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Created on September 23, 2007
Poster distributed in buildings by the municipal services of Woluve-Saint Pierre, Brussels
The 24-year-old Nigerian Mubarak Abdullahi had a unique idea: to build his own helicopter. A physics graduate, he used parts from old machines and motorcycles, assembling everything in his basement. The result is a functional four-seater helicopter.
USA - Iran
private joke
How to determine the function of a gene (based on a lecture by geneticist Christian Vélot)
Ufo-science, December 2007
JPP in Beijing, Tiananmen Square, winter 2006.
Where’s the joke? Look closely: around his neck, there’s a... compass (my sense of direction is just... nonexistent).
Strait of Hormuz, January 7, 2008
UFO-science, January 8, 2008
House burglary in Pertuis, December 2007
I know some like that.
Napoleon IV (author unknown)
March 2008, from our correspondent Philippe Vauj
EADS:
Following the signing of a major contract with the United States, EADS plans to quickly relocate 2,000 jobs initially. It asks its employees to stay confident, as it intends to maintain and develop its ‘Modelism-Radio Control’ activities in Europe; the Chinese are very fond of scale models. It will take time to decide what to do with this activity.
André Lichnérowicz:
- Nothing distinguishes a thinking mathematician from one who’s asleep.
Character from an upcoming comic: Professor Renaud Glamour, from the Academy of Sciences
Eastern Absurdistan: Charging Turbolimaces
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc
April 1, 2008: New progress with the Big Dog robot, studied by the U.S. Army (click on the image)
Olympic Flame 2008
The spirit of Pierre de Coubertin in 2008
May 2008: Death of actor Charlton Heston, president of the American Rifle Association
At the Philosophy Department of Aix-en-Provence University in May 1968:
Evolution of university methods in 1968:
I like this drawing. It’s so true...
Recent interview with Jacques Patenet (Geipan) about recent UFO sightings in Brittany
May 2008. Christophe Tardy (UFO-science) attaching miniature UV diodes to a scanner
Film Hellzapopin, 1950s
June 9, 2008:
CNES presents its best “oldies” for 2008
Author unknown
September 7, 2008: Mishap
If Bigard gives me an address, I’ll send him the original, signed and dedicated:
Yesterday, September 11, 2008, I was on a Eurostar train heading to London. Before falling asleep, exhausted from preparing for a conference at Imperial College where I was to present, I drew this sketch. Little did I know how right I was. Two hours later I woke up and asked my English neighbors, “Are we not in England yet?” Indeed, the shape of the church spires I saw through the window didn’t seem typically English. The train pulled into a station and outside the window I read “Brussels.” We’d turned back because of a fire on a shuttle truck. This raises two questions for me: How can “a braking system” catch fire while the vehicle is stationary? And how can trucks carrying potentially flammable chemicals use the Channel Tunnel? Profitability, I guess? Finally, I found a plane that can take me to London on Saturday. The organizers changed the time of my presentation. That’ll be fine.
October 2008: My banker and I, we’re “like that”
This diagram comes from a lecture given in March 2006 by Shlomo Sternberg at Jerusalem University. He describes how French mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau (whose fame extends far beyond France) took up an approach originally proposed by Einstein, Infeld, and Hoffman (1938), in an article published in 1974 in the Annals of the Henri Poincaré Institute. The Israeli scholar’s commentary is quite amusing. First, here’s the English version: “Souriau’s paper isn’t easy to read. He uses a wonderful but idiosyncratic way of presenting things. For example, see the flowchart illustrating his article below.”
French translation: “Souriau’s article isn’t easy to read. He adopts a wonderfully idiosyncratic style of exposition. As an example, see the diagram illustrating his article below:”
Idiosyncratic: understandable only by its author. Souriau laughed heartily when I reminded him of this story over the phone yesterday. I still believe he embodies Oscar Wilde’s famous line: “I live in fear of dying misunderstood.” To understand him, one must learn a special language: “Sourian,” of which I know only a few basics. He truly enjoyed rewriting whole sections of mathematics, replacing conventional terms with ones of his own choosing. Yet, I must say his choices were often more appropriate than those of his Bourbaki predecessors. When I first gave a talk using this vocabulary at a math institute, I had to be doubled up!
Fiduciary approach (economics)
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