Snowfall

Part of the magic is in the silence. As I walk among the trees, the night is only disturbed by the soft crunching of my steps. As if the snow wrapped around every sound and smothered them to no more than a whisper. Even the dog follows quietly, like a fiery little ghost in the white stillness.
It is late at night, yet I can perfectly see where I am going; the snow blanket and the smooth cloud cover give the scene a strange illumination, the light seeming to come from nowhere yet everywhere at once. Hues of blues and silver dance around as my eyes wander through the park around me.
I sit down for a while, my doggy cuddling on my side. Both our breaths drift lazily through the cold air, unperturbed by the snowflakes that are now falling thick and soft. For just an instant time is frozen. I am one with this scene and there has never been anything else, nor will there ever be. In this eerie quietude, all those I love and miss are here with me. I wish I could find something to tell them all but I can't, so I simply stay there and enjoy seeing all those faces and smiles for a moment.
A small shiver brings me back after a few minutes, or maybe an eternity. It is cold out here tonight and I didn't put on my jacket. I enjoy a few more frosty breaths before picking myself up, sending light chill tremors down my arms and spine. One by one people are getting up too, going back the way they came with a nod or a wave. I watch the last one leave then start on my way home, the dog lopping ahead, eager to go snuggle up in front of the fireplace. And all around me the snow is falling.

Fruitful Weekend

Well good evening young acolytes,

Indeed it has been quite an eventful weekend. To get things started I actually got a game in (wargames for those who wonder...) on Friday. That was good because 1) I don't usually have a game on Friday 2) it was a big, big game 3) I won. So happy all-round.

Then over the weekennd I had a 2-day First Aid and CPR course. Saturday we concentrated on CPR. That was quite instructive, and a bit of fun too. When we were finished I got to hang around with Karim for a couple of hours - that was too short but it felt good to see the big guy. I then happilly proceeded to put on the Marseille soccer game I'd recorded during the day. They got trounced by the worst team in the league. Yay! So I went to bed kinda pissed off, which probably explains the weird and violent dreams that I had (OK, my dreams are always weird, but not always violent...).
But anyway, I woke up bright and early this morning - that's right, on a sunday... - and made my merry way to the first aid class, where once again I learned a good bit and had some fun times.
And at the end of the day, a few bagels and a passed test later, I had my certification. Hoo-Rah! ( ;o) ). It's actually like a business card that I will need to plastify quickly if I don't want to damage it. I feel a little something at having that in my back pocket, some sort of confidence or something, I don't know.

But hey, it's sunday night and I'm happy I did what I set out to do for the week end, I can now sit down and relax until tomorrow morning. Gotta love sundays...

Intelligent Design - Complement to Nono's post

Good evening audience,

For those of you who don't know him, Nono is my oldest friend, and one of the great thinkers of our time. We are but a few privileged ones to know that however, we can only hope that his glory will not come post mortem. There is a link to his blog on the right, for all the French speakers (or readers) among you.

His latest ramblings concern an article published recently in a French 'volume' magazine about 'Intelligent Design'. This article apparently proceeded to mock and discredit the 'Intelligent Design' theory, all the while putting forth the unshakeable virtues of 'Science', which should be held as ultimate Truth.
Nono didn't like that. Not that Nono believes in any way in 'Intelligent Design', far from it. But the outright refutation of anything 'non scientific' seems wrong to him. All science-head that I am, I agree with him here, if only on the premise that 'just because it's not a scientific subject yet, it doesn't mean it never will be'. (For having studied advanced maths myself - and not even that advanced - I know that you can quickly reach a point where matters become almost more philosophical than mathematical. Maths then simply adapt and adopt new models to cover the new ground and be able to deal with it scientifically.)

I do however have several problems with I.D. being taught in school - which fortunately should not happen in the foreseeable future.
The first one being that evolution - Darwinistic or other - as is it taught now is not incompatible with the idea of I.D. . There is a point beyond which science says 'we don't know' where ID could find a very comfortable spot. Most religions so far refuse to go that far; after all, they have been preaching for several thousand years that Man was created 'as is' and hasn't changed since. Old habits die hard, but the world is changing, and slowly even the most conservative are becoming more flexible as their followers' faith is being shaken - mostly because of eduction and science, actually. So who knows...
The second problem that I see with ID being taught in school, is that it comes from a movement that is almost entirely catholic. Had it come from an oecumenical body, I might have shown some - not much! - more leniency towards it. It didn't, and I am certain that divergent views would clash very rapidly and create yet more tensions between religious communities. All that the world needs, really...

One thing about the push for ID being taught in school leaves me wondering: why? Why is it so important that ID be taught in school? School doesn't categorically refute religion, it simply does not teach it. On top of that, the idea of evolution as presented by Darwin is presented as just that, an idea: 'Science says evolution blahblahblah, because suchandsuch...' (well, that's what my classes were like). It does not say: 'Religion is wrong, and that's how it happened...'. Since there are plenty of places to learn about the creation theory of a particular religion - church/temple/mosque/other for example, text studies classes, etc... - why is it so important it is taught in school? I don't know...

I'm back

Yeehaa!

So I've been away for a while - well, from this blog at any rate.
As I said before, I went skiing, armed with my video camera and all. However, after only 5 minutes of use, the battery died :( . I did charge it all day, so I don't know what happened. Anyway, all I could get was one - small - run from my brother, and one from my novice-skiier step sister, Ruth. And unfortunately nothing outrageous happened in 5 minutes (Well, Ruth fell of course, but it's just not as funny with debutants. Or is it?). Ah well...

I also promised you pictures of my brother. Now for those of you who don't know him, he's quite a shady character, and doesn't like to be pinned on pictures. I did however manage to sneak in at one of his decadent 'parties' and steal this shot. I think images speak for themselves...

Finally done!

So yesterday was a day of mixed fortunes - but hey, that happens. But 2 good things happened: first my brother came back (ladies stay tuned, I'll try to post some 'shocking' pix of him later!), and that's good because I missed the little nuisance. And today we're going skiing!! OH YES BABY, old school style! Hopefully I'll also have pictures of that to show later on.
The second good thing that happened? Well, those of you who know me - other than through reading some stranger's blog - will also know of my addiction to little models and wargames. And yesterday I finally finished a unit I have put more or less 40 hours of work on. And I'm happy enough with the result, considering I'm not the best painter in the world. So for those of you who care, here are bad quality pictures of what they look like...

Dogs have a right to slippers too

Yeepee Kay Hey! The snow is finally back!! We now have about 20/25 cm of fresh powder on top of the old snow! Much better let me tell you! The end of troubles for Macha? Weeelll... not really. When the snow is very powdery and soft and fluffy (you get it, the ultimate cream-dream...), it builds up between her 'toes' very quickly, and then she can't go for more than 5 metres without having to stop to get it out. It seems to hurt her as well (hell, if I had snow between my toes I'm sure it would hurt bad enough!).
The solution? Doggy slippers of course! No more snow between the toes for Macha, and the added bonus for me that she looks extremely comical (and for some reason, she looks even more cute to passer-bys... "Oooh, lookit the cute little doggyyy!!" She's a real star out there!). Anyway, I thought I'd share with you people, so enjoy!

How does this blog work?

Well, it seems the genial plan the makers of this blog had is working: I created my blog just so I could post a comment on someone else's blog, and now 2 friends of mine have done the same just so they could post comments on mine...
Question is, why? As far as I know it's made by google, who already provide their cool email service. But at least there they seem to have some sort of advertising going on - albeit discrete - whereas I've seen very little external advertising on this blog service. Granted, I haven't spent my days looking for ads, but still. What they have going on is the possibility to add AdSense to your blog, which lets them put some ads on your page. However they pay you for all clicks and referals, so their own margin must be minimal.
So now I am left wondering, what do they gain from this? Reputation? Webmaster experience to put on their CVs? Good Karma? This is intriguing to me, especially in the evening as I'm getting tired...

Happy New Year!

Well the title says it all, wish everybody the best for 2006!

It started not so good for Macha though. I went to walk my dog this morning - like every morning. However, a couple of days ago we had what is know here as 'ice pellets' or 'freezing rain'. That's like tiny little snowflakes/hailstones that melt on impact with the ground but freeze almost immediately after, leaving you with a very smooth layer of ice on the ground.
Apart from looking beautiful - especially on tree branches which now have a smooth, transparent yet reflective coat of ice - it's also quite slippery. Now on top of that we've had some very light snowfall since last night, with wee little flakes of snow. Since it's -10 outside they don't melt, but instead make a very thin cover over the ice sheet, kinda like makeup dust on a woman's pocket mirror. And this my friends is lethal.
I managed not to fall mostly thanks to my level-10-ninja skills, and partly thanks to good luck. Macha - my dog - has yet to master kung fu though, and she was flying all over the place. Towards the end I had to encourage her to carry on, as it took the poor scared animal more time to get up after each fall. I couldn't carry her either since my own balance was precarious enough; I didn't want to fall on top of her and end up crunching her hip or something. Finally we made it home, and somehow this time Macha was a little more eager to come in and lay by the fireplace. Go figure...