a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year

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]

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.)

ABC in Svalbard, April 12-13 2021

This post is a very preliminary announcement that Jukka Corander, Judith Rousseau and myself are planning an ABC in Svalbard workshop in 2021, on 12-13 April, following the “ABC in…” franchise that started in 2009 in Paris… It would be great to hear expressions of interest from potential participants towards scaling the booking accordingly. (While this is a sequel to the highly productive ABCruise of two years ago, between Helsinki and Stockholm, the meeting will take place in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, and participants will have to fly there from either Oslo or Tromsø, Norway, As boat cruises from Iceland or Greenland start later in the year. Note also that in mid-April, being 80⁰ North, Svalbard enjoys more than 18 hours of sunlight and that the average temperature last April was -3.9⁰C with a high of 4⁰C.) The scientific committee should be constituted very soon, but we already welcome proposals for sessions (and sponsoring, quite obviously!).

and it only gets worse…

“An internal Interior Department memo has proposed lifting restrictions on exploratory seismic studies in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a possible first step toward opening the pristine wilderness area to oil and gas drilling.” NYT, Sept 17, 2017

“The Trump administration opened the door to allowing more firearms on federal lands. It scrubbed references to “L.G.B.T.Q. youth” from the description of a federal program for victims of sex trafficking. And, on the advice of religious leaders, it eliminated funding to international groups that provide abortion.” NYT, Sept 11, 2017

“On Aug. 18, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine received an order from the Interior Department that it stop work on what seemed a useful and overdue study of the health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining.” NYT, Sept 9, 2017

“Last month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dissolved its 15-member climate science advisory committee, a panel set up to help translate the findings of the National Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for businesses, governments and the public.” NYT, Sept 9, 2017

“Climate contrarians, like Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, don’t understand how scientific research works. They are basically asking for a government handout to scientists to do what scientists are should already be doing. They are also requesting handouts for scientists who have been less successful in research and publications – a move antithetical to the survival of the fitness approach that has formed the scientific community for decades. ” The Guardian, Aug 31, 2017

Ellesmere Island [jatp]