Archive for Arctic
Silarsuaq sikullu kisimi naagalavoq
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, Travel with tags Agent Orange, Arctic, baby Trump, colonialism, Denmark, EU, European Union, Greenland, Greenlandic language, imperialism, Inuits, Kalaallit Nunaat, missionaries, North, Roman Catholic Church, self-governance, Thule culture on January 28, 2025 by xi'an
Nature snapshots
Posted in Books with tags Arctic, brain cells, Canadian politics, China, COVID-19, de-exctinction, Ecuador, Erasmus, frogs, Hubei, Labour, Nature, postdoctoral position, seafood, Siberia, Taiwan, Tasmania, thyalacine, UK elections 2024, UK politics, UK universities, University of Melbourne, woolly mammoth, Wuhan on September 5, 2024 by xi'an
Some quick breakfast reads from the 11 July issue of Nature (the one with the frog cover!),
- A tribune on the Canadian example of advocating for graduate and postdoc pay raises, with a success last April. It would prove difficult to achieve in a French academic landscape when postdocs here earn about as much as starting lecturers, whose salary is notoriously low.
- A news article on the UK elections Labour landslide impact on national scientific landscape, with the former Conservatives’ government Chief Adviser and former Head of Research at GlaxoSmithKline and governmental speaker during the COVID crisis appointed as science minister (how many countries enjoy a science ministry?!) But Labour has shown no inclination to back up (from the former stance) on EU collaborations (no Erasmus!), restrictions on students visa that induced a 40% drop in overseas enrolments, or funding of UK universities (whose finances are in a terrible state). Followed by a call from five UK researchers to “give UK science the overhaul it urgently needs¨.
- A paper about identifying brain cells attached to a word’s meaning (with an example opposing son and Sun that reminded me of the confusion I had with the Taïwanese movie A Sun!)
- An another paper on an analysis of January 2020 data collected in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, with three virus identified. But inconclusive about the origin of the virus.
- A work column on the challenges of conservation ecology, with trade-offs between intervention and inaction for endangered species (with the nugget of information that Ecuador gives nature constitutional rights).
- And a back page on the TIGRR lab [great acronym!] in Melbourne attempt at resurrecting the extinct thyalacine (or Tasmanian tiger) from historical specimens, not mentioning the involvement of a biotech company, Colossal Biosciences, also involved in recreating mammoths. Which sounds counterproductive beyond the bioengineering feat, esp. with regard to the mammoths, which would be woolly (!) unsuited to the current World (except in some remote corner of Siberia?!) and its climate. When considering how challenging protecting the few remaining African elephants is, imaging free roaming mammoths that would not come to clash with human activities beggars belief.
BayesComp²⁵ in Singapore
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel with tags Arctic, BayesComp 2025, Bayesian computing, conference, equator, ISBA, Levi, National University Singapore, NUS, Singapore on August 28, 2023 by xi'an
a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags Ankou, Arctic, Barnes & Noble, BBQ, BD, Biometrika, book review, books, Breton, Brittany, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, fantasy, film review, flight, horror story, Journal of the Plague Year, kimchi, kindle, Korean food, Naomi Rapace, pandemics, pro-democracy protesters, real wood barbecue, restaurant review, Russian invasion, skater, soju, The Guar, Ukraine, Vercors on December 9, 2022 by xi'an
Read two successive books about seeking lost sisters, The Last House on Needless Street and Second Sister, after finishing the third book in a row involving a dead god, aptly named Three parts dead. This third one was rather enjoyable, thanks to the world construction, except for a blah ending. The first one, by Catriona Ward, is perplexing, complex and frankly a bit stretched in its gradual exposition of a multiple personality (disorder) patient. The “horror” side never really set for me, which is fine as it never does. Furthermore, this is the very first book I ever read where I saw a few words (correctly) written in Breton, as well as a thread with the Breton myth of ar Ankou, the local Death personification. Kudos for that! The second one, a physical book that I picked rather instinctively / hurriedly in a Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia is a thriller set in Hong Kong. Despite a bit too much of infodump on internet (in)security and hacking, and some caricaturesque sides, incl. the final coup de théâtre!, I enjoyed it as a page-turner. (But I now wonder if I am not getting prejudiced against Kindle books..!) Except for the anti-protest paragraph. Also read a nice BD, Les Animaux Dénaturés, borrowed from Andrew, which is an adaptation the 1952 book by Vercors, that I saw eons ago as a theatre play. The interrogation on what constitutes humanity (vs. simianity) is the driving force of the story, but it is somewhat marred by the killing of a newborn child that seems to negate the whole fight of the main characters.
Thanks to a short (train) visit to Coventry, I stayed overnight in the center of the city and enjoyed a fabulous dinner with friends at Jinseon Korean BBQ Restaurant, recently reviewed by Jay Rayner in The Guardian. Marinated thin slices of beef, pork, and lamb almost immediately cooked on the white hot (ring) coals, along rice and plenty of kimchi and hot sauce. And a sip of soju. Not an everyday fare, for sure, but quite delightful (and even more as my single true meal over two days!)
Watched a fraction of Swedish Black Crab, with Naomi Rapace playing the central character, but despite potential connections with the current survival war of Ukraine against the Russian terror, I quickly lost interest in the very shallow plot and in the accumulation of unrealistic scenes and heavily programmed eliminations of the characters (sorry for the spoiler!). For one thing, expert skaters skating 100km should not take days to cover the distance. For another, a military commando operating in the far North should wear appropriate clothes, not a sweater and a loose scarf! Luckily enough, I have had no screen nearby [me] to distract me on my round trip flight to NYC from reviewing Biometrika submissions. (The flight back to Paris amazingly took less than 6 hours, thanks to extremely strong tail winds.)
ABC in Svalbard [news #1]
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags 78⁰, ABC, ABC in, ABC in Svalbard, Approximate Bayesian computation, Arctic, huddle of walruses, IMS, ISBA, likelihood-free inference, Longyearbyen, mirror workshop, North, Norway, scientific committee, Spitzberg, Svalbarði, Svalbard, The Morse Bask, walrus, webpage on March 23, 2020 by xi'an
We [Julien and myself] are quite pleased to announce that
- the scientific committee for the workshop has been gathered
- the webpage for the workshop is now on-line (with a wonderful walrus picture whose author we alas cannot identify)
- the workshop is now endorsed by both IMS and ISBA, which will handle registration (to open soon)
- the reservation of hotel rooms will be handled by Hurtigruten Svalbard through the above webpage (this is important as we already paid deposit for a certain number of rooms)
- we are definitely seeking both sponsors and organisers of mirror workshops in more populated locations
As an item of trivia, let me recall that Svalbard stands for the archipelago, while Spitsbergen is the name of the main island, where Longyearbyen is located. (In Icelandic, Svalbarði means cold rim or cold coast.)
