Short Cuts

I had planned on a post today on "What is Perfection?" but since the answer is not "The Patriots," I will wait for a more appropriate time.

The list of accepted papers for STOC 2008 is out. I have one accepted paper, an old-fashioned complexity result with Rahul Santhanam that I will blog about more at a future time. Strange fact: I haven't given a regular STOC-FOCS talk since FOCS '92. A combination of younger co-authors, some bad timing (missed STOC '98 for the birth of my younger daughter) and admittedly not as many STOC/FOCS papers as I would have liked. The streak will continue as I will miss STOC this year for my older daughter's Bat Mitzvah.

Meanwhile there are quite a few good complexity papers on the STOC list, Scott and Avi's Algebrization paper heads the must reads.

Microsoft announced the opening of a new research lab in Cambridge, MA in July headed by Jennifer Chayes. The lab will have a strong theory component. More broadly how would the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo! affect computer science research at both companies? One more thing to watch as we see the merger play out.