Bill and Lance's Excellent German Adventure

Lance: Because we don't have a good microphone, Bill and I decided to have our first typecast. Hi Bill.

Bill: Hi Lance. We'll be typecast SUPERSTARS.

L: What's today's topic Bill?

B: DAGSTUHL!!! First question of the day, they seat us at lunch and dinner randomly but I've had lunch and dinner with Valentine Kabenets four times. What's with that?

L: No need to yell Bill, it's a typecast. Isn't Valentine an expert in pseudorandomness? You should ask him.

B: If I have one more meal with him, I will.

L: So what is your favorite talk so far?

B: Mine of course. But after mine, yours of course.

L: I agree. I like mine the best too :)

B: You've seemed to have resolved the prisoner's dilemma dilemma. For that you deserve the Nobel prize in Economics. It won't be the only premature Nobel prize given this year.

L:  Too late. Actually you already know my favorite talks from yesterday.

B: Wow, we can do links in a typecast, but not in a vidcast. This is AWESOME!!

L: Quiet down Bill there are people on the other side of this table trying to prove theorems and not wasting time typing to each other. But actually you can put links in Youtube if I knew how. Or so I believe.

B: A real question now. We saw a talk, a really good talk, that proved planar graph isomorphism is in a log space. It was a great talk because it gave an outline of where he (Fabian Wagner) was going so even when I got lost later I got something out of it. Why is it a complexity talk (CCC '09) and not a SODA talk?

L: Hard to say but it felt like a complexity talk. He certainly had complexity co-authors like Thomas Thierauf.

B: Co-authors do not a field make.

L: A field is defined by its people.

B: If you, Lance Fortnow, start doing algorithmic game theory would that start becoming part of complexity.

Rahul Santhanam: Yes, because the premise won't happen.

Chris Umans: What are you doing?

B: It's a typecast, like a vidcast only we type.

C: Really, are you serious? 

B: If you walk in you are fair game. 

C: How can this be a typecast if you can edit it?

L: Like we don't edit the video? We got a bit off track. What I do is complexity because I write the blog.

B: By that theory Ramsey theory is now complexity because I write the blog too.

L: You don't count.

B: I count MOD P!

L: So Vinod gave a neat talk yesterday showing the equivalence between Kolmogorov extractors and randomness extractors which I conjectured here first.

Meena: So why wasn't my talk Monday mentioned on the blog?

L: Time constraints.

R: No, space constraints.

B: Let's wrap up soon. So are you enjoying Dagstuhl?

L: Any time I get to spend with you and Rahul is a pleasure.

B: Same here.

L: But you get to be with yourself all the time.

B: And don't think I don't appreciate it! 

L: And so until next time, when in a complex world best to keep it simple.