Thursday, June 30, 2005

On hiatus for a while...

So I'm going to be in hiatus for a while. I'm getting distracted. I really need to do work showing that the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) is an Ideal Free Distribution (IFD). I'm armed with my Lagrange optimization methods, and now I just need to lock myself into a corner and not think about anything else.

A quick update though...

1. Getting rid of the acute unhappiness

A meeting with my group really picked me up. So, it was a 9am meeting that lasted until 12:30am. Nicanor was giving us a presentation on finite population ESS's and playing "against the field." This was fun partly because I was one of the only other ones in our group who does work with ESS's, so it hit close to home. It was mainly fun because Nicanor couldn't resist inserting a political comment. . .

[ You see, evolutionary game dynamics are very different if you have a finite population, especially if the population is very small. For example, in a Hawk-Dove game that comes to an equilibrium at (1/3,2/3), if you cast it as a finite population problem, you get LOTS more Hawks. The smaller the population, it's more beneficial to be a bully more of the time. Nicanor extrapolated this by looking at games played by all of the nations of the world, and commented on the existence of the G8 (and what the existence of the G10 does to the analysis) ]

. . . After the REALLY FRIGGIN LONG meeting, we went to a lunch from 12:30 to 2:30. This is when Jorge started talking about sex, and how it was related to all of our research.

It was fun. It made me realize again why I'm doing this. The tools we use fit so many interesting contexts... Yeah, sex and politics is fun, but there's a lot more available too. I enjoy what I do. I should do it more!

2. Clothing galore

In a stunning display of mid-20's crisis, I've gone out and bought more new clothing. I spent a lot of time shopping with George. I was actually pretty happy about it. I usually hate shopping with people, but for some reason George's slow pace is okay with me.

3. My Masochism Has a First Name

Women are nothing but trouble.
 

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