Archive for December 31st, 2012
Nicolas Petit- an Ordinary Professor
I’ve just realized that I forgot to share some good news with you.
A few days ago I learnt that Nicolas had been promoted to Professeur Ordinaire. To be frank, given my absolute ignorance about Belgian academia (among vety many other subjects), going from Professor to Ordinary Professor rather sounded like a downgrade.
But nope, Google tells me that Nico has managed to attain the highest possible academic position at age 33, which is very hard to understand impressive. While writing this I’ve realized that he also turned 34 on Saturday (which of course I forgot).
Congrats and best of lucks, Nico!
Death Star economics: on market power and technological innovation
A couple of days ago the FT published an interesting piece on how market power in the tech sector might disprove assumptions about technological rates of progress. According to the author, science fiction had long anticipated the trends we are seeing today.
I could dsummarize the piece, but since (i)I broke my arm/shoulder skiing; (ii) it’s taking me ages to type with my left hand (not that there’s much else I can do..), and (iii) many of you are probably on holidays, you can probably spare a couple of minutes to read it here.
Btw, happy new year !!!!