That's all, folks!

Classes are over, so the time has come to give you some final advice. This year, instead of the usual recommendations  (relax, read the instructions carefully, organise your composition, write slowly, 'dance' with your partners in the oral exam, etc.etc.) here's a list of the 10 things you should NOT do:



There are probably many more things you'd better not do at exam time -just be creative and try!- but the only one thing you should do is ENJOY it!

Thanks for your attention and patience, and ...
I wish you all the best

I, Robot

We'll be talking about science next week. It seems that, according to a recent study, robots have evolved to help each other, as a theory had already predicted.

• Read TRANSCRIPT
• Read WIRED SCIENCE: Robots evolve altruism, just as biology predicted.
• Take the "scientifically validated" ALTRUISM / EGOISM TEST to check whether your egoism is a problem or if you are taking altruistic behaviour too far. It's free, and when you finish (30 questions, take your time) you'll receive a short report including a graph and a personalised interpretion of your results. You want to know more about you? Then you'll have to pay -that's the catch!

So ... are then robots going to help us humans? Scary ...but seeing that some human beings can behave like robots, I wouldn't mind having a robot friend... not one like like HAL though, who was disconnected on suspicion of having killed two members of the crew... but that was an old, very primitive robot, not like the highly evolved machines we have now.

Walking on the Moon

After the conversation we've had today with the two groups, I'm repeating a post I sent last year . Not so many years ago, very few people would have questioned that Neil Armstrong had set foot on the moon -and those who did were considered a bit, err.. weird. Now in the internet/photoshop era manipulation is easy and, judging from what you said, the idea that the moon landing was a fake seems to have gained ground -or spreads easily at least.


After more than 40 years, the NASA released last year a new version of the original video of man's first walk on the Moon enhanced with the technology we have now. Here you'll see all the explanations, a kind of "making of " of the original live 1969 'home' video, courtesy of National Geographic.

However, some people think this is a hoax, and that nobody has ever set foot on the moon. Have a look at the arguments in favour of these (again!) conspiracy theories...

...which have also been easily debunked : The Guardian

By the way, yes, we went back to the moon after Apollo 11. TWELVE more astronauts walked on the moon in the subsequent Apollo missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) . READ HERE (scroll down a bit) and HERE .

Has the internet made us all more skeptical? If manipulation works on both sides ... isn't it a bit of a paradox that we may be manipulated into thinking that we are not going to be easily manipulated?
Is Obama American? Is bin Laden dead? Is Elvis alive? Did Paul McCartney ever exist? If you believe, they put a man on the moon .....

Superman to renounce US citizenship

It seems that the all-American super-hero is turning into a super-rebel -it must be something in his diet, or an extra dose of green Kriptonite. This piece of news is not taken from the Onion network, nor is it any kind of April fool's joke.


**If you click on the CC button, you can activate 'Transcribe audio', which is an experimental service that uses speech recognition --BUT it does NOT always recognise it correctly.

• READ Los Angeles Times
  
• READ the Independent (British newspaper)
  

(**Some of the readers comments are certainly worth reading! )

Precisely now that the White House has released Barack Obama's birth certificate to put an end to the conspiracy theories that say that he's not American and therefore not eligible to be the President of the United States (Donald Trump, among others, being the main instigator).

• READ and WATCH the story at MSNBC (with a very sophisticated transcript system)
  

Lots of questions come to mind after reading these two apparently unconnected pieces of news like, what citizenship do you think superman is going to apply for? Having been born in Kripton, could he run for president of the United States? Could he be the president of the World?Now we know that Obama is definitely American, but could he still be the president if he chose to support BarÇa in the Champions league? Should some political leaders be sent to Kripton, and leave important matters to Superman?

***PS : Monday May 2nd update. Oh dear, the plot thickens. President Obama has confirmed the death of Bin Laden -if he ever existed. What's Superman going to say about this?