French comedians enjoy about the same latitude to mock politicians as American comedians do. That is, until yesterday.

Stéphane Guillon, a sharp-tongued comedian, went a bit too far when he was hired by a French state radio to spice up its morning schedule. He joked about President Nicolas Sarkozy’s diminutive stature, mocked the first lady’s music career and called France’s immigration minister “chinless.” The station boss, Philippe Val, gave Guillon the ax when Guillon added Val to his list of victims.

In 1881 the government passed a law guaranteeing freedom of the press, and with the development of mass media, French comics became more vicious. When President Sarkozy was snapped taking singer and former model Carla Bruni on a date to Disneyland Paris, comedian Anne Roumanoff joked on TV: “A first for Disneyland: Snow White marries the dwarf.”

Guillon hit the big time (and a very sore spot) when he joked about the director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, shortly after the latter admitted to an affair with an IMF economist. Guillon told his live audience that to prevent mishaps “special security measures” were in place. Cameras had been put under Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s table, and female France radio staff had been warned not to dress provocatively so as not to “awake the beast.”

Mr. Guillon said that after being named chief executive of Radio France, Jean-Luc Hees had placed his manhood in Mr. Sarkozy’s hands. Strauss-Kahn claims humor is not funny when it is cruel. Of course, he wrong but the French government is getting the last laugh. It has fired Guillon.

Although not well known, The Epoch Times is about as good as any serious newspaper in the world. It has both print and web editions and it is published in New York City. It was launched in 2003 and it is particularly strong on news from China but publishes in 17 languages in 23 countries. It carries all the usual mainstream news but also much that is overlooked even by The Times of London and the NY Times. Of course, nothing is quite the equal of the Times of London for extensive coverage of everything you ever wanted to know and quite a bit on things you hoped never to learn about. For those who need these things, the Epoch Times has extensive sports, fashion, travel, health, and business sections. I read its China reports daily and its world news once weekly. I don’t often look at the political opinion pages but I know it has a distinct anti-Communist China leaning. It has a much friendlier “readers’ turn” than has the almost impossible NY Times. If you have ever tried publishing a letter or guest opinion essay in that newspaper you know what I mean.

I don’t know the cost of the print edition but I suppose it is amounts to a healthy chunk of change about on a par with the NY Times but less expensive than such papers as the The Times of London or any other of those overseas publications. You can always (ugh) “download” it every day via http://www.theepochtimes.com or get one of those newsreaders that allows you to scan all the headlines and choose what interests you. That is much better because it won’t cost you one red cent. Personally, I download about 30 newspapers and magazines including such heftily priced items as The NY Review of Books. You click on a headline and the full article springs up. Nothing can beat that service. Again, it is all free.

One of these days I will write an honest-to-goodness post on this matter but for now I will present you with the sort of thing mathematicians have to say. This essay appeared in MATHEMATICS MAGAZINE, Vol 61, No.1, February, 1988. I reprint it with only slight abridgment. It is titled Love Affairs and Differential Equations. I will not bother you with the name of the author.

Juliet is is love with Romeo but Romeo is a fickle lover. The more Juliet loves him, the more he begins to dislike her. But when she loses interest, his feelings for her warm up. She tends to echo him; her love grows when he loves her and turns to hate when he hates her. A simple model for this is:

dr/dt = -aj, dj/dt = br
where

r(t) = Romeo’s love/hate for Juliet at time t
j(t) = Juliet’s love/hate for Rome at time t.

Positive values of r, j signify love, negtive values signify hate. The parameters a, b, are positive, to be consistent with the story.

The sad outcome of their affair is, of course, a neverending cycle of love and hate: their governing equations are those of a simple harmonic oscillator. At least they mange to achieve simultaenous love one-quarter of the time.

As one possible variation, the instructor may wish to discuss the more general second-order linear system

dr/dt = a (subscript) 11r + a (subscript) 12j [I apologize for not knowing how to put numbers in subscripts.]
dj/dt = a (subscript) 21r + a (subscript 22j. [Same problem here.]

where the parameters a (subscript ik) (i, k, = 1,2) may be either positive or negative. A choice of sign specifies the romantic style. Additional complications may be introduced in the name of mathematical interest. Nonlinear terms could be included to prevent the possibilities of unbounded passion or disdain. Poets have long suggested the equations should be nonautonomous.

Several readers criticized my two posts on socialism. I am surer than ever that I was right. Comes the revolution, we won’t eat caviar but we will have good bread on every table.

CLICK HERE, please.

Like nearly all American colleges, Eastern Michigan tracks grade point averages. It keeps separate lists for all 19 athletic varsities. There is no good reason for doing that but I will tell you some of the resultis, anyway. As you might expect, the bottom 7 are men’s teams and 6 of the top 7 are women’s teams. Make of that what you will. The worst performers are the men’s basketball players and, unless you are cut from the Claude Rains mold, this will not deeply shock you.

What fascinates me is that the basketball team GPA is a healthy 2.487. I was green with envy when I saw that report. I believe that only in my last three semesters, as I battled against academic probation in my effort not to be booted off the track team, did I ever attain to such ionospheric heights. So I climbed up to a nifty 2.1 overall.

The difference between me at that time and the splendid 2.487 scholars of today is that I knew who the vice-president of the USA was. To suppose that such an accomplishment by today’s scholars is within their grasp strains credulity. What would have become of me had I gained such a grand GPA or, to reach out to fantasy world, imagine that I had graduated with a GPA above 3.3!! How would my life be different today? For one thing, I rather suspect my blog would be printed in richer, darker ink and in bold typography. That would please me because vanity never ventures far from my kishkes. It is just conceivable that had I attained 3.8 GPA, today I would be Prime Minister For Life of the planet. How sweet that would have been. And how well deserved.

One day I will go into a time machine and do all those things we all wish we had done: I would study and master violin and piano, I would study very hard and be “the smartest kid on the block,” I would learn to spin a basketball on my fingers, I would be a wonderful, handsome swain to all the loveliest damsels in Brooklyn. I would be….and then I would be….. The list goes on and on.

Actually “cherce” is an uncommon Brooklyn pronunciation of “choice” but outlanders don’t seem to know that. It was common once upon a time in the Greenpoint (Greenpernt) section of Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan’s lower East Side, and that’s about all.

In any case, please note that subscribers now have a choice whether to continue their subscriptions without having to beg me to remove their names. Internet surfers can now subscribe without asking me to do the work. I’d appreciate your calling your friends’ attention to this blog. I would like an additional 3-5 million readers.

Muchas gracias (whatever that means – let’s hope it is not an insult of your mother).

Worthless addendum: The man first known as “the People’s Cherce” was Dixie Walker, star of the Brooklyn Dodges in the 1940s.

We had one of those damned power outages: no water to drink, wash with with, or toilets to pee in; no refrigerator to keep food from spoiling; no TV or radio to while away the hours; no heating; no lighting. In short, zilch, nada, nichts, THE BIG ZERO.

We made major mistakes several thousand years ago and now we must pay for them forever. All we ever really needed was a cave, a bludgeon, and the ability to pick fruit off a tree. Then wiseguys came along. One said, “Let me show you guys how to rub twigs so that you can make a fire.” With that, our doomsday fall was sealed. Other jokers rushed in: one guy hollowed out the trunk of a tree and knowing that chickens crossed roads, not streams; he smugly one-upped them. To our ever-lasting sorrow. Another joker grabbed a passing lamb and said, “Hmm, hmm,good.” Men started scrambling about for more of the same.

Everyone was semi-happy but everyone also yearned for days gone by: a cave and bludgeon. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the Lockheed SR-71 streaked across the sky at 2293 MPH. Men were literally blown out of their bearskins. Seeing that, women blushed a deep shade of scarlet and, in turn, seeing that, dress manufacturers were born, creating irresistible fashion designs. With fashion design, inevitably came the longbow, used for keeping lustful men at bay. So men designed computers that could compute in nanoseconds, and that seductive step led to steroids. From steroids to intergalactic space ships was, as we know, the inevitable next step. That was followed by the Hawking machine that took us back to 17,312 B.C. at 5.30 A.M. The Nietzschean cycle of birth and rebirth was completed and here we are once again in Today World. We are currently having a black out. No refrigeration.

There’s been a change in the weather; there’s gonna be a change in me.  From now on, I’ll be fancy free.

My walk will be different, my back will be fine.  No osteopaths will hear me whine.

I’m goin’ to change my diet and if that ain’t enough, I’ll change the way I strut my stuff.

I’m goin’ to run a mile and maybe more.   No more lyin’ on the kitchen floor.

I’m gonna change my style and wear a smile.

Doggone, there’ll be some change made today.

There’ll be some changes made.

*******************

Okay, it can be done better.   Here’s Miss Peggy Lee.

Monday morning and a new week begins.   As I have no job and my wife does not permit me to do a share of the work around the house that needs doing, I wonder why I know what day it is.  Probably because this is the day she makes an 80 mile roundtrip to pick up little Anika who will be with us until Thursday evening.

Objectively speaking, Anika is no better than my other grandchildren but they do not sleep in my bed, driving me to a couch, 3 nights per week.  It is very odd that, by inconveniencing me, she is dear to my heart.   It is very doubtful she is as bright as my grandson Native Dancer and, as I am on record as having great respect for high intelligence, I am puzzled.   Having seen him no more than 15 times since he was born about 8 years ago, the Dancer is a bit of a mystery to me.  I suspect he is an incredibly good child, given that his parents have true expertise in child-raising, but this is just theoretical.  For all I know, there are children smarter than he is and more handsome and every bit as sweet, but what is that to me?   Shall I bond with children in Outer Mongolia?

I have a plan for next winter – to take the Dancer (a.k.a. foolishly and disgustingly called by his parents, “Jeffrey,”) with me for a long vacation in Florida.  If being together 24 hours per day for 7 or so days doesn’t make us want to kill each other, who knows what good may come of it?    Of course, the plan may not thrill him or his parents or I may sour on it long before next winter – maybe by dinner time tonight.   Still, I thought I should let you know and, if you think it is a bad one, to hell with you.

Confessing one’s sins is in vogue on TV and radio as well as in print.  Tiger Woods has made several abject apologies as have zillions of politicians.  Until this flurry of confessions, I had thought a sin was something so awful it could hardly be owned up to except to a priest confessor.    I thought it was not easy to atone for sins and not easy to go public with them.  Venial sins are pretty much a joke and woe to him who is such a liar that he does not admit to committing a couple dozen daily.  Mortal sins, however, are not a joke.  At least, they weren’t until televangelists began competing with one another in their claims to being the world’s #1 ranking sinner. “Worse-than-thou” is now a badge of honor.

I won’t take a back seat to anybody when it comes to being a big-time sinner and, for that reason, won’t use this journal to announce them.  Sins have to gnaw away at your kishkes and make you bang your head against a wall as a trivial part of your atonement.   In fact, if you can atone for them at all, they weren’t that big a deal.   They have to haunt you for years or decades and, if you are lucky, for eternity, after you have committed them if you expect to be included in the assemblage of sinners.

It is sometimes said, especially by people who falsely claim they don’t hate homosexuals, that we should hate the sin but not the sinner.   This is a contemptible sin because they are liars.  Big-time, too.    The truth is that a sin is a bad deed that is more than a mistake.   When convicts say “I made a big mistake” they speak nonsense.   A mistake is what happens when you add up a long set of numbers and come up with the wrong answer.   You make a mistake when you spell a certain state’s name as “Misissipi.”  When you hold a person captive for weeks, raping her periodically while waiting for ransom money to arrive, you are not making a mistake other than the mistake of not expecting to be caught.  The man who is contrite when facing his sentence for the nefarious conduct of raping and kidnapping has not made a mistake, other than in the most extended sense of the term.

Personally, I am a great fan of the idea that sins are unpardonable.  I won’t make a last minute conversion from atheism to Catholicism as I lie on my death bed in the hope that God will say, “Quit the belly-aching, Gendin, you’re okay.  Come on in.”  In my fantasies, after 100 billion years of the most extreme, unimaginable torture, I scream out to God, “Enough, already.  Give me a break” only to hear to a voice replying, “Why, we’ve hardly begun.”    Now, that’s my idea of a terrific God – one who has a sense of proportion, well-tuned by his ability to take the long perspective.

Atta way, Big Fellah.  Atta way, to go.  You are stern to the umpteenth degree.   Not an ounce of mercy in your islets of langerhan or other obscure parts of your magnificent, hulking body.   And you don’t conduct jury trials.   I love you.  I adore you more than any official member of the God Club does.   Come get me.