Archive for May, 2007

La science à la télé

Heir soir, on a regardé l’info à la télé comme habitude (c’est pas mal d’apprendre le français quand même). J’ai une bonne surpise de voir qu’il s’agissait d’un expérience fait par mes ancien colleagues. C’est la recherche que j’aurais voulu faire. Regarde, c’est super chouette.

Micro-origami

(c’est-à-dire l’origami fait avec une très petite feuille elastique et une petite goutte)

Suivre le lien de trouver le gros figure .

Un film c’est .

J’ai aussi vu plutôt un petit column sur cette expérience dans un magazine français de la recherche. La recherche a été déjà publiée il y a un mois et demi, donc c’est un peu tard, mais bon!

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Les gens qui ne croient pas la science? Bien sûr!

Comment les Français regardent les Americains?

Ce soir, on a vu un emission d’info à télé. Il s’agissait d’un report sur les creationists americains. Plus précisement, les creationists qui font une visite guidée au Grand Canyon. Le journalist a lancé son reportage avec la phrase “Les creationists ont gagné de terre” (je crois). Le but de la visite guidée c’est de convaincre les gens que l’histoire de la bible c’est vrai et incontestable. l’Evidence? La merveille beauté du Grand Canyon, assez impressionante, créé pendant quelques jours de l’inondation grande, racontrée en la bible. Point. Et alors?

Voila, encore un autre raison pour les français de me regarder comme fou et me dire “hein…americain?

Personnellement, je ne suis pas si crédule. Par contre, je crois que c’était créé par les martians qui voulaient de practique avant de les faire par tout leur planète. (blague)

Honnêtement, j’exagère un peu. Ce n’est pas si mal comme ça. Néanmoins, je remercie les creationists antiscientifiques qui entraînent les gens des autres pays du monde de penser aux Etats-Unis comme on est tous fou. Oui, il reste des gens qui ne croient pas la science. Mais, ils ne sont pas trop nombreux. Pourtant ils sont militants et ils sont assez forts politiquement, grâce à on sait qui.

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Ça m’énerve

Je suis en train de rédiger un article. Mais ça ne va pas du tout. Il devrait avoir été fini à ce jour. Cependant, je l’avais trop tergiversé. Il ne peut pas s’écrire tout seul. Et donc, il me reste pas mal des trucs à faire. J’ai passé le plupart de ce jour en révisant. Malgré tout mes efforts, je n’avais pas pu faire de progrès.

Ça m’énerve surtout cette semaine parce que j’ai également pas mal d’études pour se preparer au DELF.

Pour conclure: Zut!

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手に入った優勝おめでとう!

白鵬は今年の夏場所の優勝です!

完璧な全勝優勝でものすごく頑張ったんだ。

さらに最後は横綱の朝青龍を圧倒的に破った。

先場所に白鵬が優勝した後の横綱のレベルかどうかという 疑問が消えた。

丸でこの優勝は白鵬について大切だった。

確かに昇進して第68代の横綱になるに違いない。

それでは、次の場所は横綱対戦だ!

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もうすぐ綱取れる?

残りは二日間。

白鵬は全勝を守って連覇に王手をかけた。今場所、今まですごく頑張ったんだ。大関千代大海と横綱朝青龍を破って全勝で優勝したら、横綱に昇進するにちがいない。ライバル横綱達っていうことはおもしろいんじゃ。

他方で13日目土俵に倒れた朝青龍は今場所の優勝する可能性が消えちゃった。

今場所は朝青龍にとって前半と後半では違う時代みたいだった。中日までは強かったが中日を過ぎて2勝3敗だ。がっかりしたことだが、次の場所頑張らなくちゃ。

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Une carte radar pour le météo?

Un placement sous “vigilance orange” a été effectué cet après-midi par Météo France. Quelques oranges violents a provoqué cette réponse. En effet, à Paris, une tempête trés intense s’est battu sur la ville tôt ce soir. C’était spectaculaire!

On était encore dans son bureau quand elle est arrivé. Monquant des renseignements plus précis sur le cours prévu, j’ai essayé trouver une carte radar ou satellite. Cependant je n’ai pas arrivé de trouver ce qui n’est pas payant sauf quelques-uns pas précis, pas locales. Quelle surprise! Quand j’étais aux Etats-Unis, j’avais l’habitude de regarder souvent les cartes radar ou satellite sur l’internet. Amusant de regarder et utile en cas des orages, elles sont toutes gratuites et elles sont beaucoup aux Etats-Unis. Par contre, elles sont payants en France.

C’est vraiment domage. Est-ce qu’elles, qui sont gratuites, n’existents pas?

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Subway

While procrastinating (“taking a break” from working on my article?), I decided to turn on the TV and check the news. Flipping through channels, before I got to the news channel, I stumbled across something funny (j’ai tombé sur un truc amusant). A film was just starting. It was definitely from the 1980’s, the opening sequence said it all; tight blue jeans, big hair, someone on quad roller skates, and the totally 1980’s synthesizer soundtrack to boot. It was also a French movie. Look! There is a young(er) Jean Reno! But a few moments later someone appeared who looked like the Highlander. Was I mistaken? I saw that film when I was a kid so I had always assumed that he was an American actor. Or maybe it wasn’t actually a French movie? No, the dialog sync’ed up with their lips.; at least this was no second-rate dub. Again the Highlander character appeared. This time speaking fluent French. This prompted me to go to the web. A quick search revealed that the movie, entitled Subway, was indeed a French film by the well known Luc Besson and did indeed feature the Highlander, Christopher Lambert, or rather Christophe Lambert. The film itself was a bit strange, but I only watched for about 15 minutes before I turned it off. Still, I think it warrants a viewing sometime in the future.

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横綱は土俵に!

今場所の中日を過ごして9日後全勝の力士はただ二人だった。横綱朝青龍と綱取り大関白鵬。だが、今日一人は破られた。これで、綱が取れるという意味なのか?白鵬が優勝したら昇進ができるだろう。だが、残っているのは5日なのでまだまだだ。どうなるのか!

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More leaking? Again?

Leaking: It’s a never-ending saga.

The plombier came this morning and checked things over. He checked things out in our kitchen, which is essentially directly above the guardienne’s residence. Then we alerted him to the suspicious sound in the bathroom, which is a good 10~15 meters horizontally displaced from the problem downstairs (and over the parking garage). He took a look at the pipes under the bathtub, which is afterall easily accessible by popping out a set of tiles (something I really didn’t want to do myself in case I were accidentally to break it…). We had clear access to view all the pipes of the bathtub. As suspected, there was a nice steady leak coming from one of the joints in a cold water pipe. There was quite a bit of water that must have gone somewhere, probably into the guardienne’s apartment.

(Incidentally there was also a small amount of water leaking from the joint on a pipe going into the toilet. It was the first time we had ever seen that. What the heck is it with leaks multiplying like that??.)

The plombier said that the farthest he has ever seen water from a leak travel from the source to where it was manifest was something like 24 meters.

They replaced the leaky joint. But that wasn’t the end of it.

Early in the evening, the guardienne came back to our apartment to tell us that the leaking had never stopped downstairs. Instead, it had continued with the same intensity as before, without stopping. Furthermore, it had been like this for more than a month now since when it first started leaking (April 22nd, to be exact, the day of the first round of presidential elections). She’s left with a hole in the ceiling and has to empty out buckets of water every day.

It seems that when it first started leaking they fixed some small leak in the neighbor’s apartment above where it was leaking downstairs. However, this must have been a coincidence, as the leaking downstairs continued.

Now, they’ve fixed a leak in our apartment, but perhaps this was only a coincidence as well. We’ll shut off our water here overnight to see if it has any effect. I doubt that anything will change since the most likely candidate from our apartment had already been eliminated.

…to be continued…

** Important: If you live in France, you must get an insurance policy for your domicile. Above all, this will cover the damage very likely to occur from a leak…

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More leaking?

Water leaks seem to be a universal problem of multi-storied apartments in Paris. Even in our relatively new apartment (built in the 70’s, i.e. the 20th century as opposed to the 17th century), there are re-occurring problems with water leaks…

We got a notice from the guardienne last week informing us that a plombier needs to come by to check out our apartment in relation to a leak downstairs. This is the second time. Last month she had a leak into her kitchen that was cause by our neighbor’s bathtub. At that time we were fairly certain that it wasn’t coming from us because we had done an inspection ourselves and found no traces of water leaking anywhere or anything else suspicious.

What is troublesome this time is that we have just started hearing a dripping or running water sound in our apartment. It appears to be coming from behind the wall behind the sink in our bathroom. It’s bizarre that it just started to happen. We’ve never heard it before. Is it related to the leak into the apartment below? Or could it have been related to the rainstorm this afternoon (silly, yes, I know, but in French buildings you can never rule these types of things out)? How on earth can leaking be so wide spread? Is it a conspiracy to keep les plombiers employed??

Update: Snooping around a bit more for the source of the sound, I found that it was actually coming from the bathtub. The reflective properties of the tiling in the bathroom had made the sound difficult to locate. It sounds as if water could be leaking out from a pipe and running down the interior of the bathtub. Unfortunately the whole tub installation is covered by tile, so to get to the problem it will probably take some work… I can hear water running through the pipe if I put my ear to the faucet. … As a quick check to see if it is really coming from us, I shut off the main water value in our apartment. The leaking sound stopped.

I suppose this might be the cause of the leak downstairs. We might not have heard anything suspicious before because it had been a very small leak and it might have only just grown in severity. Or, it could just be a coincidence? We’ll find out tomorrow morning. In the meanwhile we’ll leave the water shut off overnight in case it’s causing the problem…

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