minutia press.
Playing Fussball with the Great One

I spent the last four days in Princeton, New Jersey, working on the CS GRE. I admit I enjoy this work: it's fun to think of questions to put on such an exam. But I also enjoy the meeting because of the great people on the committee. We have three new members this yaer, and they were terrific to work with.

The senior member on the committee is now Steve Cook, who invented the area of NP-Completeness. One of his former students, Paul Beame is a new committee member, and he is very good at fussball (also very good at theory and computer science, but I digress). Now I don't play fussball all that often, but Paul beat me without breaking much of a sweat, and while being disadvantaged due to one missing player on one of his rows.

A highlight of the trip was that I joined Steve Cook, double teaming against Paul Beame. Paul still had the side missing one player. Paul still won. But it was a game I will never forget.