So this morning, after cleaning out all the spam in my inbox, I discover a Call for Papers for the Fifth Virtual Conference on Genomics and Bioinformatics. It was bounced from the alife-announce mailing list, and then sent on to me (as the moderator) by the original submitter with the request that it be posted.

So, humdedum, I'm scanning down the page thinking "gosh, yet another conference on genomics; look at all of the people I don't recognize on the committee, whee". And then my eyes stop on the name of my advisor, Eric Davidson. And I think to myself, "that's weird, he doesn't usually go in for these conferences." So I step across the hallway and ask him if he knows anything about it. Blank stare. I ask his assistant (who would be dealing with this anyway) and she says she's never heard of it.

So these, these people just dumped his name on this conference announcement without any sort of participation on his part. Well, I guess that's a sign you've made it: your name is placed on conference announcements without your consent, presumably to sucker people into attending the conference.

I'm not really sure what to do. So far I'm just ignoring the e-mail. If the guy asks me to post it again, I'll ask him what the hell my advisor's name is doing on it, I guess.

Enough already

OK, it's April 1st, I get it...

In other news, it's hard to write a diary entry and work on a thesis. I need to do some therapeutic programming...

--titus

p.s. Ankh, I don't believe gay marriage is legal in Las Vegas. See above ;).

On socialism, I have a quote for you: "Any man who isn't a socialist at twenty has no heart. Any man who's still a socialist at thirty has no brain." (Sean Stewart, in Perfect Circle) It actually sums up a surprising number of people I know, although of course there are also many exceptions.

It's also interesting to note that "Red China" isn't particularly communist any more. I know several mainland Chinese here at CIT and they actually tell me it's not a communist state any more; for one surprising example, medicine isn't socialized there. Weird!