pontiff
Posts by this author
February 12, 2008
Via the Computational Complexity (welcome back Lance), the list of accepted papers for CCC 2008 has been posted. Woot, that's a lot of quantum inspired papers. By my count 7 of 33. Quoteth Feynman
...and I'm not happy with all the analyses that go with just the classical theory, because nature…
February 12, 2008
Some days it seems the universe is trying to tell you something. The last few days, this has apparently been something to do with clothing:
Self cleaning clothes. I really need these as I am in a constant battle with mustard.
Via Three-Toed Sloth, A Call for Professional Attire on dressing in…
February 11, 2008
Mike Huckabee calls the state of Washington the Soveit Union. Of course, this is old news to anyone who has been to Fremont:
February 11, 2008
The U.S. presidential candidates been invited to a debate on science. Will they come? I don't know, but the thought of Mike Huckabee using biblical references in discussing science could lead to some very fun sentences. For example, if he wanted to get apocrypha-l, when talking about the…
February 11, 2008
Quantum theory justifying gambling? So reads this column by one Reverend Doctor Mervin Stoddart from Florida in the Jamaica Observer.
Now I don't know whether quantum theory "justifies" gambling or not. But this paragraph
Life itself is a gamble and a game of trial and error in which all humans…
February 8, 2008
New results out of the Martinis lab at UCSB have shown single qubit gate fidelities of 0.98 for a superconducting phase qubit. This is significantly better than previous single qubit gate fidelities in their system and in any other superconducting qubit system. It is an extremely impressive…
February 8, 2008
As a native Californian, my sworn enemy is the state of Texas. Thus it gives me great pleasure to see that the state of Washington is tied with Texas in venture capital funding. Soon, Seattle, will rule the world! Okay, maybe not. But I love Oren Etzioni's comment on comparing Silicon Valley to…
February 7, 2008
Via John Cook's Venture blog, introducing Alaska Airlines new clippy, "Jenn".
My discussion:
You Asked: Where are you?
Jenn: Right now, it appears I live with you...but don't worry, I won't overstay my welcome! How can I help you?
You Asked: Are you human?
Jenn: I am a virtual assistant, here to…
February 7, 2008
Two faculty postions in experimental Quantum Information and Nanoscience are being advertised at the University of Bristol. The positions are a part of the Centre (not sure what that word is) for Quantum Photonics and will be housed in the new £11M Nanoscience & Quantum Information Building.…
February 7, 2008
Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics:
Those of you who know me outside of this blog will find that particular juxtaposition of physics and Nintendo very amusing.
February 6, 2008
An interesting odd/even effect:
Although no official count was available early Wednesday, state Democratic party officials predict that Clinton will get 20 to 30 more delegates when all results are in. Because of the relatively close finish, they are likely to split delegates in most of the…
February 5, 2008
"Jumper" is a new movie about a man (okay, Hayden Christensen, aka Anakin Skywalker) who can teleport himself anywhere just by thinking about it. Quantum teleportation is a procedure where quantum information can be transported using entanglement and a few bits of classical communication. The…
February 4, 2008
Microsoft, which to me is that big collection of buildings across the lake where I yell when Vista bogs down my laptop, has announced a new Research Lab to be located in Cambridge, MA. It will be run by mathematical physicist turned comptuer scientist Jennifer Tour Chayes who was the manager for…
February 4, 2008
The Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing (but really how can we fault Nobel for not having a computing prize when computers for Nobel would have been people), has been won by Edmund Clarke (CMU), E. Allen Emerson (UT at Austin) and Joseh Sifakis (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/…
February 3, 2008
Behold: my new research group webpage! This answers part of the question "what do academics do while watching the Super Bowl?"
February 1, 2008
Colorado State scores Keck money, D-Wave scores venture money, QICIQ 2008, Reversible computation tutorial, and a review of "Quantum Hoops."
The Keck Foundation has given some dinero to Colorado State for quantum computing research:
The primary goal of the research program is to demonstrate laser…
February 1, 2008
Dancing with the Profs. I bet on the CS prof for the "Quickstep."
January 31, 2008
I enjoy reviewing papers even knowing it sucks up too much of my time. I mean what better way is there to get out any inner angst than to take it out on the writers of a sub par paper? (That's a joke people.) Reading Michael Nielsen's post taking on the h-index (Michael's posting more these days…
January 29, 2008
Blue Monday, which was January 21, of this year, is supposedly (and I say supposedly when I might have better said, erroneously) the most depressing day of the year. Now there are plenty of reasons given for this: you finally realized your New Year's resolutions aren't going to happen, you've just…
January 28, 2008
The CRA Policy Blog has the latest info on the impact of the underfunding of science in the budget. In particular
NSF will likely fund 1,000 fewer research grants in FY 08 than planned and the average award size will be smaller.
Sweet! Data to update my probability of employment. Oh wait. (…
January 24, 2008
Michael sends me a link to an article with the name of the new James Bond movie: Quantum of Solace. If compassion is quantized (down that path leads madness), I really hope I'm in a region where the correspondence principle applies.
January 23, 2008
Fortune has put out its list of the top 100 companies to work for. The Google Monster is number one. Washington state does pretty good, as it is in a tie for fourth in the total number of companies on the list with headquarters in the state. (Per capita it comes in third, losing to Delaware and…
January 21, 2008
A while ago a message from Kris Krogh appeared on Scirate.com about ariXiv:0712.3934 stating Kris' belief that the paper appeared under a pseudonym (the comment contains the contents of the link which was sent to the arxiv's administrator.) Today I checked with the arxiv and found that the paper…
January 21, 2008
Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel has a scathing op-ed in the San Fransisco Chronicle on the recent spending omnibus and its effect on science funding (via Computing Research Policy Blog):
What are they thinking? When will they wake up? It may already be too late; but I genuinely think the…
January 21, 2008
This weekend was "bottling weekend." Here is one of the final products:
That's right, the Villa Sophia, 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon "Gruccia" has found its way, with a little labor on my part, out of the carboys and into the bottle. This year's wine is called "gruccia." You see at one point during…
January 18, 2008
California company claims steps in human cloning. Witch burning outside of their laboratory to follow this evening.
January 18, 2008
Second Life, the virtual community, bans banks which aren't banks in the real world.
Since the collapse of Ginko Financial in August 2007, Linden Lab has received complaints about several in-world "banks" defaulting on their promises. These banks often promise unusually high rates of L$ return,…
January 17, 2008
Does anyone know of an RSS reader which adjust the order of your feeds depending on which feeds you tend to click on / spend time reading?