Kinea

Prisons and “alternatives sentences”: from political rifts to empirical delusions

2017-08-07 - Xavier de Larminat

For the past decades, France has undergone a marked diversification of penal sanctions (adjustments, probation, community service). This phenomenon is polarizing many political rifts, even though those “alternative sanctions” rarely substitute for jail, extending further the field of possible sentences. Moreover, their administrative application is not without its share of practical problems.
August 2017 Read more →
The equation that changed the lives of a billion people

2017-07-03 - Renaud Helbig

Song Jian is arguably the mathematician who has had the biggest impact on the twentieth century world. While other mathematicians have had their works applied and have greatly contributed to the fashioning of today’s world, Song Jian is unique in his direct impact on the lives of millions of individuals in a very short time. It was Song Jian who persuaded the Chinese government of the 1980s to implement the one-child policy.
July 2017 Read more →
Reductio ad Hitlerum

2017-06-05 - Alex Feynmann

Turning the Nazis into ridiculously evil figures has led to a complete trivialisation of their symbols and ideology. Nazism, now a term void of all meaning, is used as an equivalent to absolute evil. That monster, whom we have been taught to fear, that monster we have turned into the great villain of history, is coming back with a new mask, and we haven't been able to identify it.
June 2017 Read more →

From the archives

Reductio ad Hitlerum

2017-06-05 - Alex Feynmann

Turning the Nazis into ridiculously evil figures has led to a complete trivialisation of their symbols and ideology. Nazism, now a term void of all meaning, is used as an equivalent to absolute evil. That monster, whom we have been taught to fear, that monster we have turned into the great villain of history, is coming back with a new mask, and we haven't been able to identify it.
June 2017 Read more →
Does electronic voting undermine democracy?

2016-02-08 - Théo Zimmermann

Electronic voting, either through voting machines or internet voting, already exists in professional or associative elections; and there are numerous questions about its use for political elections. What are the issues, the risks and benefits induced by this type of ballot?
February 2016 Read more →
Europe and the Javanese

2015-11-26 - Victoria Pleuchot

Foreigners and strangers often frighten us: they are part of the unknown. To reduce the fear, let us first define the concept. Even if those two words tend to be confused (in French, their meaning is merged in the single word “étranger”), they represent different notions. The foreigner is a person who does not have the nationality of the country where they live and work; whereas the stranger is defined by their otherness, by being somebody who we are not familiar with.
November 2015 Read more →
The agave and the bat: I don’t need to conquer a place, I need to conquer you

2015-11-16 - Agustín Ávila Casanueva

The histories of bats and agaves are constantly crossing each other’s paths. The latter needs the former for reproduction, and the former needs the latter for food. But it isn’t just any pollinator and it isn’t just any food. Bats can visit a lot of plants each night, while carrying a big load of pollen. The nectar and the pollen of the agaves contain proteins with many essential amino acids, allowing the bats to feed exclusively from this food.
November 2015 Read more →
Walls on the liberal city

2015-11-02 - Christopher Casas

There’s a scar just on the middle of Buenos Aires, a long east-west line dividing the city in two parts: the cauterized one, up north; the bleeding one, down south. Its inhabitants have traditionally considered Rivadavia Avenue as the border between the city of the rich ones and the city of the poor ones. And there’s no need to build up a fence or dig a ditch, between the two sidewalks of this street there’s the biggest abyss societies build: money.
November 2015 Read more →
Why Mercator?

2015-11-02 - Guillaume Geoffroy

A quick glance at an actual globe should convince you that the Mercator projection deserves its poor reputation: Europe, the United States and Canada are way too big, and Antarctica should certainly not be bigger than South America and Africa combined. So, how come this map became so widespread? Why is it still used today, even in products such as Google Maps?
November 2015 Read more →
Forced disappearances: recovering the memories

2016-02-01 - Alex Feynmann

Spain is the second country in the world with the most forced disappearances, only behind Cambodia. After the death of general Franco in 1975, Spain initiated a transition towards a democratic government. Nevertheless, the wounds left by the civil war and the forty years of dictatorship continue to bleed despite the efforts to hide them.
February 2016 Read more →
How cells remember (and sometimes struggle to forget)

2015-11-02 - Renaud Helbig

If the genome is indeed the same in all cells, it is not expressed the same way: a set of supplementary materials will guide the cell, it will tell it which gene to consider in order to function. This annotating mechanism of the DNA is called epigenetics: what is above the genetics.
November 2015 Read more →

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