Jacques Coulardeau (Author of Cro-Magnon's Language)

Jacques Coulardeau rated a book really liked it Language Universals: With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies by Joseph H. Greenberg (2005-07-18) by Joseph H. Greenberg;	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
LANGUAGES ARE NOT BINARY BUT TERNARY This book is very interesting in terms of the method used for multi-language comparison. If we want to find some universals, we have to go into such a wide comparison. Unfortunately, this book only compares words, ...more
May 06, 2026 04:10AM · like · see review
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing The Architecture of Silence: Language, Migration, and the Survival of Suppressed Civilizations by Mohammad Merajul ISLAM	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
SILENCE, THE ARCHITECTONIC ARCHIPELAGO ENGLISH – Do not believe a civilization disappears completely in absolute silence. It might get stranded in oblivion for those who believe what they have forgotten does not exist, did not happen, or would not eve ...more
Apr 26, 2026 02:48AM · 3 likes · like · see review
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing Habiter le Chaos by Laure Forlay	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
AN EXHIBITION AT THE FRAC AUVERGNE AND A CATALOGUE BOOK BY LAURE FORLAY, IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH EXQUISITE CARNAL PROMISCUITY I was left feeling rather dubious about this exhibition. Above all, don't read the numerous bilingual introductory pages in Fren ...more
Apr 11, 2026 03:00AM · 1 like · like · see review
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing La Chaise-Dieu: Nouvelle Mystérieuse,1510-1864 by Aimé Giron	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
LA CHAISE-DIEU IN A FISHY SWAMP Jean Antoine Aimé Giron, was born in Le Puy on July 1, 1836, and he died on November 28, 1907, in Bois-Colombes, was a French poet and novelist. Here is his medieval fantasy, about La Chaise-Dieu. A supposedly old text ...more
Mar 22, 2026 10:14AM · like · see review
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book really liked it James by Percival Everett	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
SLAVERY AS WHITE ENTERTAINMENT It is stupefyingly interesting to read this book because the point of view is that of a slave, of THE slave Jim/James, who takes part in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying to escape from his father and from his g ...more
Feb 01, 2026 11:24AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of James by Percival Everett. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — James by Percival Everett <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon, #6) by Dan Brown (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
HE WANDERS, HE WANDERS, THE C-I-ATHIC FERRET MINT-SCENTED WATER I went back in my archives and found articles on Dan Brown’s books. I will republish them all soon. Digital Fortress (1998). Angels and Demons (2000). Deception Point (2001). The DaVinci C ...more
Jan 11, 2026 08:30AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
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Jan 07, 2026 01:46AM
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing Never Flinch (Holly Gibney, #4) by Stephen King (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
MULTIHEADED STORY: DON’T GET DISORIENTED The book is surprising because it does not contain one single element of extranormal behavior. Some behaviors are extreme, totally absurd, yet perfectly understandable when we take into account the circumstance ...more
Jan 06, 2026 01:18PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Never Flinch by Stephen King. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Never Flinch by Stephen King <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum by Daniel Tammet (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
AUTISM FOR ALL THE “RAIN MEN” IN THE WORLD Daniel Tammet is an Asperger’s patient, hence autistic, at the savant end of the spectrum. His nine minds are mostly males, a few females, to prove the point that autism is not exclusively male. He wants to d ...more
Dec 29, 2025 10:28AM · like · see review
Jacques Coulardeau rated a book it was amazing Bois d'ébène suivi de Madrid by Jacques Roumain	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
BLACKER AND HARDER THAN EBONY, YOU’RE DEAD Is history a casino where, when “rien ne va plus,” no one can have any say on what is going to happen? The 19th century produced a vision of history in which the masses, luckily not isolated individuals, made ...more
Dec 26, 2025 11:20AM · like · see review

Jacques Coulardeau rated a book really liked it

Language Universals by Joseph H. Greenberg;

Language Universals: With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies by Joseph H. Greenberg (2005-07-18)
by Joseph H. Greenberg;

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LANGUAGES ARE NOT BINARY BUT TERNARY

This book is very interesting in terms of the method used for multi-language comparison. If we want to find some universals, we have to go into such a wide comparison. Unfortunately, this book only compares words,
LANGUAGES ARE NOT BINARY BUT TERNARY

This book is very interesting in terms of the method used for multi-language comparison. If we want to find some universals, we have to go into such a wide comparison. Unfortunately, this book only compares words, even if some of them are declared grammatical or syntactic, like personal pronouns.

But it does not compare what is far more interesting, the syntactic structures used by the various languages. He does not take into account the phylogeny of language starting at the moment when Homo Sapiens appeared as such and hence endowed with the various mutations that made him – and her – a fast, long-distance, bipedal runner around at least 300,000 BCE. He could have seen that universality is probably true for words, core-words, hence only some words that already existed when the first migration out of Black Africa took place around at least 250,000 BCE, and this migration went to Northern Africa and gave rise to the tri-consonantal root languages known as Semitic or Afro-Asiatic. And then later on, he would have come across the second migration out of Black Africa around 150,000 BCE that went to Asia and provided Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-Burman isolating languages. And later on, he would have come across, around 75,000 BCE, the agglutinative Turkic languages of the first wave of the third migration out of Black Africa. They went to both Europe, where they encountered the Neanderthals, and to Asia, where they encountered the Denisovans and the Homo Sapiens of the previous migration. Later on, around 50,000 BCE, he would have found the second wave of the third migration out of Black Africa. They went to Iran and stayed on the Iranian plateau, surrounded by the Homo Sapiens of the previous migrations and in contact with them. They will only move to South Asia and to Europe after the Ice Age around 10,000 BCE.

Those families of languages can only share the words that come from Africa and were attested to be used when each migration left. Then they were in contact with Neanderthals and Denisovans, some of them at least were, and of course with the Homo Sapiens who arrived after them. Contact means borrowing words all the time, but also a very stable continuity at the level of grammar in each language. That’s why these families still exist and prosper.

But why did Greenberg, who invented the multilingual comparative method, get trapped in what he says in this long essay?

Only one reason. He reduces all languages to one universal. Each word, each item is considered in a binary way: MARKED or UNMARKED. This binarism locks him up in the absolute impossibility to consider the paradigmatic dimension of words, sentences, and every linguistic fact as opposed to the syntactic dimension, AND the phylogenetic dimension, hence a word can be either marked or unmarked, but in both cases, it is the result in meaning and behavior of its history in its own language and in contact with other languages. No escape from this ternary approach.

So the conclusions are all false because they only concern the marked and unmarked forms. He does not even consider personal pronouns: first, second, and third persons, and what’s more singular and plural, and dual existed in an older time. Double ternary on the surface.

But he does not consider inner plural (compact plural), singular (after dual, trial, and quadral), AND countable plural. He does not consider the extension of nouns with or without articles, non-definite, definite, AND generic (several solutions according to the languages: three solutions in English: “a cat,” “cats,” “the cat”; three solutions in French: “un chat,” “le chat,” “les chats,” with a few other specific elements in the context and cotext of the generic uses of these nouns).

So, he comes to the conclusion that this distinction, Marked-ness and Unmarked-ness, is universal, with some exceptions, and he misses the point.

The book has to be read, but it turns repetitive like a mantra after a while. Not surprise the new edition is carried by Martin Haspelmath, because this linguist is an aficionado and a faithful follower of Greenberg’s. Luckily, another disciple, Merritt Ruhlen, has seriously deepened the approach. But a lot remains to be done with the phylogeny of language, and the phylogenies of languages. For more on Merritt Ruhlen, LINGUISTICA GENERALE (p) 2013-‘14 Materiali 3 - Famiglie linguistiche del mondo secondo Merritt Ruhlen (A Guide to World’s Languages, Stanford, Stanford University Press; cf. L’origine delle lingue, Milano, Adelphi, 2001, p. 142 [The Origin of Language, New York, Wiley, 1994]) and the map at the end of this critique.

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The Architecture of Silence by Mohammad Merajul ISLAM

The Architecture of Silence: Language, Migration, and the Survival of Suppressed Civilizations
by Mohammad Merajul ISLAM

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SILENCE, THE ARCHITECTONIC ARCHIPELAGO

ENGLISH – Do not believe a civilization disappears completely in absolute silence. It might get stranded in oblivion for those who believe what they have forgotten does not exist, did not happen, or would not eve SILENCE, THE ARCHITECTONIC ARCHIPELAGO

ENGLISH – Do not believe a civilization disappears completely in absolute silence. It might get stranded in oblivion for those who believe what they have forgotten does not exist, did not happen, or would not even claim any reality.

That’s good enough for those who seized some power, some existence, some territory, social, political, or cultural, good enough because that enables them to boost their own existence since before, there was nothing.

That also fits the minds of those who believe you must always eradicate the whole uncivilized past and present to enable the future to be born and to take over the whole cosmos in a preposterous suggestion that they are the direct heir of the Big Bang that is going to erect a perfectly empty memory into Alibaba’s creative teapot from which the new messiah, the new prophet, the new emperor, the new genius is going to emerge.

And in fact, this pulverized vision is nothing but a vast disorderly yet architectonic scattering of a multitude of islands in an infinite archipelago that contains only the descendants of the realities of the past, or the newly emerging present realities continuing, recuperating, transforming, and even multiplying the past entities.

This silence, this silencing procedure that eradicates, erases what everything present and future is coming, emerging, being born from in the past. The past is the procreating mother or the impregnating father, whose loving contortions of them both will cast into the world their children, offering their genetic and memorial heirlooms to the tempests, storms, and hurricanes of tomorrow.

FRANÇAIS – Ne croyez pas qu'une civilisation disparaisse complètement, laissant d’être elle un silence absolu. Elle peut sombrer dans l'oubli pour ceux qui croient que ce qu'ils ont oublié n'existe pas, n'a jamais eu lieu, ou ne revendique même pas la moindre réalité.

Cela suffit à ceux qui se sont emparés d'un certain pouvoir, d'une forme d'existence, d'un territoire, qu'il soit social, politique ou culturel ; cela leur suffit, car cela leur permet de consolider leur propre existence, puisqu'avant, il n'y avait rien.

Cela correspond également à la mentalité de ceux qui croient qu'il faut toujours éradiquer tout le passé et le présent non civilisés pour permettre à l'avenir de naître et de conquérir le cosmos tout entier. Ils prétendent, de façon absurde, être les héritiers directs du Big Bang qui va créer une mémoire parfaitement vide dans la théière créative d'Alibaba, d'où émergera le nouveau messie, le nouveau prophète, le nouvel empereur, le nouveau génie.

En réalité, cette vision pulvérisée n'est rien d'autre qu'une vaste dispersion désordonnée, quoique architecturale, d'une multitude d'îles au sein d'un archipel infini qui ne renferme que les descendants des réalités passées, ou les réalités présentes qui émergent et qui perpétuent, récupèrent, transforment, voire multiplient les entités du passé.

Ce silence, ce processus de mise sous silence qui éradique, efface ce dont tout présent et tout futur provient, émerge, naît du passé. Le passé est la mère procréatrice ou le père fécondant, dont les contorsions amoureuses de l’un comme de l’autre, engendreront dans le monde leurs enfants, offrant leur héritage génétique et mémoriel aux tempêtes, aux orages et aux ouragans de demain.

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Habiter le Chaos
by Laure Forlay

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AN EXHIBITION AT THE FRAC AUVERGNE AND A CATALOGUE BOOK BY LAURE FORLAY, IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

EXQUISITE CARNAL PROMISCUITY

I was left feeling rather dubious about this exhibition. Above all, don't read the numerous bilingual introductory pages in Fren AN EXHIBITION AT THE FRAC AUVERGNE AND A CATALOGUE BOOK BY LAURE FORLAY, IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

EXQUISITE CARNAL PROMISCUITY

I was left feeling rather dubious about this exhibition. Above all, don't read the numerous bilingual introductory pages in French and English. I didn't find the answer to my doubts about this vision of people of color in the USA. People of color, all painted pink, or a slightly diluted or faded red. In the American context, red being the Republican Party, does this mean that people of color in the USA are all Republicans, supporters of Trump? Or does it mean that it is Trump who is projecting this red and pink onto the mass of people of color, but to what end? Targets for neo-lynching-artists or for the bloodthirsty henchmen of some devil or god from the time of the War of Fire, as Rahan would say—a communist-Engelsian vision of prehistory, revised and corrected by a certain son-in-law of a certain Marx, Paul Laffargue, the king of laziness.

But this goes way back, to Plautus, in his comedy Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses, around 195 BC, Act II, around line 495): Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit ("For man, man is a wolf and not a man, when he does not know what kind of man he is"). There are many more than one donkey named Plautus. But whatever Wikipedia, that lupine or wolverine encyclopedia of soulless donkeys, may say, The War of Fire never happened, and Rahan is a typical 19th-century myth, taken up and uncorrected by colorful and imaginative minds who love red more than any other color.

So, I looked at the images, ignoring this irritating red. It's just a tangle of arms and legs, thighs and buttocks, more or less shouting "Haro!" at the Democratic donkey, oozing in the blue of overly damp basements. Or is the red the apocalyptic vision of Trump, who wants to bury Babylon a hundred leagues beneath Baghdad and can't even convince Netanyahu to change his tune and abandon the yellow of the Star of David for the green of some kind of organic scoundrel?

However, in this pictorial eroticism and colorful pornography, there is a hint of moralistic preaching. It seems to suggest that it is better to live violated than not to live at all. I dislike this lewd, deathly, devilishly playful vision with its thoroughly defaced skulls. And we fall back into the horror of Saint John of Patmos, who sees red Babylon ablaze on the horizon and sinking into the molten depths of some human volcano.

There, yes, man is a wolf to man, and Jesus is more human than anyone, who sends at least a good third of humanity to die in these molten lava flows. There is no purgatory for wolves, and he who wants to kill his dog accuses it of being nothing but a wolf in sheep's clothing. So, let's bring this sermon to an end.

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La Chaise-Dieu: Nouvelle Mystérieuse,1510-1864
by Aimé Giron

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LA CHAISE-DIEU IN A FISHY SWAMP

Jean Antoine Aimé Giron, was born in Le Puy on July 1, 1836, and he died on November 28, 1907, in Bois-Colombes, was a French poet and novelist. Here is his medieval fantasy, about La Chaise-Dieu. A supposedly old text LA CHAISE-DIEU IN A FISHY SWAMP

Jean Antoine Aimé Giron, was born in Le Puy on July 1, 1836, and he died on November 28, 1907, in Bois-Colombes, was a French poet and novelist. Here is his medieval fantasy, about La Chaise-Dieu. A supposedly old text from Jacques de Saint Nectaire’s time, one famous abbot of the Abbey of La Casa Dei, the one who was behind the monks’ nave’s tapestries, I guess. A young Flemish artist arrives in the abbey shortly after a casket is delivered by two mysterious knights, a casket that contains the body of a dead woman. The Flemish young man carves her face in a piece of stone or stone, and Jacques de Saint Nectaire recognizes her at once and is taken up by some guilt as if this carved face was the face of a woman he had loved when he was a lot younger, a teenager (we assume he must already have been a monk in the abbey, or at least a recruit promised to become a monk). The artist checks, in absolute secrecy, the girl in the casket is the one he thinks, and then he starts carving her tomb that will be deposited in the church. And Jacques de Saint Nectaire is even haunted by his recollection of his past.

After doing a few more artistic tasks in the church, particularly carving the monks’ stalls in wood, the Flemish artist finally dies of lovesickness, since that’s the only thing we learn about his connection to this girl. He fell in love with her, and she did too, but her noble family decided that it was not possible since the artist
was not a nobleman. So, she was locked up in a cell by her brothers, or is it uncles, and the Flemish artist was gotten rid of by being banned. He took refuge in the abbey. When she died – no details are provided – her body was delivered to the abbey for it to be anonymously made worthy of her afterlife

The Flemish artist ends up his carving career with the carving of the organ loft that, will we learn later, has two angels pointing to one flagstone in the church and it will be discovered three hundred years later that the two angels point at a tomb, and we discover in the more recent time of the second chapter that there was a casket under the flagstone and that in this casket there was a female body.

The mystery is complete. Who did Jacques de Saint- Nectaire love when he was a teenager, who looked so much like this young woman twenty years later, who was loved by the Flemish artist? No answer will be given or provided, but due to the age difference, we could believe the younger woman, who the Flemish artist was in love with, was the daughter of her mother, who would have looked like her, to the point that Jacques de Saint Nectaire would mix them up. That would imply that the younger one was the daughter of Jacques de Saint Nectaire. Fishy business.

But nothing is clear. We will not see the light, except in our own imagination.

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James
by Percival Everett

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SLAVERY AS WHITE ENTERTAINMENT

It is stupefyingly interesting to read this book because the point of view is that of a slave, of THE slave Jim/James, who takes part in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying to escape from his father and from his g SLAVERY AS WHITE ENTERTAINMENT

It is stupefyingly interesting to read this book because the point of view is that of a slave, of THE slave Jim/James, who takes part in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying to escape from his father and from his good, white, civilized, entirely slave society. In this slave society, slavery is both a machine to make money, to get a profit without any work on the side of the beneficiary, the owner of the slaves, and at the same time, in the same place, with the same individuals, a machine to get as much pleasure as possible from beating the slaves, raping the slaves (only females, I am surprised), making them bleed, even to death, for a pencil or a mouthful of bread. All that is perverse, not by definition, but perverted by intention and will from the white slave owners.

The fact that it is Jim, the slave, who is telling the story makes all that vicious and barbaric story a miracle of resilience and super strength. Jim is able to walk and run, even when his legs are bleeding from the lashing he has just received. This slave ordeal is supposed to make slaves obedient in pain, subservient in suffering, and yet Jim is made just the reverse in excruciating agony, and he is able to perform miracles, absolutely impossible actions.

The episode of the boat is just funny by being that extreme and unbelievable, and what’s more, this ship is in the hands of a slave since the slave owner, the owner of the ship, does not exist anymore, dead and gone, might have been killed by the slave who took over the ship. But a slave cannot take over a ship, of course not, and he just causes the wreckage and destruction of the ship by overheating the furnace that explodes.

And that’s how Jim saves Huckleberry Finn, but let his skin-white slave of an associate drown in the Mississippi, and that is more than funny, sinister indeed, since the skin-white slave could not swim, though there is no reason why Huckleberry would not know how to swim after his life of hunting and fishing, of living in the wild, as a white boy, hence protected and receiving all the respect he has the right to receive as a white boy. Not knowing how to swim is just plain incredible, whereas a slave not knowing how to swim is possible, and yet a slave not knowing how to swim? Incredible again because swimming is a natural activity for human beings, absolutely inherent in human physiology.

I never had one single swimming lesson, and I learned how to swim by jumping from the ten-meter diving platform in the Bordeaux municipal swimming pool, on one happy spring afternoon. It is such elements that let me be rather dubious about this story.

The linguistic stake on the other hand, is marvelously described. Slaves can speak perfect Shakespearean English, if they want (though I doubt it very much), but in front of any white chap, they translate their thoughts or their words into slave English. It is quite possible that the slaves might have had two levels of English, but it is rather surprising that it is stated, more or less, by virtue of not being stated at all, apart from circumstantially, that all slaves can do it. At the end of the novel, the Civil War starts for real. We are in spring 1861. Unluckily, that is not clear all the time. James’ forgiving mind at the end, when dealing with the judge, is surprising. In April or May 1861, I do not think the slaves who tried to escape slavery would have shown a lot of forgiveness. And why should they have?

But all high school students should indeed be able to read this book, provided it is in all high school libraries. And there, I doubt it very much.

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The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon, #6)
by Dan Brown (Goodreads Author)

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HE WANDERS, HE WANDERS,
THE C-I-ATHIC FERRET
MINT-SCENTED WATER

I went back in my archives and found articles on Dan Brown’s books. I will republish them all soon.

Digital Fortress (1998).
Angels and Demons (2000).
Deception Point (2001).
The DaVinci C ...more

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Never Flinch (Holly Gibney, #4)
by Stephen King (Goodreads Author)

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MULTIHEADED STORY: DON’T GET DISORIENTED

The book is surprising because it does not contain one single element of extranormal behavior. Some behaviors are extreme, totally absurd, yet perfectly understandable when we take into account the circumstance MULTIHEADED STORY: DON’T GET DISORIENTED

The book is surprising because it does not contain one single element of extranormal behavior. Some behaviors are extreme, totally absurd, yet perfectly understandable when we take into account the circumstances, the youth and education of the two criminals, since after all, there are only two criminals. The menial people of interest who intervened in the various situations to make them worse are not criminals, but only sadistic minds who enjoy the crimes of others by projecting themselves into these crimes. Hence, they are only voyeurs, and voyeurism is not one dot better than blindness. A voyeur is blinded by what he – or she – sees.

In this situation, Holly Gibney is integrated as a bodyguard of a famous public speaker, a woman who advocates the right to abortion for women in an extremely hostile America. One of the two killers has made it his task to free the world of this anti-ethical person on the basis of the fact that there exists only one morality in this world, and it is the one that comes from God and his Bible. Abortion is the assassination of a child, and the one who advocates such crimes has to be eliminated from this godly, quasi-divine, definitely holy planet. If the man who wants to kill her were not stalking her from one city to the next, from one hall to the next, and from one venue to the next, it would be amazingly simple with no suspense. The suspense here is that we don’t know who he is, and he apparently changes his looks from time to time.

The second plot is slightly more complicated. A cop who is going to be promoted is framed by his partner, who has some child pornography deposited in his home. A simple anonymous tip makes the police discover this literature, and it goes to court, and the supposedly guilty cop is sentenced to a severe prison term. In prison, as a child molester (that he is not, but it does not count in such a place), he is killed by another inmate. This boils in the head of one of the jurors of the trial. He voted for the prison term, but the motivations were not to have him killed, though everyone knows that child molesters in prison are quite in a demanding situation. This juror who knows the chap was innocent, that the pornographic literature was not actually the property of the accused cop (by the way, his partner gets the promotion), and he can prove it because Ms. Holly Gibney managed to get from the cop who sloppily had the one killed in prison indicted and tried for something he did not commit, the evidence needed here. It is the fact that the pornographic literature was put in plastic sleeves or protection that carried the fingerprints of the cop who would be killed in prison, since that cop received from the mail or whatever some comic books that were the proper size and that he handled with his own hands. But the prints were not on the pornographic magazines, only on the plastic sleeves. That is called sloppy police work.

That’s where and when the juror who is suddenly looking for justice intervenes. He sends a letter to the local police telling them he will kill 13 innocent people and one guilty to balance the decision of the 12 jurors plus the prosecutor or DA, and Holly Gibney thinks the promised 14th victim will be the lawyer who did not do his job properly. And the killings start.

Add to that the fact that a black gospel singer gets entangled in this situation, and she hires the Black helper used by Holly Gibney in her cases as her protector or bodyguard. At the same time, the sister of this young assistant, who is a poetess, is hired by the black gospel singer to sing, with her, one of the poems the young Black woman has just published. This young Black poetess is learning the job of being the performer of her own poems. And it is in this situation that the two fancy criminals come more or less together, though by accident, in their desire to burn down an old sports hall with several people inside, tied up and unable to flee, and the other menaces the hall where the black singer and the young black poetess are supposed to perform after the Black gospel singer has performed the national anthem to open some kind of sports event.

And all is well that ends well, and that is the shortcoming of this novel. The end does not have any possible development later on, that would in any way start the whole shebang all over again, like in The Dark Tower series, to give only one example of a common structure of Stephen King’s stories. What happened to the guilty ones? The cop who made a sloppy investigation, and the cop who was the partner of the one accused and executed in prison, are eliminated by natural causes, like some kind of disease. The one who wanted to kill the abortion speaker ends up badly, but it is not even a powerful condemnation of this anti-abortion terrorism, because when you limit the problem of women’s rights, but also the problem of all non-binary genders in this world to only abortion, that makes the case weak and hardly worth mentioning. The criminal in this case is a stray dog who was mistreated by his father, who had killed his mother. Can do better. A deranged criminal has no nobility in his case, in his pursuit. He is a stray dog that has to be shot because he is hosting too many fleas.

And the case of the juror who wanted to kill fourteen people is miserable. He is supposed to be some kind of non-binary male who pretends to be a female when he feels like it, and killing for him is an entertainment that provokes his own father’s memory and, at the same time, gives him some kind of consolation for not being able to be what he wants to be, because of a strong church influence in his family.

All that is a lot, and it could be considered fascinating or entrancing, or whatever, which means you may or might lose your mind in this dramatic story. But the intricacy of the crisscrossing of the several lines of interest and the rather flat ending make it rather weak at the level of the social problems the novel and the characters should bring to the forefront. I am afraid, and that is an impression I have developed over the last two or rather three novels by Stephen King: they are weaker than usual, and, as Stephen King reports, I would agree with his wife Tabitha that it is not as powerful as usual. Graphic at times, but that does not speak to the deepest layers of our ethical mind, because Stephen King’s literature is always ethical, and in this case the ethics are rather loose.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more

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Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum
by Daniel Tammet (Goodreads Author)

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AUTISM FOR ALL THE “RAIN MEN” IN THE WORLD

Daniel Tammet is an Asperger’s patient, hence autistic, at the savant end of the spectrum. His nine minds are mostly males, a few females, to prove the point that autism is not exclusively male. He wants to d ...more

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Bois d'ébène suivi de Madrid
by Jacques Roumain

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BLACKER AND HARDER THAN EBONY, YOU’RE DEAD

Is history a casino where, when “rien ne va plus,” no one can have any say on what is going to happen? The 19th century produced a vision of history in which the masses, luckily not isolated individuals, made BLACKER AND HARDER THAN EBONY, YOU’RE DEAD

Is history a casino where, when “rien ne va plus,” no one can have any say on what is going to happen? The 19th century produced a vision of history in which the masses, luckily not isolated individuals, made history with the concept of the great evening, if not night, when everything was going to change, the whole plate of history and humanity would be washed away to let a completely new world emerge. That was difficult to conceive because would the people change overnight?

Then Marx and Engels came on the stage, and their vision of the socialist revolution was simple. The class struggle between the working class, the proletariat, the lumpenproletariat, the three being the same, those who work on machines they do not possess but are possessed by the second class, against which they have to fight to the death. Annihilate the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, known as capitalism, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, eliminate all the bourgeoisie, each bourgeois after each bourgeois, and then here we are.

Naively provocative. In the USA, despite more than 150 years since their liberation, the Blacks, the ex-slaves, are still not equal despite all the fights and struggles of the blacks, of the proletariat, of even the loosely defined progressive class or forces.

Jacques Roumain was dreaming that such a big, great, powerful evening and night would have made all Blacks free and equal. It never came. Now and then, some struggle and a lot of victims, too often, lead to a slight progress, but equality and total freedom, of course not. Some whites are even dreaming of banning the teaching of slavery, segregation, racism, discrimination, and erasing black history from history textbooks. MAKE ASSES- GAGA AGAIN, you know MAGA

You'd better buy a new pair of boots. Many Asses are going to be kicked up and down, in and out, through and through. Better be well-equipped for the big ass-kicking festival.

Jacques Roumain n’a pas la résonance nécessaire à la qualité de son œuvre car il est presque introuvable en anglais et il est donc enfermé dans un ghetto linguistique, malgré une içn fluence lourde de l’anglais de son voisin du nord tant au niveau du lexique, souvent – mais mensongèrement – transparent du français à l’anglais au niveau du lexique et de l’utilisation du vers libre avec une recherche de martèlement du lecteur, ou mieux de l’auditeur. C’est une poésie profondément orale, verbale, faite pour le foirail. Son temps était le temps de la radio.

Jacques Roumain does not have the necessary resonance deserved by the quality of his work since he is almost unavailable in English, thus confining his works to a linguistic ghetto, despite a heavy influence from the English of his northern neighbor, both in terms of vocabulary—often, but deceptively, transparent from French to English—and in the use of free verse, with a deliberate attempt to hammer home the message to the reader, or rather, the listener. He is profoundly an oral, verbal poet, made for market squares and county fairs. His era was the age of radio. ...more

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	Cro-Magnon's Language: Emergence of Homo Sapiens, Invention of Articulated Language, Migrations out of Africa by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Ivan Eve (Contributor) 3.25 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	L'Apocalypse selon Saint Jean by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Annunzio Coulardeai (Illustrator), Kévin Thorez (Illustrator) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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	"Supernatural" Car Chase or Joy Ride? by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Ivan Eve, Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	HANDEL’S AGRIPPINA MODERN INTERPRETATIONS AND THE ROLE OF COUNTERTENORS by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Ivan Eve, Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	THE INDIAN OCEAN FROM ADMIRAL ZHENG HE TO HUB AND SPOKE CONTAINER MARITIME COMMERCE by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Ivan Eve it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sigiri Graffiti by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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	LOONY-LU & LULU: THE BELOVED SACRIFICED TO AND BY THE BELOVED, A MYSTICAL PARODY it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	THE U.S. SUPREME COURT A UNIVERSAL LESSON IN CONSTITUTIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS by Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author), Ivan Eve it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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