pontiff
Posts by this author
August 1, 2008
A result of much quantum coolness out today: arXiv:0807.4935 (scirate): "Quantum Communication With Zero-Capacity Channels" by Graeme Smith and Jon Yard. Strange things they are going on when we try to use our quantum cell phones, it seems. Quantum cell phones, what the hell? Read on...
You know…
August 1, 2008
A new Scienceblog: Built on Facts. Sweet, more physicists:
Matt Springer is a graduate student of physics at Texas A&M university. He is also an occasional writer and tinkerer, and he is probably too curious for his own good.
It's a good think he's not a cat, eh?
July 31, 2008
Sure quantum computers can find a needle in an unstructured haystack quadratically faster than their classical brethren, but I didn't think the word "quantum" and "search" would appear in the press quite this soon: Ex-Googlers reinvent web search: Quantum porn (not safe for work! i.e. they show the…
July 30, 2008
Turning down a tenured position at the University of Chicago Law School:
Soon after, the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for…
July 29, 2008
Someone at Caltech's PR office sure was having fun:
Caltech Astronomers Describe the Bar Scene at the Beginning of the Universe
PASADENA, Calif.--Bars abound in spiral galaxies today, but this was not always the case. A group of 16 astronomers, led by Kartik Sheth of NASA's Spitzer Science Center…
July 29, 2008
Physical Theories as Men, a tit for tat response to Physical Theories as Women. Go ahead, you know you want to click on both of them.
July 28, 2008
In attempt to keep my reading more current, I'm going to try to post the top rated arXiv papers on SciRate each week and hopefully add about the papers. Let's see how long I can keep it up (bets?)
0807.2668 (7 scites) "Mixing doubly stochastic quantum channels with the completely depolarizing…
July 28, 2008
Yesterday I started to trace the wiring for our doorbells and figure out why they aren't working (they haven't worked since we moved in.) So I'm happily tracing away (a bit difficult since part of the basement has been finished and hence obstructs me figuring out where the wires are going) and…
July 28, 2008
Last night we went to see the new Batman movie. After attempting to see it at Paul Allen's Cinerama (it was sold out), we headed down to the standard mall theater in downtown Seattle to view said film. Verdit for me: meh.
But what I found interesting was thinking about the reason for why I didn…
July 25, 2008
An interesting idea from Mark Changizi from RPI: can one design pictures which, when interpreted by your vision, perform a computation? Press release here (note to RPI public relations department: you should probably make it so that the webpage address of your press releases can be copied from the…
July 25, 2008
Yesterday the New York Times, ran an article Absaroka, a proposed state between Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota which never was. Which reminded me of the state that I grew up in, the great state of Jefferson. What, you've never head of the great State of Jefferson?
The state of Jefferson was…
July 25, 2008
Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, passed away early today. If you haven't watched Pausch's last lecture, you should:
This lecture, when I first saw it, reminded me how important humor is for teaching. In other words, my students from last term can blame all my silly jokes…
July 23, 2008
From Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston, we find a gem of quantum computer's capabilities in an interview with Max Levchin, cofounder of Paypal:
...Its one of those things where, in the end, fraud is so nondeterministic that you need a human or a quantum…
July 23, 2008
You know that web based applications have really entered into your life when you click the Firefox icon and you wonder why the browser doesn't appear and cover the document you are editing.
July 22, 2008
Standing in lines is the bane of my existence. Okay, well maybe not, but spending time around universities certainly increases the percentage of time I spend pressing the queue. The good thing about lines in university towns is that they often move fairly fast. The bad thing is that, well, you'…
July 22, 2008
For those of you interested in TiddlyWiki and who happen to live in the great city of Seattle, there will be an informal meetup for TiddlyWiki enthusiasts this Saturday, June 26. For details see: TiddlyPac.
July 18, 2008
The Scienceborg is all abuzz about some Sizzle movie, with all sorts of good and bad reviews, and gnashing of the teeth about whether the movie stunk or whether it was the best thing since the invention of sliced ham (few know that this event was much more important than the invention of sliced…
July 17, 2008
Michael Nielsen has penned a very thoughtful essay on how the internet age will change how science is performed. Having sloppily dabbled in a website which allowed for rating of scientific papers, I think Michael's observations about why "review" sites for scientific papers are a tough sell (what…
July 17, 2008
Rumors have been spreading that Stephen Hawking might be considering moving to the Perimeter Institute. These rumors have been officially denied. The real story here, however is not about Hawking relocating, but whether Stephen Hawking has turned into an experimental physicist and is testing the…
July 15, 2008
Um, okay, so was this little piece of information really noteworthy enough to be included in a New York Times article on Psystar:
Although Psystar's Web site was available earlier today, by 1 p.m. EDT it was offline and returning the error message: "Database Error: Unable to connect to the database…
July 15, 2008
When people ask me about my iPhone, I usually tell them that it is a great gadget, but not really a terrific cell phone. I'm going to have to modify that a bit now, I think. With the addition of third party applications, the iPhone is now a super duper great gadget, but not really a terrific cell…
July 14, 2008
I recently rented a car and got dinged with a 13 dollar fee because I didn't drive 75 miles (and, did not see the tiny sign indicating the new rule that if I drove so little I would be rewarded by not having to fill up the fuel tank for a mere 13 dollars. Having a receipt could have gotten this…
July 14, 2008
Ed Lazowska has penned an article over at the CCC blog about the state of computer science enrollments which is well worth reading.
My favorite part of the post is where Ed points out that the "news" reported in the "news" is not really "news":
The Taulbee Survey "headline" this year was (roughly…
July 10, 2008
There are many paths to take if you are interested in doing fundamental physics research in hopes of discovering the secrets of the universe (awkward phrasing there: this makes the universe is like the Bush administration, I guess?) Here are my three favorite ways to do fundamental theoretical…
July 10, 2008
An interesting interview with Christos Papadimitriou (recent winner of the Katayanagi Prize for Research Excellence) on Dr. Dobb's Journal. On chess and backgammon:
In chess, when you play like an idiot, you always lose, so you learn. In backgammon, you can play 10 games, not play well, and win.…
July 9, 2008
A new entry in the best title ever competition appeared last week on the arXiv:
arXiv:0806.4874
Why devil plays dice?
Authors: Andrzej Dragan
Abstract: Principle of Relativity involving all, not only subluminal, inertial frames
leads to the disturbance of causal laws in a way known from the…
July 8, 2008
After reading the comments on my post Leaving Academia: Cry or Celebrate?, I started thinking about the successful scientists I know, and it occurred to me that the following conjecture is at least anecdotally true:
Scientists who have passionate outside interests are more successful in science…
July 6, 2008
Red Eye:
A drink made from beer and tomato juice, drunk by Canadians
A kind of cicada.
Tomato ketchup. Or is it catsup?
A European fish, the rudd, Leuciscus erythrophthalmus. I was once a rudd, of a different kind.
What Dave will be doing tonight to get to the East coast. BINGO! From the OED:…
July 3, 2008
I can taste the green chilies and after conference ski trip already:
QIP 2009 -- 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009.
http://qipworkshop.org
................................................................
First…
July 1, 2008
One of the subjects of great debate in physics goes under the moniker of "the arrow of time." The basic debate here is (very) roughly to try to understand why time goes it's merry way seemingly in one direction, especially given that the many of the laws of physics appear to behave the same going…