A long article in The Guardian on how the island of Haida Gwaii along the northern coast of British Columbia managed to turn resistance to logging into a global success in nature and culture preservation. Our original holiday plans last August were to spend half our time there. But the travel costs were alas such that we ended up in Prince Rupert, 100 km east across Hecate Strait. A mere seven-hour ferry crossing!
Archive for ferry
Athlii Gwaii
Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, Travel with tags British Columbia, Canada, ecosystem, ferry, First Nations, Gwaii Haanas agreement, Haida culture, Haida Gwaii, Hecate Strait, Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, island, logging, Port Clements, Prince Rupert, The Guardian on December 12, 2023 by xi'anXing the Mekong River [jatp]
Posted in Statistics with tags Ben Tre, boats, day trip, ferry, Ho Chi Minh City, jatp, Mekong Delta, Mekong River, My Tho, Tien Giang, tourism, Vietnam on July 20, 2023 by xi'an
JSM 2015 [day #1]
Posted in Books, R, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags American Statistical Association, Bainbridge Island, Bayesian computation, delayed acceptance, ferry, Firefly MC, Harvard University, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, ISBA, JSM 2015, MCMC algorithms, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, Omiros Papaspiliopoulos, Seattle, traffic predictions, Uber on August 10, 2015 by xi'an
This afternoon, at JSM 2015, in Seattle, we had the Bayesian Computation I and II sessions that Omiros Papaspiliopoulos and myself put together (sponsored by IMS and ISBA). Despite this being Sunday and hence having some of the participants still arriving, the sessions went on well in terms of audience. Thanks to Mark Girolami’s strict presidency, we were so much on time in Bayesian Computation I that we had 20mn left for a floor discussion that turned into a speakers’ discussion! All talks were of obvious interest for MCMCists, but Ryan Adams’ presentation on firefly Monte Carlo got me thinking for most of the afternoon on different ways of exploiting the existence of a bound on the terms composing the target. With little to show by the end of the afternoon! On the mundane side, I was sorry to miss Pierre Jacob, who was still in France due to difficulties in obtaining a working visa for Harvard (!), and surprised to see Dawn Woodard wearing a Uber tee-shirt, until she told us she was now working at Uber! Which a posteriori makes sense, given her work on traffic predictions!
crossing the Daintree river
Posted in pictures, Travel with tags Daintree National Park, Daintree River, ferry, rainforest, sunset on August 22, 2012 by xi'an
Xi'an's Og 