Here are three algorithms that I found pretty funny, and that make you think, while I was trying to find elegant solutions to some problem I faced.
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Three algorithms
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Subluminal
Slower than the speed of light, but not by much
Category Archives: mood
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Messiahs and Invisible hands
Now that I have lived for over a year near the Silicon Valley, I have a better view of the local culture which is a strange mix of lefty utopian libertarian, lefty vegan liberals and all things that might seem contradictory in general, but not here.
Atlas Shrugged, in the liberal California
I want to address here what I’ve learned in these months, so that European newcomers can sharpen their learning curve !
Continue readingExperimenting espresso coffee on American scientists
In the beginning of this year, I brought an espresso machine to my lab, since they only had drip coffee.
Drip coffee is good, and probably enough to keep you alert, but I missed the conviviality of sharing coffee with other people, especially people form other department- I owe to R. Hamming the habit of pollinating one’s mind with ideas from other. Plus, I soon discovered that American researchers don’t “waste” time having lunch with each other, which is pretty sad and, to me, opposed to the idea of research; I remember, back in Paris, how many times new ideas came up by talking about mundane matters to other researchers.
Peet’s Coffee tasting
Enjoy your coffee !
(edit Dec 20th 2013) : Here’s a nice article by Matt Goudling on Japanese tradition blended with the art of making coffee : Daibo dreamed of coffee.MOOCs are a hoax
…said Dev Patnaik at Uncharted, and I believe he is probably right.
Big institutions (elite schools) have no idea how to deal with PR, so MOOCs is a good way to increase their influence : it matters for the teachers only.Continue reading
Two wheels for a 3.14 ticket
Yesterday, I had the occasion to test the US justice !
the crime scene
I had to go to the court for a ticket I received about six month ago, on 3.14, for rolling a stop inside Lawrence Berkeley National Labs while I was riding my bicycle.
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Artists and Nobels
When I read “Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (that I mentionned in this post), he mentioned the existence of Edge.org, maintained by John Brockman, and the fact the he (DK) was asked by the latter to give his favorite equation.
It turns out that John Brockman has many wonderful connections and asked that same question to a whole bunch of great scientists.
Brockman’s self formula
Together with the Serpentine gallery, they curated the collection “What is your formula ».
This is astonishingly similar to what I try to do with the drawings I get when I encounter a Nobel prize, except that I actually get drawings, instead of formulas (and I’m almost sure my list is bigger than his !).
La vie ordinaire d’un postdoc en Californie
J’écris ce post pour faire le récit de mon experience de jeune chercheur arrivant en Californie, pour que le lecteur interessé puisse mieux anticiper son arrivée et éviter certains caveats lié au différences entre la France et les Etats-Unis.
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Variations sur les droits de l’homme et du citoyen
En ligne avec le prédent post, je voulais vous faire part d’un élément étrange des droits de l’homme.
En lisant “I have a dream” de Martin Luther King Jr, il fait référence a l’élément suivant :we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal
qui est un extrait fameux de la constitution americaine.
Tentant de traduire cela en francais, j’ai comme eu l’impression qu’il manquait un mot…
Article 1er de la declaration de droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789)
Le système Etasunien
Bon, j’ai décidé d’ecrire un post en francais histoire de contenter mon travers (tres francais) de raleur compulsif, et on va parler de ce qui ne va pas aux Etats-Unis, a savoir (entre autre) le systeme imperial, la sacralisation des textes, le crédit, le systeme de santé et les inegalités.
Le syteme impérial n’est pas a vrai dire ce qu’il y a de pire ici, mais c’est quand meme un sacré pain in the butt.D’une part, les Etat-Unis sont un des seuls pays a utiliser ce systeme :
Map of countries officially not using the metric system
Ce systeme n’est pas tres efficace par ailleurs, lorsqu’il s’agit de relier des quantités :
Imperial system vs SI
… meme si certains voient un sens caché entre ces quantités…
Imperial system is all about (il)logical ratios
En fait, le principal probleme, c’est quand on a tout en metrique (des vis, des clefs Allen) qui rentrent mais pas vraiment dans les trous faits pour…
Continue readingTwo+Six Views of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The views from the balcony of my new lab are stunning !
Berkeley, its Campanile and a view of SF, seen from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory