You may be shocked

Robin Milner is probably the most influential researcher in concurrency theory, the research area in which I work. He has won the Turing award (the Nobel prize for computer science), and made decisive contributions in several areas of computing; in all of them his ideas have had both theoretical and practical impact.

Milner is 75 years-old now. He continues to work, more actively than what one could imagine. He has recently finished a book on his latest group of theories, one that attempts to provide a general formulation for a number of complicated phenomena. My impression is that such theories have had much less impact than his previous work. I personally do not like the theories; I find them very hard to understand. I guess I am not alone in that perception. One gets the impression that Milner knows that, and that he is most interested in making his theories more accessible.

The other day, by mistake, Milner sent a private email to a public mailing list. The email was intended to one of the chairs of a forthcoming conference: in his email Milner was sending very well in advance his slides for his keynote talk. In his very refined English (which we all have come to appreciate by reading his books and papers), Milner expressed his concern about the lack of a projector in the conference, also pointing out that he should be very busy over the coming weeks. Referring to the slides, Milner wrote: "You may be shocked to receive them so early." Pure Milner style.

That email from Milner got me thinking. I was indeed shocked, but not because of the slides. I was shocked to realize that Milner in 75 years was still concerned about some of the annoying issues related to research, such as writing slides and doing arrangements for conferences. Then I realized: I do not want to be 75 and be worried about research! Granted, I am not a genius-like researcher as Milner is, and most likely when I get old I won't feel the urgency of making a last, extraordinary contribution to science (as Milner probably feels). Even if one feels like doing research till the end (literally), that would certainly be disastrous way of ending your life. I mean, there are so many wonderful things in life so as to be concerned till the end about research. At that age, I certainly expect to be worried about hobbies, family, and health (in that order).

We still have one year to make things right.

Today Colombia celebrates the 199th anniversary of its Independence Day. Last week, the Colombian government raised to this unique celebration by announcing that the US military presence in Colombian bases will expand significantly in the short/mid term. I cannot imagine what surprises the government will have for us for next year, in occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Independence day.

I have a humble proposal for such an important anniversary. It is unquestionable now that Colombia is a failed country, regardless of what you understand by "failure". That said, the best thing we can possibly do for 2010 is to formally accept the reality of our failure as a country. More precisely, by 2010 Colombian leaders should start with all the necessary procedures so as to ensure that Colombia ceases to be an independent country, and becomes part of one of the current empires around.

No, I am not joking. I think we could talk to the UN, and make our case. It should be fairly simple to convince them of our failure. Perhaps they can help us in setting up a bid mechanism, so as to become part of the best developed country around. The country offering the best conditions to govern us would be the winner of the bid. Sensible options would be the US and Spain. In both cases, becoming part of them would be a mere formality; we have been behaving like one of their colonies for a very long time now. They treat us accordingly, too. So it would be like one of these couples that have been living together for a long time, and that one day discover that for some bureaucratic reason (say, cheaper taxes) making things formal is convenient.

The main advantage I see is that nothing would really change: our leaders are already used to report to someone in Spain and the US, and both countries already exploit our resources and talent accordingly. There would be many benefits of making our failure formal. Apart from the immediate order, development, and civility that a foreign empire could enforce in Colombia, there would be other small benefits. For instance, we Colombians would get a decent passport to travel around. The developed country that wins the right to rule Colombia would get access to our natural resources (most notably, water) and to our two oceans. This is not to be underestimated. For the US, I suppose having a fixed colony in South America should be very attractive: they would be close to Venezuela's oil and would neutralize the growing influence China and Iran have in the continent.

I am confident all the Colombian leaders that follow this blog will take my proposal into account. They have one year to make things right.

An intellectual bully

I follow Michael Mitzenmacher's blog My Biased Coin. Mitzenmacher is a professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and does research on a field completely unrelated to mine (he works on potentially useful stuff: data structures, network algorithms, probabilities/randomness, information theory). In his blog, MM writes about his research results and other general topics related to life as a professor and researcher. As such, he has recently written about the serious financial situation at Harvard: the huge debt they have now, the cut-offs they should do, etc.

By reading this post (and the comments therein), it seems a huge deal of the responsability for the current crisis at Harvard is due to former president Larry Summers. It seems that Summers invested too frenetically on buildings and new faculty, and the effects of that careless debt are only seen now. Apart from that, it seems that Summers is a rather controversial character (described by some as "an arrogant, intellectual bully") who during his administration brought division at different levels in Harvard. Summers resigned to Harvard presidency in 2006, and took a professorship there afterwards.

While I could not care less about Harvard's financial situation, and I am sure universities and corporations in the US are full of crazy spenders such as Summers, there's a detail that concerns us all: early this year, our beloved Barack Husein appointed Summers as Director of the White House's National Economic Council.

The idea of having a guy like Summers in charge of the US financial recovery initiatives then sounds a bit disturbing. Granted: it could be that the guy is indeed an asshole, but a very competent one for economic matters. (After all, Barack Husein appointed him, so he should be good by definition, right?) However, there's compelling evidence that indicates that Summers is an idiot (or, that thinks that everyone else is an idiot). Indeed, Summers recently claimed that US economy is indeed improving because the number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels!

How about that?

The fantastic four

I had ready a post on the absurd circumstances of the death of Pepe the hippo, and a sort of reflection on the stupidity some "noble" causes inadvertently convey. Yes, the post was boring. But then I found something funnier to write about. Consider the University of Bologna, a respectable institution, founded in 1088, or as WikiPedia would say, "the oldest continually operating degree-granting university in the world." Now consider the picture below, part of the latest publicity campaign the University released so as to attract students to the campuses of Rimini, Cesena, Ravenna, and Forli:

I always liked Ravenna and Rimini :-)

I really don't know what was the purpose of this publicity, entitled "the fantastic four." And it's not difficult to imagine the controversy (and embarrassment) it caused in Bologna and in Italy at large. Naturally, the ads didn't last long, but the damage was already done. I could write many posts on how critical the situation in Italy is, at every level. I choose not to do it. When one of the most respected Universities in the world chooses to attract students in this way, a picture is worth a thousand words.

If you want to read more about this, click here (in Italian).

Democratic dictators

Although there are several topics I could write about (most notably, my 'unique' take on Michael Jackson's death), I will repeat myself writing about politics. Or more precisely, writing about the failure of democracy in its standard definition. This is motivated by the recent events in Honduras. It must be said that Honduras is a rather irrelevant country in the world. This is not to be taken negatively; Colombia is also an irrelevant country, it's just that it is sometimes relevant for negative reasons.

Since I find Honduras irrelevant, I trust you can forgive my lack of knowledge about its basic facts. Let me summarize the situation as I learned it by reading some online news this week. Honduras had/has a left-wing president called Manuel Zelaya who, as several of his peers, wants to be president for a little longer, forever if possible. He tried to do it in the correct way, but the main courts denied his desires. Zelaya is a populist, clever enough so as to maintain good relationships with Venezuela and the United States. Zelaya's ambitions for continued periods in office made the congress (in which Zelaya's party has the minority) rather uncomfortable, and several processes against him were initiated. The opposition claims that Zelaya intends to convert Honduras into yet another puppet country of Chavez, pretty much as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua already are. They're are not that wrong in that one. Zelaya's was kidnapped by the army and expelled to Costa Rica in his pajamas. Funny scene. The congress then named a rather stupid guy called Roberto Micheletti as temporary president (if you read Italian, make sure you read this note on Micheletti); Micheletti expects to call for presidential elections very soon, and to bring Zelaya into justice if he dares to change his pajamas and return to Honduras.

The situation in Honduras is useful to illustrate a phenomenon occurring in several other countries: legally-elected leaders are becoming into democratic dictators. In other words, potential dictators are using seemingly democratic methods to gain legitimacy. It's democracy only on the surface: indeed, the idea of democracy has been reduced to the mere act of winning an election; basic laws and principles, such as the respect for the opposition and law systems and the preservation of the so much needed equilibrium of civil institutions, are rapidly fading out. The executive power is increasingly gaining more and more power in the process; we can see it in left-wing countries such as Venezuela, right-wing countries such as Colombia, and in undefinable countries such as Italy. Now it is easy to change a constitution based on polls and perceptions induced by media. And nobody seems to complain about it.

The situation is rather worrying, even if you happen to live in a country in which the president is not one such democratic dictators. At the end, they all will end up acting by example.