Call for Silly Papers: the 200th CPM Discussion paper

The Centre for Policy Modelling Discussion paper series has almost reached number 200. So, in the spirit of paper number 100 (http://cfpm.org/cpmrep100.html) or the Annals of Improbably Research (http://improbable.com), we are inviting submissions for paper number 200.

The rules are as follows:

1. All submissions have to be recognisably a social simulation paper. However unlike other social simulation papers ;-), we are looking for papers that are silly, satirical, funny, nonsensical, off-beat or just plain weird (they do not have to be *all* of these things but at least one).

2. All submissions must be received by bruce@edmonds.name by the end of Friday 21st November in one of the following formats: txt, pdf, doc or html. Late submissions will be lost with a probability that is proportional to some very large number.

3. Submissions may be of any length. Papers that do not adhere to this requirement will be rejected out of hand.

4. The papers will be objectively judged by a panel of independent experts.

5. The opinions of those experts will be studiously ignored. The papers will then be judged by Bruce Edmonds, Shah Alam, David Hales and V. Lewskogski whose opinions shall be final (if sampled over a short enough time period).

6. The selected paper (or papers) will be published to world-wide acclaim as CPM Report number 200 (see http://cfpm.org/cpmreps.html).

7. Post -Modernist papers pretending to be silly social simulation papers to try and fool us (ala Sokal) will be physically deconstructed.

8. The recycling of papers is strongly encouraged on environmental grounds, so dig out all your past, rejected papers that you thought were sensible, seminal and serious.

9. The winner will be announced here at http://cfpm-news.blogspot.com/ and elsewhere.

Enjoy!

Bruce Edmonds, Shah Alam, David Hales, V. Lewscogski

Stream on "Simulating the Social Processes of Science" at ESSA 2009

Bruce Edmonds of the CFPM will be the Scientific Chair of the 6th Confrence of the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA 2009) -- see: http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/essa2009/

At this it is planned that there will be a special stream of papers on "Simulating the Social Processes of Science", where papers that discuss simulations that try to capture the inter-personal or social processes that occur between scientists (in the broadest sense) will be presented.

If you are interested, please contact me on bruce@edmonds.name

1/2 PhD positions available at the Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester, UK

One or two studentships are available at the Centre for Policy Modelling (CFPM), starting immediately (or when the candidates can start). The Studentship will be £12K pa plus fees for 3 years. Only EU students can apply. The course of study will be centered around agent-based social simulation, which is the core of the CFPM's work. Preference will be given to those who already have some research experience (e.g. research-based masters), but other candidates will be considered. To get a flavour of our work see the CFPM's website at cfpm.org, especially the discussion papers. Past PhD students include: Luis Isquierdo, Shah Jamal Alam, Olivier Barthelemy, Richard Taylor, and Oswaldo Terán.

If you are interested, in the first instance contact either Bruce Edmonds (bruce@edmonds.name) or Scott Moss (scott@cfpm.org). We hope to fill these positions by December 2008.

The CPM Blog

This blog will replace the CPM-announcements mailing list. Since its a LOT easier to manage! Future projects, jobs, studentships, news, papers, calls etc. will be announced here (and possibly SIMSOC).

Bruce