Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity

Is here.

There is an interesting article in the NYT about how bureaucratic problems had prevent the US soldiers from having a reasonably safe vehicles during the war. The problem being that the Humvees, which are the vehicle mainly used, are just not safe, and the safer vehicles are much more expensive – and were not bought with sufficient quantities because of this. Furhtermore, a company that adds armor to the Humvees, did whatever it could to prevent other companies to also armor the Humvees.

One of those safer vehicles is the Rhino Runner. The company refuses to give the Army a vehicle so that they can blow it up in testing. Nevertheless, the vehicle is widely used by private companies. Quote from the article:

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Labock Technologies, which makes the Rhino Runner in Israel, thought it had the best advertising ever. Besides posting photographs of Mr. Rumsfeld aboard the Rhino at Abu Ghraib, the company has pictures of a shackled Saddam Hussein going to court last summer, with the headline: “So safe. … some V.I.P. won’t ride anything else.”
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This is a recurring theme. slow bureaucratic decision making having disasterous impact on the battlefield. One example for this is the slowness of the Germans in making a tank to match the suprior russian tank (the T34) in WWII. In fact, the attack in Kursk was delayed till the German forces would have enough Panther tanks (i.e., the answer to the T34), which was a crucial mistake, because this gave Russians the time to build better defenses and concentrate their forces. See here.

Already, one can see the effect of the unsufficient protection of the American soldiers. Because of the relatively “high” number of casualities, the public support, in the US, for the war in Iraq is now well below 50% (closer to 40%). From this point on, the question of exit strategies from Iraq is going to become a larger political issue, weakening the current US administration.

The bees feel so abused… Or maybe not…

New comment on your post #227 “Navigating JFK – Part I”
Author : Iraqi guy
Comment:
Question : Is Iraq part of the good guys or the bad guys now, and what’s the status of Iraqi citizens ? Suppose I come with an Iraqi passport, Do I have to stand in the citizen line or the terrorist line ?

To delete this comment, visit: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/~sariel/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=confirmdeletecomment&p=227&comment=99

Question : Is Iraq part of the good guys or the bad guys now, and what’s the status of Iraqi citizens ? Suppose I come with an Iraqi passport, Do I have to stand in the citizen line or the terrorist line ?

New comment on your post #227 “Navigating JFK – Part I”
Author : Sariel Har-Peled
Comment:
Naaa. But JFK is really horrendous.

BTW, if anybody have problems posting comments to the blogs, please let me know…

To delete this comment, visit: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/~sariel/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=confirmdeletecomment&p=227&comment=97

Naaa. But JFK is really horrendous.

BTW, if anybody have problems posting comments to the blogs, please let me know…

I was for a few days in Philadelphia for the FOCS committee meeting. If you submitted a paper you already know its fate. List of accepted papers would be published in a few days, there are some merge issues. Being on the committee was not as enjoyable as I hoped. There were about two discrete geometry papers, that were rejected offhand since they were not computational (i.e., don’t bother submitting discrete geometry papers unless they are a super important results). There was maybe one or two true CG papers, and they were not that exciting. And the rest, well, the rest was outside my field, and was at times interesting, and at times disappointing (a lot of fields sounds considerably more interesting before you know the details about them, and vice versa).

Overall, being on the FOCS and STOC committees on the same year was a very interesting experience, and I came to have a high opinion of the people in the theory community. At times I felt like being a martian from outer space (what is quantom stochastic secure mechamism design? And why is the fact that its mixing time being sub-lamina is leading to spontenous Nash equafobia is important?).

However, there is a real openness to new ideas even if they are clearly currently not leading anyware (but might lead somewhere later). People are willing to put a lot of energy into reviewing papers, and people make real effort into doing justice to papers based on merits. And people are also willing to change their minds if shown enough evidence.

We accepted about 3-4 STOC rejectees to FOCS. FOCS has a single session, and as such is considerable more selective than STOC (i.e., both conferences received about 260-290 submissions). FOCS accepted about 63 papers, and STOC accepted about 85. It is not clear to me if it makes any sense for those two conferences to have different formats and acceptance rates.

So, would I submit papers to STOC and FOCS in the future? Probably. I know enough people in this community that going to FOCS and STOC would be an enjoyable social event.

After the FOCS meeting, I visited Suresh, Karen and Wisper for a day. That was very nice, although me & Suresh did nto make any significant progress on any research problems. Suresh & K live in a beautiful neighberhood next to the river in Philadelphia, and it really seemed like life in Philadelphia (unlike some other large cities) was really enjoyable.

And now, I am visiting my friend Ran in Manhattan. For a few days of fun, and maybe some research. Despite everything.

Organized by Muthu & Christian Sohler. See here.

New comment on your post #226 “The secret garden”
Author :
Comment:
Well, well. Now I know who is that strange individual who is loitering in my garden.

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