US Patent System?

No surprises. Washington Post via Slashdot. Maybe some Econ 101 would not be a bad idea for the managers at USPTO.

Good question, no answer

Will Bicycling to Work Get You Killed? No answers yet.

Stephen Colbert in South Carolina

Do you think that there are 3000 people in South Carolina, who do not own a gun or a bible? If so, maybe Stephen Colbert has a chance.

Bird show

We spent lovely Sunday at the local "Exotic" Bird show. I made couple of pictures. The event was quite overcrowded, so when I was trying to take a picture, somebody was often in my way. I saw some lady - owner of one of the stands - to say something about me and taking picture to her husband. Naturally, I though she does not like me taking picture of her birds (I always expect the worst). In fact, she was telling her husband to move away from my view so that I can make better pictures :-)
Quite a difference in cultures. (I remember when I was putting a film into my old camera on a street in Brno, and a very angry lady came out claiming that I'm making picture of her house to rob it later. She had to be mentally ill, because I was not even taking pictures and anyway could not explain to her that I have all rights to take pictures from public land.)

Fun about Nobel Prize

This is how Comedy Central depicts Oslo, Norway:


For readers who did not get it even after reading left-upper corner, this is not in Oslo or even in Norway. Look closer to the center of Europe

Quality distribution

I just came back from a Micro Theory Lunch, which is a great thing here in SD. It is similar to Brown Bag seminars, expect the food is provided by school (and it is good - sandwiches, cookies, sodas). It has a regular schedule and it takes about an hour. The usual presenters are students, even though faculty members like to present, too. This time, the presentation was by my office mate Jim. He is a very smart and curious guy, but the presentation itself was, given my standards, bad. There was almost no structure, it was really hard to understand what is the main point, where is it all going. He also spent a lot of time on motivation but did not link its content with the theory he (very shortly) presented afterwards. It made me wonder what is the actual quality distribution of people (and their presentations) around the world. Maybe CERGE-EI is not that bad after all. Or at least, the good guys at CERGE-EI are better then the average elsewhere.

Radiohead

You probably heard the news - a band called Radiohead (never heard about them) published their album on the web. You can purchase(i.e. download) it for any price you want. There was a big fuss about it and lots of speculation whether it will be a success or no.
Well, it is definitely nice experiment, but the experience itself is appalling. The website is terribly slow (and I mean terribly) and very, very confusing. If you still manage to obtain a code to download the album, the code does not work.
This is not a way to go. Downloading from P2P is as easy as a one mouse click, so this is no competition. Even though somebody is always listening, it is so much easier to download it this way than to try to pay for it 0.0 pounds. Anyway, Nohavica way is simpler - just let people download it and encourage them to use P2P to reduce the burden for your servers.

Baby changing station

I love it - there is a baby changing station in the men's restroom in the swimming pool. I called that compete gender balance.

Presentation skills

Today, I finally had the opportunity to compare the quality of our (CERGE-EI) graduates to those of UCSD. Based on the small sample of one girl going to the job market and her first presentation, I would say we are roughly comparable. Her (empirical micro) paper was interesting, but the presentation itself was quite confusing and several problems were discover (and to many questions, she simply had no answers). Still, I admired her english. Much, much better than what we see at CERGE-EI.

The shows, the magazines and the ads

When I'm eating a dinner, I like to watch some TV. Everyone who saw a show in the US will confirm that the ads are way more frequent and longer than in the Czech Republic. They come every five to ten minutes and last almost as long. The show that has 40 minutes is scheduled for 60 minutes, so you get the picture.
Similarly, the magazines (The Economist, but also the Time) are full of ads. In particular, The Economist is about 2x thicker in the US than in the Czech Republic, but the actual content is almost identical! In the Time, you can go through 10-15 pages before the first article comes!
I have a feeling that the US is in a bit different equilibrium than the rest of the world. Ads are quite cheap and so everyone has a lots of them (and can them aim better to a specific groups of readers). In the EU, the ads are more expensive and there is much less of them.
I just hope the Europe will not converge to the former equilibrium.