Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity

If auctex stops working for you in emacs, and you get the error message:

Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size

You better revert to an older version of auctex.

If you are not using auctex to write latex, you just wasted your time reading this entry.

A very slightly modified list of the STOC 05 accepted papers is here.

And here is how the STOC PC meeting looked like.

Bernard Chazelle has an itneresting article in the **counter punch**, titled Why Would God Behave Like Rumsfeld?. While I generally agree with the article, those things are more murkier. From the Rhonda genocide to the massive death of people in Africa from AIDS, the ability of the western world to live in denial of other people suffering and ignore it, can never be underestimated. And is not a new phenomena.

Link thanks to Edgar Ramos.

New comment on your post #154 “Comments”

Author : Suresh
this is not as good an idea as one might think. I was in toronto a few months ago, and saw a number of people miss their connecting flight because they didn’t know about this different INS procedure and were delayed for a long time at the “interview” room reserved for people in different kinds of limbo (even your kind – with advance parole).

The plus side of this is that it makes connections a lot less nerve wracking.

this is not as good an idea as one might think. I was in toronto a few months ago, and saw a number of people miss their connecting flight because they didn’t know about this different INS procedure and were delayed for a long time at the “interview” room reserved for people in different kinds of limbo (even your kind – with advance parole).

The plus side of this is that it makes connections a lot less nerve wracking.

1. Being in a conference without having the printed proceedings sucks.
2. Online disucussion of PC seems to work better than a real meeting.
3. It is hard to give an excited talk on a paper written one and a half year ago.
4. …Especially if the results are preliminary, and you did not make any progress on the problem.
5. People are happy to help in reviewing papers, and usually feel committed to do a decent and detailed job.
6. Very rarely, some referees will not tell you all they know about a result although this is relevant information that you should know about it as a PC member.
7. Clearly stating what is your exact contribution in a paper (even if it is small) is better than being vague about it. You will get points for honesty.
8. The names of the authors on a paper has less influence of whether a paper get accepted or not than people think.
9. Program committes rejects papers under the assumption they would be submitted to the next conference, and with decent probability would be accepted there. As such, rejecting a paper is not a critical decision.
10. Consider the culture of the community of a conference before submitting to a conference. Excellent papers might be rejected because they are incremental, or of no interest to the community, or just because nobody relevant could be found to referee it.
11. In particular, the fact that a paper get rejected from a conference, does not imply the result is bad.
12. The fact that a paper got rejected from a previous conference would play against a paper only if the paper did not address the problems that caused the paper to be rejected in the previous conference.
13. Having the INS checkpoint in the Vancover airport instead of the target airport is very convinient and unINSly good idea. I give the INS at most two years before they would discover this lopehole in inconvinience and close it.

The list is here. To make things clear, I was in favour of accepting all the papers that were submitted.

New comment on your post #151 “So whats the point of all this cold?”

Author : Your Neighbor
Shampoo-banana is sucking your will to live! Run while you still can – before you become a lifer like the rest of us.

Shampoo-banana is sucking your will to live! Run while you still can – before you become a lifer like the rest of us.

New comment on your post #145 “On the difference between a disaster and a holocaust”

Author : J. Talton
I think Disraeli’s best line was when Gladstone said to him (at a party, if I remember correctly) “I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease.” Disraeli, never at a loss for words, immediately replied “That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”

This is even funnier when one considers that their wives were, in fact, quite good friends, despite the degree to which the two men loathed each other.