One of the last cartoons by Charlie Hebdo...

Physics behind swimming well explained by people at the Race Club.

All you need to do is to put the science into practice

Seasonal Greetings from Wester Creative Office

France finally supports a possible military action by the US. Time to rename freedom fries back to French fries?

Another crazy bird story

Here's another crazy bird story: a robin has setup a nest on our front door:

Not to stress out the poor mother-to-be we're forced to use the garage door.

But every time someone uses the front door, the robin has to flee her nest. Then one can see 4 cute blue eggs:

Most anti-science Canadian government?

Harper's government may well be remembered as the most anti-science Canadian government in the history of the country. Here's a chronology of the Conservative government's campaign against science since 2006 from the blog of John Dupuis. The results of such policies are already quite visible: according to the latest report of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council, Canada has dropped in rank from 16th to 23rd in overall expenditures on research and development relative to GDP compared to other economically developed countries. 

Economics:

It seems that spreadsheet is a major tool in Economics, and you'd better know how to use it. Two prominent economists from Harvard made a spreadsheet error, caught almost 3 year later by a graduate student. As it turns out, the paper based on the wrong spreadsheet was widely cited, and used as a basis for public policies. What is even more surprising to me, is that the spreadsheet was not openly available to other researches, and so no one was able to reconfirm the assertions of the paper, or even to reproduce the results for that matter. Paul Krugman also commented on the matter.

All that again raises the question whether Economics and science, you know...