fancy lab

During its three-years existence, this blog has received over 10,000 visits, more than 26,000 pages have been viewed. I'm not sure that anybody got an answer to his/her questions;  at least, people reading this blog will get some idea about what I spend my time on... Thanks for passing by !

Last November, we had the French Science festival "fete de la science" for 2009. My lab hold a group of tables at the scientific village set close to Marseille's Vieux Port, in the very heart of the city.

This year, we were celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's observations with the lens telescope. Therefore, one of our attractions was to re-construct one of these telescopes using magnifying lenses. It's very nice to see that five fold magnifications are readily available with two simple lenses (if you try to do it yourself, put the lens with greater focal length first; the larger the difference in focal lengths, the greater the telescope magnification; actually the magnification equals the ratio of focal lengths). See the pictures below !

In a rush of setting up a new house together with a new experiment, I somehow passed aside writing a few words here about Mark Leger, a.k.a Krabi Autrement.

Mark is a French-Thai free-lance guide for people wishing to discover the Krabi province of Thailand in an unconventional manner. I met him for ten days last February, and the least I can say is that I warmly recommend him.

Learn more on his website : www.krabiautrement.com

This is what I wrote about him in his webpage :

 

"Si vous en arrivez à lire ce texte, et qu'au fond de vous vous sentez une affinité pour la démarche entamée par Mark, alors n'hésitez plus, Krabi-autrement est fait pour vous. Mark est très disponible et à l'écoute de vos attentes. Il sait aussi bien se faire très discret, et respecter votre rythme. Ces qualités, associées à un grand professionnalisme et une profonde gentillesse, font sans doute de lui le meilleur guide francophone de cette région magnifique.
Votre seul prérequis sera de vouloir être vous-même un acteur central de votre voyage. Mark vous fera découvrir énormément de choses et s'occupera volontiers de la logistique. Vous pourrez donc vous concentrer sur l'essentiel : la curiosité de vous ouvrir à cette partie du monde. Et elle le vous rendra bien. On dit de Krabi qu'elle est la plus belle province de Thaïlande. Ce qui est certain, c'est qu'elle est fascinante."

 

Still nothing concrete. That’s not really surprising, the thing that amazes me is that the movement is still alive.

 

See the excellent work of Sylvestre Huet on his blog : http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/

 

As decided by a large majority of university staff and students, the campus on St Jerome will be blocked one day per week, starting Monday Feb 09.
This shall last as long as the government does not give any answer to our claims concerning status, CNRS future, fundings and employment.