Thanks to Economix

Bought gas lately? Not a pleasant experiece for the wallet.

Gas and other energy aren’t as cheap as they used to be.

As power prices go up, our spending power goes down.

Check out the chart above… Motoko Rich of Economix noted that

with real incomes falling and the prices of basic goods rising, this might not bode well for consumer spending and in turn, the fragile recovery.

What’s so bad about people buying less TVs, toys, and food? Well, if nothing else this stuff fuels our economy which is now expected to grow at a slower rate.

To make matters worse wages are hitting record lows, ZERO to be exact.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis notes that working for free, although not ideal, gives the worker valuable experience and a chance to prove themselves. With a hat tip to R.A. at Free Exhange who explains the trend by noting that

If it’s worth taking on someone to do a job, it’s probably worth paying them something. The problem is that there’s a discontinuity in the wage spectrum. Pay above the minimum wage is legal, and no wage at all is (probably) legal, but a positive wage less than the minimum is not. Market clearing job matches at wages between zero and the legal minimum can’t take place.

Unpaid labor is a sad truth for bloggers (hint hint) but would you our readers take a wage-less position over joblessness? Also, even if you are being paid is the price of things pinching your pocket?

If you haven’t heard by now, there is a royal wedding in the making…More importantly, there was a royal bachelor party over the weekend!

Prince William of Wales is set to wed his longtime love interest, Kate Middleton, at the end of April. Like all good weddings, there had to be a little bit of a pre-game celebration. Who better to plan the event than the prince of parties himself, Prince Harry?

Reports claim the princes and a little over 20 of their closest friends headed to the English-countryside for their weekend getaway. Though the exact details are under tough security, one thing is certain…a royal good time was had by all.

Professor Samuel Lomonaco will present a lecture on Distributed Quantum Algorithms from 2:30 to 3:45 on Wednesday March 30 in room ITE 325b. In the talk, Professor Lomonaco will show how quantum entanglement can be used as a mechanism for controlling a network of quantum computers. The talk is open to all.

1 day to go guys!! 
GET EXCITED FOR JESUS!!

>>Friday at 7:00pm in Lecture Hall 2.<<

Free Food, Live Music, Skits, Testimonies, Ministration, Poetry and much more!!

>>Click here for more details - Event Page<<

NEXT WEEK! I almost can’t believe it’s here! You still have until Friday to submit any pre-made pieces of work, so get them in before the deadline and see your artwork hung in The Commons Galleries!

We’ll be posting the daily events every morning at 10am here, and through our Facebook.

What events are you excited for/will you be attending?

The 2011 AAAI Fall Symposium on Open Government Knowledge: AI Opportunities and Challenges (OGK2011) seeks papers on all aspects of publishing public government data as reusable knowledge on the Web. Both long papers presenting research results and shorter papers describing late breaking work, outlining implemented systems, identifying new research challenges, or articulating a position are invited. Submissions are due by June 3, notifications will be sent by July 15, and the final camera-ready copy must be provided by September 9.

Websites like data.gov, research.gov and USASpending.gov aim to improve government transparency, increase accountability, and encourage public participation by publishing public government data online. Although this data has been used for some intriguing applications, it is difficult for citizens to understand and use. This symposium will explore how AI technologies such as the Semantic Web, information extraction, statistical analysis and machine learning can be used to make the knowledge embedded in the data more explicit, accessible and reusable. The symposium’s location of Washington, DC will facilitate the participation of U.S. federal government agency members and enable interchange between researchers and practitioners. We also expect attendance of international open government data players from e.g. UK and Australia.

Relevant topics include the automatic and semi-automatic creation of linked data resources, ontologies for government data, entity linking and co-reference detection between linked data resources, adding temporal qualifications to government data, creating mash-ups with open government data, linked open government data analysis, metadata for provenance, certainty and trust, policies for information sharing, privacy and use, social networks and government data, machine learning applied to government data, data visualization techniques, and applications.

This symposium will include a mix of invited talks, paper presentations, panels, system demonstrations, a poster session, and discussions. We plan to have several invited speakers drawn from government, academia and industry. We will run panels on the emerging challenges and best practices, including (i) how to enhance transparency and interoperability within an agency and across different agencies/countries, and (ii) how to promote nationwide health information network that effectively integrates government-curated public records and citizens’ personal health data.

The symposium organizers are Li Ding (RPI), Tim Finin (UMBC), Lalana Kagal (MIT) and Deborah McGuinness (RPI). Program committee members and additional information are listed on the OGK2011 symposium site. For more information about the the symposium, send email inquiries to ogk11-info@googlegroups.com.

Important Dates

• Workshop: 4-6 November 2011 in Arlington, Virginia USA
• Submissions due: 3 June 2011
• Decisions by: 15 July 15 2011
• Camera ready by: 9 September 2011