This Conference brings together a group of scholars to honor the life and research of Ronald Coase. 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Coase’s seminal paper on the Federal Communications Commission. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of his paper on “The Problem of Social Cost,” and his 100th birthday.
The presentations on this occasion cover specific topics on which Coase’s work has exerted profound influence, including such areas as telecommunications policy, airline regulation and development, environmental economics, economic development, organization of the firm, and general discussions of the questions of transactions costs and social rationality to which he has contributed so much.
The Conference is being organized by Richard A. Epstein of the University of Chicago, Thomas Hazlett of George Mason University, and Roger Noll and Greg Rosston of Stanford University. These papers shall be published in special issues of the Journal of Law and Economics and the Journal of Legal Studies. The Conference will be held at the University of Chicago Law School on Friday, December 4, and Saturday, December 5, 2009. The public is invited.
Dec 9th Update: I’ve made a correction to “Prize offered by” in the $289 Prize. My apologies to GASARCH and thanks for pointing out my mistake.
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Two Computational Complexity Prizes/Challenges
Note: I don’t know if these prizes have been claimed already. And if you think the challenges are dead easy, then your solutions are most likely wrong. :)
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A $289 Prize
Prize offered by: GASARCH Stephen Fenner, Charles Glover and Semmy Purewal
I am really excited to hear Eric Howell’s Ana’s Playground now qualifies for an Oscar nomination. Here is what Eric wrote in his blog,
I am very pleased to report that “Ana’s Playground” has won “Best International Short Film” at the 22nd Foyle Film Festival in Northern Ireland. This festival is one of a few festivals that are sanctioned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. WIth a win in the short film category, Ana’s Playground has automatically qualified to be considered by the Academy for an Oscar nomination in NEXT year’s award cycle. Wow.
Congrats Eric! I am really happy for you.
You can check out my previous interviews with Eric and a film trailer linked here and here.
Bill Buxton at BIF-5 (30 mins talk, video) – “Leading designer and Microsoft principal researcher questions why the design of most technology doesn’t incorporate important social, cultural and historical perspectives.”
This Energy Efficient Spiral Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb started to flicker and I thought it was going to die pretty soon. So I took my camera out and decided to shoot a video of its death.
What I didn’t expect was the chemical burning smell that came afterwards. I am glad there wasn’t any fire but the chemical smell was strong enough that I opened the window for half an hour.
I hope better and more affordable LED light will come to the market soon.
Last night, our friends invited us to try some fine cuisine. Roasted Rack of Lamb, Steak Diane, Callebaut Chocolate Mousse Tower, Chocolate Molton Cake were all quite yummy.
And then we had “water tasting”.
Because our friends wanted us to try something special, they ordered Italian imported water Acqua Panna. To be honest, we would rather drink the perfectly tasty Calgary tap water because the few bottles of water were silly expensive and super environmentally unfriendly (think of all the shipping, bottling, etc). But because we were polite, we drank the water.
The evening was wonderfully enjoyable, we got to know our friends a lot more and we had a great time. :)
“Frank Gehry is a transformative figure in the world of architecture. His Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has been called “the world’s most celebrated new building” by The New York Times, and his Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles, is considered both a visual and an acoustical masterpiece. Projects from Las Vegas to Abu Dhabi are in the works or preparing to open. Having recently celebrated his eightieth birthday, Gehry talks to Barbara Isenberg, author of Conversations with Frank Gehry, and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross about his art of moving forms.”
This Antivirus Message on the Arrivals screen of the Calgary Airport is, unfortunately, not an edited image but what I saw in the in Sep 2009. It looks funny and strangely incompetent at the same time.
Like many Canadians, I want to get pay a more reasonable price and get better mobile services. I was hoping WINDmobile would have been launched by now and I will soon be able leave my current provider.
So it was very unfortunate that CRTC threw a curve ball in its decision. But I am determined and I have add WINDmobile to my Christmas/New Year wish list. I hope if enough Canadians speak out and demand mobile competitors like WINDmobile be allowed to compete in Canada, then we can soon have some decent prices and services in Canada. (Note to the Doctor Who fans out there: Remember what Martha Jones did here to defeat the monster? There is hope. :)
“Though many Canadians are frustrated in their own experiences with mobile service providers, they don’t understand the scope of the the issues at hand.
For example, did you know that wireless consumers in this country deal with:
Higher prices: Due to lack of competition and real alternatives, Canadians pay an average of 60% more for mobile wireless services than Americans according to the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel.
Staggering complaints: The Better Business Bureau released its list of top ten consumer complaint calls. Cell phone companies tops that list – soaring above car dealers, movers and even utilities. Clearly Canadian consumers aren’t being treated as they should be and they’re not happy about it.
Among the weakest in the world: Canada’s wireless industry is one of the weakest in the developing world. Merrill Lynch puts Canadian wireless penetration at 65 per cent, last among 22 developed countries (below Tunisia and Iraq). The International telecommunications Union (ITU) has tracked Canada’s decline from 35th in 1998 to 128th in 2008 – far behind many underdeveloped nations.
Oligopoly: The Canadian wireless market is dominated by three very large, very profitable players – Telus, Rogers and Bell. This is not a ‘hypercompetitive market’ as they would have you believe. WIND Mobile, is the only new entrant that offers a truly national wireless alternative.”
P.S. I am a fan of WINDmobile, but I will be less than honest if I don’t mention that I actually agree with the CRTC’s analysis when it made its decision (see further comments here) that Globalive and WINDmobile are foreign controlled. I just think it is time that our telecom laws are updated to remove the foreign ownership restriction. I don’t usually like the idea of government overruling quasi-judicial bodies’ decisions, but I will make an exception here.
Lets give Canada some needed competitions in the mobile industry by exempting WINDmobile, and lets fix the telecom laws next.
“STEALTH [Sensor for the Training of Elite Athletes] is a partnership between the Schulich School of Engineering, Alpine Canada Alpin and Own the Podium, a winter sport technical program designed to help Canada win the most medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics. STEALTH has been in the works for years and the men’s Canadian Alpine Ski Team has been training with it since 2007.
“STEALTH performs with accuracy of five centimetres and up to a timing accuracy of .1 millisecond. We’re the first in the world to do this with such a high level of accuracy and with a unit that weighs less than 300 grams,” says Gérard Lachapelle, Canada Research Chair/iCORE Chair in Wireless Location.”
Since the late 80s, I’ve been in love with Norman Rockwell and the American Dreams he painted. So I had a lot of fun looking at the photos and reading “Norman Rockwell’s American Dream” in Vanity Fair.
Ted Hoff, Inventor of the Microprocessor, @ UCBerkeley
“Ted Hoff took the inner circuitry of a computer and shrank it down onto a single chip of silicon: the microprocessor, a computer-on-a-chip. He realized that the memory, the calculating, and the processing functions of a computer could all be contained in a single circuit if only the architecture could be built simply enough. He designed that architecture and so invented the first microprocessor, the chip that is essentially the “brains” in all of today’s computers.”
Posted by kempton 
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