content which deviates from the norm [from Pest county]

The Cairo Affair [book review]

After reading the Tourist trilogy, I decided to embark upon another spy novel by Steinhauer and took this book to India as another “emergency” book. Meaning as a way to escape delays and waits during our travel. While this is not a major change from the above trilogy, which I really liked, The Cairo Affair reads well and thus fits its purpose. Some of the appeal of the book is its immersion in very recent geopolitical events in Libya (far from over by now) and Egypt. (I presume there are a lot of other spy novels taking advantage of these major shifts, so this is not a major incentive for the book!) Another appeal is the connection with places I visited as a (real) tourist, from Budapest, to Croatia, to Cairo, even though I got a much more fragmented picture of the latter in the few days I spent there. While the underlying plot ends up being very thin (spoiler?!), I also liked the extreme ambiguity of the main character, whose motivations are never really revealed, possibly unknown even to herself. This major aspect of the novel makes for shortcomings on the realism plane. Worth a plane ride, definitely.

Séminaire Probabilités, Décision, Incertitude

Last Friday, I gave a seminar at the Séminaire Probabilités, Décision, Incertitude, which is run by IHφST, the institute for history and philosophy of sciences and techniques of the Université of Paris 1. I decided to present my Budapest EMS 2013 talk at a slower pace and by cutting the technical parts. And adding a few historical titbits. It took me two hours and I enjoyed the experience. I cannot tell for the audience, who seemed a bit wary of mathematical disgressions, but I got comments on the Lindley paradox and on the contents of Ari Spanos’ Who’s afraid… Here are the slides again, in case Slideshare freezes your browser as it does mine…

As a side anecdote, the seminar took place in an old building in the core of the Saint-Germain des Prés district. The view from the seminar room on the busy streets of this district was quite eye-catching! (Not as distracting as the one from a room in Ca’ Foscari where I gave a seminar a few years ago facing the Venezia Laguna and windsurfers practising…)

snapshot from Budapest (#5)

snapshot from Budapest (#4)