I have already tweeted these joke but here is a summary:

If you want to see Blues who run and are joyful see the Smurf trailer : http://yhoo.it/blOxoh

The French team on strike? Well they have been on strike for 4 years!

American joke : what is the shortest French joke ? French resistance. At least Anelka is fighting against Domenech, waiting for the landing…

Domenech is the Kerviel (or Madoff if you prefer) of the French football.

Domenech / French Football Federation is to football what Kerviel / Societe Generale is to finance.

The Blues is a very nice example that the lack of control leads to chaos.

The state of natural catastroph is declared for… the Blues (there are heavy flooding in France).

Let’s hope that Laurent Blanc will clean all that whiter than white (blanc means white in French, no other meaning intended).

Today, I got fired for saying aloud what everybody thinks silently about my boss. FML Nicolas A. (FML = Fuck My Life see also this website for a good laugh).

At last, the football spill is finally closed for the French team.

To non French Football fans, here is an exchange with a friend about the mess in the French football team.

Message 1
First : Sorry for all this mess !
Second, notice that all of this is not so surprising. If you check my forecasts, like about all French Football fans, I forecast the very early elimination of France. The reason for that is pretty simple : Domenech is the responsible for all this disaster. Domenech is a scam, a swindler. The only reason he is still there after the other disaster of Euro 2008 is because the leaders of the French Football federations are also swindlers. Domenech is totally incompetent and so is the Federation president.

The rest is only a consequence of that. If anything, it is not bad that Anelka and others dared to rebel. One can only wish they would have done it earlier. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible, it is like fighting a dictature. They could rebel but then they are simply not selected. Which by the way explains the non selection of some other French players far better than the one we had.

Nothing complicated. Only a crazy mafia of friends at the Federation.

PS. I thought France would lose all their games. So, if anything, they actually did a great WorldCup (1 draw) !!

A friend :
The thing is, France deserves better than this. I have no doubt that Domenech was a terrible coach (he refused to shake the hand of the South African coach!) but as you said, the revolt should have happened earlier. To have it happen at the world cup is about as bad as it could get.

Here’s hoping Petit can fix things in time for Euro 2012. Or at the latest Brazil 2014.

Answer
Last revolt was the one of Zidane. He was both a great player and a coach for the French team. Then, the team had to be rebuilt after the departure of the France 98 players. Unfortunately instead of a mason we got a fool.

With all the power in the hands of the Federation and Domenech nobody could revolt. Some tried (former France 98 players, journalists, the public who whistled all the games since 2006) but we were in front of a wall.

Because of FIFA rules, even the government who wanted changes at the Federation was totally helpless.

So when I say the FFF is an oligarchy and a dictature, I mean it.

As a joke, think that the Technical Director is the coach that was eliminated of the World Cup 94 even before the final phase (G. Houllier). He may be worse than Domenech.

Finally let’s hope Blanc (not Petit) will be able to clean all that. I do have some good hopes but unfortunately, if nothing happens at the Federation, things can stay as bad (worse would be very difficult!).

Conclusion:
Escalettes, Houllier, Domenech : just resign. (Anyway Domenech is out)

PS for my faithful readers: “The French team is a very nice example that the lack of control leads to chaos.”

PPS My pronostic for the final winner is Argentina. Entonces, vamos Argentina !

A visualization of chaos is given by fractals. I showed you the pictures of fractal trees taken during a walk at the Parc de Sceaux after a snowfall in Paris. But I had taken a few more pictures of the very beautiful French garden of this Park.
A French garden (“jardin à la française”) is a nice illustration of control. Basically, the gardener controls the shape of the trees. The proximity of the natural trees with their fractal shapes and the gardened trees allowed me to take great pictures that show this contrast between chaos and control.

Let’s begin with my preferred one:

I love the description given by the BBC for their documentary “The Secret Life of Chaos” (which you can watch here).
As I have written a few articles about fractals, chaos and controls lately, I have added links internal to this blog to the text.

“Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand. It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?

In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science -

• how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life?
• How does order emerge from disorder?

It’s a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics.

Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you’ll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.”

Notice that this introduction can be sum up by “Chaos vs God” or “Chaotical Design vs Intelligent Design”. However, anyway, one question remains: who created the laws of physics? Or how were created these laws of Physics, if you prefer ;-)

I have often privately said that James Gleick’s Chaos book gives clearer answers than the Bible about our world. Now is the time to say it publicly!

Enjoy the documentary!

The BBC aired on Thursday, January 14th an excellent documentary about Chaos, Fractals and Nature. You can watch it right here thanks to YouTube. If you are in UK you can also watch it on the BBC website at this address.

I am glad the BBC helps making these subjects popular and fashionnable more than 20 years after James Gleick’s Chaos book.

Part 1

All parts follow.

Thx Pixgeeks for reminding me of this nice Google logo involving fractals.

It was in memoriam to Gaston Julia’s Birthday.

In case I need to precise, the fractals you see on the logo are called Julia sets because the French mathematician Gaston Julia described them first. However, most of my readers already know that, right? ;-)

To say something only initiated people can understand: “The Mandelbrot set contains all Julia sets”. (That is why the fractal on the left is actually the Mandelbrot set.)

You can check all google logos here.

You probably already know that the snowflake and the tree branches are the canonical examples of fractals.

So, as in Paris we have the chance to have currently a lot of snow, I went to the “Parc de Sceaux” to make these wonderful pictures.
I only regret the sky was not as blue as in Normandy.

Children making a snow battle under a magnificient fractal tree.

Picture showing the fractal invariance of scale in a tree. Background is the Battle of Normandy (D-Day) Memorial, in memoriam to the allied forces who liberated Europe from the Nazi yoke, Caen, France.

I wish you to have all your wishes realized. But to be a little more accurate, I actually wish you to precisely know what you want and wish. Because wishes have a much better chance of becoming true if you can clearly formulate them.

That-is-to-say, in order to clearly know what you want, and how you can get it, you will need:

• Aims (requirements)
• A plan to reach them (control system)
• Means to act (actuators)
• Means to measure your effort (sensors)
• The ability to adapt to your environment and to what you have measured (back to the control system) Notice a good control system does allow you to change your aims as well as your plans along the road. Heading straight into a storm is probably not a good idea…

Mandelbulb by Daniel White

As we are still at the beginning of the holiday season, maybe you haven’t bought all your gifts yet. In that case, here are a few lifechanging books you can offer to your loved ones.
By lifechanging, I mean you will never look at the world in the same way after reading one of these books. There is even a good chance you will find the world a lot more simple after your reading because these books give you keys to the behaviour of nature and mankind.

Why Microsoft fails, Why Google Rocks? It is a matter of marketing. Don’t piss off your users, especially your potential fans.

This post was actually meant to be an apologia of Microsoft Pivot but it won’t be. I requested an invite on Friday. I got it today. This is nice and fast but it stops there. Let’s see why, worst thing will be last.