Following what seemed like an eternity of welcoming remarks and opening ceremonies, the conference began with a number of keynote speakers. Some were actually quite good, like Ben Goertzel's talk on Artificial General Intelligence and Paul Rosenbloom's "Towards a New Generation of Cognitive Architectures." Both speakers were brought in for the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI), part of the Multi-Conference on Artificial Intelligence (MCAI), which includes the Foundations of Information Science (FIS). I also enjoyed Pablo Marijuan's FIS talk on the Information Needs and Signaling Resources of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Our paper is on the FIS schedule for tomorrow morning.

Repeatedly the presence of two Russian scholars was brought to our attention, several times by the Russian scholars themselves. They are not real Russians, mind you, but cartoon Russians, built from the stereotypical characteristics of Brezhnev-era academic elites and Boris Yeltson look-alikes. I don't like sounding prejudiced, but they didn't have to wear those suits and cut in the lunch line like they did. I'm not alone in feeling this way.

By mid-afternoon, the sessions were running about an hour over time and technological foul-ups were becoming more frequent, so I cut out a little early to catch a nap and get some work done in the hotel room (mostly I wanted a nap). Already very bored with the monotone food in the cafeteria, I stopped by the Wu-Mart on the way back and picked up some yoghurt and bread for diner. Yes, there really is a Wu-Mart. From the outside it looks like a one-room street-side grocery story with a few shelves of canned goods and racks of beef jerky, but walk in and you find a two-floor supermarket with fresh produce, baked goods, clothes and cheap jewelry. A Walmart, but with character.