Tierras Centro Americanas [journal of the NYC weekend]

Upon my arrival at JFK, Queens, Andrew took me to have unbelievable tortillas in this Guatemaltec restaurant, soft and yummy, almost like pancakes! Along with great food altogether. We also had a pleasant stroll walking through Queens’ lively Jamaica district. Including coming upon a just extinguished fire in a row of shops! On the opposite, I did not see much of New Brunswick, apart from walking by the Harvest Moon brewery where I got a beer (and a tee-shirt) on my earlier visit there.

Read Truthwitch, another disappointment in the series (of recent books), as the universe building could have been great (despite being heavily inspired from Western Europe geography and culture, and in particular of Venezia. Again, I presume I was missing the YA label when I first picked this book! Scenario is rather terrible, full of last second rescues, new and convenient forms of magical powers, while interactions about characters are artificial and predictable, definitely not recommended. (And there are five books in the series!)

Watched The Silent Sea a short Korean TV serie taking place mostly in a Korean infected base on the Moon. While trying to solve the water crisis on a drying Earth (looking red from the Moon). The ending is quite disappointing while the original idea was most appealing. The science (fiction) behind the story is however terrible. (E.g., never use guns in space! And why would astronauts rely on cheap, handheld, lamplights to explore dark tunnels?! And how can you hide stealthy visits to a Moon basis from Earth?! &tc.)

New York New York [jatp]

riddle of the week

The Riddler of April 1 offered this simple question:

start with the number 1 and then try to reach a target number through a series of steps. For each step, you can always choose to double the number you currently have. However, if the number happens to be one (1) more than an odd multiple of 3, you can choose to “reduce” — that is, subtract 1 and then divide by 3. What is the smallest positive integer one cannot reach this way?

Which I turned into R steps (while waiting for flight AF19 to Paris)

  while((!(x-1)%%3)&((x-1)%%6)){
    oor[2*x]TRUE
    oor[x<-(x-1)%/%3]=TRUE}

but running an exhaustive search till 10⁸ did not spot any missing integer… Maybe an April fool joke (as the quick riddle was asking for the simplest representation of (x-a)(x-b)…(x-z)…!)

cost(s) of living

Yesterday, Andrew posted an announcement for a postdoc position in Paris, at the national medical research institute (INSERM) on Bayesian approaches to high throughput genetic analyses using nonlinear mixed effect models and the comments went ballistic about the low salary attached to this postdoctoral position, namely 2600€ – 3000€. As I have already commented on the rather stale clichés on French academics, let me briefly reflect on the limitations of comparing 3000€ a month in Paris with say $5000 a month in New York City. (Which seems to be at the high end of US postdoc salaries.) First, the posted salaries are “gross” but the French one already excludes the 25% taxes paid by the employer. I do not know if this is the case in the US. Second, comparing absolute values makes little sense imho. Even if the purchasing power parity is about one between France and the US, I think the long term cost of living [as opposed to visiting for a week] is lower here than there. If only because the amount is similar to, if higher than, the starting academic salaries and around the median salary. Interestingly, the same appears to be true for the US, if less favourably for the postdocs there.

say their names [a New Yorker cover]