Archive for Oregon
swimming the Seine (after the Aare, the Cher and the Willamette)
Posted in Running, Travel with tags Aare, Bern, Chenonceaux, Cher, Kumano Kodō, morning run, Notre-Dame-de-Paris, open water swimming, Oregon, outdoor swimming, Parc des Écrins, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, Paris 2024 Paralympics, pollution, Portland, rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, Seine, sewage, Ville de Paris, water pollution, Willamette, women's Olympic triathlon on July 29, 2025 by xi'an
make eugenics great again?!
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics with tags 1930's, anti-vaccine, antivaxers, autism, Brave New World, COVID-19, eugenics, heredity, HIV, Human Genetics, IQ test, Julian Huxley, MAGA, MAHA, Nature, NIH, Oregon, Portland, Ronald Fisher, sterilisation, The Eugenics Society, The Guardian, Trump administration, USAid on May 26, 2025 by xi'an
A most interesting (and ghastly) article in The Guardian by Portland writer Derek Beres on “Maga’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed“. It points out how significantly the Trump administration is influenced by (soft and not that soft) eugenics ideas. Starting with (the US Secretary of Health) Robert F Kennedy Jr’s MAHA (“make America healthy again”) movement that centres on “natural” selection of the fittest and healthiest members of the community, from his anti-vax positions to his insistence on health being a personal responsibility, to his denying the genetic roots of autism (or letting those impacted disappear from the gene pool), and to stopping NIH funding of research on HIV, vaccine hesitancy, vaccination rate disparities, and COVID-19, all pointers to this selection by (at best) passivity from the State.
Similarly, Elon Musk’s and Trump’s fascination with IQ tests and levels need not much arguing towards eugenism when recalling that IQ was intrinsically linked with eugenism (as for instance setting the IQ bar in many US States forced sterilisation programs that ran till the 1980’s). Same for the current natalist discourse that mimics the one of the earliest eugenists like Galton, Pearson and Fisher. Trump’s proposal of a baby bonus echoes 1930’s Fisher’s call for an allowance so “that the standard of living of the competent will rise, and that of the incompetent will fall”. And the defunding of USAid, Head Start, HHS and other programs that contribute to children health, nationally or internationally, follows the same furrow that the resulting (numerous) deaths and diseases will only impact the “unfit” part of their Brave New World.
a journal of the Pacific and Northwest tƿēnight
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags 10k, Africa, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, bagels, bakery, Barnes & Noble, book review, boulangerie, bread making, COVID-19, farmers' market, First Nations, frijoles, glacier, huckleberry, Journal of the Plague Year, JSM 2024, Miguel de Cervantes, Mount Baker, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Mount Hood, Netflix, Oregon, Pacific North West, Paris 2024 Olympics, Portland, ramen, Russian invasion, rye bread, Seattle, sequel, skillet, smoked salmon, spelt, Thai cuisine, Ukraine, USA, wheat, William Marx, William McIlvanney, wynn rune on September 7, 2024 by xi'an
Read both the first (1605) and the second (1615) books of Don Quixote along with the (William) Marx commentary (Un été avec Don Quichotte) over the PNW vacations, a delight in discovering how modern it is! Even modern enough to write a follow-up (II) and to initiate the meme that sequels are not as good as the original, although the parts where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza debate of their own characters in tome I are hilarious and the prologue of tome II made me discover a certain Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda had written a (poor) sequel of his own, published in 1614. As well as the detective novel The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney, set in Glasgow in 1975, which I enjoyed a lot (except for the lazy, easy, hurried ending), presumably due in part of the references to places near the U of G that sounded so familiar. The political aspects are more stringent than in the earlier book. (And those of his uncle.) And Gab’s Road to Freedom, of course! Also came back from a Sunday aft at Barnes & Noble, in NE Seattle, with a pile of books that threatened to overflow my luggage allowance!
Made frijoles negros over a rainy day in Mount Hood Village. As it takes a while to soften the black beans and then further simmer them to turn them into a yummy paste, this was the perfect opportunity! And I made enough to recook the dish several days in a row, improving each time! I also learned there how to cook with an iron skillet (found in the first airbnb cabin we rented), after rescuing (overcleaning?) the skillet from its greasy state and starting the fire alarm a few times (only frightening the nearby bear, I presume). Mount Hood Village where I bought some outanding smoked salmon from a local First Nations fisherman, with a long discussion on running (as I was wearing my Huckleberry 10k tee-shirt) As I had not time at all for cooking while at JSM in Portland, I gave into the opportunity to get great lunches at Hat Hei Belmont (advertising Thai levels of spicy that remained rather mild) and Kiboshi (red) Ramen (that fuelled a great training session the next morning). While near Mount Baker (with no true bakery on the radar!, as many “bakeries” I came across neither bake nor sell bread…), I baked our daily (whole wheat if not rye) bread with a spelt substitute I had brought from France and on the same bake made a first attempt at whole wheat plain bagels, which ended up eatable if on the hard side. (Blame the oven!)
And watched no Netflix or any other video during the entire PNW trip, mostly due to early sleep – early run schedules, followed by long hikes on most days, and on top of frequently checking the Olympics events in the (PNW) mornings. And of course due to meeting with (no enough) friends during JSM! (Leaving Paris during the Olympics was presumably a wise move in this respect as I would have otherwise spent most of my days there watching events!)
Portland murals [jatp]
Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags airbnb, American Statistical Association, ASA, homless people, jatp, Joint Statistical Meeting, JSM 2024, murals, Oregon, Pacific North West, Portland, United States of America, Willamette River on September 3, 2024 by xi'an
A river runs through it [jatp]
Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel with tags dusk, evening light, hiking trail, jatp, JSM 2024, Mount Hood, Norman MacLean, Oeeg, open water swimming, Oregon, Pacific North West, Portland, salmon, Salmon River, Spanish moss, sunset, USA, Welches on August 21, 2024 by xi'an
