Archive for England
off to Bristol
Posted in Statistics with tags Bristol, Clifton suspension bridge, COVID-19, England, FIMI 2024, functional inference, Greta Thunberg, lockdown, machine intelligence, machine learning, protest, UK, University of Bristol, workshop on March 24, 2024 by xi'an
yet another conference scam
Posted in Travel, University life with tags Bristol, Brunel, CIRM, conference, email, England, FIMI, functional inference, hotel reservation, Luminy, Marseiile, scam, University of Bristol, workshop on February 12, 2024 by xi'an
Within a few days of the online appearance of the programme of the Workshop on Functional Inference and Machine Intelligence (FIMI) at the University of Bristol, which I am attending, I received the following email about accommodation, which did not sound right despite the focus on the right conference at the right time. After contacting the organisers, it proved to be a scam. A similar thing happened a few months ago with our workshop at CIRM, when one participant was asked to pay for an hotel room that happened to be 100km away… Again taking advantage of a published list of participants to the workshop. There as well the participant found the email suspicious and contacted us.
From: BOOKINGS GTE <bookings@g-travelexperts.com> To: christian.robert@ceremade.dauphine.fr Subject: Accommodation in Bristol, England - March 25-27, 2024 - University of Bristol Dear Christian, For your upcoming conference visit to Bristol in March. Kindly provide your arrival and departure dates for us to finalize your reservation. Once confirmed, we will email you an invoice and an itinerary including detailed information about your booking. Your booking is fully flexible for alterations, modifications, or complete cancellations up to 14 days before your scheduled check-in date. Thanks, Contact the Global Travel Experts Team via our Call Centres: Our team is ready to assist.
Shane MacGowan (1957-2023)
Posted in Kids, Wines with tags Celtic music, Dirty Old Town, England, Gaelic, Guinness, Ireland, Irish nationalism, NeurIPS, punk rock, Salford, Shane MacGowan, Thomas Bayes, Tunbridge Wells, youtube on December 4, 2023 by xi'an
The punk singer Shane MacGowan has died a few days ago. He formed the fantastic Pogues Celtic punk band in the early 1980’s, mixing punk raw energy with Celtic tunes and instruments, and Irish nationalism. (In true punk fashion, the name of the band come from the Gaelic póg mo thóin that I let readers check for translation! In the same spirit, his earlier band was called the Nips with no connection with the Neural Information Processing Systems conference! However, he could have claimed a connection with Bayes since he was raised in Tunbridge Wells.) His early death is sadly unsurprising given his lifelong issue with alcohol, which started as a young boy when he started drinking Guinness… (As a minor trivia, the Dirty Old Town song was originally written about Salford, near Manchester, England, although adopted by several Irish bnds.)
Covent’ska [jatp]
Posted in Statistics with tags 1970s, bus station, Coventry, England, jatp, Korean food, Madness, Midlands, Ska, The Specials, University of Warwick on November 5, 2023 by xi'an
the incredible shrinking pools
Posted in Kids, Running, Travel with tags England, Milano, NHS, Oaxaca, Oxford, Paris, Public Health England, swimming pool, The Guardian on February 10, 2023 by xi'an
I was reading an opinion piece in The Guardian about the sorry state of public pools in England. With more and more closing for lack of proper funding, this being aggravated by the explosion in heating costs, as pools are excluded from governmental help. And the resulting impact on public health (and the NHS), since providing one less opportunity for exercising. And on general safety, since nowadays less children can swim… Which reminded me of the difficulty to find a pool in Oxford and Oaxaca. And of the cost of entering one in Roma and Milano. And of the relative accessibility of French pools, at least in cities, as shown by the estimation that 95% of the French high school students can swim to some extent.
