Very Short Stories

Below follow a few very short stories.  Not necessarily stories with a beginning and an end, only an impression, a feeling, or a situation, possibly real, or not, developed in a few lines.  Like a haiku, less the poesy, or a postcard on www.postsecret.com, the intention is to give a very quick glimpse on a story.  The goal is for the reader to retain a feeling, an image, or to let him imagine the rest of the story.


1.  Press Release from the White House:  President Bush Signs the Environmental Reversing Act

"Today, President Bush signed a new historical piece of legislation adopted by the Congress with a wide bipartisan majority.  This Act is the most important breakthrough in the field of environmental law since the Nixon administration.  Previous regulations tend to reduce future pollution or deal with past pollution, such as Superfund, it focus on pollution, under its common meaning.  It deals with hazardous substances, waste, oil spilling and so on.  The new Act covers these kinds of pollution and goes further to encompass the whole impact of man on the environment.  It also targets roads and electricity lines that destroy part of the countryside, cities where environment has been virtually entirely eliminated or the depletion of any kind of natural ressources: mineral resources, animals, plants. 

The new Act will be implemented in 3 phases.  During a first period of 5 years, the government will finance studies to determine the final scope of the new Act, the areas where measures can be taken, an overview of the possible measures and an assessment of the time necessary to implement these measures.  During the second period of 15 years, the government will be responsible to implement programs developed during the first period to encourage, including by favorable fiscal treatment, targeted actions by individuals or companies.  Prohibitions or specific regulations may only be allowed in specific circumstances when the economic feasibility and the efficiency of such a measure has been carefully assessed.  Finally, the next step will be to implement a full set of regulation at the end of the second period wherever the market failed to reduce appropriately any environmental nuisance spotted during the first phase."

An alternative to the second paragraph: "The new Act will be implemented in 3 phases.  The objective is to reach gradually the goal of eliminating environmental nuisance at an economically feasible and efficient pace.  Therefore, measures economically neutral enter immediately into force, including hunting (except in Georgia), leisure fishing, and skiing.  The Congress will also finance a 300 millions dollars new bridge over the Mississippi between Iowa and Illinois.  During the second phase, the location and number of winding farms, because they destroy the countryside, will be strictly regulated.  Furthermore, swimming pools will be prohibited, recycling mandatory for all individuals, and transports by polluting vehicles prohibited.  Finally, after the second phase, road will be eliminated, hunting, fishing and agriculture strictly regulated, and the production of waste, without immediately recycling it, criminally sanctioned."


2.  Commuting

Commuting became for me, as for many more I guess, an automatism.  Sometimes with little adrenalin to finish the last task at work, sometimes just with a small feeling of relief at the end of the day, my mind gets immediately on forward automatic mode the minute I leave my office to wake up at home to live the evening happenings of my family.  Unfortunately, the automatism can go to far.  Today, I was vaguely watching at the landscape by the window of the train as usual.  But it became odd when it looked less, and less, ... and less familiar.  I try to find something familiar.  Visages of unknown tired commuters do not help.  Neither unknown station name.  You can say I am a bit lazy never to have looked at a map before beyond my itinerary. Well what I saw did not invite to tourism and curiosity.  Where did I miss something?  My train was maybe transferred to another platform and I did not listen to the announcement.  I was just saying myself:  "Shit, I'd better stop at the next station, take a train back to the city and finally my train.  I'm going to loose one hour or more if there are no frequent trains to the city."


3.  Wired – Multidimensional Internet: Second Generation, May 2013

Beginning 2009, Google released a small software allowing users to visualize their navigation on the web on a second screen.  Websites were represented by small or big dots – depending on the number of viewers – with a small comment and hyperlinks by lines.  The software was not well received because the usefulness was far from being evident and because it was too basic.  This did not stop Google that continued to add interactivity to its software.  For example, as in Google Earth, the user could later use different scales, as if he was looking the internet from above and distinguish clusters of websites, such as all websites of the US governments that are highly interrelated.  In Facebook, groups of friends or interests are represented by more or less important clouds on which the user can zoom.

Supported by the growing interest of the public - visualization allows to catch part of the depth of the internet, rather than being limited one page at a time, Google has now launched the second generation of its software which includes a more interactive navigation screen and, most importantly, the possibility for other websites to add information and design.  Certain websites may limit themselves to a mere picture or a mere catchy description, others have already started preparing more elaborated three dimensional representation of their websites, closer to a video games.  Linder Lab, designer of Second Life, has recently contacted Google to study the possibility to merge Second Life with Google's software to develop a completely new global virtual world.


4.  Meet my Double

          « You cannot escape it anymore.  You will have to face them. »
          « Shut up, I'm driving! »
          « Oh, come on.  Don't get nervous. It's gonna be fine.  The first two minutes will be weird when you all realize each of you did not meet the partner of their parent then we will have a nice lunch, a nice talk and we'll be back in 5 hours. »
          « It's more than that.  My mother presented them her reality, how she sees me for more than 5 years.  I don't want to know what she told them. »
          « Oh! You know.  That you're smart, read a lot, good listener, ... »
          « Mother's talk.  »
          « Her partner's son studying at the university will try to talk philosophy with you, there will be a silence (laugh) then you're gonna talk base-ball. »


5.  AP – OPEC condemned by Federal Court for Antitrust Violation, September 4, 2008

The Federal Court of Phoenix, AZ, ruled today that the OPEC infringed the Shearman Act.  A US citizen from Phoenix, AZ, took the OPEC to the Federal Court for infringing the Shearman Act by intentionally fixing the gas price very high.  The Federal Court ruled that the agreement between the members of the OPEC to fix the oil price was an agreement that was prejudicial for US consumers.  Therefore, the Federal Court judged that it was competent to hear the case and to condemn the members of the OPEC to pay $ 75.000 to the plaintiff.  A class action based on today's judgment is believed to be under preparation.


6.  Argument against Determinists

          Reporter:  "Mr. Bergson, you've recently defended a very original position against the determinists and proving that free will really exists, could you please give us a word about it?"
          Bergson :  "What I attempt to prove is that all discussion between the determinists and their opponents implies a previous confusion of duration with extensity, of succession with simultaneity, of quality with quantity:  this question once dispelled, we may perhaps witness the disappearance of the objections raised against free will."
          Reporter:  "It sounds interesting.  I share your feeling against determinism.  I cannot understand how man would be biologically determined to create a symphony, the rule of law, or to prefer Mozart over Céline Dion while cows prefer watching trains.  I appreciate your attempt to reduce an important question to basic concepts.  However, I do not fully follow your reasoning.  People do not see the difference between quality and quality?"
          Bergson:  "Conscious life displays two aspects according as we perceive it directly or by refraction through space.  Considered in themselves, the deep-seated conscious states have no relation to quantity, they are pure quality;  they intermingle in such a way that we cannot tell whether they are one or several, nor even examine them from this point of ..."
          Reporter:  "Thank you for your time Mr. Bergson.  I think I have enough for my article."


7.  God Does not Exist

They annonced it in the newspapers this morning, God does not exist.  Scientists found a man stuck in an ice block for years and could reanimate him.  His soul was not in paradise, just in parenthesis for many years.  If you can switch on and off the soul, without paradise in the equation, it's just mean that ¨Paradise and all religions promising a Paradise are false.  Being Christian, I felt embarrassed.  Life was too beautiful as well as the universe and the values shared by Christians to be reduced to just dust without more.  Maybe there is then still a God based on different rules than those developed in the Bible or another divine book... who then did not really care to explain us anything, to send us a message, create an alliance with us.  Oh yeah, I must find it within me, in my heart.  Well, not much there. 


8.  Reuters - Olympic Flame Extinguished, May 2, 2012

The British government announced today that it decided to stop the relay system around the world and to refuse to allow the olympic games to enter in the UK.  This decision takes place after violent protests from environmental associations.  They criticized the carbon emission of the plane transporting the olympic flame around the world and the carbon emission by the olympic flame itself.  For them, such a gratuitous pollution was unacceptable and contrary to the principles of the Olympic Games to promote a healthy way of life.  There were a lot of protests from environmental associations wherever the olympic flame went in developed countries, especially in the UK.  The UK took this decision in order to preserve the spirit of the Olympic Games of healthy behavior and sport challenge.