We discovered on the Atlantic stretch of beach leading to the lighthouse (Phare) of Chassiron on the northernmost tip of the Île d’Oléron thousands of stone piles (cáirn). It was a really arresting and surprising composition, like a landscape from the imagination of Anton Gaudí. The collected and arranged stones were obliviously bleached and hewn by the sea, pock-marked and made me think of the received folk-belief of the Hühnergotten (equivalent to the Celtic idea of the Adders’ Stone) that a rock with a naturally (or preternaturally) bored hole is a lucky charm—presumably because it can be strung through easily and worn as an amulet.
Not all of these stones could have been eroded by time and tide to specifications like this one I spied but left on the beach to achieve a perfect poultry-form (I realise that hühn has nothing to do with chicken but it is an association that gets reinforced like Sparkasse as Cheese Bank) as I think that would have been too magical.
I knew, however, that each stone was tending in that direction at least as we stacked and balanced ours along the beach as well before proceeding to the lighthouse and latter day ensemble at the promontory.
Saturday, 16 July 2016
hühnergott
catagories: 🇫🇷, 🌍, 🏖, myth and monsters
Thursday, 14 July 2016
revenons à nos moutons
With it being Bastille Day, one could be forgiven for taking the title to be one of the rousing but lesser known verses from La Marseille, but it is actually a French idiom to the effect “but we digress,” which sometimes makes an appearance in English too as a turn of phrase.
From an anonymous medieval play called La Farce de Maître Pathelin, an anti-hero and petty thief tries to confuse a county magistrate trying him for sheep-wrangling but introducing details from a second crime—to which the judge cries “but let us return to our sheep at hand.”
catagories: 🇫🇷, 💬, holidays and observances
Wednesday, 13 July 2016
campfire stories ou dame de la moselle
Our trip started with a bit of a fright and a mystery. Just back to the campsite just short of midnight after watching the football finale—and admittedly surprised and respectful that France, our and their host, had taken their defeat at the hands of Portugal with such model sportsmanship and rather than rioting, there were cheers and fireworks for the winners.
Like something straight out of a horror movie, the figure was communing with something and oblivious to us. H clicked the door lock which reports a heavy clunk and flashes the parking lights. This only caused her to position herself behind the camper.
Now, with her out of sight, I was creeped out by the thought she might crawl under the bus to get me. The Lady in White however ambled on towards the shores of the Moselle where the campgrounds were more densely packed (we were in the last pitch) but strangely, no one was about to notice her.
I ventured that maybe it was her time to return beneath the waters. A few days later, it elicits a shudder. To dispel this visitation, please enjoy a few brighter impressions of Metz. Subsequent campsites were markedly less fraught with fright.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
vacances
a brief history of injunctions
Though such examples of true and unabashed stalking are no laughing matter and to be alive at the same time as great thinkers is an enormous privilege, it did make me giggle to read Bob Canada’s sobering indictment and predictions of recidivism for the American woman resident in Norway recently sentenced and served a restraining order for her harassing but contradictory claims of being enamoured and concurrently wanting to kill Professor Stephen Hawking—plus her characterisation as the world’s laziest psychopath. Apprehended whilst shadowing the physicist during a conference in Tenerife, the woman alternately professed her love (perhaps a honey-trap) for Hawking and her grave displeasure with him for disproving God. Regarding the later, I can’t recall Hawking proving or even attempting to demonstrate that he was capable of such a thing.
Friday, 8 July 2016
electric mirages
The fatal accident involving a tractor-trailer and driverless carriage, the brilliant BLDGBlog reports, was certainly a tragedy, but also prizes out insights into the increasingly inscrutable realm of machine perception.
Just as the component influences of complex algorithms quickly grow beyond human comprehension and artificial intelligences behave in ways that their programmers could not predict, it’s rare that we bother trying to understand how a machine sees and judges accordingly. When things run like clockwork, I suppose we are not that considered about what’s under the hood and how it works. Diagnostics revealed that the robot car could not distinguish between the chassis of the truck and the sky, forwarding further thought on the design of infrastructure and of space in general (the home, highway, office and warehouse) to make it more (or less) machine-accessible. What do you think? Is real-estate to be landscaped for use by computers, much like most of the traffic of the internet, or are those unreasonable accommodations?
at arm’s length or (personal) space invaders
Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, comes an excellent primer on the fascinating topic of proxemics, the study of the non-verbal narrative that is dictated by proximity and confines and is as culture specific and as richly limned as language.
First introduced as a branch of sociology by American anthropological researcher Edward T Hall in the mid-1960s, the research and received terminology not only was the compass for describing the circles that define an individual’s spheres of comfort for various interactions—territories from intimate to public and how that physical space is reflected in the virtual too—but also informs the surrounding (or underlying) architecture, hygiene and group norms. Just think how cubicles might effect on the job etiquette or the boundaries that are thrown up once we feel violated. These sorts of different nudges and cues, which beforehand went unarticulated, are pretty engrossing to think about. Find out more and see a video demonstration at the links above.