Computers and statistics

  • I have become interested in Bayesian analytical techniques lately, so I have started gathering some notes from the different sources I am reading, which others might find helpful. Comments are, of course, welcome.
  • diveMove is an R package I wrote to work with dive data from time-depth recorders (TDRs). Currently available as a contributed package from CRAN.
  • My ~/.emacs file showing some work habits and preferences in GNU Emacs. It includes my customizations to work with AUC-TeX, as an interface for the LaTeX typesetting system, as well as my use of the ESS package to interface with the GNU R Statistical System. The R Core Team are a brilliant group of experts in the statistical and computing sciences that are developing state-of-the-art software for dealing with most of the analytical challenges that biologists and other researchers encounter in their work. I have benefited enormously from their contributions, in particular those from Drs. Brian Ripley, Doug Bates, José Pinheiro, Andy Liaw, and several others, too numerous to list but who are very well known in their fields and in the R discussion groups.
  • If you are using Emacs, you probably know about emacswiki.org, where you can get tons of ideas for customizing the best text editor around ;-) The excellent planner-mode in Emacs is an invaluable tool for keeping track of projects and tasks. You can pick up my configuration files (planner, muse, and remember), called from my .emacs file above, which are slightly modified versions of those used by the maintainer. I have also included some of my elisp snippets at my Emacs Wiki user web site.
  • r-utils, an Emacs library for ESS that I wrote to make my work with R more efficient and comfortable. It's a hack on Dr. John Fox's init.el file for XEmacs users, and I'm frequently modifying it to adapt it to my needs, but I try to keep it updated here.
  • fixAbbrs is a gawk script to remove useless entries in a file with full names and various abbreviations that may be repeated or with different punctuation, which is considered irrelevant. This is a typical need for creating so-called "term-lists" for Endnote and other bibliography managers. Once the database is clean, and if you use BibTeX, stringBib will generate @string commands to use as input in *.bib files and then use the full name, or various abbreviations for journal names, etc. If strings in the *.bib files need to be replaced by macro names (shortcuts), I generate them with tbl2bibtoolrsc, and then use bibtool, with its -r (resource) option:
$ tbl2bibtoolrsc.awk -abbr biosis.csv > bibtoolrsc
$ bibtool -r bibtoolrsc [bibfile]

Politics

  • Support Malalai Joya's struggle to bring justice and equality to her country. One way to support her is to not give any privileges or handicaps to your neighbours based on their sex, or anything other than their relevant merits, and be the best neighbour you can be.
  • Learn about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
  • Noam Chomsky's sharp insights into global politics and international relations.
  • Joseph Stiglitz is one of the greatest economists and thinkers of our time. He's not compromising his principles to be the flavor of the month at the White House.
  • A few historical items to consider when talking about the role of the U.S. in world affairs.
  • It's always interesting and amusing to check Richard Stallman's website, which keeps up with some major social issues.
  • Read what the largest companies in electronics are trying to do under the flag of the TCPA.
  • We all know that the most popular news sources are always trying to sell news, rather than inform people. Unfortunately, this means they usually hide the truth, or worse, spread lies to the public. There are some alternative sources of information that provide excellent coverage and comment on important issues, not the garbage that the major sources provide to distract us from what really matters. Check, for instance, Democracy Now! and Rebelion (the latter in Spanish).
  • Stephen Meyer published this article, which is not very encouraging, but I think is very accurate in describing our relationship with our planet.
  • Edward O. Wilson wrote this article, on a similar topic and thinks about our environmental ethics. It's a bit more optimistic than Meyer.
  • Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin delve some more into these questions on this article. Very interesting.

Science

Some links that may be of interest:

Ringed seal ecology

Remote sensing

  • I have prepared animations of monthly chlorophyll-a concentrations and sea surface temperatures at the ocean's surface, as seen by SeaWiFS and MODIS (Terra and Aqua) sensors, respectively, over the Southern Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean from 2001 through 2003. This was my study area. The frame rate is not the same for both animations because the features in each time series require different values to be appreciated easily. Notice the seasonal advance and retreat of the Subantarctic Polar Front (~9 C), and the development of chlorophyll-a blooms north of Iles Crozet. Notice also how closely the fronts correspond to bathymetry, which is displayed by the contours (1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 m).
Sea surface temperature over Southern Ocean
Sea surface temperature over Southern Ocean
Surface chlorophyll a concentration over Southern Ocean
Surface chlorophyll a concentration over Southern Ocean

Various

  • If you've ever had to deal with a narcissist among your family or friends, here you'll find some very helpful reading.
  • Poster on some of my research presented at the XVI Conference of the Society of Marine Mammalogy.
  • You can browse my bibliography, which is on ecological topics for the most part, but contains other items as well. If you're interested in any of these, please contact me with the item number and I'll try to provide a copy. There are many items in my library that have not yet been entered in the database, so feel free to request items that you feel I might have.
  • Nicolas Guillén's poetry to remind us of some important things.
  • If you haven't yet heard Nathan, you haven't experienced one of the purest forms of acoustic massage. Truly an oasis of beauty in Winnipeg!
  • Mike Trike and his band's beautiful tunes along a similar vein.
  • Do consult wikipedia as a source of information on almost any topic you can imagine. It is a great service, edited by people from the widest range of backgrounds and knowledge. This probably makes it one of the least biased sources of information in the world today. As with anything else though, keep a healthy dose of skepticism, as it's hard to assess the rigour that went into gathering the information.
  • Please do not top-post on your email or newsgroup messages.

Quotes

  • "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." — Steve Biko (1946 - 1977)
  • "If you tremble in indignation at every injustice committed anywhere, then you are a comrade of mine." — Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928 - 1967)
  • "If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself." — Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917 - 2007)
  • El Nacedor: "¿Por qué será que el Che tiene esta peligrosa costumbre de seguir naciendo? Cuanto más lo insultan, lo manipulan, lo traicionan, más nace. El es el más nacedor de todos. ¿No será porque el Che decía lo que pensaba, y hacía lo que decía? ¿No será que por eso sigue siendo tan extraordinario, en un mundo donde las palabras y los hechos muy rara vez se encuentran, y cuando se encuentran no se saludan, porque no se reconocen?". — Eduardo Galeano (1940 - present)