Blog Odyssée

Maybe the best Dilbert ever…

… even if, as an engineer, I might be a little partial.

Advices to business executives from @FT circa 1957 (via ‏@markhillary)

1. Don’t travel too often or too far.
2. Have at least one week’s clear break in the middle of long tours.
3. Never fly both ways on a business journey.
4. If possible, come home part of the way by boat. If not, have three or four days at home before going to the office.
5. Never travel over week-ends except for pleasure and then never more than 100 miles.
6. Keep your week-ends completely to yourself.
7. Cultivate outside interests and hobbies.
8. Try and take some physical exercise – gardening and fishing recommended.
9. Have a medical check-up every two years until age of 50, and then every year.
10. Learn to relax.

Pretty up to date… except, unfortunately, for the advice to "come home part of the way by boat"!

Great sketch note version of a post by Tanmay Vora (@tnvora) with visual representation of the ideas.

You're aboard an airplane.

The cabin pressure is making you drowsy.

You are gradually entering a state of paradoxical awakeness – for just a few minutes.

The creation of a world often begins with a pre-existing world.

For example, the world you're flying over or about to fly over.

Does the creation of worlds as we know them always begin with pre-existing worlds? Does it describe what has already been described?

Reality and fction are like a pair of trees that grow together, inter-twined, one supporting and bolstering the other. A sort of transfer of force occurs like the mesh of steel cables between the two pylons of a bridge. It gives the impression of reciprocal support, of symbiosis, a give-and-take dynamic that nourishes world-as-word made flesh.

In some ways, we're living in an era in which we should be hysterical, but we're not, because we can't imagine what's happening.

We assimilate only fragments of information.

There are people. There are stories. People believe that they are the ones shaping the stories, but it's often the reverse.

Now there's some food for thought.

We have these "CNN moments," and it's exactly then that we truly feel like we're living in the moment. Then, in a flash, we're back to exactly where we started.

Uncertain of what will triumph over the individual or the crowd.

There's this idea of octaves and music, that the world is based on vibrations and sounds. The eight dimensions of the octave form what is called the "dimensional realm." Each dimension is a note from an infnite scale, yet the eight form an enclosed space, an impression of completeness within a boundless infnity.

A few years ago, proof of the existence of other worlds was found.

Long live the meta-universe.

You are fying over only one of these worlds.

Text by Philippe Parreno for Air France Magazine

Le Ride béret baguette, French jusqu’au bout des ongles qui griffent le guidon.

According to mashable.com, this photo posted to social media Thursday shows a woman stripping off the black garb required by the Islamic State to reveal a colorful dress underneath.

Maia Flore met en scène sa rousseur avec une poésie à la fois douce et délicatement dérangeante.

From The New Yorker, May 25, 2015 issue.

You can’t list your iPhone as your primary-care physician.

That’s what I love about social media. I can have connections with thousands of people and yet still be completely isolated and alone.

The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience.

Our old buddy, Steve Clayton, GM, Microsoft storytelling, sends out a super cool private email every Friday-ish to friends and family (he’ll add you if you email him here – we’re all family, right .

Last Friday, Steve linked to a great post.

Life advice from a young tech entrepreneur turning 30.

I wish I had my s**t together like Sam does at 30.

The gist of the post is, stay out of your comfort zone at work, and in it as much as you possibly can with your family.

Coming up in the age of the internet and social, even more so.

Sam pretty much nailed the whole work/life thing.

Well worth the read.

Image and text by @gapingvoid

In a blog post, John Graham-Cumming (@jgrahamc) explains how to draw a nice visual of the 100 first integers when factorized.

Image from Dominic Roy at National Geographic.

This great picture is both funny and worrying. The posture of this owl fighting against the wind seems to me like the perfect evocation of the usual entrepreneur in France.

Image Thierry Martinez (@thmartinezphoto)

A recent article by the title How to Prevent Overdiagnosis, published in Swiss Medical Weekly, accurately sums up the issues about overdiagnosis.

Overdiagnosis, as defined in the summary is the diagnosis of an abnormality that is not associated with a substantial health hazard and that patients have no benefit to be aware of.

In their conclusion, the authors, mainly from the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (IUMSP), Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland, provide a perfectly concise 5 bullet points overview of overdiagnosis issues:

1. Overdiagnosis is mainly the consequence of a technology-driven medicine that aims to improve patient outcomes by detecting disease in its earliest form.
2. Overdiagnosis is of growing relevance in population dominated by chronic conditions having long pre-clinical stage.
3. Although early detection has been shown to be beneficial for several conditions, it also increases the probability of finding insignificant abnormalities, whose treatment is not associated with any benefit but can harm the patient.
4. Moreover, overdiagnosis diverts healthcare professionals from caring about other health issues and generates costs.
5. The increase in healthcare costs, the over- and underutilisation of some care, the debates about the effectiveness of several screening, and the growing role of patients in medical decisions require concern about overdiagnosis.

Les articles de la rubrique "Logique et calcul" de Jean-Paul Delahaye publiés dans le journal Pour la science sont disponibles pour la période 1991-2013 : http://www.lifl.fr/~delahaye/pls/

Tine  explique que Charlie Hebdo, épuisé dans tous les points de vente en France, va finalement tirer à 5 millions d’exemplaires.

Mais encore faut-il se souvenir comment fonctionne ce truc !

Il y a le succès des marches Charlie. Un peuple angoissé qui se regroupe après avoir été attaqué par trois mujahidin et superbement immortalisé par le photographe Martin Argyroglo …

Et puis il y a ces gens, enfermés dans la cage aux fauves, comme cette enfant yézidie de 6 ans dont la blondeur et les yeux bleux sont comme une insulte pour les fanatiques.

Youssef Boudlal, photographe pour Reuters décrit sa rencontre à Fishkhabour, sur la frontière Irako-Syrienne :

I remember the scene well. It was the day that I arrived at the Iraqi-Syrian border crossing of Fishkhabour.

With shocked, sunburnt faces, men, women and children in dirt-caked clothes were struggling in temperatures of over 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), waiting patiently for local Kurdish aid.

At first, I focused my camera on a group of women sitting on the ground, but when I turned away I saw this little girl.

I took one shot of her there and as she saw me, she gave me a smile. I captured another frame of her with her mother.

I was drawn to her wild beauty in this terrible situation. There is a kind of intensity, distress and sadness in her eyes.

I know that she is 6 years old because I asked her mother, but unfortunately I didn’t ask for her name. The family was coming from the Iraqi town of Sinjar, fleeing Islamic State militants.

It was really sad not only to see this girl, but also to see the hundred others who were dirty, exhausted, and sitting amongst garbage in the heat.

I have been in Iraq for over a week now. It’s my first time in the country, and though I have been to many conflict zones, nothing compares to seeing these displaced people.

I wonder what their state of mind can be as they walk for miles and hours through the mountains with a few of their belongings.

I would be very curious to see the blonde girl who I photographed again. I wonder what will become of her. I wonder what will become of all the others.

Stupid…

Stupids…

Gary Barker (@Barkercartoons), Illustrator and political cartoonist for the Times, Guardian & Tribune

Plantu (@plantu), Illustrator for Le Monde and L’Express

Complete (almost) genealogy of what I've called THE BLACK SWAN PROBLEM pic.twitter.com/b206P6W9qr

— Nassim NicholنTaleb (@nntaleb) January 2, 2015