Archive for the Wines Category
vendanges tardives
Posted in Kids, pictures, Wines with tags Alsace, French wines, Gewurtzstraminer, late harvest wine, vendanges tardives on July 20, 2017 by xi'an
Midsummer dinner at Emmanuel College
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel, University life, Wines with tags Bourgogne, Cambridge colleges, Chassagne-Montrachet, Emmanuel College, England, Fareoe Islands, French wines, Sauternes, Shropshire cheese, skuas on July 20, 2017 by xi'an
It just so happened that I was in Cambridge for the Midsummer dinner last Saturday at Emmanuel College and that a good friend, who happens to be a Fellow of that College, invited me to the dinner. Making the second dinner in a Cambridge college in a week, after the workshop dinner at Trinity. Except the one at Emmanuel was a much more formal affair, with dress requirement (!) and elaborate dishes. The wines were also exceptional, with a remarkable 2002 Chassagne-Montrachet.
While the dinning room (or whatever it is called) is beautiful, it is also rather noisy and I could not engage in conversation with anyone but my immediate neighbours, but still managed to have a fairly interesting exchange with a biologist studying skuas on the Faroe Islands. The end of the meal was announced by a loud clap and Graces in Latin, followed by cheese and port (and a fabulous Sauternes!, not in the wine list) in an equally beautiful room, where it was easier to talk with my neighbours. All in all, a unique evening and opportunity for a glimpse into College traditions! [And a first wine post for the 20th of the month!!]
BimPressioNs [BNP11]
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life, Wines with tags École Normale Supérieure, Bayesian nonparametrics, BNP11, empirical likelihood, French cheese, Hamiltonian, IHP, Noel Cressie, NPR, Paris on June 29, 2017 by xi'an
While my participation to BNP 11 has so far been more at the janitor level [although not gaining George Casella’s reputation on NPR!] than at the scientific one, since we had decided in favour of the least expensive and unstaffed option for coffee breaks, to keep the registration fees at a minimum [although I would have gladly gone all the way to removing all coffee breaks!, if only because such breaks produce much garbage], I had fairly good chats at the second poster session, in particular around empirical likelihoods and HMC for discrete parameters, the first one based on the general Cressie-Read formulation and the second around the recently arXived paper of Nishimura et al., which I wanted to read. Plus many other good chats full stop, around terrific cheese platters!
This morning, the coffee breaks were much more under control and I managed to enjoy [and chair] the entire session on empirical likelihood, with absolutely fantastic talks from Nils Hjort and Art Owen (the third speaker having gone AWOL, possibly a direct consequence of Trump’s travel ban).
Zinfandel de l’Arjolle
Posted in Wines with tags French wines, Paris, zinfandel on June 20, 2017 by xi'an
a bar for MCMC algorithms [jatp]
Posted in pictures, Travel, Wines with tags bar, Cabourg, France, Hastings, jatp, Normandy, weekend, wine bar on June 8, 2017 by xi'an
stéphane carbone [14]
Posted in pictures, Travel, Wines with tags andouille de Vire, Buddha's hand, Caen, Mas Amiel, MIchelin starred restaurant, Normandy, sauvignon d'or, Stéphane Carbone, Venere black rice on May 28, 2017 by xi'an
Rundlestone Session
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags ale, alpine climbing, Banff, Banff International Research Station, beer, BIRS, Canadian Rockies, Mount Rundle, Rundlestone, The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company on May 20, 2017 by xi'an
