I took (my) Alice to the movies this week-end, and we saw Tim Burton's Alice in 3D. I love Tim Burton's universe. But this time it just didn't work for me.
Maybe it's because I've recently read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but the whole foundation of the movie seems utterly absurd. In a bad way.
All events *should* be absurd but should make sense in their own weird way. Alice should be the one who tries to make sense in an absurd world.
Instead of that, we have a relatively normal world with slightly mad characters. there is a plot, and even a quest.
But worst of all, Alice as a warrior in a shiny armor? Alice in Wonderland as an action flick? Wow. And when Alice recounts the six impossible things she's done today, she sounds like Rambo, not Alice.
It's OK to take an existing work and make it your own, but this is not it. It's not even very personal: Burton can do so much better than that.
The only moment of grace for me was when Alice remembers her previous visits.
Anyway, (my) Alice liked it so it wasn't a complete waste of time...

Amy was asking me some questions on "alternate dimensions" and "parallel universes". Here's my answer, which is entirely non-scientific although it is based on a few things I know (or think I know) about physics. I'm suspecting for example that the string theory stuff is a little shaky as I never really studied the math in there.

Uh oh, I've been watching Fox at the gym again...

The big thing they were talking about was Harry Knox, a White House advisor, having said the Catholic Church was "hurting people in the name of Jesus" by forbidding the use of condoms. Fox pundits of course were outraged, their arguments being that scientific consensus was agreeing with the Pope that condoms weren't preventing the spread of AIDS and that the Catholic Church was saving a lot more lives through its charities than Knox's organization, HRC.

Let's look at these claims.

It’s the week-end, which is the perfect time for a slightly off-topic post. It’s still engineering of sorts though in that it provides what I think is an original and cheap solution to a real problem.

As I’m in vacation, I thought I’d make a post on something different but still quite geeky. I really like to see how people set-up their video systems: there isn’t just one way to do it right and I can’t think of two friends of mine who have something even remotely similar. So I’ll describe my setting and invite you to drop me a comment and describe yours. I’ll also tag a few friends and ask them to describe theirs. I’ll post links here.

I don't watch the news and to be honest I don't understand why anyone with half a brain would. That is, I don't watch except when they put a screen in my face with the captions on like it's the case at the gym. I didn't think I would ever regret being able to read. A TV screen is a terrible thing: it's very hard not to look at it. And I had forgotten the Zune.
So I watched the news.
Here's what I learned...

Every so often, somebody points out how bad of a metric code coverage is. And of course, on its own, it doesn’t tell you much: after all, it’s a single number. How could it possibly reflect all the subtlety (or lack thereof) of your designs and of your testing artillery? Of course, within all the various *DD approaches, some better than others enable you to know whether or not your code conforms to its requirements, but I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the general idea of a software metric and how it relates to the mothers of all metrics: physical ones, cause you know, I used to be a scientist. Proof: the lab coat on the picture.

I bought the new Guitar Hero 5 because I needed a new fake plastic guitar and Activision’s guitars are the best that are not outrageously expensive. The Rock Band guitars I just can’t stand. So as I was going to buy a guitar from them, I thought I might as well get a (couple of) cheap game(s) with it.

Warning: this post is devoid of contents.

During one of the very first classes of my Bachelor of Science in Physics, I got struck with a particular piece of information that sounded like a revelation to me:

If a problem exhibits a certain symmetry, the solutions to this problem do not necessarily exhibit that same symmetry, but the set of solutions always does.

The economist has a piece about how much American kids study (http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13825184&source=most_recommended) that starts with the requisite clichés about the lazy French.

Did you know that the French are the fifth most productive people of the OCDE, before the US and way before Japan?

It's true that the American work on average 11% more than the French but did you know that on average the French work more (and better) than the German?

Interestingly, there seems to be an inverse correlation between hours worked and productivity: the less you work, the better you work.