From George Washington to Barack Obama, US presidents have been 6 to 8 cm taller than average AmericansMany websites, including Wikipedia, compare the height of US presidents with their main contenders and find that, in most cases, the elected president is the taller of the two. This post takes the observation a bit further –…
Jérôme Bosch a peint le Jardin des Délices au tout début du XVIème siècle, en 1502 ou 1503. Le panneau de gauche représente le paradis. Dieu – très bien habillé, en rose [1] – y fait un brin de causette avec Adam et Ève, en compagnie d’un oiseau et d’un lézard tricéphales, plus un phoque,…
We all develop rules of thumb that help us make operational decisions. One of my personal rules is that “agronomic significance” comes before “statistical significance”. For instance, when assessing regression coefficients, I would discard some of them regardless of their statistical significance if they don’t make agronomic sense. An example would be a negative relation…
(Published 20100212 / Last updated 20111207) There are basically three types of BIG problems facing the earth and, ultimately, the survival of man as a dominant species. The majority (1) has to do with the use and the misuse of natural resources, such as oil and water. (2) Then we have the possibility that an…
While writing the post on mountain climate(s), I wanted to provide examples for the severity of living conditions in temperate mountains. I did the usual thing: I Googled “driven into the mountains” and found an amazingly large harvest of websites with that very wording, from around the world. Here are some examples, but the web…
J’ai recu par email, il y a déjà quelque temps, cette publicité du “mage” marocain Lafkih Sheikh Rohani Zarouk. On a l’impression que ce texte a été traduit de l’arabe par un programme. J’aime beaucoup ce texte pour son côté poétique, et pour son titre. Le fait que certains passages soient incompréhensibles ne nuit pas…