context.

Much it is with some paintings, which so vividly rouse the beholder's imagination in creating a whole scene around them. Take Poussin's famous painting Les Bergers d'Arcadie for example: this gathering of shepherds around a tomb suggests that there is a story behind the scene we see, but it is up to us to invent it.

So my idea is to write very short fragments of prose, tableaux of a kind, which suggest that there is more to the story but don't reveal it.

Here's an example which might better explain the idea I have in mind (it's not very well written, my English is as bad as usual, and so on, but at least it should make clear where I'm getting at):

“The sea! The sea!” they exclaimed, rushing down the cliff as fast as the steep path would allow. “The sea!”—joyful as the Greeks led by Xenophon—“at last!”

And when they finally touched the deserted shore of the cove, nobody said a word. The young one cupped his hands, reached down and collected some water, careful not to let a single drop fall, carrying it as though it were liquid diamond—and then throwing it all in the air with a cry of glee.

The sun was beginning to set, coloring the autumn landscape with pinkish hues, and the ocean in front of them was woven with rivulets of molten gold. An overwhelming sensation of peace descended upon the little group. No longer were they running away—no longer were their enemies close on their heels. Now they had reached the end of the world, and the beginning of another journey. Ahead of them lay freedom: a freedom almost tangible, a freedom which they could discern on the horizon, a freedom that was their due after this dreadful flight.

A call sounded behind, drawing them from their rêverie. “Make haste: they are coming! This way, quick!” And they were on the run again.

What does this suggest? I don't know. I can't tell you who these people are who just arrived on the seashore—or who are those that seem to be running after them. I can't tell you how they intend to cross the sea, or whether they do. Nor do I know what holds this promise of a better life. I only have this little scene in mind, very colorful indeed, from which I could make a painting (if I knew how to paint!); you'll have to create the rest.

But my point is, this could be part of a novel. It could even be the beginning of one—or the end, for that matter. And I think I would rather like to read such a novel. Only it doesn't exist, which is sort of too bad.

More interestingly, I think the “gratuitous literary fragment”, as I call it, or perhaps more elegantly, “verbal tableau”, could be a form of art of its own, much like a kind of poetry. Frustrating as it would be, a book of mere fragments such as the above would be an interesting work.

I have written a couple more “gratuitous” fragments (not all in the same spirit, though).

I'm afraid it's happening again: I have millions of things to do, but somehow—metaphysically I might say—the fact that it's summer means I must be bored, and lack the courage—the energy—the willpower to do anything (anything constructive, that is).

For now I think I'll just go to bed and sleep copiously.

A friendly hello to my friend Marjorie ‘Izys’ Luzet who started her photo(b)log, Candid Eye, a few days ago. Sometimes, they say, a picture is worth a thousand words…

Thanks to Garoo (whom I've already mentioned in this 'blog), I discovered this fun directory of wonderful things, a collection of news of the most futile—but wonderful—kind. Definitely worth a look. Several looks per day, in fact, considering the number of things that get posted. Keep this in mind for your wasted moments in cyberspace, when you no longer know whither to surf (whither, not whether, mark), and you need something relaxing to read. It seems perfect for that.

Try telling this story to your friends: and the first warning he [some common friend, perhaps] ever had of the start of Alzheimer's disease, appropriately enough, was that he wanted to say something about Alzheimer (the physician) and found himself unable to remember the guy's first name. When you say this, people will start, suddenly worried, scratching their head trying to figure out what Alzheimer's first name was. The trick is that, for some reason, virtually nobody knows that it was Alois, but they get the impression that such a famous person's first name must of course be well-known.

I am told that Alois' son liked to play a similar joke on people who didn't know his (last) name: they would hesitate, hello there, Mister, Mister…, in trying to remember it (or whether they should know it) and he would take a deep and meaningful voice, as if diagnosing—“Alzheimer”.

All right, it seems that (at least until someone tells me otherwise) deactivating JavaScript stopped MSIE from crashing on this page. (Actually, my first attempt failed because of a typo on my part, but this is now fixed.) So Internet Explorer users (that's what? 98% of the Web population?) are no longer excluded from reading my WebLog, hurray, hurray. If you can't read this sentence, please tell me about it (davidwwwmadoreorg).

The downside is that (always talking about MSIE, of course) email addresses such as the one I just quoted will appear quite ugly. I'm sorry about that, but there isn't much that I can do; you just have to imagine that the little picture is a “commercial at”, and that the is a “full stop”. Yeah, it sucks. Of course, users of Mozilla and Opera should have no problem (readable email addresses even with JavaScript turned off). As for Konqueror or Safari, I received reports that it doesn't quite work, but I still have to investigate.

The main worry at the moment is that this 'blog, with its currently 93 entries, has long since become far too long to remain on a single flat page. But I still have to write the XML processing infrastructure that will split it in monthly pieces (plus the last twenty or so entries on the main page, and a table of contents of the rest), while keeping all the links good. I've come to the limit of what XSLT can do, and I'm afraid I'll have to drive eXpat from a C program of my own to do the parsing.

Today, one of the great pioneers of the World Wide Web has died: AOL Time Warner has put an end to (the thoroughly unprofitable) Netscape—which had been bought by AOL in november of '98. Netscape employees have been laid off or will be employed in another branch of AOL Time Warner. Although this had been expected for some time now (especially with AOL's recent agreement with Microsoft), the suddenness of the decision came as a surprise to many.

Not all may have liked Netscape or what they did, but certainly 2003-07-15 is a day that will be remembered when someone writes the history of the World Wide Web. I would like to write a little obituary but I'm afraid I don't know enough of the history of Netscape for that. Certainly there must be a little celebration party currently going on down Redmond: after all, they just won the war (the one that started seven or eight years ago).

Concerns are being raised as to whether Mozilla can survive. The Mozilla Foundation has been created to continue the Lizard's development, and it has received from AOL the various logos and trademarks associated with Mozilla, and will also receive USD2000000 (two million dollars—sounds like a pretty negligible amount of money to me, barely enough to pay for this summer's development or so, but anyway…) plus other donations in computer time, bandwidth and whatnots; other industry leaders such as Sun Microsystems, Red Hat and perhaps IBM have also pledged various donations to the Mozilla Foundation. But I remain skeptical. Time will tell, I guess.

Due to repeated reports of Internet Explorer—including version 6—crashing on this WebLog in various circumstances (not always clear), I am deactivating all JavaScript on my site for MSIE clients, in hope that it will remove the problem. Of course this means that “despammed” email addresses (such as my own, davidwwwmadoreorg) will appear in an unpleasant way. If you don't like that, please consider using a decent Web browser: Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror or Safari.

If you have some wisdom to share as to what is causing MSIE to crash, and how I can work around it minimalistally (uh, what's the adverb corresponding to the adjective “minimalist”? don't tell me there isn't—the English language can't be that broken), please let me know.

Primo, comment peut-on être suffisamment con pour essayer de photographier la tour Eiffel depuis les Tuileries au flash ? Essayer de photographier des feux d'artifice, c'est une chose (je n'en sais rien, mais je suppose qu'avec une pellicule assez sensible et une assez grande ouverture on peut arriver à capturer le parcours de la fusée pendant le temps d'exposition). Mais la tour Eiffel au flash, c'est vraiment trop débile.

Secundo, pourquoi faut-il que les gamins trouvent les pétards si rigolos ? Pourquoi n'a-t-on toujours pas interdit ces jouets bruyants, dangereux et vraiment stupides ? Est-ce que je deviens vieux et grincheux ? D'ailleurs, il faudrait aussi interdire les feux d'artifice amateur : déjà qu'un feu d'artifice professionnel fait par les meilleurs artificiers que la mairie de Paris a pu engager, et que quelques centaines de milliers de personnes sont venues admirer, je trouve ça un peu répétitif et lassant (bon, d'accord, on sait maintenant faire des trucs qui prennent trois couleurs successivement, ou qui font des formes un peu plus intéressantes d'une bête sphère, mais c'est quand même vaguement tout le temps pareil), mais alors une petite merde amateur à deux euros, ce n'est guère mieux qu'un pétard. Bon, d'accord, je deviens effectivement vieux et grincheux. J'ai le droit de m'énerver du fait que le feu d'artifice de Paris ait commencé avec une heure de retard ?

Tertio, suite à ma note précédente, j'insiste : il y a vraiment beaucoup de beaux garçons qui me demandent si j'ai une clope. Surtout quand je suis vaguement looké en racaille (enfin, en racaille bien pédé, quand même). Comment expliquer cela ? Est-ce

1. parce qu'ils se disent qu'un jeune branché comme moi (ha, ha, ha) doit forcément fumer et être un type sympa prêt à partager ses cigarettes, ou bien
2. parce qu'ils ont des tendances homo refoulées (ou non), qu'ils me trouvent terriblement séduisant et qu'ils utilisent ce qu'ils peuvent comme prétexte pour m'aborder ?

Je préférais la deuxième option, hein (mais bon, je me sentirais con du nombre d'occasions que j'aurais ratées en disant « désolé, je ne fume pas » : bordel, ils ne pourraient pas demander l'heure, plutôt ?). Manifestement il faut que je m'achète des cigarettes même si je suis non-fumeur, rien que pour pouvoir en offrir quand on m'en demande (et trancher entre les deux possibilités ci-dessus). Quelqu'un peut me conseiller une marque (je n'y connais rien, et pour cause) ? Ah, et comment faire taire ma conscience qui me dira que c'est mal de donner un produit nocif à quelqu'un qui m'en demande, fût-il beau garçon ?

Quarto, comment se fait-il que tous les guides de la drague gay parisienne en plein air mentionnent les Tuileries mais disent juste que ça s'arrête à la tombée de la nuit (quand le parc ferme) ? Moi j'ai l'impression que ça se délocalise ensuite dans les bosquets (labyrinthes ?) du Carrousel, de part et d'autre de l'arc du Carrousel. Ou, si ce n'est pas de ça qu'il s'agit, j'aimerais bien savoir ce qu'y font tous ces mecs qui y déambulent au début de la nuit. Ils vont pisser ? Ils admirent le Louvre ? Hum, j'y crois moyennement. Bon, j'enquêterai quand je serai vraiment en état de manque.

Très belle journée ensoleillée, et très belle pleine lune ensuite. Plein de gens dans les rues de Paris en cette veille de 14 juillet. Je précise, comme plein de gens n'ont pas l'air de savoir, que les feux d'artifice à Paris c'est le 14 au soir, et non le 13 au soir. Mais le 13 au soir il y a différents concerts un peu partout, et pas mal d'activité.

Tellement de jolis garçons dans la rue… Y'en a pas un pour moi, par hasard ? (Ben non, apparemment pas. Enfin, expérimentalement pas.) Parfois quand on me demande, t'aurais pas une clope ?, j'ai envie de répondre, une cigarette, non, mais une pipe, je peux fournir. Excusez-moi, je deviens vulgaire, je ferais mieux de me coucher, là.

J'ai dîné aujourd'hui (c'est la première fois) dans un des lieux mythiques de Paris : le Bouillon Chartier (7 rue du Faubourg Montmartre, Paris 9^e), un restaurant de tradition centenaire, dernier rescapé d'une époque disparue. C'est un mélange très curieux du prolétaire (les verres style cantine, les nappes en papier, le bas prix des plats, …) et du chic (dans le décor, par exemple, qui rappelle par son aspect rétro celui de l'excellent restaurant Le Train Bleu par exemple). L'expérience mérite d'être tentée : les plats ne sont pas exceptionnels, mais ils sont bons et bon marché ; le service est un peu expéditif (les serveurs sont payés en pourcentage des recettes), mais au moins on ne perd pas de temps, et ça fait partie du charme.

Alain Piriou, porte-parole de l'Inter-LGBT, est un des mecs les plus mignons que j'aie jamais vu. Voilà, c'était l'information inutile du jour. Malheureusement, il n'y a pas l'air d'avoir de photos de lui sur le Web.

Comme c'est devenu habituel le vendredi soir, l'association >Dégel! (association des étudiants homos de Jussieu et d'ailleurs), s'installe sur les quais de Seine, dans le square Tino Rossi (également connu comme le jardin aux sculptures contemporaines ridicules), sur l'herbe, pour manger et boire et regarder la nuit tomber et la Seine couler, bavarder et (pour ceux qui sont bien saouls) chanter des chansons paillardes. Le lieu est d'ailleurs rempli de groupes de gens plus ou moins nombreux qui se livrent au même farniente, et parfois les groupes se mélangent (un peu), ce qui est fort sympathique. Je ne sais pourquoi, cette soirée-ci a été particulièrement réussie à mes yeux. Peut-être était-ce parce que pour la première fois de ma vie j'ai vu en vrai un concours de gobage de Flamby (oui, ils sont fous, il y a bien une fédération française des gobeurs de Flamby, qui vous expliquera par exemple les 23 techniques officielles du gobage), qui avait lieu juste à côté de là où nous étions. Mais plus probablement simplement le fait que des gens sympathiques étaient là ce soir, et que le climat était spécialement propice à la conversation.

Malgré cela, je m'en tire toujours avec un sentiment un peu partagé (que j'ai d'ailleurs déjà évoqué). Ce n'est pas que j'aie le sentiment d'être mis à l'écart du groupe, c'est plutôt que j'ai un peu tendance à me mettre moi-même en marge, sans le vouloir, peut-être par une sorte de réserve instinctive dont je n'arrive pas encore à me départir suffisamment. Par exemple, alors que tout le monde se jette sur tout le monde (plaisamment, je précise ! nous ne faisons pas encore de partouze en plein air — tiens, aujourd'hui quelqu'un que je ne nommerai pas a décidé de donner libre cours à son fétichisme sur les lobes d'oreille) je réussis toujours à me faire passer inaperçu. (J'ai un talent incomparable pour passer inaperçu, même si ça peut surprendre quand on ne m'a pas vu l'appliquer. Et parfois je l'invoque de façon quasiment inconsciente.) Ou, pire encore, si ce n'est pas moi qui manifeste de la timidité, je crois qu'il y en a qui en éprouvent à mon égard (notez que tout cela est très subtil, et les mots que j'utilise sont considérablement exagérés) : et c'est encore plus difficile à vaincre.

Autre chose, c'est qu'il y a plusieurs des garçons, là, (disons facilement cinq ou six ce soir : tout compte fait je ne suis peut-être pas aussi difficile que je le dis parfois, ou en tout cas pas avec les étudiants dans la bonne tranche d'âge), dont je pourrais facilement tomber amoureux si je me laissais, ou même, si je ne me retenais pas un peu. Bon, j'ai acquis, à force, un certain contrôle de moi en la matière, donc ce n'est pas un problème en soi. Nous avons, selon la personne, des relations amicales, ou cordiales, ou indifférentes, et je me donne peu de chances d'y changer quelque chose. (Par exemple, il y en a un — non, je ne donnerai pas de nom — que je connais depuis quatre ans maintenant, et que j'admire très profondément, mais je suis dangereusement doué pour ne rien laisser paraître de ce que je pense. Enfin, je m'entends bien avec lui.) Maintenant, ce que je me demande bien, c'est quelle idée les autres ont de moi : passé-je pour un chieur ? un cinglé ? un timide ? ou encore quelqu'un de parfaitement insignifiant ? C'est bien triste que je n'en aie aucune idée (« not a clue »).

Mais bon, je ne voudrais pas que ces méditations obscurcissent le fait que j'ai passé une excellente soirée : j'ai appris à ne plus me laisser attrister par ce genre de considérations.

J'ai dîné ce soir avec quelques amis dans un restaurant que je tiens à recommander à tous les Parisiens amateurs de cuisine chinoise et qui recherchent quelque chose d'un peu différent de ce qu'on trouve partout. Il s'agit du restaurant situé au 16 boulevard de Strasbourg (Paris 10^e, Mº Strasbourg Saint-Denis), appelé Sichuan Panda (le nom varie un peu selon l'endroit où il est indiqué, mais c'est toujours quelque chose Sichuan ; en chinois c'est « 川外川 » je crois, soit « le Sichuan en-dehors du Sichuan » ou quelque chose de ce goût). C'est la troisième fois que j'y vais, et j'ai toujours été très content.

Comme son nom l'indique, il se spécialise dans la cuisine de la province du Sichuan (四川, « quatre rivières »). Celle-ci est nettement plus épicée que la cuisine chinoise à laquelle on est habitué : mais bien que le goût pimenté soit fort, il ne manque pas pour autant de finesse et de subtilité.

Je recommande particulièrement le poulet à la Sichuannaise (avec des arachides, un peu épicé mais pas trop), le lapin à la sauce aux clémentines (ces deux plats forment un très intéressant duo), et le bœuf à l'eau piquante (assez fort, mais sans excès). Mais il y a d'autres plats qui méritent l'essai ; il vaut mieux y aller à plusieurs pour pouvoir partager et goûter ainsi plus de saveurs. En entrée, leur potage pékinois (c'est ce que je prends presque systématiquement dans les restaurants chinois), même si ça n'a rien de sichuannais pour le coup, était très bon aussi (et un peu différent de ce qu'on trouve d'habitude sous ce nom).

Tant que j'y suis à conseiller des restaurants chinois à Paris, j'en recommande aussi un autre : le Village Tao Tao, 159 boulevard Vincent Auriol (Paris 13^e, Mº Nationale), où je vais assez souvent. Ce n'est pas aussi exotique que le Sichuan Panda, mais c'est aussi très bon ; et le cadre est agréable. Là je suggère particulièrement le poulet au miel et aux épices (ou poulet piquant au miel, je ne sais plus exactement), ainsi que le porc à la sauce aigre-douce.

I had a dream last night that I was suddenly brought back in time by twenty years, retaining my present memory but reverting to my body of a seven-year-old where I happened to be in 1983 (well, only Zeus remembers what I did on Saturday the 9th of July 1983). I woke up almost immediately, so I can't tell you more about that dream.

But it is an amusing gedankenexperiment. How would I proceed, in 1983, to prove that I had lived the years 1983–2003? If I ended up in the Middle Ages, I could prove that I know lots of science that was then completely unknown (and end up burned at the stake for practicing black magic). But 1983? There have been great technological progresses since then, of course, but nothing that I could prove my knowledge with (I could pass for the inventor of hypertext before Berners-Lee, of course, but that would just sound like a nice idea, not a proof of technological foresight). Any ideas? In theory I should know some mathematics that were not discovered in 1983, but that wouldn't prove much except that I'm a precocious kid (and so I would be, I guess), and anyway there would be missing details (there isn't much of which I could give a full proof that wasn't known in '83, and I would have a hard time convincing experts).

Nor could I prove my claims by predicting the future: any small change made to the present, like my knowledge being different from what it was in the 1983 that I really lived, would change the entire future course of the Universe (mumble butterfly effect mumble). The near future would be very similar, of course, but all sorts of little coincidences would take place differently and in the end my knowledge would be useless: I would be stuck with the memory of a never-never time, the ghost twenty years of a parallel world, an alternate future—and probably with a sense of loss. Some happy coincidences which have brought me joy in the future I “remembered” would perhaps not take place, and I would be disappointed, even though some misfortunes could probably, on the other hand, be avoided.

Pondering over this idea, I concluded that, on the whole, I wouldn't like it to happen. I don't believe I've made many mistakes in my life that I'd that desperately want to be given a chance to set straight again; I sometimes think that I've wasted my time at various periods of my life that I could have used more productively, but not so much that I'd be willing to go through the pain of living throught it all again: basically, I'm mostly satisfied that the years behind me are just that, behind me, even if I sometimes wish some things had gone differently. And I guess I just couldn't stand waiting another ten years for the World Wide Web to appear. Besides, as I just mentioned, there would be the frustration of having lived through a period that never existed, some years mysteriously vanished from the history of the world; the feeling of having lost my home (Universe). Not counting the frustration of not having paid more attention to what went on in 1983 so that I could predict at least some things accurately; or, for that matter, of not knowing or remembering enough of what could turn out to be useful. So if some mischievous daemon offered me the possibility, I would decline it, I think.

If you find the idea amusing, you can also read my crazy speculations about the mathematics of time travel (in French).

Interestingly, they had a story on the news tonight about a guy (Terry Wallis) who regained consciousness after nineteen years in coma. (They make it sound as though it were cause for happiness, but I guess this guy's brain is now total havoc, and he'll probably never speak again, so I'm not sure he's in an enviable situation, not to mention the fact that he totally lost the best years of his life. A real cause for rejoicing would be someone waking up from prolonged coma with no ill side-effects whatsoever.)

Je me suis fait retirer mon grain de beauté aujourd'hui ; j'ai été positivement surpris de la rapidité de l'intervention : quelques minutes tout au plus, et je n'ai rien senti du tout (sauf la piqûre pour l'anesthésie locale elle-même). Si j'en crois le médecin, je ne devrais avoir qu'une cicatrice à peine visible (parce qu'il n'a fait qu'une exérèse en surface et non en profondeur). Enfin, pour l'instant j'ai surtout un petit pansement (que je suis censé garder deux semaines).

Je me dis que je devrais chercher à me trouver un look (un vrai look à moi) pour remplacer mon actuelle absence complète de style, une tenue qu'on ne peut qualifier que d'« éclectique » (à ceci près que je ne porte que du noir : on suit le leitfaden qu'on peut).

Éclectique dans le temps : par le passé j'ai eu les cheveux rasés et je portais bombers, treillis et rangers — plus tard, avec les cheveux très courts mais plus tout à fait rasés j'ai réussi à me faire prendre pour un pompier (sérieusement !) par une brave dame dans la rue qui m'a demandé son chemin (elle ne pouvait pas me faire de plus charmant compliment) ; maintenant ma tenue fait plutôt « gothique » avec mon sweat Slipknot et mon pantalon baggy (on a insisté pour que je porte autre chose que des treillis, et j'ai besoin de plein de poches, alors le baggy était une solution naturelle, en plus, c'est rigolo, il y a plein de parties dont je me demande si elles sont censées être fonctionnelles ou décoratives, ou les deux).

D'ailleurs, ce soir, je me suis fait aborder par une fan de Slipknot juste parce que je porte le logo du groupe sur mon sweat (en tout cas, c'est le prétexte qu'elle a utilisé pour m'aborder — peut-être que c'était juste pour mes beaux yeux). Elle elle avait un look clair et lisible : comprendre, « goth » en gros caractères clignotants (noirs, évidemment). Moi j'aime assez bien le look goth, hein, c'est juste que je pourrais difficilement le porter à de telles extrémités sans écouter la musique qui va avec (bon, et puis les petites croix à l'envers dessinées sous les paupières, quand même, c'est peut-être un peu excessif). En tout cas, là, je me suis trouvé un peu con avec le devoir aporétique d'expliquer que, non, je n'étais pas spécialement fan de Slipknot (bon, je n'allais pas non plus dire que je n'avais strictement rien entendu d'eux — maintenant je vais me faire un devoir de remédier au moins à cette complète ignorance) et que, euh, j'écoutais un peu de tout (de fait, au fur et à mesure que j'écris cette entrée, mon ordinateur m'a donné successivement à entendre du Eminem, du Bangles, du Mendelssohn, du Altan, du Mylène Farmer, du Sibelius et du Limahl : c'est dire si c'est éclectique).

Éclectique aussi dans la composition : avec le sweat qui attire les (ostro?)goths, ou en son absence s'il fait trop chaud, je porte un tee-shirt sans manche façon surfer (Quiksilver, O'Neil ou Billabong — mais là on retrouve une unité parce que « Billabong » est écrit en caractères gothiques) ; des baskets Nike, et parfois une casquette (à l'envers) idem ; des dog tags (plaquettes d'identifications, façon armée américaine) que j'ai fait graver à mon nom et numéro de sécurité sociale (parce que c'était une idée ridicule donc ça me plaisait) ; à l'occasion j'ai aussi des poignets de force.

Ah, tiens, ça me fait penser, il y a un accessoire vestimentaire / décoratif qui semble assez populaire en ce moment, et dont l'utilisation est vraiment éclectique, c'est le bandana. Comprendre, un carré de coton (coloré et décoré d'arabesques d'un côté), que j'ai vu porter au moins de toutes les façons suivantes : sur la tête (façon « pirate ») d'au moins deux manières différentes, ou ceignant le front comme un bandeau, ou encore comme un foulard (façon « cow-boy ») devant le cou ou derrière la nuque, ou à l'inverse pour se cacher le visage (façon rebelle néo-zapatiste), ou bien autour du biceps, ou enfin autour du poignet. C'est fou tout ce qu'on arrive à faire avec le même carré de tissu : les origamistes n'ont qu'à bien se tenir. Je me suis procuré l'objet magique (en noir, bien sûr), mais je n'arrive pas à reproduire toutes les figures de style que je viens d'énumérer, si quelqu'un veut bien m'apprendre… Ah, on peut aussi le laisser dépasser de sa poche pour indiquer ses préférences sexuelles (voire religieuses — mort de rire), d'ailleurs je me suis toujours demandé comment des gens pouvaient avoir réussi à distinguer tellement de couleurs différentes — mais bon, je crois que c'est un art qui s'est perdu depuis. En tout cas, sous une forme ou une autre, il y a clairement une thèse de sociologie à écrire sur le port du bandana.

Ah oui, j'ai essayé la toge romaine aussi, comme façon de s'habiller. Verdict : d'abord c'est horriblement inconfortable et difficile à mettre. Ensuite, les gens dans la rue, qui ne daignent pas détourner la tête pour quelqu'un qui a les cheveux verts et des piercings de partout, en revanche, si vous vous baladez en toge, ils vous regardent vraiment bizarrement, c'est bizarre.

Mais bon, peut-être que je devrais assumer mon éclectisme et le revendiquer, en fait. (Trivia de la journée : saviez-vous que l'éclectisme était le nom donné à la doctrine philosophique de Potamon d'Alexandrie ? Non ? Moi non plus, il y a une minute. Eh bien maintenant vous savez.) Après tout, quand on a vraiment de la classe, on communique la classe à tout ce qu'on fait, quelle que soit la façon dont on le fait, y compris la manière dont on s'habille.

Et si je me faisais faire un petit tatouage ? Je sais déjà ce que ce serait : le symbole « danger biologique » — quoi de plus approprié pour m'étiqueter ? Malheureusement, un groupe de heavy metal a déjà eu l'idée de s'approprier le logo et le nom « biohazard », et on risquerait encore de me prendre pour un fan. Pfff, c'est terrible ce monde, toutes les bonnes idées sont déjà prises. Potamon d'Alexandrie avait bien raison : il faut les récupérer là où elles sont.

I've mentioned several times in this 'blog my joint paper with Jean-Louis Colliot-Thélène on Del Pezzo surfaces over fields of cohomological dimension one, paper which I presented in Besançon. I would now like to try to explain something of what it is about for the benefit of non-experts. Unfortunately, I won't make my explanations accessible to all laymen, because that would either take too much space or require to remain at a level of generality such that it wouldn't be interesting to anyone; but I have plans for writing a general introduction to arithmetical geometry, at some point, that would be understandable by everyone and his dog. For the moment, I'll assume that the reader has undergraduate (math major) knowledge of algebra, including knowing what a field is (though I'll recall it in a minute), and also a polynomial in several indeterminates and a vector space. I guess that excludes a lot of people, but at least I'm not assuming that you know what an étale cohomology group (and, therefore, a field of cohomological dimension one) is. Anyway, here we go.

A (commutative) field (I recall just to make sure everyone agrees, but I assume the reader knows this already) is a domain E with two operations, addition and multiplication, so that addition puts an abelian group structure on E (in other words, addition is associative and commutative and has a neutral element written 0 (zero), and for every element x of E there exists an element written -x and called the negative of x, such that x+(-x) = (-x)+x = 0), multiplication distributes over addition, multiplication is associative and commutative and has a neutral element written 1 (one), and for every element x of E other than 0 there exists an element x^-1 such that x·x^-1 = x^-1·x = 1. Examples of fields are the set R of real numbers or that, C, of complex numbers; or the set Q of rational numbers, or the set R(t) of rational functions in one indeterminate t with real coefficients; we also have the set Z/pZ of integer (residues) modulo a prime number p, or, for those who know what that is, the set of p-adics Q_p.

If we take this definition of a (commutative) field and remove just the assumption that multiplication is commutative, leaving everything else as it is, we get the definition of a division algebra, or skew-field (some people just say “field”). The simplest example is probably the skew-field of quaternions, H: it is obtained by adjoining three symbols, i, j and k to the real numbers subject to the relations that i² = j² = k² = ijk = -1 (this implies, for example, that ij = k whereas ji = -k). It is a famous theorem of Wedderburn that every finite division algebra (in the sense that it has only finitely many elements) is, in fact, commutative (in other words, is a field). In any division algebra D, the set of elements x which commute with every other element y, that is, so that xy=yx for every y, forms a commutative field (a subfield of D) called the center of D (for example, the center of H is just R).

Recall that a field E is said to be algebraically closed iff every non-constant polynomial equation (with coefficients in E) in one indeterminate has a solution. For example, the equation x²-2=0 (in the indeterminate x) should have a solution (“the square root of two” up to a sign) in any algebraically closed field: this shows that the field Q of rational numbers is not algebraically closed, and neither is the field R of real numbers (because the equation x²+1=0 has no root in R, that is, -1 has no real square root); on the other hand, the field C of complex numbers is algebraically closed, a theorem due to Gauß (based on preliminary work by D'Alembert) and often referred to as the “fundamental theorem of algebra”.

A mere matter of notation: rather than considering polynomial equations in one indeterminate such as x²-2=0, algebraic geometers prefer to consider polynomial equations in two indeterminates which are homogeneous, meaning that the total degree (sum of the degree in each indeterminate) of each monomial es the same, such as X²-2T²=0: this can be arranged by the procedure (homogenizing the equation) consisting of adding a new indeterminate (here T) and multiplying each monomial by the appropriate power of it so that the total degree is the same everywhere. Now we look for non-trivial solutions of the homogeneous equation, that is, solutions in which all indeterminates are not simultaneously zero: it will readily be seen that (X,T) is a solution to the homogeneous equation X²-2T²=0 if and only if the ratio x=X/T is a solution of the initial equation x²-2=0. So it is the same to ask that every homogeneous polynomial equation in two indeterminates of (strictly) positive degree have a non-trivial solution as to ask that every non-constant polynomial equation in one indeterminate has a solution: both mean that the working field is algebraically closed. Actually it turns out that the restriction on the number of variables is irrelevant: over an algebraically closed field, any (one) homogeneous polynomial equation of (strictly) positive degree has a non-trivial solution so long as there are at least two indeterminates (and any (one) non-constant polynomial equation has a solution as long as there is at least one indeterminate). In fact, we can do better: over an algebraically closed field, if we consider at least m homogeneous equations of (strictly) positive degrees in n indeterminates, then so long as n-m is at least 1, they have a common non-trivial zero.

Homogeneous polynomials of degree two are called quadratic forms, and of degree three, cubic forms. When they have a non-trivial zero (in a given field) they are called isotropic, otherwise anisotropic. So the above paragraph tells us, in particular, that a form (quadratic, cubic or whatever) in at least two variables over an algebraically closed field is always isotropic. For quadratic forms, this is not true over the field of real numbers: in fact, there are quadratic forms with arbitrarily many variables over the real numbers that are not isotropic, for example X²+Y²+Z²+T² cannot be zero over the reals unless all of X, Y, Z and T are zero (the trivial solution), for reasons of positivity; on the other hand, any cubic form over the reals in at least two variables is always isotropic.

[Continue reading…]

[Traduction française ci-dessous.]

I had wanted to try this for several years now, and I finally got around to performing this little cooking experiment. I was told that egg white coagulates (“cooks”) at 62°C (that's 144°F) and egg yolk at 68°C (that's 154°F). Now I like my eggs cooked so that the yolk is completely liquid and the white is quite solid; but that is never the case (or at any rate I've never seen an egg perfectly done in that way). Hence the rational solution: instead of putting the eggs in boiling water for a short period, keep some water at 65°C (that's 149°F) plus or minus 3°C (5°F), with the eggs in it, for nearly an hour—and find out what the result tastes like.

This is easier said than done: to keep the water temperature within a 6°C (11°F) interval for an hour, when all I have is an electric plate, is not the simplest thing in the world. But I managed, with the help of a digital thermometer (with alarm): the trick is to add a cup of cold water when the temperature rises too high, and to remove water when the temperature is stable (so that the pan doesn't overflow); and also, not to put the eggs in until the trick to keep the temperature in range has been well learned. I must have left my eggs to cook for perhaps three quarters of an hour. Another trick is to use the thermal inertia at the end, when the electric plate is turned off, and not to remove the eggs until the water temperature has dropped well below 62°C.

The result wasn't at all what I had expected. Both the yolk and the white became mostly solid—but they remained very soft (much softer and “creamier” than in normal hard-boiled eggs). Actually, if anything, the yolk was more cooked than the white, which is incomprehensible given the temperatures I mentioned (and also since the yolk floats to the top of the egg, where the cooler water is). But the slightly sulfurous taste that I strongly dislike when the yolk is solid was entirely absent: it tasted just the same as when it is liquid. So I guess it was worth it. One further advantage of this (low-temperature) method is that one does not hurt oneself by putting one's hand in the water by accident, or by handling the eggs. However, one should not be in a hurry.

Next time I'll try it I'll be even more careful not to go over, say, 67°C, even if it means going a bit below the lower bound at times (that doesn't hurt), provided it's not for too long.

Also see this page on how to cook a “perfect egg” (in French), which inspired my little experiment.

Nota: For those who live in Paris, you can get a digital thermometer that is specially designed for cooking things at just the right temperature by going to Dehillerin, rue Coquillière (1rst arrondissement), that's where I got mine (for something around €30). Thanks to Marie-Lan for this bit of advice, and also for telling me about the Web page I just mentioned.

[Traduction française ci-dessous.]

I came back home today from Besançon around 4PM after having “given myself dispensation” from the conference's Friday afternoon courses. Right now I'm dead tired, so I'll try to be as brief as possible in writing my summary of this trip: but I have much to tell.

The conference was interesting and well-organized. There were some very prestigious people in attendance, including Andrej Suslin, Albrecht Pfister or Jón Arason. Of course, since all the lectures were given by different people, some were good and some were not: I very much enjoyed those by Nikita Karpenko, Skip Garibaldi and Vladimir Chernousov. The idea of having short talks (some were fourty or even twenty minutes long, which in mathematics is exceptional) turned out to be a good one. I learned some interesting mathematics, the most important being that I now think I quite understand what the Witt ring of a field is, and I am beginning to grasp the notion of essential dimension.

Surprisingly (for me at least), my own talk went very well, despite my having slept only perhaps half an hour in the train, having gotten badly sun burnt and having had only around one hour of preparation for the talk (after lunch, just before the lecture). To my own surprise, I did not mumble or stutter, I wrote legibly (and large enough) on the blackboard, I did not make any mathematical error (at least not that I know of), I did not forget anything important, I stopped exactly on time, and I did not need to refer to my notes all the time (a good thing, because my notes were a mess). My worse failure, as far as I can tell, was to suddenly draw blank on the plural of genus (which, as everyone should know, is genera) when trying to say: the arithmetic and geometric genera differ by a quantity δ. After the talk I was able to answer questions (and they were not rhetorical questions either), by Kunyavskii, Chernousov and others, in a—I hope not—entirely stupid way. And four or five different people told me in private that they had enjoyed my lecture. I don't want to sound smug about this, but I was so entirely convinced that it would be a disaster that I was really amazed when it went so smoothely.

After that I went to bed very early. Fortunately, the hotel was comfortable enough (though far from luxurious); but I think for that night I would have slept anywhere.

Besançon is actually quite a nice town, at least for the two main streets, which are pedestrian and form a pleasant city center, with lots of shops and quite some lively activity—beyond that it gets a bit austere (its a fortified city, which explains things). It is true that most of the shops (bookstores, for example—I always like to browse around bookstores when I go shopping, even if I have no intention of buying a book) are not, of course, up to par with comparable places in Paris (which may themselves not be what can be found in other major world cities), but I found it really nice to have so many of them in a small area. I quite enjoyed my Wednesday afternoon (that was the conference's half-day off; most of the other perticipants either went for a hike or visited the citadel of Besançon—but I prefered shopping). The people in the streets (including some damn good-looking lads, but I digress—it just happened to strike me) seemd to be enjoying themselves, too. Luckily the weather was nice on that afternoon. I didn't get the chance to discover whether the city had a real night-life, however, since I was getting up early (by my standards) on mornings; but I'm quite sure that it has absolutely no kind of gay life whatsoever (the only gay bar I discovered, with the help of a guide, was a cruising place where I would not want to set foot from what I saw of the outside).

I also would like to point out that the Besançon bus system is utterly incomprehensible for non-natives: just looking at the map should be enough to give anyone a headache; already I find the Parisian metro and bus maps too complicated, and Paris is—uh—moderately larger than Besançon. It is also unfortunate that the university is rather far away from the city center (where the conference participants' hotel was located); so we had to come and go by bus. I was witness to a rather amusing scene in the bus on Tuesday, incidentally: Kunyavskii, Borovoi and Chernousov were chatting in Russian (nearly half of the conference participants were native Russian speakers, I think), a youngster stepped on the bus (not anyone from the conference at any rate) and asked for the time, in Russian (and with an impeccable accent), as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, and Kunyavskii answered in Russian also (it was nearly six, if you want to know), and went on talking with his colleagues as if it had been perfectly understood that of course everyone spoke Russian and of course it was the most natural thing in the world, in a bus in Besançon, to ask in Russian what time it was.

<small>Besançon also holds a military fort (of the French army, of course). On my way back it seems like I was on the same train as servicemen taking their week-end leave, so I found myself surrounded by good-looking young men with very short hair (to be honest, most of them were in the smoking section, so I wasn't truly surrounded), and I don't find that unpleasant at all—especially since the gorgeous guy sitting next to me had this tendency to sleep with his head to the side, nearly on my shoulder. That was nice.</small>

I may have had a good time away, still I'm glad to be back home, and now I have a zillion things to do that I couldn't do while I was away. But for now, to bed!