Tunnels of Paris

Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort ('Stop, this is the empire of Dead')

A really interesting photo of a train pulled into a secret station underneath the Waldorf-Astoria reminded me of the Catacombs of Paris. A tenuous connection, perhaps – evidence of previously forgotten human uses underground in metropolitan areas, that’s as close as I can get to a segue. But the link was there in my brain, anyway.

The Catacombs are a series of tunnels underneath central Paris. Originally a series of caves, then stone mines, when Paris ran out of burial places within the city limits, a new graveyard was established outside the city – and the bones of those within the city limits were exhumed and re-interred in the tunnels.

They were artfully arranged, and they are now opened as a tourist attraction. They are lit up (mood lighting) and you can wander through in your own time. The Catacombs are not at all spooky – we went through with children and they weren’t worried at all. The queues are pretty phenomenal though – two hours waiting to get in. They only let a certain number in at a time so there isn’t a traffic jam underground – and it does mean that while there are a few people around you, there are times when you are alone in the tunnels – alone with the thousands, perhaps millions of souls whose last repose is as a tourist attraction….

Of course, as well as the areas that are open for tourists, there are other tunnels and catacombs underneath Paris. Some years ago French Police found a fully operational cinema in one, complete with a motion-activated sensor that triggered a barking dog. National Geographic also has a fascinating story exploring the Catacombs.

signs indicate which cememtery the bones came from and when

If you liked this post you might also like some more posts from France…..
Arrival in Paris
Caves of Lascaux
Notre Dame
French menus
Standing Stones of Carnac
Les Grottos en France
The Louvre
Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower)

Not just the World Game…

The discovery of a soccer-ball-like nebula in the far reaches of the universe has positioned soccer as not just the world game, but the universal game…

Kronberger 61 (soccer ball nebula) (photograph by Gemini Observatory / AURA, as printed on National Geographic website)

The nebula has been named Kronberger 61 after its discoverer, amateur astronomer Matthias Kronberger. It was formed when a dying star released a gaseous shell. I find its similiarity to the familiar soccer ball interesting, given my recent post on Apophenia, Searching for Meaning.

For more information on the theory behind the formation of this phenomena, click here.

when the animals rule…

So a fish has now been photographed using a tool to bash open a shellfish. We humans are in trouble.

Personally, I have been waiting for the day that the animals took over. I swear our dog is so clever and domineering, if he had opposable thumbs he would be ruling the house by now. He can unmake beds and turn them into dog-nests. He can open doors. He is particularly good at hitting unwary visitors in the back of the knees to make them buckle (consider yourself warned).

However the honour of ruling our house currently sits with the rabbit. The rabbit is a new addition to the menagerie. He lives indoors in a hutch and gets given the run of our tiled area twice a day. Yes, he is house trained. More-so than the children are anyway.

Now you would think in a house of two dogs and a rabbit, the pecking order would be pretty well established. In the wild, dogs hunt and eat rabbits. Apparently no-one has let our animals know this. The rabbit chases the dogs away from the dog food, and proceeds to eat it. (I need to talk to the vet about whether rabbits should be carnivores – it certainly wasn’t on the list of instructions we were given.) The rabbit rounds the dogs up. All in all, the rabbit treats the dogs with the disdain that they deserve. Call themselves dogs? Gotta be joking.

To be fair however, the rabbit also has the humans trained. When he wants attention – food, a run, etc, he thumps on his hutch floor. Repeatedly. No matter what time of day or night. It is very hard to sleep through a rabbit thumping every ten seconds after about ten minutes.

However, I digress. If animals are smart enough to open doors and use tools – what next? This was supposed to be one of the major defining characteristics between higher order apes (such as us) and other animals. Who’s to say they can’t communicate.

I don’t want you to be paranoid or anything….but maybe they are plotting a take-over. They couldn’t make any more of a mess than we have.