Archive for pop culture

a journal of the chaos, conquest, war, fried meals, and death year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 30, 2024 by xi'an

Read Charles de Lint’s Jack, The Giant-Killer, which is just as terrible as it sounds!  The only redeeming feature is that it takes place in Ottawa, Canada, where the author lives, as I could relate to the places of down-town Ottawa mentioned therein. Otherwise, a terrible book inspired from classical folk tales, with an unpleasant undertone about homeless people… Can’t see at all why this book was recommended in one of Tor’s tribunes on forgotten classics or something like that.

Cooked a variety of spicy stir-fries while staying at a Warwick maths house with Josh and Stan two weeks ago, Josh adding the sweet-potato pancakes, which made the mini-nans somewhat superfluous. The common colour theme came from abusing the curry dispenser. Also had a great Greek mezze dinner in Pointe Rouge, Marseille, to celebrate the Marseille-Cassis race. (The place was a wee bit too popular, though, patronised the same evening by some actors of the local soap opera, as well as a group that sounded like a hen-party.)

Watched the first ½ hour of Shirkers, a pseudo-documentary about a movie made twenty years earlier by three young women in Singapore. Very original, especially for the delve into the 1990’s Singapore pop culture. And the fanzines that reminded me of my teenage years. No wonder it won the Sundance Film Festival  documentary award. Also tried Season 2 of Hellbound, but could not find the slightest excitement to even complete the first episode…

salut, c’est Lenoir !

Posted in Books, Kids, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2024 by xi'an

The death of Claude Villers a few days ago, a mythical radio presenter, reminded me of Feedback, the fabulous rock and pop show of his accomplice Bernard Lenoir on France Inter, to which I listened most evenings while in high school then uni, with live concerts like Joy Division’s and my religiously taping my favourite groups on cassettes. Until it got terminated. He returned to the national public radio for Black Sessions / C’est Lenoir, with a memorable studio concert of The Cure in 2004. Chapeau, Lenoir!

francescoverdose [Jorge does Massilia]

Posted in pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on November 9, 2023 by xi'an

Johnnysteria

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , on December 6, 2017 by xi'an

Monty Hall closes the door

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2017 by xi'an

Among much more dramatic news today, I learned about Monty Hall passing away, who achieved long lasting fame among probabilists for his TV game show leading to the Monty Hall problem, a simple conditional probability derivation often leading to arguments because of the loose wording of the conditioning event. By virtue of Stigler’s Law, the Monty Hall game was actually invented earlier, apparently by the French probabilist Joseph Bertrand, in his Calcul des probabilités. The New York Times article linked with the image points out the role of outfits with the game participants, towards being selected by the host, Monty Hall. And that one show had a live elephant behind a door, instead of a goat, elephant which freaked out..!