I first got attracted by this book thanks to its beautiful cover (in a Seattle bookstore last year)! The book is an aggregate of three stories, loosely related around the themes of altruism and disastrous good intentions. I did not like the first story, about the disintegration of a gay couple by ways of (OCD) psychiatric issues as well as an increasing radicalism towards Ayush’s societal choices, with some shocking episodes as when he shows illegal filming from pig abattoirs to their young children. I saw some worth in the second story, when a classic academic gets obsessed with the migration of a Sudanese child-soldier to the point of obsession, removing herself from her job and civic duties, as in not reporting a possible hit & run, and eventually gifting a kidney to the refugee’s brother. As a dubious reparation for her grand-parents’ involvement in the British Raj colonialism. I mostly enjoyed the third one, where Sabita, a rural Bengali or Bangladeshi woman, receives a cow from experimental economists (in the spirit of Esther Duflo’s school), a stupendous gift that is slowly unraveling her family and her precarious finances. However, my overall impression is one of an overly ideological posture, tending to caricatures (esp. of academics) and compartmentalisation of individuals, to the detriment of the book per se and to the depth of its characters. The last story is further strongly condescending towards the main character who proves unable to manage the cow (and her family), again forcing the trait for the sake of the political argument. The Guardian is more appreciative of the book, however.
Archive for cows
Nature snapshots
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags AI, Bank of Sweden, computer-based proof, conjecture, cows, Daniel Kahneman, Emmanuel Macron, French politics, mathematics, Nature, Paris-Saclay campus, Pink Floyd, religious persecutions, SARS-CoV-2, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Vichy régime, WW II on July 13, 2024 by xi'anAs I was waiting for my wife when visiting the Doges’ Palace in Venice last week, I read most of one of the issues of Nature I had brought with me to the Serenissima (after they arrived by bulk the week before for unclear reasons).
- One of the editorials is about AI-assisted design of mathematical conjectures. Reminding me of grant panels I took part in where candidates in pure maths were often focussing on solving one or many conjectures, as opposed to more applied branches (like statistics).
- Two entries about France, one about Macron’s idea of a European DARPA, unlikely to convince European partners after his calling most unnecessarily an election and bringing the extreme-right to its apex since the Vichy régime. Another one about the super mega campus Paris-Saclay unable to settle on a form of leadership and hence elect a president. Federalist versus centralised… Once again, thanks to Macron’s reckless gamble, his current Ministry for Higher Education may be in need of a position next month and could return to heading the campus.
- Worrying coverage of bird flu in US cows (not yet pigs on the wing but worrying enough) and of zombie cells that should have died and that new treatments can fight way better.
- A reflection on coming up with a treaty against AI weapons with autonomous kill decisions but isn’t it too late?!
- Building design that would avoid total collapse of a failing building, as in South Florida four years ago. But solely for new ones, unfortunately. (And the connection with lizards escapes me, except for managing to escape by loosing a tail…)
- A biography of Daniel Kahneman, decision-theorist, 2002 Nobel economics (aka Bank of Sweden) Prize, author of Thinking, Slow and Fast, and spending the WW II in occupied France hiding from round-ups by the Vichy police.
in the marshes of Kaw (2) [jatp]
Posted in Statistics with tags cows, French Guiana, jatp, Kaw, marsh, rain season, zebu on January 22, 2022 by xi'an
unimaginable scale culling
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, Travel with tags ABC, Approximate Bayesian computation, Badger Trust, badgers, Britain, British Wildlife Centre, cows, culling, Gareth Roberts, Nature, TB, tuberculosis, United Kingdom, University of Warwick on September 17, 2019 by xi'an
Despite the evidence brought by ABC on the inefficiency of culling in massive proportions the British Isles badger population against bovine tuberculosis, the [sorry excuse for a] United Kingdom government has permitted a massive expansion of badger culling, with up to 64,000 animals likely to be killed this autumn… Since the cows are the primary vectors of the disease, what about starting with these captive animals?!
ABC [almost] in the front news
Posted in pictures, Statistics, University life with tags ABC, Badger Trust, badgers, Britain, cattle, cows, England, epidemiology, media, SMC-ABC, summary statistics, TB, The Guardian, tuberculosis, University of Warwick on July 7, 2014 by xi'an
My friend and Warwick colleague Gareth Roberts just published a paper in Nature with Ellen Brooks-Pollock and Matt Keeling from the University of Warwick on the modelling of bovine tuberculosis dynamics in Britain and on the impact of control measures. The data comes from the Cattle Tracing System and the VetNet national testing database. The mathematical model is based on a stochastic process and its six parameters are estimated by sequential ABC (SMC-ABC). The summary statistics chosen in the model are the number of infected farms per county per year and the number of reactors (cattle failing a test) per county per year.
“Therefore, we predict that control of local badger populations and hence control of environmental transmission will have a relatively limited effect on all measures of bovine TB incidence.”
This advanced modelling of a comprehensive dataset on TB in Britain quickly got into a high profile as it addresses the highly controversial (not to say plain stupid) culling of badgers (who also carry TB) advocated by the government. The study concludes that “only generic measures such as more national testing, whole herd culling or vaccination that affect all routes of transmission are effective at controlling the spread of bovine TB.” While the elimination of badgers from the English countryside would have a limited effect. Good news for badgers! And the Badger Trust. Unsurprisingly, the study was immediately rejected by the UK farming minister! Not only does he object to the herd culling solution for economic reasons, but he “cannot accept the paper’s findings”. Maybe he does not like ABC… More seriously, the media oversimplified the findings of the study, “as usual”, with e.g. The Guardian headline of “tuberculosis threat requires mass cull of cattle”.
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