Feynman on the Measurement Problem

Category: Physics

I'd never seen this quote from Richard Feynman on the measurement problem:

When you start out to measure the property of one (or more) atom, say, you get for example, a spot on a photographic plate which you then interpret. But such a spot is really only more atoms & so in looking at the spot you are again measuring the properties of atoms, only now it is more atoms. What can we expect to end with if we say we can't see many things about one atom precisely, what in fact can we see? Proposal,

Only those properties of a single atom can be measured which can be correlated (with finite probability) (by various experimental arrangements) with an unlimited no. o f atoms.

(I.e. the photographic spot is "real" because it can be enlarged & projected on screens, or affect large vats of chemicals, or big brains, etc., etc. - it can be made to affect ever increasing sizes of things - it can determine whether a train goes from N.Y. to Chic. - or an atom bomb explodes - etc.)

Posted by Dave Bacon at 11:21 AM • 3 Comments • View blog reactions

Relatively Right in Front of Your Nose

Category: Go Ahead, Waste Your Time • Physics

Special relativity holds a special (*ahem*) place in most physicist's physicists' hearts. I myself fondly remember learning special relativity from the first edition of Taylor and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics obtained from my local county library (this edition seemed a lot less annoying than the later edition I used at Caltech.) One of the fun things I remember calculating when I learned this stuff was what "right in front of your nose" meant in different frames of reference.

Read on »

Posted by Dave Bacon at 9:18 PM • 5 Comments • View blog reactions

QIP Santa Fe

Category: Quantum Computing • Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.

For those of us quantum computing folk heading to QIP 2009 in Santa Fe, NM, a few recommendations from someone who once called Santa Fe home.

Read on »

Posted by Dave Bacon at 2:21 PM • 2 Comments • View blog reactions

Dad - 5 Years On

Category: Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.

It is nearly impossible for me to believe that five years have passed since you passed away.

And hey, we're still waiting for Mt. Shasta to explode, could you get working on that?

One day, when I was an undergraduate at Caltech, I received a package in the mail from my father. In it was a small yellow squash with red dots painted onto it along with a strip of paper which read "what is this?" Well, Caltech is full of some pretty smart people, so we spent a few days trying to reason what this strange package that my father sent was. Small. Yellow. Squash. With red dots. Huh? After a few days I gave up and gave him a call. Okay, dad, what is that damn thing? "Oh, that's simple," he said, "It's an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot zucchini!"

We miss you. Even your bad jokes.

Posted by Dave Bacon at 4:21 PM • 4 Comments • View blog reactions

Little Miss Bleeeeeeeeeep

Category: Television

Anyone else catch Little Miss Sunshine on USA this weekend? The scene where the brother Dwayne breaks his vow of silence has to be one of the longest silence bleeps of all time. Anyone know of of a longer one (for one word, not for a string of words)?

Posted by Dave Bacon at 2:40 PM • 3 Comments • View blog reactions

Happy New Year!

Category: SciRate

Like the title says: Happy New Year!

Looking back at the list of top scited papers on scirate.com, shows some good fun indeed:

23 SciTes - 0811.3171
Title: Quantum algorithm for solving linear systems of equations
Authors: Aram W. Harrow, Avinatan Hassidim, Seth Lloyd

23 SciTes - 0809.3972
Title: A Counterexample to Additivity of Minimum Output Entropy
Authors: M. B. Hastings

19 SciTes - 0807.4935
Title: Quantum Communication With Zero-Capacity Channels
Authors: Graeme Smith, Jon Yard

18 SciTes - 0804.4050
Title: Matchgates and classical simulation of quantum circuits
Authors: Richard Jozsa, Akimasa Miyake

17 SciTes - 0806.1972
Title: Universal computation by quantum walk
Authors: Andrew M. Childs

17 SciTes - 0805.0007
Title: Superpolynomial speedups based on almost any quantum circuit
Authors: Sean Hallgren, Aram W. Harrow

16 SciTes - 0808.2474
Title: Making Almost Commuting Matrices Commute
Authors: M. B. Hastings

16 SciTes - 0804.3401
Title: Quantum Computational Complexity
Authors: John Watrous

16 SciTes - 0804.1109
Title: Classical and Quantum Algorithms for Exponential Congruences
Authors: Wim van Dam, Igor E. Shparlinski

Posted by Dave Bacon at 11:50 PM • 0 Comments • View blog reactions

A Curmudgeon's and Improv's Guide to Outliers: Chapter 1

Category: Extralusionary Intelligence • Nitpicker's Paradiso • Off The Deep End • Read You Tweed • Society • Sports

Moving on to Chapter 1 in my ongoing pedantic plodding through Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success. See here for what this is all about. Note that I really am doing this as I read the book (I'm reading it really really slowly), so what I say here may be outdated by the time I get further into the book.

List of posts here: introduction, ch 1.

SPOILER ALERT: Dude, I can't talk about the book without giving away what the book is about, so if you don't want the book's main ideas to be spoiled, don't continue reading.

IDIOT ALERT: I'm in no way qualified in most of the fields Gladwell will touch on, so please, a grain of salt, before you start complaining about my ignorance. Yes I'm an idiot, please tell me why!

Read on »

Posted by Dave Bacon at 3:35 PM • 13 Comments • View blog reactions

A Curmudgeon's and Improv's Guide to Outliers: Introduction

Category: Extralusionary Intelligence • Health • Neologista • Off The Deep End • Read You Tweed • Society

So I picked up Malcolm Gladwell's newest book Outliers: The Story of Success the other day, as I'm sure many of you will be doing on your next trip to the airport (where stands of Gladwell's hardcover book, marked down thirty percent, block your every exit through the already cramped airport bookstores.) Gladwell's books are fun, but I find myself often disagreeing with his analysis, so I thought it would be entertaining to take my time reading his latest and jot down my thoughts as I progress. Well "entertaining" in that "holy shit dude you are pedantic" sort of way. Note that I really do like Gladwell's books, and indeed for me, reading with critical eyes is exactly the reason I like his books. Ah, the life of a curmudgeonly pedant, revealed before your eyes, here on these there intertubes!

To balance things out, I've also included some thoughts from the improv part of my brain: the part that takes ideas at more than face value and tries to run with them.

SPOILER ALERT: Dude, I can't talk about the book without giving away what the book is about, so if you don't want the book's main ideas to be spoiled, don't continue reading.

IDIOT ALERT: I'm in no way qualified in most of the fields Gladwell will touch on, so please, a grain of salt, before you start complaining about my ignorance. Yes I'm an idiot, please tell me why!

Read on »

Posted by Dave Bacon at 5:15 PM • 5 Comments • View blog reactions

Deleting arXiv References?

Category: Scientific Publishing

A while back, Aram commented on how he had trouble trying to get arXiv links into a paper he had written (read the further comments for a comment indicating that it was not the policy of the journal to do this.)

Which reminded me: I believe I've submitted papers with arXiv references to Physical Review A, but looking back over the papers I don't see any such references unless the paper was never published. Does anyone know Physical Review's policy on this? A quick scan of the guidelines didn't yield anything. Shouldn't Physical Review be allowing these links? Sure if I want to be careful about a paper I'll check out the published version, but many times, having the preprint around is extremely useful.

Which reminds me even further: am I the only one who finds it extremely annoying that references in Physical Review don't include the titles of the papers? (Unless, of course I'm writing a PRL, in which the silly four page limit makes me wish I could use doi's for references alone.)

Posted by Dave Bacon at 3:36 PM • 9 Comments • View blog reactions

Villa Sophia Skiing

Category: Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self. • Skiing

Skiing past our home in Seattle:

Later a group of local kids made a snowboard jump...I would have used it but it didn't look all that sturdy, and I probably would have ended up with an action shot of "Dave destroying local kids joy."

Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:28 PM • 4 Comments • View blog reactions

Bouncing Back From Droping Off The Edge

Category: Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.

Whew. That was quite a quarter! Talk about drinking straight from a firehose. Okay, okay, I still have a long list of missed deadlines that I need to get to ASAP, but at last it feels like maybe I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (don't tell me its the next quarter, I want to be delusional for at least a few days.)

The winter break is always a great time, most importantly because "OMG snow!" (Seattle got another four plus inches of snow last night. Dude, that's like a two feet equivalent in most of the rest of the northern U.S.!) and because of all the great Christmas cheer (like the war on Christmas taking place right here in Washington. In order to add to this war, my front yard currently includes a Santa Flamingo and his nine flamingo Reindeer:

) And most importantly because I like to spend my winter break thinking really crazy ideas. In other words, it's more likely that there will actually be something worth reading on this blog in the coming weeks (promised to be crazy however, always ruin being crazy, so I won't promise to be crazy, because, well, that would be crazy.)

Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:11 PM • 1 Comments • View blog reactions

Conference Spam

Category: Funny Ha Ha

Amusing, in a twisted an irritating sort of way.

Who's on first:

Dear scholars:

Here is an invitation letter from 6th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management(ICSSSM'09) which will be held in Xiamen in June next year. We hope you can submit your new papers and exchange new ideas with us. There is a call for letter in attachment. And if you're interested in,please login our conference website: http://sm2.xmu.edu.cn/icsssm09/index.htm.

Looking forward to your participation!

ICSSSM09 COMMITTEE

--
Thank you again for your contribution.
Sincerely,
icsssm09 Organizing Committee
Email: icsssm09@gmail.com

Please remove me from your email list.

dabacon (at) cs.washington.edu
- Hide quoted text -

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 1:12 AM, icsssm09 wrote:
> Dear scholars:
>
> Here is an invitation letter from 6th International Conference on
> Service Systems and Service Management(ICSSSM'09) which will be held in
> Xiamen in June next year. We hope you can submit your new papers and
> exchange new ideas with us. There is a call for letter in attachment. And if
> you're interested in,please login our conference website:
> http://sm2.xmu.edu.cn/icsssm09/index.htm.
>
> Looking forward to your participation!
>
>
> ICSSSM09 COMMITTEE
>
> --
> Thank you again for your contribution.
> Sincerely,
> icsssm09 Organizing Committee
> Email: icsssm09@gmail.com
>

ICSSSM09

Dear Author(s):

Thank you for submitting your paper to ICSSSM2009!

We are sorry to notify you that the submitting method has changed
from sending e-mail to this mailbox to login of the conference website
http://one-stop1.baocard.com/icsssm09/en_index.php .And this mailbox
is invalid now. So if you have already submitted your paper, please
make sure that you will re-submit on the website. Otherwise, the paper
which sent into this mailbox will not be collected for the meeting.
And icsssm09 Organizing Committee would not be responsible for it.

Sorry for bringing these troubles to you.

And thank you again for supporting us!

ICSSSM09 Organizating Committee

--
Thank you again for your contribution.
Sincerely,
icsssm09 Organizing Committee
Email: icsssm09@gmail.com

Posted by Dave Bacon at 5:05 PM • 3 Comments • View blog reactions

Large Earth Collider

Category: Funny Ha Ha • Science

Oh noes: Scientists Warn Large Earth Collider May Destroy Earth:

BATAVIA, IL--In October, Fermilab scientists joined a growing number of physicists around the world in warning that the Very Large Earth Collider--a $117 billion electromagnetic particle accelerator built to study astronomical phenomena by colliding Earth into various heavenly bodies--could potentially destroy Earth when it sends the planet careening headlong into Mars, Jupiter, or even the sun.
...
Physicists at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who underwrote the VLEC's construction with donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, agree that there are "some troubling variables" whenever attempting to launch Earth through the vacuum of space into a massive body of solid matter. Yet, they insist, the academic benefits of a planetary collision outweigh any risk of annihilating the Earth

Posted by Dave Bacon at 1:01 AM • 5 Comments • View blog reactions

A Race

Category: Computer Science

Who can find what is wrong the quickest in arXiv:0812.1385 (or verify that it is correct!)? 1,2,3,....go!

Posted by Dave Bacon at 9:11 PM • 22 Comments • View blog reactions