Post by potet on Sept 14, 2023 21:58:06 GMT
A younger friend of mine, who is from the Burgundian village where I spent my childhood, would like the mayorial house to have a copy of every one of my books including the private ones. He'll pay for everything. I offered him to place the order myself so that he would benefit from the author's price.
There will be about 20 books. The parcel will be rather large. Would you advise me to place a single order or two orders - for instance one for the public books and another for the private ones or more?
P.S.1. This might sound strange at first sight, but this village has the odd privilege of being the birthplace of a fairly large number of scholars given its small population. Many spend their summer holidays there. The friend who wants to donate my books is himself a doctor in mathematics. He organized international summer conferences of mathematics in his village, until he started his international programming company in South Korea, then the Philippines to offer services to companies all over the world.
P.S. The funny thing is that UFOs were sighted in this village several times in the past ... which makes me wonder whether there is a relationship with the large number of scholars from there.
I myself saw one, and I relate my experience in my sitcom Spiffies and Loonies. Here is the episode.
________________________________
Context: Brad his reading to his wife Dolly the diary in English of his French grand-uncle who taught English in the grammar school of Dijon.
63. ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE
Cast: Brad (BRAD), Dolly (DOLL).
SCENE I
DOLL: Have you got something less serious, than all that military stuff? Something more entertaining.
BRAD: Aliens?
DOLL: What sort?
BRAD: Aliens from outer space.
DOLL: Don’t tell me your great-uncle actually encountered aliens.
BRAD: Not quite, but listen.
❏ When you read this, I’ll have been dead for a long time. I have seen to it. I should have been too ashamed of disclosing what I experienced during my lifetime. People would have laughed at me, and made me the butt of their jokes.
What I am relating here took place a few years after World War II. I was ten by then. My younger brother Secundus and I were spending the summer vacations with our paternal grandparents. Their house stood on top of a hill overlooking the countryside below. Our bedroom was on the first floor. From its window, we had a panoramic view on the orchards gently sloping down to a large river. Beyond, on the other bank, spread acres and acres of green pastures and meadows, spotted here and there by the white figures of grazing cows.
One night I was awakened by an intense orange light that filled our bedroom. I ran to the window, and saw an enormous, luminous globe floating above the slope down to the river, and stopping there, its colored shape beautifully reflecting on the surface of the water. Immediately I ran back to the bed to wake up my brother.
It took me some time to draw him from his deep sleep. Eventually, he opened his eyes, sat up, and asked what was going on, but refused to budge. I returned to the window, and saw that the object was now swiftly moving away above the pastures. Soon, it was no bigger than an orange, and disappeared behind a clump of trees. I stood for a long time by the window, hoping I would see it again, but to no avail. Then I went back to bed, and fell asleep exhausted. ❏
SCENE II ❏ The day after, at breakfast Secundus complained loudly to our grand-parents that I had shaken him out of his sleep in the middle of the night. I explained what had happened, but everybody was sure I had had a bad dream.
“Now if you did see something,” said our grandfather, “I am of the opinion that it was a weather balloon. They launch them from the local airport at about 30km from here. They’ve got a light inside for the weathermen to follow them at night with binoculars.” ❏
SCENE III ❏ In the afternoon, as we were strolling along the river, we noticed the bank was eerily littered with umpteen sheets of tin foil lined with white tissue and half cut up into strips. The willows thus tinselled had an odd Christmas-tree appearance under the hot sun of August.
Our grandfather explained these pieces of paper and metal foil were used to blur radar detection. Like a squid spurting ink to cover its flight, a flying plane would drop a cloud of these foil squares, and radar screens would display a large white area where it was impossible to make out any particular aircraft spot. He added there must have been air force manœuvres the night before, hence the weather balloon I had seen. ❏
SCENE IV ❏ At this very moment, Secundus spotted what looked like a squadron of five bright silver coins up in the sky moving westward so swiftly that we concluded these were jetplanes, something quite new in the fifties. Our grandfather tried to compute their speed, and came up with the amazing figure of about 16,000kmh which sounded so improbable that he computed it again, without obtaining a much different figure. ❏
SCENE V ❏ The day after, as we were crossing the field behind the house, we found a curved piece of plastic that we first took for a salt block like those left in pastures for cattle to lick. After some use, they generally show smooth shapes always with a definite curve due to the movement of the cows’ tongues against it. Now, the block was not salty. Besides, it was much too lightweight and translucent to be salt, therefore our grandfather concluded that a plane had burst in mid-air, and that this was a piece from its cockpit, although its edges were smooth, not sharp. We brought it back home, and washed off the earth that clung to it. ❏
SCENE VI ❏ Our grandfather took this opportunity to give us a lesson in physics. The problem was to determine the specific weight of the material the block was made of.
First he took a large wash basin and weighed it. Then he put the basin on the kitchen floor, placed a bucket in it, and carefully filled the bucket to the brim with water. This operation completed, he placed the block in the bucket. The block floating like a miniature iceberg, he held it down with the tip of his forefinger. The displaced water fell into the basin.
He removed the block and the bucket from the basin, and weighed the latter with the water in it. Since we already knew the weight (actually the mass) of the basin, a simple subtraction gave us the weight of the water, hence its volume, hence the volume of the block. Then he weighed the block and a simple division of its weight by its volume then an application of the rule of three gave us its specific weight, which was about 0.8 [point eight].
The experiment completed, our grandmother ordered us to take this block out of her kitchen. We complied, carrying it to the barn, and leaving it on a low wall in front of the rabbit hutches.
It was soon forgotten. ❏
SCENE VII ❏ Now, a few days later, Secundus and I were accused of cutting off a hole in the wire netting of the chicken shed on the side of the barn. We were also accused of making another hole in the barn wall itself by demolishing part of the cob (a mixture of clay and straw). Despite our protest of innocence, we were punished, and left to brood over how unfair adults can be toward children. ❏
DOLL: Poor kids. All the same, their grandfather was a remarkable man.
BRAD: Yes, they were very lucky to be initiated to physics by him. Shall I continue?
DOLL: Yes, please.
BRAD: Where was I? Oh, yes!
SCENE VIII ❏ A month later, uncle Edward, who was a radar expert, paid us a visit, and we excitedly told him of all the marvellous things grandpa had taught us about aviation. Uncle Edward congratulated grand-father, but balked at the impossible speed of the so-called ‘jet-planes’, and was intrigued by the block. He asked us to show it to him.
I rushed to the barn, but couldn’t find it where we had left it a month ago. I looked around, then everywhere in the barn, but in vain. As I came back empty-handed, our grandfather remembered that, while feeding the rabbits, he had caught sight of a child’s figure seizing the block, and carrying it away to the field. It wasn’t me, so I concluded it had to be Secundus, who strongly denied having taken the block away.
Uncle Edward said he was quite puzzled. First cockpits were not plastic but glass. Second, no jetplane was able to fly at 16,000kmh. He had recently read articles about unidentified flying objects (UFOs for short), better known as ‘flying saucers.’ He wondered whether the things we had seen were not, after all, such space craft. ❏
SCENE IX ❏ It goes without saying that our children’s imagination ran wild on such premises. Soon we reconstituted the scenario, and we played it on and on until we grew tired of it.
A flying saucer had lost a piece of its fuselage. A probe ship, that looked like a big luminous orange sphere, had been sent to explore the ground and retrieve it. This mission having failed, the squadron captain had ordered them to remain in the area, and wait for day time to resume their search.
The sun rose, but the object was too small to be visible from their altitude, and they couldn’t take a position closer to the ground without being detected, even hidden in an artificial cloud.
Fortunately, in the afternoon, the Captain’s screen showed him a party of three humans busying themselves around something in a field that might well be their piece of xaxium, a transparent metal unknown on earth. Once he realised it was it, and that it would be left unattended in the barn for a long time, he set up a raid.
A four-strong squad landed the night after in a small exploratory craft, and hid in the wood beyond the field behind the house. Two of the soldiers remained in the craft while the two others went on their mission. They progressed through the maize crop, then hid in the tall grass behind the barn. They could hardly be detected, for they were the size of eight-year-old children, and wore camouflage fatigues. This operation was necessary for, however powerful their monitoring screens may have been, they couldn’t see through roofs and walls, so they didn’t know the exact location of the block. All they knew was that it was inside the barn. ❏
SCENE X ❏ At dawn, they saw our grandfather open the chicken shed, and let the fowl go out and peck in the orchard, as he would every morning. They cut off a hole in the wire netting and slithered through it. Once inside the chicken shed, they made another hole in the barn wall to get inside. Soon they spotted their block.
Unfortunately the old human male was feeding his rabbits. This didn’t deter the leader. A daring fellow, he scurried to the low wall, seized the block, and left the barn through its back door our grandfather had left open. Soon they were back to their craft. They waited for night to fall and for the whole village to be fast asleep to fly back to their mother ship.
They were congratulated and commended for a promotion, then the whole squadron briskly flew away from Earth toward their invisible planet. ❏
SCENE XI
DOLL: I think he made it up.
BRAD: No. He’s sincere. I believe him. I myself saw very strange things while salvaging the Atocha’s cargo.
DOLL: You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?
BRAD: Not at all. I saw weird things on my boat.
DOLL: You never told me.
BRAD: It was a secret then. Now that Tony has allowed me to tell you what happened, I’ll do it. But, first, let’s go to bed.
There will be about 20 books. The parcel will be rather large. Would you advise me to place a single order or two orders - for instance one for the public books and another for the private ones or more?
P.S.1. This might sound strange at first sight, but this village has the odd privilege of being the birthplace of a fairly large number of scholars given its small population. Many spend their summer holidays there. The friend who wants to donate my books is himself a doctor in mathematics. He organized international summer conferences of mathematics in his village, until he started his international programming company in South Korea, then the Philippines to offer services to companies all over the world.
P.S. The funny thing is that UFOs were sighted in this village several times in the past ... which makes me wonder whether there is a relationship with the large number of scholars from there.
I myself saw one, and I relate my experience in my sitcom Spiffies and Loonies. Here is the episode.
________________________________
Context: Brad his reading to his wife Dolly the diary in English of his French grand-uncle who taught English in the grammar school of Dijon.
63. ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE
Cast: Brad (BRAD), Dolly (DOLL).
SCENE I
DOLL: Have you got something less serious, than all that military stuff? Something more entertaining.
BRAD: Aliens?
DOLL: What sort?
BRAD: Aliens from outer space.
DOLL: Don’t tell me your great-uncle actually encountered aliens.
BRAD: Not quite, but listen.
❏ When you read this, I’ll have been dead for a long time. I have seen to it. I should have been too ashamed of disclosing what I experienced during my lifetime. People would have laughed at me, and made me the butt of their jokes.
What I am relating here took place a few years after World War II. I was ten by then. My younger brother Secundus and I were spending the summer vacations with our paternal grandparents. Their house stood on top of a hill overlooking the countryside below. Our bedroom was on the first floor. From its window, we had a panoramic view on the orchards gently sloping down to a large river. Beyond, on the other bank, spread acres and acres of green pastures and meadows, spotted here and there by the white figures of grazing cows.
One night I was awakened by an intense orange light that filled our bedroom. I ran to the window, and saw an enormous, luminous globe floating above the slope down to the river, and stopping there, its colored shape beautifully reflecting on the surface of the water. Immediately I ran back to the bed to wake up my brother.
It took me some time to draw him from his deep sleep. Eventually, he opened his eyes, sat up, and asked what was going on, but refused to budge. I returned to the window, and saw that the object was now swiftly moving away above the pastures. Soon, it was no bigger than an orange, and disappeared behind a clump of trees. I stood for a long time by the window, hoping I would see it again, but to no avail. Then I went back to bed, and fell asleep exhausted. ❏
SCENE II ❏ The day after, at breakfast Secundus complained loudly to our grand-parents that I had shaken him out of his sleep in the middle of the night. I explained what had happened, but everybody was sure I had had a bad dream.
“Now if you did see something,” said our grandfather, “I am of the opinion that it was a weather balloon. They launch them from the local airport at about 30km from here. They’ve got a light inside for the weathermen to follow them at night with binoculars.” ❏
SCENE III ❏ In the afternoon, as we were strolling along the river, we noticed the bank was eerily littered with umpteen sheets of tin foil lined with white tissue and half cut up into strips. The willows thus tinselled had an odd Christmas-tree appearance under the hot sun of August.
Our grandfather explained these pieces of paper and metal foil were used to blur radar detection. Like a squid spurting ink to cover its flight, a flying plane would drop a cloud of these foil squares, and radar screens would display a large white area where it was impossible to make out any particular aircraft spot. He added there must have been air force manœuvres the night before, hence the weather balloon I had seen. ❏
SCENE IV ❏ At this very moment, Secundus spotted what looked like a squadron of five bright silver coins up in the sky moving westward so swiftly that we concluded these were jetplanes, something quite new in the fifties. Our grandfather tried to compute their speed, and came up with the amazing figure of about 16,000kmh which sounded so improbable that he computed it again, without obtaining a much different figure. ❏
SCENE V ❏ The day after, as we were crossing the field behind the house, we found a curved piece of plastic that we first took for a salt block like those left in pastures for cattle to lick. After some use, they generally show smooth shapes always with a definite curve due to the movement of the cows’ tongues against it. Now, the block was not salty. Besides, it was much too lightweight and translucent to be salt, therefore our grandfather concluded that a plane had burst in mid-air, and that this was a piece from its cockpit, although its edges were smooth, not sharp. We brought it back home, and washed off the earth that clung to it. ❏
SCENE VI ❏ Our grandfather took this opportunity to give us a lesson in physics. The problem was to determine the specific weight of the material the block was made of.
First he took a large wash basin and weighed it. Then he put the basin on the kitchen floor, placed a bucket in it, and carefully filled the bucket to the brim with water. This operation completed, he placed the block in the bucket. The block floating like a miniature iceberg, he held it down with the tip of his forefinger. The displaced water fell into the basin.
He removed the block and the bucket from the basin, and weighed the latter with the water in it. Since we already knew the weight (actually the mass) of the basin, a simple subtraction gave us the weight of the water, hence its volume, hence the volume of the block. Then he weighed the block and a simple division of its weight by its volume then an application of the rule of three gave us its specific weight, which was about 0.8 [point eight].
The experiment completed, our grandmother ordered us to take this block out of her kitchen. We complied, carrying it to the barn, and leaving it on a low wall in front of the rabbit hutches.
It was soon forgotten. ❏
SCENE VII ❏ Now, a few days later, Secundus and I were accused of cutting off a hole in the wire netting of the chicken shed on the side of the barn. We were also accused of making another hole in the barn wall itself by demolishing part of the cob (a mixture of clay and straw). Despite our protest of innocence, we were punished, and left to brood over how unfair adults can be toward children. ❏
DOLL: Poor kids. All the same, their grandfather was a remarkable man.
BRAD: Yes, they were very lucky to be initiated to physics by him. Shall I continue?
DOLL: Yes, please.
BRAD: Where was I? Oh, yes!
SCENE VIII ❏ A month later, uncle Edward, who was a radar expert, paid us a visit, and we excitedly told him of all the marvellous things grandpa had taught us about aviation. Uncle Edward congratulated grand-father, but balked at the impossible speed of the so-called ‘jet-planes’, and was intrigued by the block. He asked us to show it to him.
I rushed to the barn, but couldn’t find it where we had left it a month ago. I looked around, then everywhere in the barn, but in vain. As I came back empty-handed, our grandfather remembered that, while feeding the rabbits, he had caught sight of a child’s figure seizing the block, and carrying it away to the field. It wasn’t me, so I concluded it had to be Secundus, who strongly denied having taken the block away.
Uncle Edward said he was quite puzzled. First cockpits were not plastic but glass. Second, no jetplane was able to fly at 16,000kmh. He had recently read articles about unidentified flying objects (UFOs for short), better known as ‘flying saucers.’ He wondered whether the things we had seen were not, after all, such space craft. ❏
SCENE IX ❏ It goes without saying that our children’s imagination ran wild on such premises. Soon we reconstituted the scenario, and we played it on and on until we grew tired of it.
A flying saucer had lost a piece of its fuselage. A probe ship, that looked like a big luminous orange sphere, had been sent to explore the ground and retrieve it. This mission having failed, the squadron captain had ordered them to remain in the area, and wait for day time to resume their search.
The sun rose, but the object was too small to be visible from their altitude, and they couldn’t take a position closer to the ground without being detected, even hidden in an artificial cloud.
Fortunately, in the afternoon, the Captain’s screen showed him a party of three humans busying themselves around something in a field that might well be their piece of xaxium, a transparent metal unknown on earth. Once he realised it was it, and that it would be left unattended in the barn for a long time, he set up a raid.
A four-strong squad landed the night after in a small exploratory craft, and hid in the wood beyond the field behind the house. Two of the soldiers remained in the craft while the two others went on their mission. They progressed through the maize crop, then hid in the tall grass behind the barn. They could hardly be detected, for they were the size of eight-year-old children, and wore camouflage fatigues. This operation was necessary for, however powerful their monitoring screens may have been, they couldn’t see through roofs and walls, so they didn’t know the exact location of the block. All they knew was that it was inside the barn. ❏
SCENE X ❏ At dawn, they saw our grandfather open the chicken shed, and let the fowl go out and peck in the orchard, as he would every morning. They cut off a hole in the wire netting and slithered through it. Once inside the chicken shed, they made another hole in the barn wall to get inside. Soon they spotted their block.
Unfortunately the old human male was feeding his rabbits. This didn’t deter the leader. A daring fellow, he scurried to the low wall, seized the block, and left the barn through its back door our grandfather had left open. Soon they were back to their craft. They waited for night to fall and for the whole village to be fast asleep to fly back to their mother ship.
They were congratulated and commended for a promotion, then the whole squadron briskly flew away from Earth toward their invisible planet. ❏
SCENE XI
DOLL: I think he made it up.
BRAD: No. He’s sincere. I believe him. I myself saw very strange things while salvaging the Atocha’s cargo.
DOLL: You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?
BRAD: Not at all. I saw weird things on my boat.
DOLL: You never told me.
BRAD: It was a secret then. Now that Tony has allowed me to tell you what happened, I’ll do it. But, first, let’s go to bed.
)