Hidden Giant Art in the Wilderness of Copenhagen

This hidden giant art (and its implementation) is so awesome!

(Tip of the cap to Christopher Dempsey.)

What Happens in Bielefeld Stays in Bielefeld

I am off to a conference in Bielefeld, in search of an existence proof!

German Caricature Map from 1914

This German caricature map from the onset of World War I is fancy.

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Maps.)

Pictures from Barcelona

Here are a bunch of pictures from Barcelona from my recent trip.

What Happens in Nice Stays in Nice

I am going to Nice, France (near Côte d'Azur) for the Transdisciplinary Extreme Risk Modelling Workshop at Université Côte d'Azur.

Today's Theme Song: "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

The UK had the vote on Brexit today, and there is an obvious theme song (and a clash of opinions too!).

I posted it on Facebook this morning, and Mariano Beguerisse Díaz subsequently tweeted about it. (We had already discussed the apt theme song several weeks ago, so I knew what I wanted to post this morning for quite a while.)

I am including Mariano's tweet in this post.

The official soundtrack of this day, courtesy of The Clash https://t.co/qFrRAxqxt4 Cc @masonporter #Brexit

— Mariano Beguerisse (@marianobegue) June 23, 2016

Update: The UK has voted to leave the European Union.

Tales from the ArXiv: "First-level NUTS of the European Union"

I can't make this stuff up. There is something called "First-level NUTS of the European Union". The acronym NUTS stands for "Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics", and it seems that there are three different levels of European NUTS.

I found out about this from the paper The winter day as a constraint for human activity in Western Europe, which I saw in an ArXiv mailing this morning.

Now where did I put my nut cracker? :)

Tweeting Cats During the Brussels Lockdown

This is spectacular! Well played, Belgium. Very well played.

Pictures and Vampires in Paris

Here are my initial pictures from Paris from today and last night. (Most of them are from today.)

Notice the Theatre du Chaos on Rue Henri Poincaré. I approve! The street is a dinky little residential street, and I was very pleased indeed to see this local theatre in one of its corner. It made me really happy.

I just noticed on Google Maps that Paris has a Vampire Museum not far from Rue Henri Poincaré. Too bad I only noticed that after walking all the way back instead of when I was there a couple of hours ago... I think there is a decent chance it's not open today anyway, but let's see if I can figure out from here when it's open. You can also find some information on another page from the Atlas Obscura website

And here is how to make an appointment to visit the museum (it's by appointment only). I have to admit that I am very tempted to do try to make one, but I would rather look around in there without talking to someone while I am doing it, so I'm likely not going to do it. This is the type of thing I'd like to go and do with a friend. :)

What Happens in Barcelona Stays in Barcelona

Well, I finally made it to Barcelona. I have been meaning to go for several years, and I even was planning to go to a conference here a few years ago (but I was only given a poster presentation and --- under the circumstances of the initial e-mail response to my abstract when I submitted it --- it felt like a bait-and-switch, so I declined it). Now I am here for the 2013 European Conference on Complex Systems and for its associated satellite meetings. I have never gone to this conference series before, though some of my collaborators have previously presented our joint work at ECCS conferences. I already ran into Alex Vespignani at the hotel check-in desk, so I know I'm in the right place!

I was tempted to introduce this post with a Crystallian (as in Billy) fake European accent as a nod to a certain oral report I did in 7th grade on the city of Barcelona. The school year was 1988-89, and we chose Barcelona as our city on which to report because of the 1992 Summer Olympic Games for a presentation in Andrea Ambler's class. I think it was my idea --- not too creative, I admit. In our oral presentation (and in other presentations on other European cities), every single person used the same fake European accent --- no matter which European city was covered in their report. It was kind of ridiculous. (Is it too late to apologize for this past transgression? Now that I have several European friends, I feel like I owe them a retrospective apology for that oral report.) And for those of you who don't know what that "European" accent sounds like, let's just say that it's simply marvelous. In summary: My group's 7th-grade report on a European city was on Barcelona, our collective notion of a European accent (for all countries) was Billy Crystal, and this series of oral reports must have been extremely painful to watch (and, especially, to listen to) for anybody in the room who had any knowledge at all about Europe. Those were the days.

Update (7/01/14): I think I forgot to post my pictures from Barcelona.

What Happens in Tarragona Stays in Tarragona

In about 1 hour, I will be boarding a coach that will take a 3.5 hour trip to Stansted Airport, from which will fly via RyanAir to Barcelona, at which point I will be picked up by my host Alex Arenas to go to Tarragona. I will be visiting his group there until Wednesday night, when I will take a flight that will get me back to Stansted airport at about 10:30 pm, and then I will get a bus just after midnight (when I will be letting it all hang out, of course) and get back to Oxford at around 4am. Remind me why I decided to do the Stansted/RyanAir combination? I made sure to buy some very strong medicine to deal with my severe motion sickness.

As some of you might know, I have been having a tough time in my personal life at the moment, and in fact this is the worst I have felt since summer-fall 2007. That was the era of She Who Shall Not Be Named, so any of you who know what happened then will realize that I'm feeling positively awful these days. This situation, which I will not discuss (but for which I am talking to a friend for pep talks and advice), is a rather different one---and in particular, it is one that I expect will ultimately have a positive outcome, even though things are difficult right now and I have my moments when it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, Spain is supposed to be a place where one can forget one's troubles, right? It's too bad that having a fling is not my style (it's not even remotely my style), but I have to admit that I wonder if that might be one of the healthier things I could do? It seemed to have beneficial effects in this movie.

At the minimum, I will enjoy the academic interactions and the opportunity to practice my Spanish.

Thoughts?

Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Critical Condition

On 25 October 2010, the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Vienna was informed without prior warning that its funding by the Austrian Ministry of Science will be terminated with effect from 1 January 2011. It might not be too late to reverse this decision---and I really don't like the idea of something like this on that type of ridiculous time scale---so take a look at a letter circulating among mathematicians and maybe try to help mathematics in Austria.

Mapping Europe According to Stereotypes

Here are some maps of Europe (and surrounding environs) according to stereotypes. This is priceless.

(Tip of the cap to Karen Daniels.)

Update (9/27/10): Mariano Beguerrise Díaz also points out the Tory Atlas of the World, which is also pretty amusing.

Reducing the Eurocracy for Research Funding in Europe

Well, at least we can try. Here is a petition to sign whose goal is to do that. Assuming that you believe in reducing the amount of red tape to try to get research funding in Europe, please sign this petition.

What happens in Louvain stays in Louvain

Tomorrow I am going to take my first trip to Belgium. I'll be visiting the networks group in Louvain. The plan is to give a talk and ideally to also formulate a new project with the locals.

Belgium will be my third and likely last new country of 2009. The other two were Spain and Poland. I have invitations to visit Singapore (from a scientist) and Germany (one from a friend and one from a scientist), but I have not made official arrangements to visit either yet. I'm sure that some currently unknown opportunities will also open up for 2010.

By the way: Damn! I like waffles!

Poland so far

I've been a bit silent for a few days, so here are some of the things going on in Wroclaw. I'll post pictures later (aside from the ones that are already in the photoblog) once I return to Oxford on Sunday.

1. I found a restaurant named "PRL", which you can already see in my photoblog.

2. Before I even arrived, I had it in mind to get some good perogis, and this trip has not disappointed. I have twice gotten beef perogis---on the first night where they unexpectedly came with bacon bits and last night at a Jewish restaurant called "Sarah" (though I was unable to find the mezuzah).

3. My hotel's restaurant was a Chinese restaurant, which I did not expect. I ate there one night when I was feeling lazy, and I was awarded with an epic fail.

4. Bicycles are big in this town, as are walking down.

5. Another thing that is huge here are the small statues of gnomes. I have been told that there are over a hundred of them, but a blog entry with an excellent description of their origin incorrectly claims that there are over 15. (Some of the students here claim to have taken pictures of over 20 of them.) You can find pictures of some of them on this website. I've taken pictures of two of them, and I will post them in my Wroclaw photo album.

6. I found a really nice hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse where I have been getting iced lattes and nice pastries, chilling out, and reading.

7. I also found a decent dessert place, which had a really nice environment right outside the shop on Sunday morning before other people showed up with their kids. I was outside with a blended coffee drink (this was before I found the other place, which I like much better for coffee) and was reading and enjoying the weather. I noticed some pigeons with a neat flocking pattern. Whenever the pigeons were disturbed, they would fly up from the ground and then they would make one or two cycles of a consistent size, and then they would return to their feast. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a good picture of this. However, I was wondering why there was usually one cycle and on occasion two (and to a lesser extent about the specific, consistent size of the cycle). When I was sitting there, it made me think of some lazy weekend mornings playing chess with Vito Dai outside of a coffee place---Vito with his tea and me with my coffee. I really felt the urge to be playing chess at that moment.

8. The 'old town' (marketplace) area is really cool---there are a lot of neat restaurants, places to sit, an awesome fountain, a plaza where live music could easily be done, etc.

9. Radiohead apparently is having a concert (or has had a concert) here during my trip. Leonard Cohen played in Vienna while I was there, and I slightly regret being lazy and not going to the concert. (I was feeling rather tired and a bit lazy at the time.)

10. Many of the churches here (unsurprisingly) have very similar architectural styles to each other.

11. Naturally, I got horribly lost while trying to find the university for the first time on Sunday. That was inevitable. Because of this and my prior explorations, I did a ton of walking on Sunday and my feet are still hurting a bit as a result of it. After lots of circling, finding my way in the wrong part of town, and going back to the hotel, I finally made it to the university and I even took a reasonable route (starting from my second time at the hotel, so ignoring/pruning the long closed-loop excursion)---although not the one that I had initially attempted. I got slightly lost again on the way back---though I quickly realized that I was on the route that I had attempted initially. It evidently got completely foiled by just one epic fail of a decision on that particular street. I knew where I was because I noticed the "W. Kruk" store (though I later found another one of those even closer to the hotel) that I had marked in my head earlier in the day because it made me think of the baseball player John Kruk. In general, the way I follow directions doesn't rely on cardinal directions because I get disoriented really easily---it takes me several days of being in a new city to do a decent job of where north is, and then if the sun is in my eyes, I go all deer-in-headlights and my internal compass just goes completely haywire---so I rely on "landmarks" that I have noted for some reason (large or interesting buildings, prominent signs, or whatever else) and also relative directions and distances a la logo. Ah well, I got back without any real delay.

12. One of the modelling week problems is how to climb (by foot) a mountain. It uses data that comie from a mountain by the name of "Wank" (yes, that is apparently the real name of the mountain). So the problem then becomes how to climb Mount "Wank". (It's not quite "Climbing the Mountain of Conflict", but it will do.) Another problem is called "Improving the Efficiency of Prick-tests", which I think could use a better name.

13. Food is extremely cheap here (though not at the level of Taiwan). My meat perogis with bacon bits + a drink + a tip cost me 35 Polish zloty, which amounts to roughly 7.5 pounds. My meat perogis + a drink last night + a tip cost me 20 zloty.

14. The first restaurant that I've now mentioned a couple of times served some food in tinfoil that was shaped like a bird. It reminded me of R.J.'s---may that restaurant rest in peace!---though in this case it wasn't for leftovers being taken home. I definitely felt the pangs of nostalgia when I saw that.

15. I had dinner with some of the students on Monday night. Among the crowd were 3 of the 4 Oxford students attending the meeting (so, along with me, we had all of us except one person) and a few students from other places. The waiter was facetiously trying to get the women among us to order vodka. One of them ordered "half a liter of water", and the waiter pretended to misinterpret: "Half a liter of vodka?"

16. I was using my digital camera to get screenshots of whiteboards to help with the note-taking.

17. My students worked really hard and did an excellent job. The problem I gave them to study was ranking American football teams, and my goal was for them to come up with a different way of doing it than I had done in my prior research. (After a couple of days, I showed them what we had done.)

What happens in the Motherland stays in the Motherland

Tomorrow I am taking my first trip to Poland, which is the country where all my grandparents were born.* (Hence, I guess it's the Grandmotherland rather than the Motherland.) I am going to be an instructor in a mathematical modelling week in Wroclaw, which is not pronounced in a manner anywhere close to how it's spelled and which alas is nowhere close to any of the places where my grandparents are from. Because I am an instructor, and apparently need to be present both with my students and in meetings simultaneously during a couple of the days (I still haven't figured out how I'm going to manage this), escaping for a day to check those places out is not even remotely an option. Hopefully I'll be able to do that on another occasion, but I already some some interesting facts just by getting the names of places and looking them up on wikipedia, so I'll check things out in more detail online later. I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to get some good latkas, kreplach, and matzah ball soup while I'm in Poland. :) We shall see.

Also, Poland will become the 8th different European country that I have visited (counting Ireland and Great Britain as European countries, because to an American they are such). I have invitations to visit Belgium and Germany, so those are the most likely candidates for me to visit next. (I also have an invitation to visit Singapore, though I'll really need to think about what timing will be good for that visit and I'd like to try to drop by and hang with friends even though the invitation is an academic one. Hence, there is some nontrivial coordination involved. The invitation to Belgium is also academic, and I have both academic and non-academic invitations for Germany.) Belgium will mostly like be the next country overall because the discussed plan was to try to get there this fall.

* Some of the places where they were born are no longer actually part of Poland.