After two days at the ARCS workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, as well as two more days at the annual Business Network meeting, my 'buffer is full', as we say in the computer business. It was an excellent combination of specific/deep (ARCS) and broad (BusNet) meetings.
All in all, my favorite presentations were those of Norman Johnson of LANL, and Martin Nowak of Harvard. Dr. Johnson's presentation was entitled "Pandemics: The Emerging Threat, Biodefense & Biosecurity- Global View", and walked through the history of prior pandemics, the societal conditions that existed at those times, with the contrasting societal conditions now and the impact of a comparable pandemic. It was a very effective and chilling augur of the coming pandemic(s).
Dr. Nowak of Harvard had an equally excellent presentation on cooperation. He went through his slides quickly, walking through the five distinct modes of cooperation and the prisoner's dilemma. He covered more material in his brief presentation than I have absorbed in >10 books on the subject. If he had been a professor of mine in my undergraduate years, I would have quickly shifted my focus from business and computer science to evolutionary dynamics.
Hopefully, the Santa Fe Institute team will post the slides from the BusNet meeting soon, so I can update this post with links to those presentations.
I also was able to wrap up my last two days in Santa Fe with back-to-back morning runs, including a new personal record for the mile (10.06) as well as prolonged distance without stopping (about two miles). I am glad, as I sit in the Frankfurt Airport, that I ran those days, as international travel provides a good opportunity for those tired muscles to heal up in preparation for some good runs in Nice and London this week.
Going to head for my gate now, where it appears that the European air-travelers are equally unthrilled with the liquid/gel regulations that are causing travel delays worldwide. More from the Cote d'Azur.
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