Joe Halpern (1953-2026)

 Joseph Halpern was an early explorer of the interface between computer science and game theory.  

Here's his funeral home obit: 

Joseph Y. Halpern
May 29, 1953 — February 13, 2026 

"Joe spent nearly 30 years as a professor of computer science at Cornell, and was considered a pioneer in his field. He was famous for having an impressive influence in a wide variety of topics, working extensively at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and game theory. His work has reshaped the way we think about topics such as reasoning about knowledge and causality. He is the recipient of prestigious awards such as the Gödel Prize and Dijkstra Prize, the co-author of three highly influential books, six patents, and over 300 papers." 

 

His student Daphne Koller writes:

In Memoriam: Joe Halpern

"Yesterday, my PhD advisor, Joe Halpern, passed away after a long battle with lung cancer. He was a brilliant mathematician, a transformative mentor, and a truly wonderful human being.

"Joe possessed the rare ability to identify unusual, deeply interesting problems and solve them with breathtaking elegance and rigor. He was also a master communicator who could distill the most complex concepts into simple, straightforward truths—a skill I strive to emulate every day." 

 

Here's his Google Scholar Page: Jospeh Halpern 

Eric Schmidt on the future of warfare

 Warfare--the technology by which wars are fought--is changing.

Ukraine’s no man’s land is the future of war
In drone vs drone combat, valuable personnel can be pulled back from the front
Eric Schmidt 

"The writer is former CEO of Google, chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project and an investor in drone technology" 

"Future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons. The combination of unblockable satellite communications, cheap spectrum networks and accurate GPS targeting means the only way to fight will be through drone vs drone combat. Drones share data in real time, meaning that many inexpensive platforms can act as a single weapon. They will carry air-to-air missiles to defeat attackers, just like a fighter jet does, but will be cheaper and more abundant.

"The winner of those drone battles will then be able to advance with unmanned ground and maritime vehicles, which move slowly but can carry heavier payloads. These air, land and sea formations will absorb the initial fire and expand what is becoming an increasingly robotic kill zone. Only after the first waves of machines have gone in will human soldiers follow."
 

4th Computational and Experimental Economics Summer School, UPF Barcelona, May31-June 6

Rosemarie Nagel writes from Barcelona:

Dear colleagues and graduate students,

 We invite graduate students, postdocs, and young faculty to the 4th Computational and Experimental Economics Summer School, to be held on May 31 - June 6, 2026, at the BESLab at UPF in Barcelona, Spain.

 The goal of the summer school is to build a foundation for using computational tools, machine learning methods, and large language models to complement and/or explain results from human-subject experiments. In particular, throughout the curriculum, students will learn to implement a variety of agent-based models that have successfully captured regularities observed in experimental and field data.  

 

In addition, the summer school will include a two-day workshop on computational and experimental economics at the BSE summerforum, featuring presentations by leading researchers in experimental and computational economics.

 The deadline for applications is March 7th, 2026, for the summer school. 

 You can find more information and details on how to participate in the summer school here: https://www.upf.edu/web/beslab/comp-2026

 Organizers,

 Herbert Dawid (Bielefeld University)

Mikhail Anufriev (University of Technology Sydney)

Rosemarie Nagel (ICREA-UPF, and BSE)

Valentyn Panchenko (University of New South Wales)

Yaroslav Rosokha (Purdue University)

Trump Administration Removes Pride Flag From Stonewall National Monument (but the Stonewall Inn is still in private hands)

 When a national monument is designated around a private business in a liberal state, the ability of the President to alter its message is  at least partially circumscribed.

Trump Administration Removes Pride Flag From Stonewall National Monument  The enduring symbol of LGBTQ+ liberation has been taken down from the historic site.
By James Factora and Quispe López  February 10, 2026 

 

 

 "Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal told the New York Times that the directive to remove the Pride flag came from the Trump administration. The monument itself was designated in 2016 to honor the origin of Pride in the United States, and was also the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGTBTQ+ rights.

"But like the 1969 rebellion that cemented Stonewall into history books, queer and trans people are not taking it without a fight. While the park and monument across from the original Stonewall Inn is now a federal park, the business itself is private property.

“Bad news for the Trump Administration: these colors don’t run,” Human Rights Campaign Press Secretary Brandon Wolf said in a statement. “The Stonewall Inn & Visitor’s Center is still privately owned, their flags are still flying high, and that community is just as queer as it was yesterday. While their policy agenda throws the country into chaos, the Trump administration is obsessed with trying to suffocate the joy and pride that Americans have for their communities.”

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N.Y.C. Officials Reinstate Pride Flag at Stonewall After Federal Removal   By Liam Stack and Olivia BensimonUpdated Feb. 13, 2026, 2:40 a.m. ET

"A group of New York elected officials gathered on Thursday to replace the Pride flag that was removed from the Stonewall National Monument after a directive from the Trump administration, mounting a defiant response to the government’s assault on diversity initiatives at a federal site honoring the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.

"The plan to re-raise the flag in the center of the small park outside the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village had been widely publicized on social media, and hundreds of spectators cheered as its rainbow colors made their way back up the flagpole under a cloudy winter sky."

Moral Economics: Book cover and jackets

 Getting a book out involves some tedium (e.g. trying to proofread the index) as well as many small excitements: here's the full book cover and jackets for Moral Economics:) 

 

 

 

Blurb I recently wrote (for a How-to on a familiar but surprising subject)

Like everything else in life, blurbs have editors, so not everything you write gets published.   

Some of the books I've read and blurbed might surprise you, such as this one (on a familiar subject, but a surprising one for a book):

You've Been Pooping All Wrong  by Dr. Trisha Pasricha (who I first encountered some years ago).

 Here's my blurb as it appears on the book's web page: 
“An entertaining and instructive book.”

  Here's the full blurb that I wrote

"Dr. Trisha Pasricha has written an entertaining and instructive book, in very plain language, about how our bodies turn inputs into outputs, along with tips on managing that. Along the way she writes equally clearly about the emerging, polysyllabic field of neurogastroenterology, which studies the lifelong, two-way conversation between brains and guts." 

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"My needs in life are simple, I want three things maybe four...a little love, just enough to eat, a warm place to sleep, and everything I write should be published"

Before I forget, coffee lowers risk of dementia

 Here's the good news, published yesterday in JAMA:

Coffee and Tea Intake, Dementia Risk, and Cognitive Function
Yu Zhang, MBBS1,2,3; Yuxi Liu, PhD2,3,4; Yanping Li, PhD1,2 et al,

JAMA, Published Online: February 9, 2026
doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.27259 

"Findings  In this prospective cohort study of 131 821 individuals from 2 cohorts with up to 43 years of follow-up, 11 033 dementia cases were documented. Higher caffeinated coffee intake was significantly associated with lower risk of dementia. Decaffeinated coffee intake was not significantly associated with dementia risk.

"Meaning  Higher caffeinated coffee intake was associated with more favorable cognitive outcomes. "

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I figured I'd better pass along the news before I forget...