Adventures in Onionism

I'm stuck in Bush Intercontinental Airport at the very end of a long work trip. I went to DC to teach version control for research reproducibility at the World Bank on Wednesday. Thursday, after stopping by Dianne and Kamala's offices to advocate for unified NO votes on the cabinet, I flew to Boston, where I got to see MHD briefly. I presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research at a conference for research on SNAP (food stamps) on Friday, and then flew to Houston to run my first race of the year: Rocky Raccoon 100. Rocky Raccoon is a flat course run on five 20-mile loops in Huntsville State Park. Ian Sharman ran the fastest trail 100-miler on US soil here a few years ago, meaning if I were in shape it would be an opportunity for me to set a PR or at least go under 24 hours. However, I'm not in shape, so it just turned into a not-at-all scenic suckfest from mile 40 to mile 98 or so. Whatever. At least I stuck with it and got to catch up on a bunch of podcasts. I a...

Well, regardless of what happens to my home university/state/country/planet thanks to our new president, I got to see Hawaii before it all went up in flames. One of the funders of my data science home (the Moore Foundation) set up a conference in Hawaii for their postdoc and early career researchers. (If anybody wants to set up a research transparency and reproducibility-related conference in Alaska, that's still on my list.) I flew to Kona a few days early, rented a car, and went to Volcanoes National Park. If I'd had more time to do research I would have hiked in the Waimanu valley instead, but VNP was pretty cool. I backpacked in to a pair of secluded beaches where I had small beaches and coves, with camping and snorkeling all to myself. The hiking to get to the beach was pretty underwhelming, as it was mostly lava and grass with no shade, but obviously the point was the beach, not the hiking. After the beaches, I drove back to Kona around the island in the other directi...