Journal de bord

Robert Howsare.

1. Le 24 mars 2012,
Yogi

Ah le spirograph … ça ne nous rajeunit pas. [/mode vieux con]

2. Le 24 mars 2012,
Stéphane

Il manque un peu de musique pour accompagner cette chorégraphie. D’ailleurs, j’en vois deux au fond qui gardent leur bras au repos.

3. Le 25 mars 2012,
Hoedic

Cette chose dessine très clairement un tore. Fascinant!

Blah ? Touitter !

L’Organisation Hydrographique Internationale a publié le 14 mars dernier une “importante notice de sécurité” dans une lettre circulaire (PDF CL 33/2012), relative aux lecteurs de cartographie numérique :

[…] About a third of the manufacturers’ systems reported to the IHB appear to function as expected in the checks. A further third of the systems display all significant underwater features, including underwater obstructions, but the isolated danger symbol required to be shown under certain conditions is not always used. This issue is unlikely to have a significant impact on safe navigation. Most of the remaining third of the systems reported to the IHB failed to display some significant underwater features in the “Standard” display mode. Under various conditions, mostly related to safety depth settings and other variable factors, these underwater features can include some types of wreck and other obstructions. All these features are displayed in the “Full display” or “All display” mode.

One manufacturer, Japan Radio Co. Ltd (JRC), has confirmed to the IHO that earlier versions of its ECDIS will not display some types of wreck and underwater obstructions (including stranded wrecks) in any display mode. This means that, for these models of JRC ECDIS, the mariner must navigate in conjunction with paper charts in order to ensure that all wrecks and underwater obstructions can be identified. JRC has issued a notice alerting its customers to this problem and will make an upgrade package available to its customers shortly. […]

In summary:

All mariners using ECDIS should be encouraged to check their ECDIS equipment using the IHO ENC Data Presentation and Performance Check. This will enable them to determine whether their ECDIS requires that the display be operated in “full display” mode in order to display all important charted features.

In the case of JRC ECDIS, mariners should use the IHO ENC Data Presentation and Performance Check to determine if they need to consult paper charts until such time as the ECDIS equipment can be upgraded.

Donc, seulement un tiers des systèmes de visualisation de cartographie numérique, appelés ECDIS, fonctionnent comme ils le devraient. Un tiers omettent de signaler par un symbole de danger isolé les obstacles sous-marins (roches, épaves, obstructions), et enfin, bien plus grave, un tiers des systèmes n’affichent pas du tout certains de ces dangers (épaves, obstructions) dans le mode d’affichage normal (“standard”), mais seulement en mode “other / all / full”.

L’étude de l’Organisation Hydrographique Internationale a aussi permis de trouver que les lecteurs ECDIS fabriqués par le japonais JRC n’affichent dans aucun mode certains de ces dangers isolés.

Tous les capitaines de navire sont donc invités à vérifier les capacités de leurs lecteurs de cartographie à l’aide d’un fichier de test afin de déterminer s’il doivent bloquer leur lecteur en mode “full”, ou encore recourir exclusivement aux cartes papier (toujours obligatoires à bord).

L’information a été relayée aux navires en mer jeudi dernier par NAVTEX :

22.03.2012 21:25:47 (LV)
ZCZC UA82
141300 UTC MAR
BALTIC SEA NAV WARN 016
IT HAS BEEN PROVEN THAT SOME ECDIS
SYSTEMS FAIL TO DISPLAY SOME SIGNIFICANT
UNDERWATER FEATURES IN THE STANDARD
DISPLAY MODE. CERTAIN VERSIONS OF
'JRC ECDIS' FAIL TO DISPLAY SOME TYPES
OF WRECK AND OBSTRUCTIONS IN ANY DISPLAY
MODE. SHIPS USING 'JRC ECDIS' SHOULD USE
PAPER CHARTS AS PRIMARY MEANS OF
NAVIGATION UNTIL THE ECDIS HAS BEEN
PROVED TO OPERATE CORRECTLY,
SEE WWW.JRC.CO.JP/ENG/PRODUCT/MARINE/
WHATSNEW.
SHIPS ARE RECOMMENDED TO CHECK THE
OPERATION OF THEIR ECDIS BY MEANS OF A
'CHECK DATA SET' AVAILABLE AT
WWW.IHO.INT.

Il y avait déjà eu un grave problème décélé en 2009, affectant là aussi l’affichage standard (cf. “NOAA Warns Mariners of Serious Display Issue with ECDIS”). D’où l’importance de faire très régulièrement les mises à jour logicielles. (Je n’ose pas imaginer qu’il y ait à bord de navires des ECDIS pas mis à jour depuis 2009…)

Le commandant du Costa Concordia a dit pour sa défense, dès le lendemain de la catastrophe, que le rocher ne figurait pas sur la carte, qu’il n’y avait pas eu d’alarme déclenchée par l’ECDIS.

Il est possible qu’il dise vrai (au moins pour l’alarme). Ces systèmes sont manifestement faillibles.

La “e-navigation” a encore des progrès à faire et le papier est loin d’être mort. La sagesse en matière de sécurité maritime demeure toujours de jamais se reposer sur un unique système.

This month marks the ninth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Regardless of your views on the wisdom of that decision, it’s fair to say that the results were not what most Americans expected. […]

Lesson #1: The United States lost. The first and most important lesson of Iraq war is that we didn’t win in any meaningful sense of that term. The alleged purpose of the war was eliminating Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but it turns out he didn’t have any. Oops. Then the rationale shifted to creating a pro-American democracy, but Iraq today is at best a quasi-democracy and far from pro-American. The destruction of Iraq improved Iran’s position in the Persian Gulf — which is hardly something the United States intended — and the costs of the war (easily exceeding $1 trillion dollars) are much larger than U.S. leaders anticipated or promised. The war was also a giant distraction, which diverted the Bush administration from other priorities (e.g., Afghanistan) and made the United States much less popular around the world.

This lesson is important because supporters of the war are already marketing a revisionist version. In this counternarrative, the 2007 surge was a huge success (it wasn’t, because it failed to produce political reconciliation) and Iraq is now on the road to stable and prosperous democracy. And the costs weren’t really that bad. Another variant of this myth is the idea that President George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus had “won” the war by 2008, but President Obama then lost it by getting out early. This view ignores the fact that the Bush administration negotiated the 2008 Status of Forces agreement that set the timetable for U.S. withdrawal, and Obama couldn’t stay in Iraq once the Iraqi government made it clear it wanted us out.

The danger of this false narrative is obvious: If Americans come to see the war as a success — which it clearly wasn’t — they may continue to listen to the advice of its advocates and be more inclined to repeat similar mistakes in the future.

Lesson #2: […] The remarkable thing about the Iraq war is how few people it took to engineer. It wasn’t promoted by the U.S. military, the CIA, the State Department, or oil companies. Instead, the main architects were a group of well-connected neoconservatives, who began openly lobbying for war during the Clinton administration. They failed to persuade President Bill Clinton, and they were unable to convince Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to opt for war until after 9/11. But at that point the stars aligned, and Bush and Cheney became convinced that invading Iraq would launch a far-reaching regional transformation, usher in a wave of pro-American democracies, and solve the terrorism problem.

As the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman told Ha’aretz in May 2003: “Iraq was the war neoconservatives wanted… the war the neoconservatives marketed…. I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office [in Washington]) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.”

Lesson #3: […] Given the stakes involved, it is remarkable how little serious debate there actually was about the decision to invade. This was a bipartisan failure, as both conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats all tended to jump onboard the bandwagon to war. And mainstream media organizations became cheerleaders rather than critics. Even within the halls of government, individuals who questioned the wisdom of the invasion or raised doubts about the specific plans were soon marginalized. As a result, not only did the United States make a bone-headed decision, but the Bush administration went into Iraq unprepared for the subsequent occupation. […]

Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt: “Top 10 Lessons of the Iraq War.”

[…] Then in February of 2010 I got a phone call from my mom. My mom never calls me. Never. It’s like pulling teeth to get her to talk on the phone, but she called me and she was like, “Are you on the cover of a magazine?” I had been voted Man of the Year in Unzipped Magazine that month, so I said, “Yeah … how do you know that?” And so she told me this story: It was a Saturday night, and she had had a date with a guy and he had stood her up. She wanted to entertain herself so she went to the adult bookstore to buy a dildo, and she decided to browse the gay magazines because she said that’s where the hottest guys always were. And there I was on the cover of the magazine.

Later on she called me again. She had read the article that went with my photos in the magazine, and she said it was really beautiful. She cried a little bit and I was like, “Oh, that’s really nice.” I think at one point she wishes she could have done porn, which is a strange thing to hear from your mom. Now we talk a lot more and there’s always the feeling that I don’t need to be hiding anything from her. If you’re open to your mom with the fact that you do porn there’s not really any other secret you can have.

Porn is much more out there these days. So many celebrities have sex videos, and everybody has naked pictures on their phones, and there are so many amateur porn tube sites. But I know a lot of people who come from conservative religious backgrounds whose parents have completely disowned them or distanced themselves from them, and it’s unfortunate. It’s hard to come out as a gay person, but it’s even more difficult to also come out as a person who has sex for a living. It can be hard for some family members to take. But that’s their loss, unfortunately.

Salon, Samuel Scott: “Are you on the cover of a magazine?”

How would your mom react?

1. Le 24 mars 2012,
Cedric

Je ne comprends pas bien que l’on puisse à la fois défendre l’ouverture totale (ahem) et ne pas mieux accueillir ceux qui ne sont pas ouverts (cf. la dernière phrase de l’extrait).

(et everybody n’a pas des “photos à poil” dans son téléphone)

Je n’ai pas la moindre idée de comment ma mère réagirait. En tant que père (the question?), je dirais que tant que mon fils est heureux ça me va (mais à ce stage c’est très théorique en fait, le cas ne s’est pas présenté).

2. Le 25 mars 2012,
Gilles

Je serais triste si mon fils se révélait homo. Franchement, je compte sur lui pour me ramener de la jeunette à la maison :D

3. Le 25 mars 2012,
Laurent Gloaguen

@Gilles : de mon expérience, aux années lycée, les gays ont souvent plein de copines.

4. Le 26 mars 2012,
Guillaume

La transparence totale. Plus rien n’est séparé, le privé, le public, les générations. On mélange tout, on échange tout, toutes les informations. Un inceste.

C’est à la fois flippant et pathétique.

5. Le 27 mars 2012,
Karl, La Grange

@Guillaume

Oui c’est vrai que dans les villages, il y a trois siècles, à l’époque où 90% de la population vivait à la campagne, tout était privé… ou peut-être pas.

Blah ? Touitter !