Archive for Antarctica
World Nature Photography awards 2026
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags Antarctica, climate change, icebergs, penguins, The Guardian, World Nature Photography Awards on August 30, 2026 by xi'an
Nature squeakbits [26 February 2026]
Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Travel with tags Antarctica, basketball shoes, book review, China Initiative, Chinese Government, climate change, climate science, COVID-19, EPA, ERC Advanced Grant, ERC Consolidator Grant, ERC Starting Grant, France, French politics, greenhouse-gas emissions, Indonesia, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeffrey Epstein, large language models, London, London calling, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, measles, Nature, nuclear weapons elimination day, perspective, rock art, SARS-CoV-2, snippet, START treaty, Sulawesi Island, The Clash, Trump administration, UKRI, unilateral nuclear disarmament, US Government, US politics, West Antarctica Ice Sheet, WHO on April 16, 2026 by xi'an
And another coverage of the deplorable Trump administration dismantling the biodefense and pandemic preparedness branches of the US NIAID, presumably a late under-the-belt jab at the national institute Anthony Fauci directed for 38 years. Meaning one of the forefronts for pandemic research and vaccine development has been dismantled. Plus the US EPA revoking the 2009 statement that climate change is endangering the US population and removing greenhouse-gas emission rules. In tune with the Drill, baby, drill! motto of the Trump supporters more interested in their short-term profits than in the long-term (no-)future of the country. Paradoxically sitting in the same issue as a comment calling for a policy-making assessment of avoidable climate-change risks. Illustrated by London’s drownin’ below
And a summary of their conclusions from 23 of the 27 members (from 27 countries) of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origin of Novel Pathogens for the WHO. After 3.5 years of debate on the origin of COVID-19! Four hypotheses are examined and other hoaxes and conspiracies are debunked.
Another political entry about the EU and its Horizon Europe programme (that is funding my ERC Synergy grant) baring (researchers from) Chinese research organisations from applying for its grants in sensitive methodologies, in order to prevent “the undesired transfer of IP”. Following similar and earlier actions in the US with the (newspeak!) China Initiative launched by Trump 1.0 that turned into a witch hunt.
An exciting 228 metres of rock and mud providing a window on the past 23 million year weather. Obtained from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet.
Nature tidbits [21 Aug 2025]
Posted in Books, pictures, University life with tags @ScientistTrump, Antarctica, Arctic, astronomy, birth rates, black holes, climate change, COVID-19, electric car, Europe Union, global warming, ice sheet, mRNA, OpenAI, supernova, Trump administration, US research on October 16, 2025 by xi'an
On the Trump 2.0 administration’s attack-on-science front, an editorial exposes the irresponsibility of cancelling grants for mRNA studies (which Trump 1.0 supported during the COVID crisis). And a longer article points out the radical switch in managing federal grants, committees moving from scientists to political appointees, searching for “anti-American values”… And another one on the backlash following the report from said administration about climate change and global warming. (As blogged recently.)
At a more conceptual (and international) level, an article questions the usual stand on declining birth rates as being problematic. While acknowledging that public incentives have a highly variable mileage, the article remains vague on how supporting an ageing population while keeping an homogeneous welfare support will prove feasible. A second socio-economic article muses about the lack of a downward curve in the cost of electric cars, despite the drop in battery costs, pointing out the inefficiency of state support that creates profit bubbles for the manufacturers. Stricter policies on combustion vehicles similarly seem inefficient, given the violent reactions of car owners (as in the Gilets Jaunes revolt). The EU has alas recently backed down on its goal of prohibiting new combustion engines by 2035.
In shark contrast, a review paper document the rising probability of a climate catastrophe induced by the melting Antarctica, which could prove of a higher magnitude than the melting Arctic. (Even though the introduction article is rather confusing, mixing this issue with the pollution brought by Antarctic tourism and mentioning indigenous populations that do not exist on the 7th Continent).
And on the (weekly) AI front, the announcement of the downloadable gpt-oss from OpenAI, which I plan to check. And the debate on whether or not AI generated papers can plagiarise, again a poorly focussed article mostly missing the issues of the scientific worth of such papers (and the basic fact that they 100% plagiarise the literature dataset they learned from!).
reductio ad absurdum
Posted in Books, Travel with tags Antarctica, anti-communism, baby Trump, Donald Trump, elasticity, Falun Gong, Guadeloupe, guano, Guyane, hotel, La Réunion, Martinique, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, tariffs, The Epoch Times, trade deficits, Trump administration on April 19, 2025 by xi'an
While the decision to impose massive tariffs to handle trade deficits is either idiotic (as not addressing the reasons for said deficit) or Trump’s customary approach to negocoations, the figure of the increase is even absurder, as it it is exactly (some evaluation of) the country-specific trade deficit by the value of its exports to the US. Bon sang, mais c’est bien sûr!!! As put by Paul Krugman, “there’s so much wrong with this approach that it’s hard to know where to star.” Divided by two to add nonsense to the absurdity. And the White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai posted a math formula a wee bit too late after the reasoning had been spotted. Where elasticity conveniently cancels with “passthrough” (a concept I had never met before)!
Another degree of non-sense is reached when considering the tariffs differ between territories of the same country, like these Australian territories near Antarctica where no people live (unless they export penguin guano?!). In the case of France, oversea departments get differential treatments. For instance, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane and French Polynesia face only a 10% rise, while La Réunion get a 37% additional tariff(for exporting vanilla?!) and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, east of Newfoundland are imposed with a 50% new tariff! Since all these territories are part of France, separating their imports and exports from the mainland is making no sense whatsoever.
the amazing adventures of Kavalier & Clay [book review]
Posted in Books, Kids, Travel with tags Antarctica, antisemitism, Aryan ideology, Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, book review, Citizen Kane, comics, Czechoslovakia, Eleanor Roosevelt, emigration, Empire State building, Germany, golem, homophobia, Houdini, integration, Jotunheimen, Kefauver Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, Nazis, New York city, New York Society Library Book Award, New York World’s Fair, Orson Welles, Pearl Harbour, Prague, Pullitzer Prize for Fiction, Queen Maud, Rosa Luxemburg, Salvador Dali, super heroes, U-boats, United States of America, Will Eisner, World War II, WW II, Yiddish on August 2, 2024 by xi'an
After reading the (pretty good) Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, I found out this earlier book had won a Pullitzer prize for fiction and decided to give it a go. Which lasted for weeks as I found the book very slow paced, to the point of always falling asleep within a few pages. The pace sort of accelerated in the second half, sort of coïnciding with Pearl Harbour and the formal entry of the United States of America into the war. At the beginning it felt too much like a transposition of my former read and despite the multiple covariates with a positive coefficient (comics, Prague, the golem, Rosa Luxemburg, New York City, the silliness of the superhero concept, esp. when repeated week after week, the ambivalence of the very notion as well, when considering the closeness between Supermen and Hitler’s Übermensch), I had a hard time engaging with the story. Maybe due to the lengthy sentences and descriptions which, as I read later in a review, were intended to supplement the absence of visual representations that (obviously) come with a graphical novel. Maybe due to the millefeuille of literary styles and fields and of parallel stories with a myriad of characters and places.
“Besotted with language and brimming with pop culture, political relevance and bravura storytelling…” The New York Times
I clearly am a minority in enjoying the book so little. The Guardian put it within its 100 best books of the 21st Century. If in the second half. And so did the New York Times. In its 16th position. There is even a (inactive) website on the book! Actually, the massive injection within the actual history of America and Europa at these most tragic times makes the novel an epic, helped with a witty and mostly understated humour. There are indeed lots of actual facts and characters, the book deeply digs into the history of the time. While indirect snapshots of the unrolling Holocaust are ghastly, Both the sinking of the orphan boat (presumably inspired by the all too real attack on the City of Benares) and the Antarctica part during WW II are sheer fiction (despite a long-going myth of Nazi bases there). But a compelling part of the novel, paradoxically.
