A Year in 12 Posts

January 2011 was full of hope: we celebrated the Arab spring and the beginning of a year which ended up being tough on tyrans.

2012 was less glorious on many fronts (armed conflicts, economic crisis). The ship Concordia (= "harmony"; beautiful name...) gave the starting signal. A half a billion capsized ship and a chaotic evacuation.

We however need to learn to catch the good signals and to generate good vibes! Here is a personal curation of some 2012 events - politics, business, web, sport, art... what marked me in the past 12 months. Enjoy, share and comment. And most importantly, let 2013 be a better year for everyone!

Moebius reach was so wide: US comics, Japanese mangas and even movies (Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element). A creator of universes, a rare artist.

Also in March, Putin's come back. Back to the cold war days, Russia was the bad soviet guy. Now it's more complex: Russia embrassed capitalism but embarasses with its positions on Iran, Syria, democracy.

And if your software crashed with no good reason, you might have an excuse: the biggest solar storm in 5 years. Stronger storms expected in 2013!

Of course: Oscar Pistorius, Felix Sanchez, Michael Phelps, Usan Bolt (and his TPM record: more than 80.000 Tweet per minute), but ...

My prefered stories: Dong Hyun setting a new world record in archery although he is ... blind! And Hamadou Djibo Issaka: was given a wild card and 3 months to train to rowing... that's the olympic spirit!

Also from the Olympics but much less glorious: the scandal of censorship.

But there was something bigger in July 2012: The Higgs boson has almost certainly been discovered!

The Higgs boson was a "missing particle", predicted by the standard model of physics 50 years ago, but never so far observed. A mega device, the Large Hadron Collider (cost: $1B+) has been build just for it. Electroweak interactions, symmetry-breaking scalar fields... poetry!

On Nov 6, Barack Obama was elected to a second presidential term, defeating Republican Mitt Romney (332 - 206. Full results: here).

Web perspective: Beyond the political stake, this post links to Obama's FB page. Super classy pics of a super classy man. Also, his "four more years" tweet broke the record of most RT ever (800k+).

On Nov 18, one of my heros (this is a personal curation) died. Patrick Edlinger was a free climber and a free man. Here is a beautiful video of him climbing (dancing? levitating?) bare hands, bare feet, no rope. Music by Bach. Enjoy, dream, remember.

5 Oscar, including best actor for Jean Dujardin. And first best-picture award for a silent film since first ceremony in 1929. A Touching film, with daring choices (black and white, silent) and great actors. And also probably a superb marketing campain.

Google get clearance for its $12.5B bid on Motorola. Seems to me like Google went into mobile just yesterday. The pace at which the mobile world is reshaping is amazing ; the Android v. Apple battle is epic.

And for the geekiest : IBM getting closer to Quantum Computing! (can someone please explain this ?).

With armed conflicts in so many countries, it's almost impossible to catch the good news. Well, things are going better in Myanmar! D. Cameron, British P.M., called for suspension of sanctions; the European Union does it and Japan will write off the debt.

April also saw the mega acquisition of Instagram by Facebook for $1B! Instagram was a 2-year old, 12-people, no revenue company. Its founder, Kevin Systrom, 27-y old, pockets $400M.

Mark Zuckerberg then claimed "Not much will change with the service". I wonder if Instragram's users would agree with this statement today.

Solar Impulse, the Swiss project, completed the world first solar-powered intercontinental flight from Spain to Morocco. An important technical achievement when energy is one of the world next big challenges.

The plane was piloted by Bertrand Piccard, who was also the first to complete a non stop balloon flight around the world.

Less mediatic than a Richard Branson or Felix Baumgartner, but interesting family: his father Jacques was the first (with Don Walsh) to explore the deepest point of the oceans (Mariana Trench, - 36.000 ft) and his grand father Auguste set altitude records in balloon and invented the bathyscaphe. 

After a  352 million miles, 253 day journey from Earth, Nasa's heavy-weigth (1 ton) rover Curiosity lands on the red planet! One of the mission is to collect data for a manned mission!

Paul Doherty has a great video explaining what (Carbon) - and how - the rover is searching. Must watch.

Things to know when planning your next trip to Mars.

And if you want more good news from the stars, discover Guillaume's topic. And keep traveling!

On the business front, it was decision time for the Apple v. Samsung patent trial. Apple won.

I love the design of Apple's products. And I believe that patent rights are a necessary protection of R&D investments. But things are getting absurd. E.g. a "rectangle with rounded corners"; or "a tap is a zero-length swipe". Come on Apple, please...

Amazing feat, scientific achievement, egotistic trip? Whatever. We all watched and were thrilled. Congratulation Felix Baumgartner.

Records he set: first man to break the sound barrier with no engine (834 mph or Mach 1.24), highest jump ever (120.000 feet; previous record was 102,800 feet by Joe Kittinger back in 1960!). But also the most watched live video on Youtube (8 millions).

Here is a cool list of 15 speed records.

On a more dramatic note, Sandy hit on Oct 2012. Nasa has analysis and pictures. Impressive.