Sticks and stones may break your bones, but picks and pokes can make a joke1. It is Thanksgiving today in Trumpland — a celebration of harvest and gratitude. Over here, in France, it's a bit the opposite: we celebrate our ungratefulness for blossoming taxes while the government reaps what we sowed.
Last Friday, Nicola Sirkis of Indochine paid a special tribute to the President of The United States (POTUS) of whom he's a big fan during a live broadcast of their show at the Accor Hotels Arena in Paris, introducing "Trump le monde" (Trump the world), a song he wrote in his honour and which was unfortunately (or conveniently) replaced by commercials. However, Nico's fingers did manage to fall through the censors' net. So if you can use a VPN (or live in France), you may want to watch this “censored” part while still available online HERE.
Now you may wonder about the remainder — the two less glorious raised fingers pictured above: Thom Yorke's was directed at activists of the anti-Israelian BDS movement, while Noel Gallagher's was aimed at Thom Yorke... among others.
After Halloween, what about celebrating F***sgiving too? Then on the next day, we'd have Johnny's Friday2 for “Black is black, there's no turning back”. Alternatively, we can always have Beaujolais nouveau as a consolation. And the month of sundays to stay in bed after drinking ourselves to death.
Endnotes
The original pun was inspired from a French saying that didn't really work in English. It literally says “Hand games villain games, finger games skun games”.
Johnny Halliday who passed away last year and had national funerals was regarded as the French Elvis.
Following an article on time travels I wrote last month in French for a community project called Eklabugs, I came across this long piece in Michael Crichton's Timeline novel — also adapted on screen, but haven't seen it — in which a scientist explains the basic principles of quantum physics to a bunch of students in a comprehensive but simple way. I thought it would be a good idea to share it here. For those who'd like to read more, the story takes place in Dordogne, south-western France, in a mediaeval excavation site where a group of American archaeologists is sent via a quantum computer back to the Middle Ages in the midst of the One Hundred Year's War to rescue a professor stuck there...
Ey@el
A hundred years ago," Gordon said, "physicists understood that energy — like light or magnetism or electricity — took the form of continuously flowing waves. We still refer to `radio waves' and `light waves.' In fact, the recognition that all forms of energy shared this wavelike nature was one of the great achievements of nineteenth-century physics. "But there was a small problem," he said. It turned out that if you shined light on a metal plate, you got an electric current. The physicist Max Planck studied the relationship between the amount of light shining on the plate and the amount of electricity produced, and he concluded that energy wasn't a continuous wave. Instead, energy seemed to be composed of individual units, which he called quanta. "The discovery that energy came in quanta was the start of quantum physics," Gordon said. "A few years later, Einstein showed that you could explain the photoelectric effect by assuming that light was composed of particles, which he called photons. These photons of light struck the metal plate and knocked off electrons, producing electricity. Mathematically, the equations worked. They fit the view that light consisted of particles. Okay so far?" "Yes..." "And pretty soon, physicists began to realize that not only light, but all energy was composed of particles. In fact, all matter in the universe took the form of particles. Atoms were composed of heavy particles in the nucleus, light electrons buzzing around on the outside. So, according to the new thinking, everything is particles. Okay?" "Okay..." "The particles are discrete units, or quanta. And the theory that describes how these particles behave is quantum theory. A major discovery of twentieth-century physics." They were all nodding. "Physicists continue to study these particles, and begin to realize they're very strange entities. You can't be sure where they are, you can't measure them exactly, and you can't predict what they will do. Sometimes they behave like particles, sometimes like waves. Sometimes two particles will interact with each other even though they're a million miles apart, with no connection between them. And so on. The theory is starting to seem extremely weird. "Now, two things happen to quantum theory. The first is that it gets confirmed, over and over. It's the most proven theory in the history of science. Supermarket scanners, lasers and computer chips all rely on quantum mechanics. So there is absolutely no doubt that quantum theory is the correct mathematical description of the universe. "But the problem is, it's only a mathematical description. It's just a set of equations. And physicists couldn't visualize the world that was implied by those equations - it was too weird, too contradictory. Einstein, for one, didn't like that. He felt it meant the theory was flawed. But the theory kept getting confirmed, and the situation got worse and worse. Eventually, even scientists who won the Nobel Prize for contributions to quantum theory had to admit they didn't understand it. "So, this made a very odd situation. For most of the twentieth century, there's a theory of the universe that everyone uses, and everyone agrees is correct — but nobody can tell you what it is saying about the world." "What does all this have to do with multiple universes?" Marek said. "I'm getting there," Gordon said. Many physicists tried to explain the equations, Gordon said. Each explanation failed for one reason or another. Then in 1957, a physicist named Hugh Everett proposed a daring new explanation. Everett claimed that our universe — the universe we see, the universe of rocks and trees and people and galaxies out in space - was just one of an infinite number of universes, existing side by side. Each of these universes was constantly splitting, so there was a universe where Hitler lost the war, and another where he won; a universe where Kennedy died, and another where he lived. And also a world where you brushed your teeth in the morning, and one where you didn't. And so forth, on and on and on. An infinity of worlds. Everett called this the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. His explanation was consistent with the quantum equations, but physicists found it very hard to accept. They didn't like the idea of all these worlds constantly splitting all the time. They found it unbelievable that reality could take this form. "Most physicists still refuse to accept it," Gordon said. "Even though no one has ever shown it is wrong." Everett himself had no patience with his colleagues' objections. He insisted the theory was true, whether you liked it or not. If you disbelieved his theory, you were just being stodgy and old-fashioned, exactly like the scientists who disbelieved the Copernican theory that placed the sun at the center of the solar system — and which had also seemed unbelievable at the time. "Because Everett claimed the many worlds concept was actually true. There really were multiple universes. And they were running right alongside our own. All these multiple universes were eventually referred to as a `multiverse.' " "Wait a minute," Chris said. "Are you telling us this is true?" "Yes," Gordon said. "It's true." "How do you know?" Marek said. "I'll show you," Gordon said. And he reached for a manila file that said "ITC/CTC Technology." He took out a blank piece of paper, and began drawing. "Very simple experiment, it's been done for two hundred years. Set up two walls, one in front of the other. The first wall has a single vertical slit in it." He showed them the drawing.
● ●
"Now you shine a light at the slit. On the wall behind, you'll see..." "A white line," Marek said. "From the light coming through the slit." "Correct. It would look something like this." Gordon pulled out a photo on a card.
Gordon continued to sketch. "Now, instead of one slit, you have a wall with two vertical slits in it. Shine a light on it, and on the wall behind, you see..."
"Two vertical lines," Marek said. "No. You'll see a series of light and dark bars." He showed them:
And," Gordon continued, "if you shine your light through four slits, you get half as many bars as before. Because every other bar goes black.">
Marek frowned. "More slits mean fewer bars? Why?" "The usual explanation is what I've drawn - the light passing through the slits acts like two waves that overlap. In some places they add to each other, and in other places they cancel each other out. And that makes a pattern of alternating light and dark on the wall. We say the waves interfere with each other, and that this is an interference pattern." Chris Hughes said, "So? What's wrong with all that?" "What's wrong," Gordon said, "is that I just gave you a nineteenth-century explanation. It was perfectly acceptable when everybody believed that light was a wave. But since Einstein, we know that light consists of particles called photons. How do you explain a bunch of photons making this pattern?" There was silence. They were shaking their heads. David Stern spoke for the first time. "Particles aren't as simple as the way you have described them. Particles have some wavelike properties, depending on the situation. Particles can interfere with one another. In this case, the photons in the beam of light are interfering with one another to produce the same pattern." "That does seem logical," Gordon said. "After all, a beam of light is zillions and zillions of little photons. It's not hard to imagine that they would interact with one another in some fashion, and produce the interference pattern." They were all nodding. Yes, not hard to imagine. "But is it really true?" Gordon said. "Is that what's going on? One way to find out is to eliminate any interaction among the photons. Let's just deal with one photon at a time. This has been done experimentally. You make a beam of light so weak that only one photon comes out at a time. And you can put very sensitive detectors behind the slits — so sensitive, they can register a single photon hitting them. Okay?" They nodded, more slowly this time. "Now, there can't be any interference from other photons, because we are dealing with a single photon only. So: the photons come through, one at a time. The detectors record where the photons land. And after a few hours, we get a result, something like this.
"What we see," Gordon said, "is that the individual photons land only in certain places, and never others. They behave exactly the same as they do in a regular beam of light. But they are coming in one at a time. There are no other photons to interfere with them. Yet something is interfering with them, because they are making the usual interference pattern. So: What is interfering with a single photon?" Silence. "Mr. Stern?" Stern shook his head. "If you calculate the probabilities-" "Let's not escape into mathematics. Let's stay with reality. After all, this experiment has been performed - with real photons, striking real detectors. And something real interferes with them. The question is, What is it?" "It has to be other photons," Stern said. "Yes," Gordon said, "but where are they? We have detectors, and we don't detect any other photons. So where are the interfering photons?" Stern sighed. "Okay," he said. He threw up his hands. Chris said, "What do you mean, Okay? Okay what?" Gordon nodded to Stern. "Tell them." "What he is saying is that single-photon interference proves that reality is much greater than just what we see in our universe. The interference is happening, but we can't see any cause for it in our universe. Therefore, the interfering photons must be in other universes. And that proves that the other universes exist." "Correct," Gordon said. "And they sometimes interact with our own universe." "I'm sorry," Marek said. "Would you do that again? Why is some other universe interfering with our universe?" "It's the nature of the multiverse," Gordon said. "Remember, within the multiverse, the universes are constantly splitting, which means that many other universes are very similar to ours. And it is the similar ones that interact. Each time we make a beam of light in our universe, beams of light are simultaneously made in many similar universes, and the photons from those other universes interfere with the photons in our universe and produce the pattern that we see." "And you are telling us this is true?" "Absolutely true. The experiment has been done many times." Marek frowned. Kate stared at the table. Chris scratched his head. Finally David Stern said, "Not all the universes are similar to ours?" "No." "Are they all simultaneous to ours?" "Not all, no." "Therefore some universes exist at an earlier time?" "Yes. Actually, since they are infinite in number, the universes exist at all earlier times."
Here is it at last: the long-expected new Muse album — another themed record entitled The Simulation Theory exposing the impeding threat of transhumanism and the matrix of delusion we all live in. In the same fashion as the above clip and its three predecessors plus the next "Pressure", released a couple of weeks after this one, and which taken together seem to form a story — the illustrated cover looks just like a 1980's scifi movie poster à la Back to The Future meets Tron. Naturally, it makes some sense that the music is more electro-orientated with lots of synths. T tracklist includes very telling titles such as "Algorithm", "Propaganda", "Break It To Me", "Get Up And Fight", "Blockades" (Blocus), and "The Void" which I haven't had the opportunity to listen to yet.
I for one loved this track at first listen. Partly because for some reason it reminds me of this brilliant cover the threesome did of Chvrches's "Lies", but mostly because lyricwise Matt Bellamy's words perfectly echo how I'm experiencing right now — that is how every human being is feeling more or less and not just Starseeds.
For as human consciousness is awakening thus raising the overall vibration of this planet (know as the ascension process), everything no longer aligned with this higher frequency is being disturbed, upset, and forcefully brought up in plain light in an ultimate desperate attempt to reverse the tide. This is exactly what we are witnessing right now at every level. These are hazardous times for every one — most especially for those who still cling to the illusion — to get (irreversibly) drawn to the “dark side of the force” as illustrated in the StarWars movies. It is now time to break the cycle of forced reincarnations which keeps every soul eternally trapped on this prison-planet (which might sound offending to your belief systems). And we will succeed for we have now reached a critical mass to restore the balance. The evidence is all around. Despite the all-out attempts to divide and hijack, things are changing fast. Never forget the importance of what you focus on is what you feed with your energy. So be aware of the dark side but stop feeding it with your fears and never lose track of the outcome you want to manifest. This is THE only way and the reason why every thing is done to keep in in a constant flow of scary and stressful situations.
This notwithstanding, Matt Bellamy impersonating Michael J. Fox aka Marty McFly is totally awesome! However, the most fun part for me is the fact that the futuristic urban setting looks so much like the original design of this blog.
Ey@el
I have lived with darkness — For all my life, I've been pursued. You'd be afraid If you could feel my pain And if you could see the things I am able to see.
Break me out... Break me out... Let me flee!
Break me out... Break me out... Set me free!
I hail from the dark side — For all my life, I've been besieged. You'd be scared Living with my despair And if you could feel the things I am able to feel.
As every year, public authorities remind us of security measures to ensure a relatively safe clock change. Simple rules we tend to forget sometimes. Here's a quick user-friendly reminder.
Eye protection: unlike previously (2005, 2008, and last year), the time change will take place at night. Therefore no eye protection is necessary. No need to bring out those polarised glasses from last year handed out by the government. However, for those on the far west of Brittany, since the time change over there will start earlier at 7pm (8pm Paris time), it is recommended to wear sunglasses. Everywhere else in France, there should be no cause for alarm. Overseas departments and territories will not be affected by the time change.
Please, remember that the time change line is merely symbolic. Crossing it is both odourless and painless. However, should you experience any discomfort or particular impediment (less than 1% of the population encounter this issue), you are encouraged to seek advice from your doctor.
Here's a simple trick to cope with the time shift: spread the winter/summer time change over a week or more. Thus, by shaving a few minutes off every day, you should be on winter time within a couple of days with minimal after-effects. Important: don't forget to synchronise your calendars with the “Easy Winter Time” App for iPhone and Android for a smooth presattable gradual winter time change.
Some doctors advise to stay up all night to avoid having to adjust to the loss of one hour. Among other things, massive consumption of energy drinks or coffee, vitamins, and orange juice should help you to stay awake and observe the imaginary time change line across French skies.
Animals aren't affected by the time change. According to scientists, most stories of animals congregating to high places a few minutes prior to time changes are unfounded.
Check your food and petrol supplies. Even though the time change should not create any unrest, make sure you're well stocked with sugar and raw materials. Battery, petrol, and ammunition supplies are also recommended. Check your water and gas entry/exit points.
What about you? Do you have any tips to share for a safe clock change?
It's been almost a year since I last posted some photo edit tutorial. It was about time. Since we're switching to winter time this weekend, I suggest to make an easy drastic makeover and transform a quiet dayscape into a dramatic twilight scenery. For this purpose, I have used The GIMP (Linux version), but any decent photo editing software should do the trick.
dayscape with overexposed/flat sky, easy to detour highly contrasted twilight sky (or scenery from which you can use the sky)
G'MIC filters (si you're using GIMP for Linux/Windows)
Instructions
1. Duplicate your original picture and add an alpha channel for transparency.
2. Using the magic wand, select the sky then click on Suppress. Depending on the type of picture you're using, you may need to use the freehand tool instead or the eraser.
3. Copy the sky you want to replace the one you've just erased with and paste it as a new layer, moving it under the existing layer. Adjust size and position to cover the missing area. In my example above (for which I've used a stunning picture taken by Virevolte), I had cheat and use the cloning and smudge brushes as I did not want to strech — and distort — the layer to make it fit. I also applied an horizontal mirror effect to match existing light sources.
4. The last step is probably the longest since you may have to try a lot of different settings until you get what you want which will mostly depend on the picture you're using. In short, you need to apply a series of adjustments and effects to your original layer so as to match the background sky's hue, contrast and light. I have used the Basic Adjustments filter (G'MIC) to change the hue and reduce the gamma value (-9) in order to darken colours. I have also edited the background sky to boost shadows with the Light Glow filter (G'MIC) just reducing opacity.
In my second example above (a picture I took in Holland in the early 1990's), I have reduced gamma and saturation of the landscape to darken it and increase constrast in the same proportions. I have then adjusted colour balance, desaturated a selected colour, and since it wasn't twilightish enough, I have tweaked the output level and reduced gamma some more. Last but not the least, I got the dramatic effect I wanted using Paint Shop Pro 8 (works fine on Wine) to apply the Low Key filter (Color Efex Pro 3).
That's all folks! Hope my current inspiration will inspire you in turn. And if you ever published your work online, please, feel free to post the links in the comments section below, I'd love to see them.
Released last month on 13th September, that is one year after their 13 album which it is part of, this fourth single by Indochine is amongst my top favourites and the one which certainly finds the best echo in me. Incidentally, the band had honoured with a retweet as a treat for my birthday last year, which had really moved me (thank you guys!). The accompanying road-trip styled promo clip all filmed in Chile is both very emotional and upsetting on account of the harsh reality depicted in it -- in great Indo fashion since "College Boy". Like "Un singe en hiver" (A Monkey In Mid-Winter), the lyrics of this song are purely autobiographical. Nicola Sirkis is completely open about his troubled relationship with his father (which had been exposed by the media in the early 2000's, right after the tragic passing of his twin brother Stéphane who had been suffering from a lethal disease), about how he still misses his brother and how he lost his faith in God as previously mentioned in a recent radio interview, with the recurring theme of crucifixion, hallmarked by the wobbly cross of their new logo, also present. At the same time, as a founding member and sole remainder of the original line-up, Nico (as fondly called by his fans) had to carry a heavy burden in order to keep his dream alive through thick and thin and make it come true again. Whether you like the music or not, it commands both admiration and respect (except if you're an ass and it only inspires you contempt and jealousy, which unfortunately is still quite common in France). Nico has unshakeable faith in his dream and is a living example of the amazing power residing in all of us. Thank you.
Ey@el
I wish I were alive And no longer afraid. I wish I could love my father, I wish I knew how to do that. I wish I could understand him, I wish he could wait. I wish I were important, I wish I were a desire. I wish I were impossible, I wish you could be cured, I wish I could see you grow up And ease your pain.
Down with the crosses, My dream will come true! Down with the devils, There are no gods!
You may challenge my dreams Or destroy my soul, We will be an amazing dream. It's just my my life, It's just my soul We will be an perfect dream — An amazing life. I'd like to have a perfect dream.
I wish I were a warrior, A fearsome one. I wish you could be back, I wish I could feel good, Receive refugees, Go back in time. I wish I could stop ageing And never have bought into it — I wish I could try.
Down with the crosses, My dream will come true! Down with the devil, There are no gods!
You may challenge dreams Or destroy souls, We will be an amazing dream. It's just my my life, It's just my soul We will be an perfect dream — You will be a perfect dream.
I was told All my fears would go away, And every night I would dream of an amazing life.
And every night, I wish I could have a perfect dream And forget That tomorrow our realities...
I wish I were alive And a better person. I wish I could love my father, I wish I knew how to do that. I wish I could watch you grow up I wish I could see you stop suffering I wish I could go back in time When nothing really mattered.
If you've been following me on Twitter (or on the main blog in French), you'll know that the power of the mind over the body is actually what I'm experiencing right now. For those who don't or can't read French, ealier last month, I ended up in hospital after a nasty fall in the woods where I broke my hip (greater trochanter/thigh-bone) and had surgery altogether with a great cocktail of unhealthy chemicals including some opioids to relieve pain. I may be a “spiritual warrior” (sic), I'm no less human and when you're in agony you take the antimony whatever it takes. Besides, not much of an option when you're out of it.
At least temporarily. That is because when in pain, the mind is more vulnerable to external thoughts and when medics advise you to take your painkillers “even if you're feeling fine now because then you won't be able to get up and your physiotherapy will take much longer”, you tend to buy into it and take their junk in. Except tranquillisers and the like don't agree with me at all and mess up my brain big time to the point where I feel so disconnected, altogether it was rather preferable for me to cope with the physical pain instead. I'm afraid it might sound weird to those who've never really experienced as yet how it feels to be connected to your soul, but those who do will have an idea of how excruciating it can be. A little reminder that came as a great helper to get myself out of the mental fog I was temporarily in and which made me realise that even though I needed skilful engineers to fix my broken body, as for the healing process I knew better what was best for my body.
So I decided to ignore the nurse's ditty (a lovely empathic woman though) while she left the colourful little pills on the bedside in case of, while mentally arguing that not only would I flush them all into the toilet, but my pain would disappear in no time and I would impress the hell out of them with my speedy recovery. And I did because I truly believed in it and I wanted it so much (same way as I was in agony after I'd been told precisely how bad and how long my suffering would last). You should have seen me racing around the hallways with my walker not even three days after surgery! I would have plenty of stories like this one to tell you about the placebo (Latin for « I will please »)/nocebo (“I will harm”) effects, and I'm sure you'd have to.
To conclude this lengthy preamble, I'd say that the safest form of prevention is to learn mental alchemy, that is how to develop mindfulness so as to be able to transmute parasitic negative thinking before it can migrate to the shady areas of your psyche and poison your mind first then your body.
Ey@el
The medical establishment has been proving that the mind can heal the body for over 50 years. We call it “the placebo effect,” and we know that when patients in clinical trials get nothing but sugar pills, saline injections, or fake surgeries, but believe they might be getting the new wonder drug or miracle surgery, their bodies get better 18-80% of the time.
While many are aware of the seemingly mysterious placebo effect, fewer people know about its evil twin, “the nocebo effect.” When I was researching my book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, I became convinced, without a shadow of a doubt, that a combination of positive belief and the nurturing care of the right healer can activate the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms and help the body heal itself.
But was the opposite also true? Do negative beliefs about our health or harsh care from insensitive doctors harm the body?
The Call of the Real The Real is not reached by adding meaning, but by letting the dream die.
If you've been following my work, you might have noticed a gradual decrease ...
FR
