Theoretical Musings
Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also an pseudo professor assistant research professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research is on quantum computing, his scientific passions extend to everything in physics, mathematics, computer science and beyond, and his personal pleasures include making wine, playing poker, skiing, camping, and daydreaming (although not all of those at the same time.)
December 31, 2008
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,...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 11:50 PM • 0 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 30, 2008
Category: 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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 3:35 PM • 13 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 29, 2008
Category: Health
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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 5:15 PM • 5 Comments • • View blog reactions
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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 3:36 PM • 9 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 22, 2008
Category: 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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:28 PM • 4 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 21, 2008
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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 12:11 PM • 1 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 17, 2008
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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 5:05 PM • 3 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 16, 2008
Category: Funny Ha Ha
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...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 1:01 AM • 5 Comments • • View blog reactions
December 14, 2008
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
December 11, 2008
Category: Finance
Holy mole: a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme run by Bernard L. Madoff. That's an astounding amount of money if true. Update: This is now big news, of course. For an interesting read of someone who has been pursuing this...
Posted by Dave Bacon at 7:14 PM • 3 Comments • • View blog reactions
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