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Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also a pseudo professor. 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.)
Nothing he says on this blog should be construed as having anything to do with his employer or his dog.
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Category: Funny Ha Ha • Neologista
Posted on: February 1, 2009 4:53 PM, by Dave Bacon
Amusing line from a New York Times article this morning:
"Are you aware under what conditions I worked in 1996?" he said by telephone from Mexico. "It's only because of my lawsuit that you or anybody else can pick up a tape. In those days, I could not leave the archives with that material. I used state-of-the-lost-art equipment. I brought in a team of court reporters to help me with the first drafts.State-of-the-lost-art? He used a telephonoscope?
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State-of-the-lost-art? He used a telephonoscope?
Yes. In those days, we used to shake iron filings on audio tapes, and look at the pattern under an optical microscope, by candle-light.
Under the supervision of detective, Lord D'Arcy [Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians], we succeeded in solving murder mysteries in an alternative reality. Shredded documents were restored by a combination of the proper spell, and rotating the mass of shredded paper in a drum cranked by interns so that when, randomsly, two shreds touched along edges formerly joined, they became magically rejoined, and so [Smoluchowski coagulation equation omitted here for brevity; integrodifferential equation introduced by Marian Smoluchowski in a seminal 1916 publication] coagulated to fully restored (and un-redacted) documents.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | February 2, 2009 12:48 PM