pontiff
Posts by this author
October 24, 2008
Bruce Schneier has a commentary up at Wired about quantum cryptography. There are a lot of good points about the article, but it left me kind of scratching my head. As far as I can tell Bruce Schneier believes that you should not worry about any cryptographic system currently in use ever being…
October 23, 2008
Stephen Jordan, now a postdoc at Caltech, has produced a useful little guide to quantum algorithms: a zoo of quantum algorithms. Help squash the myth that all there is to quantum algorithms are the algorithms of Shor and Grover!
October 22, 2008
The universe doesn't always operate the way we want it to. No, I'm not talking about the stock market (unless you've been short lately), I'm talking about the role of error in logical deterministic systems! When you zoom down far enough into any computing device you'll see that its constituent…
October 17, 2008
A very good essay Paul Krugman wrote on his method of doing research. Some good gems in there for researchers of all fields.
The injunction to dare to be silly is not a license to be undisciplined. In fact, doing really innovative theory requires much more intellectual discipline than working in a…
October 16, 2008
It's official: Loveland and Arapahoe Basin are open for the 2008-2009 ski season. Eighteen inches of man made snow may or may not, however, be considered good news.
October 16, 2008
Okay, I think it is time I give in and create a category on the blog called "Bacon." Two new entries for the category:
Bacon Robots. Think, people, before you start sizzling up the Bacon that falls from the sky.
Bacon and Donuts: Taste We Can Believe In.
October 14, 2008
Self promotion for those around the University of Washington campus: I'm giving a talk in the physics department at UW. Mondays, October 20 at 4:00 P.M. Ronald Geballe Auditorium, Rm. A102 (cookies at 3:45):
Title: "Who Will Build a Quantum Computer: the Physicists or the Computer
Engineers?"…
October 14, 2008
Garrett Lisi, surfer and creator of possible theories of everything, has given a TED talk:
I had never thought to put Schrodinger into the box.
"I try to balance my life between physics, love, and surfing. That way even if the physics I work on comes to nothing, I've lived a good life." Word.
October 14, 2008
I wonder how many people this week realized that "ten percent down" followed by "ten percent up" does not equal "no change." Probably a few. And how many realized that "ten percent down" followed by "ten percent up" is the same as "ten percent up" followed by "ten percent down"? Or that up 5…
October 12, 2008
A new entry in the best title every competition:
arXiv:0810.0827: Sine function with a cosine attitude
Authors: A. D. Alhaidari
Someday I promise that I will use the phrase "an exponential function with a logarithmic attitude."
October 10, 2008
From the annals of strangely mixed news stories. Canada: $25 billion government bailout and....$50 million for the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing:
BRANTFORD, Ont. -- The $25-billion government deal to buy mortgages from Canada's banks isn't a lifeline for lenders stuck…
October 10, 2008
You know it's a heavy volume day when even Google can't handle it:
Your message could not be posted to the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE INDEX group because there have been too many messages posted to the group recently.
October 9, 2008
Fear
Google's view of capitulation
Irrationality?
Anyone seen any old men with canes yet?
Crisis per capita winner? Iceland. Will the last one leaving Reykjavík please tear up that recipe for Súrsaðir hrútspungar?
Panics 1812, 1837, 1869, 1873, 1882, 1884, 1896, 1901, 1907,1937, 1973, 1987,…
October 9, 2008
Not just grades but:
Grade distribution for the class. At a minimum: class average, standard deviation, median. Even better: a breakdown by grade.
Scores of students in the class on standardized exit exams. For example I'd like to see how students who took the class scored on physics GREs.…
October 7, 2008
A priceless new email feature for gmail: Mail Goggles:
Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you…
October 7, 2008
And the Nobel prize in Physics 2008 goes to...Yoichiro Nambu (1/2), Makoto Kobayashi (1/4), and Toshihide Maskawa (1/4) "for discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at…
October 2, 2008
Take a look at Google circa 2001. Yes that's right you can search like it's 2001! Oh my: apparently I was everything and nothing: 2001 Google search for "Dave Bacon".
October 1, 2008
DonorChoose, an organization which matches teachers requests for funds with donors, is running their annual blogger challenge. Already Cosmic Variance is trying to harness their vast resources of physicists, The Optimizer is appealing to the base nerd in everyone, He of Uncertain Principles is…
September 30, 2008
A quantum physics spotting in....rugby? An article about rugby player Jonny Wilkinson:
The experiment was conceived by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödin-ger to demonstrate a conundrum at the heart of quantum physics: that a sub-atomic particle exists in two states. However, the act of…
September 30, 2008
Two quantum postdoc advertisements crossed my desk this week, from two fine institutions. Good postdocs if you can land one! The first advertisement is a double wammy from Caltech
CENTER FOR THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Postdoctoral Research Positions
The Center…
September 30, 2008
The New York Times has an article about Chongo Chuck. Chongo is a legendary homeless rock climber who lived in Yosemite for years. He is also the author of The Homeless Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Anyone ever seen a copy?
September 30, 2008
DARPA math challenges. My favorite is "Mathematical Challenge Nineteen: Settle the Riemann Hypothesis." I'm guess that's one where you can't follow the age old strategy of writing a grant proposal for work you've already figured out ;)
September 29, 2008
Yes, it's all finance all the time, here at the Pontiff. Where else can you go to get your daily dose of extralusionary intelligence?
Once again it's a New York Times article Maybe Short-Selling Isn't So Bad, After All. Now I don't know much about how the changes in shorting stock (the removal of…
September 28, 2008
From this Sunday's New York Times in an article entitled Wall Street, R.I.P.:
In search of ever-higher returns -- and larger yachts, faster cars and pricier art collections for their top executives -- Wall Street firms bulked up their trading desks and hired pointy-headed quantum physicists to…
September 26, 2008
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
September 26, 2008
The prime number theorem is a statement of a quantuplicity: there are about N/log N prime numbers in the first N numbers.
quantuplicity noun. The quantitative relationship between two amounts. Usually referring specifically to the case when this is expressed as a ratio giving the number of times…
September 26, 2008
There are many things I do not understand in the wide world of finance, but the one which perplexes me the most is why people believe that their money is safe under their mattress.
I mean come on people: mattresses? The odds of a fire in your household serious enough to call the fire department…
September 25, 2008
Reminder that Sandra, Maria, Grrl, and I will be Ozzies this Saturday. Translation: beer! That's Saturday, Sept. 27th at 4 pm in the upstairs mezzanine at Ozzie's. The address is 105 W. Mercer St., Seattle, WA 98119. That's in lower Queen Anne just east west of that gigantic need with a…
September 25, 2008
"Dreams of poverty excited universal enjoyment in Berkeley, coupled with the hope that the political and economic situation would worsen, throwing the country into ruin: this was the theory of the activists. Misfortune so vast it would wreck everyone, responsible and not responsible sinking into…