The fact of the day

NY TImes: As the investigative reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele observed in the October Vanity Fair, America has to date “spent twice as much in inflation-adjusted dollars to rebuild Iraq as it did to rebuild Japan — an industrialized country three times Iraq’s size, two of whose cities had been incinerated by atomic bombs.” (And still Iraq lacks reliable electric power.)

The Drought

South-west of the US suffers from one of the worst drought in the history. Or maybe not - maybe it is just a climate change. Anyway, it's getting scary. Warning, that NY times article is long. Worth reading, though.

Fires

Well, so it is here. The winds called "Santa Ana", flowing from east to west (opposite to the usual direction), very hot and very dry, caused a couple of fires around SD. Nothing really close to us, but we can smell the fires, and the visibility is significantly lower. It gets worse - the conditions that caused these fires are likely to continue for next couple of days and further accelerate the spreading of fires. But don't worry - except some difficulty with breathing, everything is OK around here. Or at least it seems so.

Obesity and health

Even though there are not many really fat people at UCSD (most of fat people around here are non-faculty staff), most people seem to be slightly above the ideal BMI. This is hardly surprising - we all know that obesity is on the rise. Well, it is no wonder, if you can have a lunch (i.e. full meal) composed of junk food for $1 or $2, but regular good meal will cost you $4 at least. In fact, cookies for $0.50 are sufficient for lunch (of course, you cannot do eat them for lunch very often - at least I don't) in their energetic contents. And they are good.

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.