I'd like to wish all my French friends happy Bastille Day, and also to thank everyone over there who helped make Le Philosophe et le Loup such a success.

Another of the great pleasures of my recent trip to Europe was working with the wonderful people at Univers- Cite du Chien to make a video documentary on dogs: how to live with them, and how to cope with problems you may encounter. Some short video clips of the documentary are now online. The first can be found here:

Mark Rowlands from Daniela SpŠder on Vimeo.

And the second is here:

Mark Rowlands - Les enfants et le chien from Daniela SpŠder on Vimeo.

My favourite part is undoubtedly the bit where Hugo performs a little impromptu herding of my older son.

I'm back in Miami now, for that hurricane and humidity festival that, in these parts, is known as a summer. As I mentioned in a previous blog, one of the high points of the couple of months spent in Europe was a trip to the Centro de Recuperacao do Lobo Iberico, not far from Lisbon, Portugal. I would like to thank Francisco Fonseca, Professor of Biology at the University of Lisbon, and President of Grupo Lobo, for his hospitality. Here is a short TV clip made by TV1 during my visit.

http://www.tvi24.iol.pt/galeria_nova.html?mul_id=13286069

The French interviews are starting to appear. Here, for French readers of this blog, is a piece in Le Progres:

http://www.leprogres.fr/fr/vos-loisirs/cinema/article/3289983/Mon-loup-reste-mon-modele-encore-aujourd-hui.html

Curiously, the Le Monde piece doesn't seem to be online.

Greetings from France, where I, along with the rest of my family (including Hugo), have been ensconced since mid-May. I apologize for my long silences on this site.

I’m here for several reasons; First, I love it here. I love looking out across the sea, and seeing the long sweep of mountains running down to the Spanish border. On clear days, I can see the mountain known Le Canigou, to the south of Perpignan. When you come from Wales and live in Miami, you miss mountains, believe me. You don’t necessarily miss much else. But you do miss mountains.

Secondly, I’m working; not only writing the next book, but also on publicity for the previous one. The French translation of The Philosopher and the Wolf - Le Philosophe et Le Loup: Liberté, Fraternité, Leçons du Monde Sauvage was published in France in May by Editions Belfond. I spent a few days in Paris and Lyon and did numerous interviews with newspapers; magazines, and TV. I was blown away by the positive response the book has received here, and also by the professionalism of the journalists who had not only read the book very carefully but also had a myriad of very specific, detailed and intelligent questions that my limited possession of the French language was probably not up to answering very well.

I also popped over to Portugal for couple of days to talk about the Portuguese translation, and, among other things, had the great pleasure of being taken to centre dedicated to the rescue and preservation of the Iberian wolf - but more on that later.

In case anyone is in the neighbourhood, I'll be giving a few talks in Paris and Lyon next week. On Monday and Tuesday, I'll be at CREA-Polytechnique.

Monday is a debate with Shaun Gallagher on representation and action - more or less.

Tuesday, I'll be giving a paper entitled 'Intentionality and the amalgamated mind'.

Both talks are 2-4 p.m. at CREA, 32 Boulevard Victor, Paris 75015. Monday's talk is in Room 28 156. Tuesday's talk is in room Colbert.

Then I go to the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon for Wednesday's talk entitled '4e cognition: just how anti-Cartesian is it? 

ENS Lyon, Site Desartes, 15 Parvis Descartes, Lyon 7 in Room F 005

I'll also be doing various publicity things for WOLF, or rather LOUP, which was published in France last month.

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend a very enjoyable day in the Languedoc region of France filming a documentary on dogs: how to live with them, how to treat them, and how to get them to refrain from biting you. Our family dog, Hugo, featured prominently in the documentary; ideally, not biting anyone. Here is a photograph of him taken on that day, in full flight, on the beach at Portiragnes Plage. That's my eldest son in the background.

The photographer is the multi-talented Daniela Spader, founder of the Univers-Cite du Chien:

http://www.univers-cite-du-chien.com/accueil.html

Daniela and I co-wrote the documentary, which was directed by Antoine Elizabé, and presented by Daniela, the journalist Laurence Lefèvre, and myself.

Daniela's breathtaking portfolio of dog photographs can be found at:

http://www.photo-chien.com/portfolio/daniela_spader.html

Thanks also to Geneviève Paillé and Jean-marc Zuiliani.

7.30 a.m. until 1.30 a.m. - that's a full day's work lad and don't you forget it!

There is a new interview with me just published in the journal Dilemata. It can be found at:

http://www.dilemata.net/revista/index.php/dilemata/article/viewFile/40/41

In a new spin on mixed martial arts, here's a photo of Hugo and yours truly engaging in one of our daily (weather permitting - which it usually is in Miami) MMA workouts. That's a kevlar sleeve, and when Hugo gets a good grip I can still feel my bones beginning to crunch. I actually had no idea dogs could bite so hard, and Hugo is little more than half the size of Brenin - which, I suppose, makes some of my previous lifestyle choices somewhat disturbing ... Oh well.

Next week we're all off to France, to, among other things, shoot a documentary on how to persuade your dog not to bite people. Details to follow.

One of our regular contributors to this blog - Steve Joordens, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto - has reached the final of the 2010 Best Lecturer Competition. This is a national competition designed to find the best university lecturer in Canada. There is a video of Steve in action, to be found at:

http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bigideas

Congratulations to Steve! It's easy to see why he's got this far. Also, there is a profile piece that can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmnmUowiwbc

Please vote for Steve!

Following up the last post, an interesting piece on the Bluefin tuna/CITES debacle can be found here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7069808.ece

There's been some very disappointing news from the CITES (Commission on International Traffic in Endangered Species) meeting in Doha. A proposal to ban trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna has been rejected in the face of strong lobbying from Japan and Canada, among others. It's not difficult to work out what happened: money. Atlantic bluefin is a mainstay in sushi, and far too lucrative to ban - even though its numbers have declined 85% since industrial fishing began. Another twenty years and it's probably curtains for the Atlantic bluefin.

Environmental problems are sometimes portrayed as stemming from human irrationality. But this sort of case is revealing of what is really going on. Fundamentally, there is no such thing as humanity. Instead, there are just various interested parties. Some of those parties have already been born, others have not. Some of those parties (Japan, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, among others) have large tuna fleets and will not support a ban; others have no such fleets and will. It's all perfectly rational. It would be irrational only if the people making the decisions today are the same ones to suffer later. But, of course, they're not. It is not irrationality that drives human devastation of the environment. It is selfishness - the selfishness of those who have already been born to those who have not. And that's not even taking the fish into account.