Destiny

If you go back a couple of weeks, you'll find that I lost my glasses and eventually, after retracing my steps, found them in a pizza restaurant. Well, yesterday I lost my glasses, again. I checked a couple of places around here that I'd visited, but no joy. I think they are well and truly gone. I guess it was meant to be (destiny) and the last two weeks were really just extra time with my glasses before they went their separate way. Luckily, I have a backup pair, so I'm good. And, I bought a lanyard for my glasses so that when I take them off, I'm not tempted to lay them on a countertop somewhere, but instead they hang around my neck. If only I'd done that two weeks ago. Destiny.

 ****

Laura took the bus to Santiago today and is currently on board waiting to take off as I write this. I'll go to sleep tonight and she'll fly to Miami overnight and then to Dallas. I don't envy her. Fortunately, her travel to the airport went smoothly and she now has a good idea of that process so that when she does it again in the 3rd week of October, she'll know what she's doing. She'll also be in a good position to advise people that plan to visit us here in the coming months.

 ****

I hit the gym this afternoon, did a bit of reading of research papers, watched the tail end of the Phillies' playoff game against the Braves, had dinner, chatted with my sister on the phone, and wrote this blog entry.

 ****

I took a brief moment for the obligatory sunset photo. As we head into spring/summer here, the sun sets further and further south. Soon, it will no longer set over the ocean, but rather will drop behind a spit of land to the south of us. By my reckoning, leaving as we are in late-February, we won't see it set over the ocean again. Anyway, here's the photo:

 

To AI or not to AI?

 This is the big question in the news of late. And, if you attend to a certain sector of the media, there are a lot of people out there saying that unregulated use of AI is dangerous. Those of you that know me, know that I've tried to keep a nuanced opinion of AI. I've argued that it has its use cases, but it's not a panacea. As I work on my research here in Chile, I've found AI to be really useful in finding relevant references and in helping me to read and understand those references. As a teacher over the past couple of years, I've found AI to be useful in preparing classroom materials--especially in developing the kinds of active learning activities that are so important in a mathematics classroom.

But, there are things I'm still wrestling with. 

• As I take this year away from teaching, I'm thinking very deeply about the role of AI in learning. In other words, how should students be guided in their use of AI for the purposes of learning? Of late, I'm beginning to think that students should not use AI, at all, in their education. This is a different position than I've held previously. Why?
• In spite of the rapid development of technology all around us, our brains are the same as they were 100,000 years ago. Learning is often challenging. Learning requires effort. Learning can be frustrating. The challenge, the effort and the frustration are the learning. AI can teach, but maybe it teaches a little too well. It reduces friction in the learning process. I think that the friction is exactly where the learning happens.
• To use AI well, a person needs to have knowledge in their head and a critical eye. A person uses their knowledge to identify problems, pose solutions, develop solutions, test solutions and revise accordingly. Without innate knowledge, a person is unable to do any of these. To gain innate knowledge see the previous point.
• I've done a lot of programming in my life. I have the barest understanding of how serious computer viruses work, but even in pre-AI times we saw dreadfully damaging viruses (e.g. MyDoom). AI is particularly good at analyzing computer code because it is so highly structured and easy to test. I'm really worried that someone is already using AI to build a computer virus (or similar exploit) that will shutdown the banking system, or damage an electric grid, or scramble the cellular network, or just turn off the internet... all of it. It's hard to even imagine the impact that would have on the world.
• Even if you're not a student and you're not trying to watch the world burn, AI has a creeping seductiveness that leads a person to cede more and more of their agency. I'll use myself as a case in point. I've been using Google's Gemini AI to determine my workouts for the better part of a year. I feed it data from my fitness watch, tell it that I'd like to run a half-marathon in March 2027 and it tells me what to do every day... and I do it. Why? I don't know. Pre-AI, I would've searched the internet for training plans. Pre-internet, maybe read running magazines or go to the library. Letting the AI figure it out is easy. So that's what I do. In this small instance, I've given up some of my autonomy. I've turned it over to a computer program.
  
  A lot of people are giving up little pieces of their autonomy every day. What does that look like in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. One thing I'm quite sure of, it will have been much easier to give it up than to get it back. 

Maybe I just need to go outside and sit on the beach.

****

Obligatory sunset photo.

 

Advising

Part of every faculty's role at the College is to advise students academically and professionally. Even though I'm in Chile, I kept my student advisees instead of handing them off, temporarily, to another faculty member. Typically, if an advisee wants to meet with me while I'm away, they shoot me an email and we set up a time to zoom. 

Yesterday, I met with one. Today, I met with a couple more. It's good to touch base with them and hear how they're doing in the new semester and new school year.

****

Today, when not meeting with students, I spent the day testing a new algorithm for clustering words and phrases by their meaning using a "transformer". This is the 'T' in chatGPT. A transformer converts words and short phrases to numbers and lets you compute how similar they are semantically (in their meaning). It's a difficult task that has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 5 years. Aside from its use in AI, transformers have important applications in computational linguistics, which is where I'm applying it.

****

Our freezer is pretty well stocked with meals that Laura has made over the past several days. I should be in good shape for home cooked meals while she is in the US for the next few days. She got a Ninja blender a couple of days ago and has put it to good use almost every day since. This evening, we went to a little shwarma place we like a couple blocks from our building. Thus, conserving one of the meals in the freezer.

****

Obligatory sunset photo. 

 

The Pride of the Fleet

 This morning it was very foggy and cool. Not a pleasant condition to be outside in. That's why we were surprised when we saw a lot of people lining up to get onto the pier When the gate finally opened, the throng moved to the end of the pier and stayed there for a long time--maybe an hour or two. Laura and I wondered why the group would be willing to stand out there in the damp and fog. Eventually, Laura learned through some internet sleuthing that a group of Chilean Navy vessels was due to return to base after a two month deployment today. I guess the crowd of people were there to welcome them home and to see the ships. Eventually, a group of ships did appear and sail by the pier. Each blasted its horn as it sailed by. There were 7 ships in all and I did a timelapse of their passage.

 There's always something going on down here.

****

Obligatory sunset photo.

 

Wheelin' ChileWalla

 In Walla Walla there's a vintage car parade every year in September called Wheelin' Walla Walla. There aren't many events in WW that we go to regularly, but that one we rarely miss. Being here in Chile, we missed this year. So I was happy/sad to see some vintage cars rolling up to the pier this morning on my run. Apparently, this year is the 100th anniversary of the Ford Model A. The cars were on display all day situated along the pier.

 Having seen a lot of vintage cars (remember Wheelin' Walla Walla) even I could see that these cars were immaculately restored.

 That's why is was low-key shocking to see people touching the cars, getting inside them and all manner of other close contact. My guess is that tomorrow, their owners will be detailing them all day.

****

There are 3 beaches along our stretch of Vina del Mar. Our beach is Playa Acapulco, the next one is Playa el Sol (not a typo, it's 'el', not 'del') and the last one is Playa del deporte (the sports beach). My runs usually take me along all three beaches. This Saturday morning, there was a lot going on at Playa del deporte.

Apparently, there are public exercise classes here each weekend. It was certainly busy this morning.

Speaking of beaches, the waves have been really strong the past 24-48 hours. Several waves made it all the way to the sea wall beneath our building yesterday and today.

These skim boarders were pretty excited about the big surf.

****

We had a nice visit with our 2nd floor neighbors this afternoon. They helped us answer questions about sending and receiving mail, taking the bus to Santiago, and a list of other questions that we'd developed over the past several weeks. They're really nice. Also, coincidentally, the wife happens to be traveling to Santiago on Wed for a high school reunion. Laura too is traveling to Santiago on Wed to fly to the US for work. They're going to travel together and our neighbor will be a guide for Laura as she transfers to the airport bus at the bus station in Santiago.

****

Here's the obligatory sunset photo,

 

Argentina vs. Chile

 Argentina borders Chile to the east. it stretches from the Andes range to the Atlantic Ocean. Those of you of a certain age might recall that Argentina and Great Britain had a brief armed conflict over control of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Less well-known is the fact that Chile aligned itself with Great Britain in that conflict and relations with Argentina were tense as a result. The UK regained control of the Falklands in 1982 and continue that control to this day. Recently, Chile and Argentina formed an agreement whereby, Chile supports Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands and in exchange, Argentina will drop its disputed claims to sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan. This represents an improvement in the diplomatic relations between the two countries. 

****

I might need to add an earthquake counter to this blog. Today we felt our second earthquake. We were here in the apartment and the whole build swayed for about 20 seconds. There was a 5.2 magnitude earthquake about 60km south of us. 

****

Mostly just a work day today, but we did go out for a walk this evening and the sunset was pretty spectacular.

 

Boardwalk Empire

Almost since we arrived, there have been carpenters building a boardwalk along the seawall in front of our building.

Here they are connecting it to the existing boardwalk right below our balcony. After reading up on things, it turns out that a winter storm in July raised the surf right up to the sea wall and a 200 meter stretch of this boardwalk was washed away. It's hard to imagine the surf that high, sloshing around right under the balcony and I'm kind of glad I wasn't here to see it (though I wouldn't mind seeing a photo... hmmm, here's video of the surf during that storm at the shoreline about 2km south of our beach). I can see where that might do a bit of damage.

In other weather related news, there was an interesting little fog bank that rolled in north of us this afternoon, but it rolled back out before it got to our part of the beach. 

****

Obligatory sunset photo.

 

Neighbors

Today we had a knock at the door, which is unusual, and a woman introduced herself as our neighbor here on the 2nd floor of the building. Turns out she knows the owner of our flat and wanted to pass on a message from them that if we ever needed anything that we could communicate through her. She also just wanted to make our acquaintance. Turns out she's a fluent English speaker--having spent the Pinochet years in Australia. She's originally from Santiago and her husband is German. She showed us their flat, which is absolutely gorgeous. Later, when her husband got home, he also came over and introduced himself. They both seem super nice. They've lived in the building for about 12 years and know a lot about the ebb and flow of life here in Vina del Mar. We swapped contact info and look forward to getting to know them a bit better over the next few months.

****

I had a good zoom meeting with one of my collaborators today. Unfortunately, the other one had a last-minute conflict and couldn't join in. We have a plan for work for the next two weeks or so, until we meet again.

****

Laura bought a Ninja blender today. We have one in Walla Walla and she uses it a lot in her cooking. We figured it was worth it to have for the 6 months we're here. 

****

Obligatory sunset photo.

 

Probability Theory

Not a statistician, but I'm trying to understand a probability theory paper on capture/recapture studies in field biology. The idea is that field biologists might want to know how many deer are in a particular area. Maybe every day for a month they go out into area and look for deer. If they see one, they make a note. Some deer may be observed 15 times in the one month period. Other deer, only once. Some, not at all. Given this kind of sample, can you estimate how many deer are in the area.

This same kind of analysis might be applied to people being asked to describe concepts. A particular concept, like "bonfire", will have an unknown number of properties associated with it. Asking 100 people to list properties of bonfire, you might get "hot" 50 times, "burns" 30 times, "party" 15 times etc. Just like the biologist saw the same deer 15 times, the psychologist saw the same concept, "hot", 50 times.

The same math that the biologists use to estimate the number of deer can be used by the psychologist to estimate the number of properties associated with the concept "bonfire" found in the universe of study participants. This number can be useful in some of the linguistic analysis that I'm working on.

 Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm not a statistician, but I did teach a course in probability theory once. I've been slowly dredging up that stuff over the past several days. It's been fun. I feel like I'm getting a better understanding of probability as I re-learn it. 

****

I did a timelapse of the ocean this morning. At first, I did it because there was some kind of navy ship out there doing exercises, but when I looked at it afterwards, the ship was the least interesting part. If you look at the video, you can see the usual waves crashing into the shore, but you can also see the reflected waves that head back out into the ocean. In theory, I knew that there would be reflected waves, but I don't think I've ever seen them so clearly as in the video.

 The ocean is endlessly fascinating.

****

Obligatory sunset photo.

 

 

Chile Facts

 

Some Chile Facts as of Today

Population:  20,150,000

Capital: Santiago, (but congress meets in Valparaíso) 

Currency: Chilean Peso (960 CLP ≈ 1 USD) 

Inflation: 4.1%

Unemployment: 9.5% 

Length: 2,600 miles

Width: 110 miles  

Religion: Roman Catholic (54%), unaffiliated (26%), Protestant (16%)

Indigenous: 11.5% of total population, of those, Mapuche (77.2%), Aymara (8.5%), Diaguita (7.3%) 

Government: democratic republic, tripartite, like the US 

President: José Antonio Kast, (conservative)

Most Famous Actor: Pedro Pascal 

Strongest Earthquake: 9.5 (strongest ever recorded on earth) 

Favorite Food: hot dogs 

Desert: Atacama (driest non-polar)

Mummies: Chinchorro (5000-3000 BC, older than Egyptian mummies) 

Mining: accounts for about 10-15% of GDP 

Dog: The Quiltro (mutt) is most popular followed by the poodle 

Dog or Cat: Dog by about 2:1 

Most Popular Musician: Mon Laferte 

Beer: Cristal 

Soft Drink: Coca-Cola 

Largest University: Universidad Andrés Bello 

Tallest Peak: Nevado Ojos del Salado (22,615 feet)

Hurricanes: nope 

Gold Medals: 3 (tennis, tennis, skeet) 

(most of these facts were generated by Google Gemini in response to my questions, use at your own risk) 

  

***

Obligatory sunset photo. Tonight there was a ship in the way.

 

 

 

Distraction Free

 After a lot of time, effort, and planning, I'm in a fairly distraction free zone here in Chile. For the purposes of getting research done, this is pretty important for me. I've always been too easily distracted by the tasks of daily life to keep my attention fixed on the long-term project of mathematical research. There's always a student to help, a class to plan, a committee to run. There's always something to do around the house, or with the car, or on my bike. And, I've always been a bit too willing to let those things move to the top of my list of priorities at the expense of research time.

Now that's all been put at a distance (about 6,000 miles distant). Now, I live in someone else's house. I don't have a car, or a bike. I'm not teaching, or advising, or on any committees. I get up in the morning and there are a couple of things to do. Maybe wash dishes, or vacuum, or do a load of laundry, but the todo list quickly clears itself all the way down to research. So, when all the little jobs are dispatched, I curl up with my computer and work on math problems. And, when all those other distractions are at such great remove, I find that I actually like the work. It's interesting, challenging, and maybe even useful somewhere down the line. 

Part of why we're here is to experience a different country. But, the other half of why I'm here, is to put myself in a context where I can actually do research and not worry about what else I should be doing instead. A side benefit is that life here is simple and relatively stress free.

****

It rained here for the first time since we arrived. It was also pretty windy and I got wet and blown around pretty good on my run this morning. Whatever tiny storm that brought us the rain and the wind today also raised the surf. The waves were noticeably bigger today and came in sets of 4 or 5. I'd always heard that waves came in sets, but today was the first time I'd actually seen that phenomenon. This video isn't a set of waves, it's just one as it rolled in and washed under the pier.

 ****

I saw the 4 dogs that travel with the homeless person this morning enjoying the beach. I didn't see the homeless person. It's interesting how they stick together.

 

Last Day of Winter

 The equinox is tomorrow and today is the last full day of winter here. It was cloudy, windy and cool here today, but nothing close to winters we experience in Walla Walla. At its coldest here in the winter, the temperature might dip into the low 40's. While we've been here, it's generally in the low 50's overnight. Despite the chill and the gray, people still come to the beach. Laura and I walked along the beach path this afternoon. There are a lot of vendors.

There's this fun little trampoline area 

A person making cotton candy

A houseplant seller (I am seriously tempted to get a little green roommate)

 A guy cutting up mangos

A little girl trapped in a hamster ball

and a whole lot of other stuff going on

The ocean was pretty, then there was this guy swimming in the 55 degree water, nope.

We also ran across this game store a few blocks from our house. Thinking maybe we might go to one of their game nights.

 And the day concluded with an independence day parade right in front of our building

 

Chilean Healthcare

Unfortunately, I learned about the Chilean healthcare system today. I'll jump to the punchline and say that Laura and I are both fine, but this morning at about 11am I lost vision in my right eye for about 3 or 4 minutes. It was really frightening. The internet suggested that in such cases, one should be evaluated at an emergency room. So we found a nearby ER and walked over. I felt fine and my vision recovered fully before I even arrived at the ER. 

We presented ourselves at intake and one person there spoke english. She translated us through the initial check in, although Laura's spanish is good enough that she followed most of what was going on anyway. A triage nurse gave me the once over and elevated my case to high priority. In about 30 mins, I was seen by a doctor. He ordered some bloodwork and a contrast head and neck CAT scan to check for blood clots. An IV was place and the blood was drawn. After about 60 mins, I was wheeled into the CT room. The CT only took about 20 mins. I was wheeled back into my little ER cubicle and from that point on it was just a waiting game.

After another 90 mins or so, the doctor came back with good news that my CT scan and blood work were normal. He said it was a small blood clot in the retina that resolved itself. He suggested that I get a follow up with an ophthalmologist, but that it was not urgent. He also described the symptoms of a stroke and said that if any of them arose, to return immediately.

On the financial side, we paid the bill up front, but our regular health insurance will reimburse us at the normal rates. Base on past experience, I'd say the cost here was about 1/4 of what the same care would've cost in the US, but still a nice ding on the credit card.

Weirdly, while we were in the ER waiting, we felt the whole room shake in what could only have been a small tremor or earthquake. Sure enough, there was a magnitude 5.2 earthquake near Santiago that we felt in Viña del Mar.

**** 

The day started out gray again. The homeless people didn't come back last night, but the seagull did.

Today was the Chilean Independence Day. The country is 208 years old. Given the we were in the hospital all day, we didn't really see any festivities. It got a little bit sunny in the afternoon/evening and people came to the beach. Here's the obligatory sunset photo.

  

Gray Day

 It's been sunny everyday since we arrived here in Vina del Mar on Sep 2. Today, however, it was a gray, misty day.

 As I mentioned, we did grocery shopping this morning to get us through the next two days when grocery stores are closed for the Chilean independence day holiday. Laura's made enough meals with leftovers that we're getting pretty close to capacity in our little refrigerator. We definitely won't starve in the next 48 hours.

**** 

 When you look at the same stretch of beach everyday, you start to notice things. For example, for many of the nights we've been here, a homeless person, or couple, sleeps under this little boardwalk structure right in front of our apartment.

What's interesting is that they have 4 dogs that follow them around. The dogs are pretty protective. They will bark and rush almost every person that walks down the beach in the mornings. I guess that's pretty handy if your homeless and want to be left alone. This morning the 3 black ones stood at the base of the lamp post in this photo and barked at a seagull that was sitting at the top. The dogs worked that seagull for at least 10 minutes and the seagull seemed pretty bemused at the goings on.

The police will roust the people from this spot. They'll stay away for a couple of days and then return. You'll notice that this boardwalk ends kind of abruptly. Further on, there's been a crew of workers rebuilding a section of boardwalk to join this one. Today, the workers got to the point where they needed to start working on this end of the boardwalk. One of the worker rousted the couple from their spot. The moved about 5 yards towards the ocean and camped out there for another 3 hours while the workers got access to that part of the boardwalk. They left around noon. It'll be interesting to see if they come back overnight tonight. 

****

It was breezy today. There were a lot of kites on the beach today. I noticed one kite flew into the yard of our building. A young kid was trying to pull it back using the string, but it was solidly stuck on our side of the hedge. Since we're only on the 2nd floor, it was easy for me to scoot down there and push the kite back over to his side of the hedge. We never saw each other, but I heard a happy "Gracias" from the other side as he managed to grab the kite.

****

I had a good research day after grocery shopping. I have a meeting with my collaborators next week after the holiday. The universities here are on a kind of "spring break" situated around the independence day holiday. Both of my collaborators are taking a break and doing vacation type things. I'm looking forward to sharing what I have with them next week.   
   

Otra Cozza

Did a load of laundry today. Most of it dried today, but there are a couple of heavy items that still need some time on the rack.

☙❧ 

Sept 18th is a national holiday, Fiestas Patrias. Most stores will be closed both Fri and Sat, including grocery stores. We haven't really built up a stockpile of leftovers, so we have to plan carefully each meal over the next few days and shop accordingly tomorrow.

☙❧ 

I ran along the beach this morning for exercise. I saw some really beautiful sea birds along the route:

 According to the internet, this is an inca tern. This photo doesn't really do it justice. The white arc around the eye is actually a feather that leafs out from the face--one on each side of the head. Here's a better photo (not mine) that shows the white feathers:

☙❧ 

We went out to dinner this evening at an Italian place called Otra Cozza. I had this mushroom ravioli that was really good:

Laura had some pizza, which was good, but not quite as good as Masamá Restaurante, where we had pizza last week.

☙❧ 

Yesterday, I was watching Netflix and I saw the flag of Texas on the show I was watching. There are so many Chilean flags flying at this time of year that it's hard not to see them all the time. Once you've seen both, it's hard not to see the similarities:

Not sure who copied who here.

☙❧

 Obligatory sunset photo:

 

Chile is not Sevilla

We lived a year in Sevilla, Spain and I thought it would be good to compare and contrast.

Similarities

They're both Spanish speaking countries.

 

The walking path along the beach in Chile is similar to the walking path along the Guadalquivir Canal in Sevilla. I have used both for my regular runs.

 

Spicy food is not popular in either country.

 

Milk is sold at room temperature and in a sealed cardboard box.  

 

Both have decent public transit.

 

Both have a lot of natural beauty.  

 

It doesn't rain much here in Vina del Mar. Nor does it rain much in Sevilla. 

 

Both have popular professional soccer leagues. 

Differences

The Spanish is different. The 's' sound is suppressed in a lot of words. Endings of words are swallowed or dropped altogether.

 

Chile has the ocean. Sevilla even though it has the river(s), is pretty arid and landlocked.

 

Related, Chile can have tsunamis.

  

Chile was a Spanish colony. Spain is just... Spain. The colonizer.

Chile is less historic and just younger than Sevilla. No 800 year old churches or 2000 year old Roman ruins. Related, if you come to visit, it's mostly just a beach town. A lot like the US. 

 

Chile is geographically isolated. 

 

Chile uses the Chilean Peso, 1 US dollar = 960 Chilean pesos. Spain uses the Euro. 

 

ATMs are expensive here, like an $8 use fee. The ATM we used in Spain was free. 

 

Temperatures are more moderate here throughout the entire year than those in Sevilla. It's generally warmer in the winter than Sevilla and significantly cooler in the summer than Sevilla. 

 

Indoor shopping malls are very popular here. There was really only one significant shopping mall in Sevilla and it wasn't fully enclosed. 

 

Sevilla had a much wider variety of fruits and vegetables available in the grocery stores.

 

Beer was very popular in Sevilla. You could even buy beer in McDonalds. Not so much here.

 

☙❧

 

Obligatory sunset photo,

   

 

Semantic Space

One of the projects I'm working on is quantifying how abstract concepts like "freedom" or "business" differ between cultures using the property listing task (PLT) of cognitive psychology. An important part of that is being able to compute the similarity between two words. For example, we would expect the similarity between "dog" and "cat" to be higher than the similarity between "dog" and "atom". People in the field of natural language processing (NLP) have been working on this problem for years. Recently, with the rise of AI, some very good tools for this have emerged. In general, these tools are called "transformers". They turn words and phrases into points in space. Once they're in space, you can see how close together or far apart they are. Today I spent the day reading about these transformers and playing around with them.

The transformer I used today is only about 1.5 years old--so pretty new. What's interesting about this transformer is that it has been trained on over 100 currently living languages. So, no only will it say how similar "dog" and "cat" are, but how similar "perro" and "gato" are. Even better, it will say how similar "dog" and "gato" are, or "perro" and "cat".

Here's a multilingual set of words and the similarity scores. In the (dog, dog) slot we have a 1.0, which is perfectly similar. In the (dog, perro) slot, we see 0.822, not perfect.

	dog	perro	cat	gato	cow	vaca
dog	1.000000	0.822781	0.648068	0.653384	0.643983	0.492068
perro	0.822781	1.000000	0.621134	0.639385	0.632134	0.499414
cat	0.648068	0.621134	1.000000	0.790680	0.589765	0.444248
gato	0.653384	0.639385	0.790680	1.000000	0.582464	0.510511
cow	0.643983	0.632134	0.589765	0.582464	1.000000	0.504098
vaca	0.492068	0.499414	0.444248	0.510511	0.504098	1.000000

Why would (dog, perro) not be 1.0 also? Well, while both refer to dogs, in english "dog" has different sense clusters, e.g. to nag, to pursue relentlessly in English, whereas in Spanish "perro" is never used as a verb at all. These different contexts pull the words apart in semantic space and reduce their similarity.

 

This demonstrates the importance of context. If we change the words to simple phrases:

 

	animal: dog	animal: perro	animal: cat	animal: gato	animal: cow	animal: vaca
animal: dog	1.000000	0.917744	0.869536	0.842130	0.839884	0.816267
animal: perro	0.917744	1.000000	0.825918	0.811056	0.810678	0.785195
animal: cat	0.869536	0.825918	1.000000	0.903485	0.815107	0.757159
animal: gato	0.842130	0.811056	0.903485	1.000000	0.790497	0.778824
animal: cow	0.839884	0.810678	0.815107	0.790497	1.000000	0.817964
animal: vaca	0.816267	0.785195	0.757159	0.778824	0.817964	1.000000

 

We see that (animal:dog, animal:perro) is now 0.91. Adding "animal" improves the behavior of the entire set of similarities.

 

We hope to see similar performance applying this to the PLT data for abstract concepts. The idea is to ask people to describe an abstract concept like "freedom", to build sense clusters, and quantify shifts in the sense clusters across languages and cultures. More to come.

☙❧

  

I spent most of today working on this stuff, but we did take a walk along the beach path today.

Near the navy college there is a row of retired heavy guns pointing into the Pacific. Ironically, up on the hill you can see the modern navy hospital. It turns out that two of my collaborator's daughters were born there, though not the daughter we met at lunch on Saturday.

 

Also, here's the obligatory sunset photo:

New Normal

 We're truly settled. After a morning run, the day was spent on vacuuming

 and doing laundry

A few items are still a bit damp. There was a bit of a logistical challenge in figuring out how to dry the bed sheets. We ended up hanging them from the curtain rods with clothespins.

Other than that, we had another lovely sunset 

The beach was pretty busy today. It will be interesting to see how the crowds ebb and flow during the coming Independence Day holiday.

Chilean Friends

The day started with me realizing that I lost my glasses, but it got better. 

Last week, my Viña del Mar collaborator invited Laura and me to lunch at Club Naval de Campo Las Salinas with his wife, eldest daughter and her husband and 2 year old son. It is part of a private club on a navy base about 3km north of us along the coast. He is a member by virtue of having served in the Chilean navy for more than 20 years.

Laura and I walked there from our apartment and met him at the gate where he brought us in. Through an unhurried lunch and a mix of Spanish and English, we got to know each other. He, his wife and eldest daughter all lived in the United States for a time while he pursued a PhD. They all understand English, though his daughter is probably most fluent at the moment. She, by the way, has US citizenship by birthright as she was born in the US. She has also visited the US several times on her own. 

Her husband knows a bit of English and we talked about our families, about kids, about universities, healthcare, public schools and lots of other topics. It was all really interesting. We were able to see the similarities and differences between Chile and the US across all of these issues. He is from a small town 30km east of here and he is one of 11 children, 7 boys and 4 girls! It turns out that their two-year old son and I share a birthday. Now I want to get Emily to come here for a visit over our birthday so that the three of us can celebrate together.

After lunch, we went to a playground just outside of the restaurant and the adults took turns playing with the two-year old on the equipment. In the end, we were there for around 3 and a half hours and it turned out to be a wonderful afternoon. We broke with plans to get together again soon.

Laura and I walked home along the beach. Given that it was a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon, the promenade was busy. This is also the beginning of a holiday week that culminates on Sep 18th, Chile's Independence Day. Also, people that are off this week probably came to Viña del Mar for vacation starting today. 

The day continued to improve when we stopped in the restaurant we visited yesterday evening and I asked if they had my glasses. They did!

But wait, it gets better. Laura successfully made brownies from scratch in our oven. Which, by itself is a feat, but even more impressive given that the oven in our flat does not have a thermostat. Nor does it have a thermometer. So, it can't regulate its temperature and you don't get to know what its temperature is.

Another lovely sunset.

 

Drink the Water

Had a bit of an intestinal interlude last night. It was not unexpected. My experience living in Hungary, Spain and now Chile is that it takes a bit of time to get used to the water. In each of these places, I drank the tap water regularly. In each place, after about two weeks, I went through some kind of intestinal distress. Last night was my Chilean turn. It was rough. I didn't sleep much. Hopefully, now I'm adapted to the water. 

I worked again most of the day reading a paper on matching "nearby" bipartite graphs. It's nice having the beach right out the back door. When I've been sitting (or when working in the bedroom, lying) too long, I can just get up and walk along the beach for a few minutes. It really clears your head.

 Walked to the Mall Marina this evening to get a couple of things. We passed this giant sundial along the beach.

 Fun thing about sundials in the southern hemisphere is that they go counterclockwise, i.e. the opposite direction of sundials in the northern hemisphere.