FOCS Accepts- June 24, 2008 Accepted FOCS papers posted.http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/focs-accepts.html Seven Dirty Words- June 24, 2008 In memory of the great George Carlin, we present the seven dirty words you cannot say at the Complexity Conference. Constants Algorithm Application Heuristic Competitive Implementation Wolframhttp://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/seven-dirty-words.html ACM Awards Banquet- June 23, 2008 With the kids at camp, after Iron Man, my wife and I hopped a plane to San Francisco. Did some wine tasting, saw some opera, played tourist (even riding the cable cars) all leading up to the ACM Awards Banquet on Saturday night. While the ACM sponsors many conferences, there is no annual conference that covers our whole field. In non-FCRC years, they hold their awards ceremony at a nice hotel in San Francisco attended mostly by ACM officers and award winners. I was there as a new ACM Fellow to.http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/acm-award-banquet.html Karp Wins Kyoto Prize!- June 20, 2008 Fast breaking news: Karp wins the Kyoto Prize! See here Certainly deserved! Lets all congraduate him (hmmm- this may clog up his email.) Lets hope this gives some attention to computer science theory. Quoting from here about the philosophy of the prize it says Those worthy of the Kyoto will be people who have,as we at Kyocera, worked humbly and devotedly, sparing no effort to seek perfection in their chosen professions. Interesting- seems like you need to be a nice person as well as a...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/karp-wins-kyoto-prize.html See you at CCC 2008!- June 20, 2008 Can still register for CCC08: Register here. BILL: Lance, maybe we should have an Anonymous Guest Blogger for CCC 2008 since I am one of the local organizers (along with Richard Chang and Maruis Zimand), hence anything I write might be biased, and we want someone who is free to complain about not having enough Bagels. LANCE: I can be a non-anoymous non-guest blogger. I have no problem complaining that there are not enough Bagels. After the conference is over I will blog about...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/see-you-at-ccc-2008.html Guest Post on App of Ramsey to Constraint Satisfaction- June 19, 2008 (Complexity Conference next week! Register Here) (Guest Post by Manuel Bodirsky on a paper of his that applies Ramsey Theory.) In a recent paper we apply the so-called product Ramsey theorem to classify the computational complexity of a large class of constraint satisfaction problems. A temporal constraint language is a relational structure &Gamma with a first-order definition in (Q, In our paper we show that such a problem is NP-complete unless &Gamma is from one out of...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/guest-post-on-app-of-ramsey-to.html In my day...- June 18, 2008 Can still register for CCC08: Register here. (A reader emailed me the website and asked me to Blog on it.) According to this, Math Exams in England have gotten much easier since 1951. The article also points to the exams the exams themselves so you can judge for yourself. The later exams look easier to me but not that much easier as to be a concern. The earlier ones had proofs, but the later ones had some concepts not on the earlier ones. Every generation tends to think that life..http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/in-my-day_18.html I am Iron Man- June 17, 2008 Yesterday we dropped the kids off at camp and celebrated our first night of freedom by seeing a movie that does not involve a panda mastering martial arts. In my comic-book reading days of the mid-80's, my favorite hero was Iron Man and I had the chance to catch the movie before it leaves the theaters. Some mild spoilers ahead. Why Iron Man He didn't have power thrust upon him like Spiderman or come from a dark background like Batman. Rather Tony Stark was the ultimate engineer. He developed...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/i-am-iron-man.html Posting a SUBMITTED paper- June 16, 2008 (Can still register for COMPLEXITY 2008 at here.) In a comment on my post SODA 2009 CFP that Shiva Kintali pointed out that SODA is encouraging authors who submit to post their submissions on their own websites. He is correct that they are encouraging it, see here, but is he correct that it is an excellent idea This raises a few questions. You are on the SODA committee. You read a paper that is very good and that you can build on. You make sure it gets rejected from SODA and then write..http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/posting-submitted-paper.html Working Outside Our Fields- June 13, 2008 An economist told me recently how he is often impressed when other economists give talks using tools and working on problems in other academic areas. "They really seem to get it," he said. After hearing this I first thought about similar experiences I have had when I see computer scientists talk about ideas in physics, biology and economics that they seem to have really learned about the other field and tied the areas together well. My next thoughts went in a different direction....http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/06/working-outside-our-fields.html |