Past sites that interested us :
- Pendant des années,
les fabricants
de cigarettes ont dépensé des dizaines de
millions de
dollars pour tenter de discréditer ceux qui montraient que
le
tabac était cancérigène.
- Depuis le 1er février
2007, en
France, fumer est interdit dans tous les lieux publics.
- Le film ci-dessus montre le
début de la même histoire concernant les OGM.
- Combien de temps faudra-t-il
attendre avant que le
public soit informé honnêtement des travaux, des
incertitudes et des risques liés aux aliments issus de
plantes
génétiquement modifiées ?
Too
easy money (by Eric Le Boucher, Le Monde,
28-29 January, 2007)
Un
article sur Warren Buffett.
Qu'est-ce
que le Web 2 ? un article très clair
par O'Reilly
La crise du
système de
santé
américain (traduit
de The Economist,
26
janvier 2006). Lire aussi
Politique
et music-hall :
A good and complete RSS
tutorial
by wizard-creek. Voir aussi :
Bachelier and
his times
: very interesting interview of Bernard Bru by Murad Taqqu, of Boston
University, on the life and works of Louis Bachelier (1870-1946).
Myopie
monétaire : critique roborative de
l'action tant admirée d'Alan Greenspan
(traduit
de The
Economist, 12 janvier 2005). Lire aussi
L'étonnant
redressement de l'Argentine :
description du redressement non orthodoxe, mais pas
dénué
de fragilités
pour l'avenir, de l'Argentine (traduit du Guardian,
10 janvier
2006).
Partez,
M. le Président !,
par
Christian Blanc. Lire aussi
Le
CAC 40 depuis 10 ans
: expliquer la courbe, puis la prévoir.
Pour
dépasser le débat
"libéralisme vs protectionnisme". Lire
aussi :
France
Balance of
merchandises
Simple
counterintuitive
systems : Most
systems display
counterintuitive
behavior. We want to correct a variable y by
acting, in a way
shown by common sense, on a variable x, and we get
things worse
instead of better. Why ? Because the links between x
and y
are different from what intutition or common sense suggest.
For instance, in order to reduce mortality from smoking (the variable
y) an obvious idea is to reduce the quantity of tar (the
variable
x) in cigarettes. But this is based on the assumption that
people
want a stable number of cigarettes per day. If, as it turns out, they
want a stable quantity of tar per day, they will smoke more cigarettes
per day. And if in cigarettes there are other bad products for health,
the quantity of which, per cigarette, has not changed, then the impact
of reducing x is not to decrease y
but to increase it !
Systems display two types of counterintuitive behavior :
- evolution in
the wrong direction
toward a new stable static state,
- strange
dynamic evolution,
sometimes
simple oscillations (like cars wavelike stops and gos on
freeways
at certain regimes of flow), sometimes more complex dynamic behavior.
It is time political
leaders learn the
basics of systems, because they constantly take decisions which turn
out to be counterproductive (example : the
French government 's fight against unemployment).
And the dire
state of the economy in France, which will lead to
increasingly
frequent chronic strikes in the next ten years, before some major
social upheaval takes place, is, for a large part, the result of such
wrong headed decisions.
Nonlinear Science FAQ : by far
the best simple introduction to all the important concepts developed to
describe and study nonlinear dynamical systems. Maintained by
James Meiss, University of Colorado at Boulder. See also :
Histoire
de la monnaie en France. Voir
aussi :
Hyperhistory a useful site, designed by
Andreas Nothiger,
to position quickly a historical event in its world and time context.
Many maps. See also :
A history of education and
childhood a source
on the history of education and the history of
childhood. See also
Libdex.com
a world
wide index of
Libraries on the Net
Les nouvelles façons de visiter le Net : le
lecteur de fils rss FeedReader.
Voir aussi :
- Qu'est-ce qu'un flux rss ?
l'article sur wikipedia
- L'adaptation de FeedReader
avec des fils français préinstallés : AlertInfo
How
to write, think and learn better by Michael
A. Covington
Un
aperçu intéressant sur l'avenir du Net :
un commentaire sur le rachat de del.icio.us par Yahoo.
Le robot Asimo
(le player,
si nécessaire)
Maxims
for teachers
Rafi Haladjian
: des vues pénétrantes, hilarantes et
très bien écrites, sur la communication
contemporaine. Voir aussi :
A
quoi s'intéressent les internautes : une
analyse des données du compteur webstats4u pour
la France
Sites
intéressants tirés de l'analyse ci-dessus :
Can market crashes be forecasted ?
Some observations on market irrationality and likely crash.
Recent economic
articles from Le Monde :
There are three types of money : standard fiduciary money
(in
various currencies), marketable tangible assets, private promises. The
U.S. use mostly promises to pay for their excess imports. This will
lead to a world financial crisis that will happen sooner or later in
the next few years, because the value of their promises
(approaching 10 000 billions of dollars) will collapse. As a
forewarning, the price of gold - even though it is useless - is rising.
Global Imbalances - An assessment,
by Raghuram G. Rajan, economic counsellor at the IMF :
Recommended
reading : "The
power of gold, the history of an obssession", by Peter L. Bernstein,
to understand the deep economic and monetary forces that shaped our
world, and are still at work. See also :
Le mathématicien physicien : Jean-Marie
Souriau. Voir aussi :
- video
(taper "Souriau" dans la fenêtre de recherche)
2000 ans d'histoire
l'émission de Patrice Gélinet
sur France Inter.
Commanding Heights
: site presenting the economic history
of
all major countries, and much more. See
also :
Complex systems and Keynes approach. See
also :
Nonlinear Science FAQ : by far the best simple introduction to all the
important concepts developed to describe and study nonlinear dynamical
systems. Maintained by
James Meiss, University of Colorado at Boulder. See also :
A
fascinating interview of Warren Buffett : one of the most lucid investors in the world. See
also :
www.riskglossary.com a nice site on investment and risk. See also :
Quelques
ressources en Economie
Watch online PBS video production "The Elegant Universe",
based on Brian Greene's book, presenting the current explanation of
what the Universe is made of and how it works.
See also :
A presentation of
M-theory,
from Wikipedia
- Planets,
as bodies turning around the Sun, were postulated only five centuries
ago. Now we have pictures taken from the surface of Titan
- Atoms,
as fine constituents of matter, were seriously postulated only two
centuries ago (Dalton),
to explain the surprisingly simple chemical combinations observed by
Lavoisier. The atomic theory was strongly criticized for a whole
century before full acceptance.
- Quanta
of energy were postulated only in 1900.
- The particule
form and behavior of atoms, and their constituents, was abandoned
in the late twenties.
- To explain some of the
current riddles posed by observations, we now introduce
strings
and branes. If the usefulness of these explanations is confirmed, for
instance by unexpected predictions and the creation of new tools for
our everyday life, they will become as "real" as the preceding concepts.
XXIst century science
: a refreshing site from the University of Oregon. Also
:
- It is time to abandon the
idea that the wave function represents a probability density, and that
there is a fundamental uncertainty principle in the
joint measurement of position and momentum of a particle. Such
"particles" stem from a naive realist view of the world.
- It is like steadfastly
wanting to know, or at least to be allowed to think about, the exact
abscissa and ordinate of a small malleable surface.
Old books at the BNF
Mathematics made simple
Introduction to finance (undergraduate
level)
Sur
la trace du boson de Higgs ? Voir aussi :
Chinese,
notations and mathematics :
- Chinese, unlike western
languages, doesn't use a notation of sounds to note words and concepts
: there is no way to know how to pronouce this 马, until we are told so,
and it is difficult to recognize that this is the picture of a horse.
It is not pronounced "horse" nor "cheval" in Chinese, it is
pronounce "ma". It is not the notation of a sound either. For instance 骑 (which
contains the horse character in its left
part) is pronounced
"tchi" (noted in Chinese pinyin "qi" :-) )
- Learning Chinese helps
distinguish between concepts and their notations, and the rules to
interpret the notations.
- This is useful too in doing
mathematics.
- In mathematics there is a
common mistake which is to mix up notations and concepts, and as a
result to be lead to do meaningless operations. The following erroneous
proof of Cayley-Hamilton theorem is a classical example : the theorem
states that a matrix A put into the polynomial in x obtained with det(A
- xI) yields the zero matrix. The erroneous proof goes like
this : put A instead of x in the det notation, we get det(0), and this
is zero. It is erroneous because det(M) is only a notation for
operations on the components of M (and the result is a number), not on
M itself.
Jacques
Bouveresse : a philosopher we appreciate, who knows
what to think means and entails. See also :
- Henri Bergson : a bright mind that unfortunately did not go
anywhere, essentially because he did not think important to check his
conceptions with experience. (On "laughter" : he ignored all that was
known on aggressiveness. On "time" : he did not understand the new
profoundly interesting ideas of his time.)
- Gaston
Bachelard : a luminous philosopher and poet. Exposed
his theory of the three minds : magic, scholar, interrogative and
conceptual, in "La formation de l'esprit scientifique".
Un
site
de
jeux mathématiques interactifs. See also :
A view of mathematics
a very clear and interesting survey by Alain Connes.
Blois
A
brief history of calculus Calculus is one of the
great achievements of human
thought.
Its history illustrates the slow progression from Realist thinking to
Nominalist thinking and the tremendous power of the latter approach to
solve problems.
The Nominalists / Realists dispute
: it is not possible to create new science without being familiar with
the issues debated in this controversy. See also :
- Stanford
encyclopedia of philosophy
- New
Advent encyclopedia
- Ancient Greek mathematicians could not discover Calculus
and could not compute the area under a curve because they were Realists
(to whom an area could not be thought of as another curve). It took the
freedom of abstraction of the Nominalists of the late Middle-Ages to
invent these tools. Then they were developped in the XVIIth century.
- Renaissance is built on the strong foundations of the
late Middle-Ages' new ideas.
A few powerful
minds of the Middle-Ages, aguably more powerful than those of the
Renaissance
:
- Alcuin
of York (735-804) leading scholar at the court of Carolus
Magnus.
- Al-Farabi
(870-950) regarded, for centuries, as the Second Teacher in philosophy
after Aristotle.
-
Gerbert
d'Aurillac (c945-1004) introduced arabic
numerals in the West. Became pope Sylvestre II in 999.
- Avicenne (980-1037)
also named Abu
‘Ali al-Husayn b. ‘Abd Allah Ibn Sina.
Great persian physician.
- Abelard
(1079-1142) pre-eminent philosopher and theologian of the XIIth century.
- Averroes
(1126-1198) also named Abu'l-Walid Ibn Rushd. A towering figure in the
history of Arab-Islamic thought. Contributed to the rediscovery of
Aristotle.
- Maimonides
(1135-1204) major jewish thinker of the late Middle-Ages. Thomas
Aquinas borrowed ideas from Maimonides.
- Albertus Magnus
(c1206-1280) called "Doctor Universalis", in recognition of his
extraordinary genius and extensive knowledge. Advocated for the
peaceful coexistence of science and religion.
- Roger Bacon
(1214-94) surnamed "Doctor Mirabilis". Placed considerable emphasis on
empiricism, and has been presented as one of the earliest advocates of
the modern scientific method.
- Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274) a Dominican friar. Had views on God.
- William of Ockham
(c1285-1349) a Franciscan friar. One of the leading Nominalists.
Recommended to minimize hypotheses to explain new phenomena (Ockham's
razor).
- Oresme (c1320-1382) un
génie mathématique du XIVe siècle.
- Luca
Pacioli (c1445-1517) wrote the first manual on double entry
accounting. Well, this one belongs to the Renaissance.
Un peu de
géopolitique : Petite
histoire récente de l'Afghanistan. Voir aussi :
L'Histoire
de France, par Jean-Joseph Julaud : le livre qui va
réconcilier les Français avec l'histoire de leur
pays. Voir aussi :
Les classiques des sciences
sociales :
une bibliothèque numérique dirigée par
Jean-Marie Tremblay, professeur de sociologie à Chicoutimi,
comprenant, en septembre 2004, un millier d'oeuvres de 375 auteurs.
Exemple :
Introduction
à l'intégration des fonctions. Voir
aussi :
La Grande guerre
: site crée par les Éditions
Anovi, de Eric Labayle,
sur la
première guerre mondiale et l'époque qui
l'entoure. Nombreux documents. Biographies.
efootage.com
to find old news clips
Ditta
Commanding
Heights a synthetic presentation of the evolution
of world economies during the XXth century. See also :
Histoire Géographie et Education civique
un bon site pédagogique de l'académie de Rennes
Country
studies by the US Library of Congress. See also :
Worldlingo
online translator
Indo-European
roots, for instance Mögen in German and
мог in Russian, guest in English and гость in Russian.
Пониматъ, noos and mind ?
Evolution
of human languages
Caral
civilisation : very old little known civilisation outside the
Middle-East or China
Vinca
culture and old european script : european scripting before Sumer ?
La chronique d'Alain Rey
sur les mots de la langue française, sur France Inter.
The Khazars
: history of a people that linked the East and the West. See also :
The Thirty
years war the first international conflict of
modern times.
Russia
in the times of Elizabeth I (16th century) and Louis XIV (17th century)
See also :
Test
your knowledge of the aftermaths of WWI See also :
- What Gerhard
Schröder could not mention the 6th of June 2004 in
Normandy : if you drive a person nuts and then that person commits a
crime, who is responsible ? This situation is very common in real life.
It feeds the inspiration of writers. It enriches lawyers and judges. It
makes teachers talk about human nature and justice, and pious people
pray.
- Who is
responsible for starting WWI
What
is a leader : the three types of authority
- conferred by position (that is granted by people
"above",
and usually there ain't no free lunch : someone given a position serves
the interests of the people who granted the position ; this explains
for instance the corruption of academic co-optation),
- conferred by superior group-problem solving capacity
(that is granted by people "below" ; unfortunately this is not exempt
of the possibility of corruption by clientelism),
- obtained by grabbing it.
Learn
JavaScript. See also
- w3schools
: the excellent site by Jan
Egil Refnes provides an elementary introduction (but not
enough training to be operational).
Try, for instance, 2^32 + 1 ( = 4294967297 ), like Euler did to check a
Fermat hypothesis. And what about
10*(2^32 + 1) + 9 ?
Free
JavaScripts provided by The
JavaScript Source
Bayeux
tapestry : move along the complete
Bayeux tapestry, viewed with quicktime. See also :
Voiles
et
autres représentations de la femme dans la
société occidentale.
Voir aussi :
The
MacTutor History of Mathematics archive the
reference in mathematicians biographies. Also contains a history topics
index and a famous curves index. See also :
Atmosphère
: un modèle d'atmosphère. Voir aussi :
Sosmath : a pedagogical site to teach
calculus and other math topics. See also
How
money
systems work : a contribution toward a
new understanding of the role and behavior of money. See also :
Frédéric
Laroche un site de
mathématiques, niveau terminale et juste au dessus. Voir
aussi :
Un siècle de
télévision
Histoire de la télévision française
durant le XXe siècle - où l'on voit qu'elle a
toujours été aux mains d'un nombre
étonnamment réduit de gens. Les WebTV rendront la
télévision aux spectateurs, et leur offriront en
plus l'interactivité.
Voir aussi :
A few reference sites in mathematics :
Games
and other softwares by Alexander
Bogomolny
Paradoxes
of randomness by Gregory Chaitin.
Stephen Wolfram
a controversial genius, that invented the program Mathematica, and went
on to claim that the whole world can be explained with a few simple
algorithms.
Une illustration des mathématiques de la
compression jpeg (exemple de filtrage) : images
et un
peu de théorie.
Les chroniques de Frédérick Gersal
sur
France Info : Ulysse,
Victor
Hugo, etc.
Par
4 chemins : l'index des sujets
traités dans l'émission de
Jacques Languirand sur Radio Canada. Ecouter la station :
Total Information Awareness
The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to
revolutionize the ability of the United States to find, treat, and use
sensitive information, etc...See also
Dossier WIFI
Courtiers en ligne
: comparatif très détaillé des
sociétés de courtage par Internet, avec
commentaires d'utilisateurs
www.w3schools.com
: the excellent tutorials by Jan Egil Refsnes on XML, Javascript, SQL,
etc.
jb
guinot
un site sur Gustave Flaubert et en particulier sur
l'écriture de
Madame Bovary, par JB Guinot, qui a aussi créé un
site sur Georges
Perec. Voir encore :
www.cantabile-subito.de
a
site to learn about and listen to opera singers of the past.
La joueuse
de marelle
Dialogus
: un site d'histoire, permettant d'écrire et poser des
questions à des personnages historiques, animé
par
Sinclair Dumontais. Voir aussi
Clio,
la muse de l'histoire
Le sitede Jean Savaton, membre du ring
consacré à l'histoire,
présentant les civilisations anciennes, de sumer aux
grecs (importantes iconographie et bibliographie). Voir aussi :
A Short History of
the World, the synthesis of the
history of the World, published by H.G. Wells in 1922, put on the Net
by www.bartleby.com
of Steve
van Leeuwen. See also
Wolfram Research
: the Wolfram encyclopedia of sciences. See for instance Dissection,
remarkable results on transforming one shape into another.
L'histoire en ligne
: un site d'histoire synthétique et utile par Denis
Blondeau, lié à uZine. Nombreuses biographies.
Planète
Terre, un remarquable cours de
géologie et d'histoire de la Terre, par
Pierre-André Bourque de l'Université de Laval.
Voir aussi :
The Mediterranean sea
as an explanation. See also :
Sylphide
A primer on Iraq, a
good source of background information, at the highschool level, on
Iraq, provided by Infoplease. See also :
Penn State Video
Productions : la mise en ligne de
conférences données à Penn State
University. Visionner par exemple Internet2,
un pas de plus vers l'ubiquité.
Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert
Pirsig. See also :
The life of René
Girard, best known for his book
"Violence and the
Sacred".
Sur un écrivain à succès, Houellebecq
Valley of the
Ancients : The "Eliki" site on ancient
civilizations, beliefs and myths. See also :
Wikipedia
a free encyclopedia on the Internet. See also :
A course in Literary criticism
by Kate Liu of the Fu
Jen Catholic University English department. See also :
An introduction to Neuro-Linguistic
Programming : a model of how human
beings feel, think and communicate. See also
Around the World
on a bycicle, and with a pen and a camera. See also
The Ouighur
region and population : at the center of economic, geographic,
and cultural conflicting interests (article in French)
See also
Arthur
Proxomitron
: a powerful ad filter, if you ever quit a very interesting page you
were reading because you could no longer stand all the flashing ads
around the text your eyes and your mind were trying to focus on...
An interesting chap : Ryszard Kapuscinski,
a journalist who travelled the World over with a quick and independant
mind. See also
The
TIC portal To promote and sustain the
use of TIC in education. See also
Value-added testing
: Information without added-value no longer has any value. Anybody can
access it, and make its choice. Media will become more interesting, or
at least more opinionated. See also :
San Diego zoo's pandas
"live". See also :
For students of the East-West contacts, Chinese cultural
studies : "The rise and fall
of the great powers", by Paul Kennedy.
Other selected references :
Les sites d'Art et de
Culture les plus visités en
France. Une intéressante source d'informations sociologiques
et prospectives. Voir aussi :
Cyberhumanisme.org De
"la matière à penser", même si on peut
ne pas être d'accord avec tous les points de vue
exposés. Voir aussi
Le monde merveilleux de Serge Delbono
Un site à l'image de son
animateur : riche en ressources informatiques,
photographiques et politiques, multiforme, inclassable.
Uzine.net
Un Webzine roboratif et rafraîchissant. Et pour sourire (ou
s'indigner, selon votre psychologie) :
Télé-réalité
Des détails sur le traitement fantaisiste de la
réalité à la
télévision. Voir aussi
La guerre informationnelle
Quelques travaux de l'Ecole de Guerre Economique Ege/Eslsca.
Building a better Web Le meilleur des
mondes ?
Magaziner's
report on E-commerce
Public
Information Research
Un groupe, politiquement orienté à gauche, de
surveillance des activités et prises de position des
élites américaines.
Celui qui passe
framasoft.net
Les logiciels libres ; l'esprit du libre.
Comment
ça marche ?
(l'informatique)
L'excellent site "CCM vulgarisation informatique" de
Jean-François Pillou, qui a obtenu une distinction de
Wanadoo, explique tout : Langage, Base de données, Web,
Systèmes, etc. CCM anime aussi un forum.
Walt
Howe's Internet Learning Center
Un très bon site, animé par Walter B. Howe, pour
connaître et comprendre Internet, son histoire, ses outils,
les services qu'il offre. Ce site a des ancêtres, le FAI Delphi
Internet Services ainsi qu'une ancienne version, Delphi_navnet,
qui donne une intéressante perspective historique sur le
Net, et des sites affiliés parmi lesquels le site de forums delphiforums.
Dictionnaires
Des dictionnaires de toutes les langues.
Clicksouris
Le site d'Axelle Desaint pour les enfants,
qui a obtenu un Net d'Or.
Rue
Mongallet
Pour comparer les prix des revendeurs de matériel
informatique.
Quatuor
Le site de Christian Ricordeau pour comprendre l'histoire de l'art
à travers la question "Mais à quoi sert donc une
poivrière ?"
chesscorner.com
Un site, appartenant à Aletia Corporation qui, parmi
d'autres choses, permet de visualiser en interactif des
parties d'échec célèbres de
maîtres. Ici j'ai sélectionné
directement le lien vers Alekhine.
(Utilisez la barre d'espace pour voir le coup suivant) .
momes.net
Le site pour les enfants animé par Marie Plassard, en ligne depuis
1995.
www.sytadin.tm.fr
La circulation automobile en temps réel. (Attention
à la bonne orthographe de l'adresse URL ; ne pas cliquer sur
http://www.sytadin.com)
La
voile
Un site sur la voile, pour les navigateurs, par Pierre Boucher, qui est
aussi artiste peintre
Convertisseur Euros
Une calculette interactive, offerte par la Banco
de Sabadell, qui donne les conversions depuis toutes les
monnaies européennes vers l'euro.
gratilog.net
Le catalogue des logiciels freeware établi par Sylvie
Pierrard. (vous
cliquez sur le bouton "Arrêter" de votre
navigateur si l'oiseau qui vole vous empêche de vous
concentrer).
sitnema.com
Un site sur le cinéma, créé par Axel
Trotignon, référençant 8000
films, 10000 acteurs, 3000 réalisateurs, etc.
Un
site sur l'histoire et les développements récents
de la science économique (en anglais).
Tout sur les théories économiques depuis Smith et
même avant, jusqu'à maintenant, les
idées, les acteurs, les controverses, les
polémiques.
Les
ordinateurs et Internet, comment ça marche ?
Une introduction au fonctionnement des ordinateurs et à
Internet (pour ceux qui comprennent tout, à condition qu'on
leur explique clairement).
Merci à S. Delbono pour l'information.
Un cours de lecture d'image.
Apprenez à voir, regarder et comprendre une photographie, un
tableau ou une image (par Damien Bressy)
Des liens qui mènent à
des textes littéraires classiques, en ligne, dans toutes les
langues.
(établie par Bob Peckham)
(this address changes so often, if you get nowhere, please search "Bob
Peckham" on the major search engines.)
