pontiff
Posts by this author
January 17, 2008
Through my computer science "information is king" eyeglasses, there are really only two notions which thoroughly distinguish quantum theory from classical theories of how the world works: the nonlocal nature of quantum correlations as exemplified by Bell's theorem and the much less well known…
January 16, 2008
Sam, after asking me for $100 dollars out of nowhere, points me to quantalk.org, a new slick website for, err, talking about quantum information. Seems to be a closed registration right now, so no talking by plebes is allowed, but it is slick! I hope it goes far, considering how little success I'…
January 16, 2008
What else am I to conclude from recent UFO reports out of Texas, except that no one in the entire town had a cell phone with a camera? Or a digital camera? Do the aliens use data from cell phone usage and digital camera usage when they decide where to do their joy riding?
Oh, and I will be happy…
January 16, 2008
Graphene quantum dots as qubits, Quantum Zeno effect, and the APS March meeting.
A group in Zurich has made quantum dots in graphene and demonstrated Coulomb blockade opening up yet another material of promise for quantum dot qubits. Journal article here.
Lev Vaidman has an itneresting News and…
January 15, 2008
Quantum Hoops, a movie about the Caltech basketball team, will be playing in Berkeley at the Landmark Shattuck Cinemas. Now if only we could get it up here in the Pacific Northwet.
January 15, 2008
Speaking of airports, why can't there be more airports like Albuquerque's Sunport: free wireless and even nice places to plug in and lay out your laptop:
Actually this brings up a point I've often pondered while sitting in an airport refusing to pay the $9.99 to connect to the Internet. Seattle is…
January 13, 2008
Are you a geek if you write a blog post from an airplane seat? And the airplane door is...
January 11, 2008
The New York Time's reaches new heights of self-delusion: It's not as if New York's resorts are considered inferior. Counting as your props recommendations from Ski magazine is just awesome. Ever notice how every single article in Ski magazine references a ski area from all major ski regions? I…
January 11, 2008
Sean watches a panel discussion on whether the universe is a computer, looks up the definition of a computer, and decides that instead the universe is a calculation. If thinking about the universe as a computer is designed to make computer scientists feel important, thinking about the universe as…
January 10, 2008
Mad about the funding cuts in science? Why not send an letter to those responsible?
Taken from an letter just sent out to members of the American Physical Society:
From: Arthur Bienenstock, President, the American Physical Society
To: Members of the American Physical Society
Re: Federal Funding…
January 10, 2008
Birthday tributes: Da Optimizer, Da Theorizer, BILL GASARCH, Da Geomblog, and Good Math, Bad Math.
January 10, 2008
I knew the Perimeter Institute was big, but enough to bump Kitchener to the second highest concentration of scientists in municipalities of its size in Canada?
(And yes I'm kidding that the PI is all that there is in Waterloo :) )
January 9, 2008
Can markets predict elections? Alea summarizes last night's primary results: Ooops! From my perspective, I find the ideas of markets predicting future events fascinating, if for no other reason than my original motivation for studying physics was tied up deeply in questions about predicting the…
January 8, 2008
Video from the keynote at CES:
The real question is, now that Bill is working for the foundation, which is opening an office in lower Queen Anee, will Bill be buying us a new bridge to aid his commute?
January 8, 2008
Holy mother of quack science, Neuroquantology. But that withstanding, some of you real scientists should really satisfy their call for reviewers. I mean think how much fun you could have tearing holes in their papers :We need additional reviewers:
Since in our interdisciplinary Journal we seek…
January 7, 2008
For a New York Times article What is it About Mormonism?, the following lines which made me guffaw:The framers recognized, of course, that a candidate's religion (or lack thereof) would enter political debate, and they were prohibiting only a formal test for taking office. But they were also giving…
January 4, 2008
What with the U.S. presidential election dominating the news, could you ask for anything more this Friday than more politics blogging? Pain below the fold.
Gordon Watts asks a good question about the zeroing out of funding for the ITER. Treaties? We ain't got no treaties. We don't need no…
January 3, 2008
Look, I'm on physicsworld.com! Sometimes I have a vision that references on the world wide web which form a cycle lead to a runaway internet. You know...looping self-referentially forever and ever and resulting, of course, in a break in the space time continuum. I'm guessing the above link won't…
January 3, 2008
From a letter sent to APS members by Michael S. Lubell the Director of Public Affairs for the American Physical Society some due outrage:The Omnibus Bill is a disaster for the very sciences that our political leaders have repeatedly proclaimed essential for our national security, economic vitality…
January 3, 2008
From a New York Times article describing the Nature Theater of Oklahoma's production of "No Dice:" "Poetics," for example, was choreographed using dice. Each face on the die represented one of six possible gestures, and each appendage -- two arms, two legs and the head -- got its own roll of the…
January 3, 2008
As we move ever closer to the day where using a computer involves flapping your hands around in the air:
January 2, 2008
Last quarter I taught discrete math. One component of the class was to cover some basic probability theory. On one of the homeworks we asked the following two questions about random five card poker hands:
Given that the hand contains an ace, what is the probability that the hand contains another…
January 2, 2008
Books conquered during the holiday resting season: "Learning the World" by Ken MacLeod, "The Crack in Space" by Philip K. Dick, and "Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide" by Paul Gregutt.
Learning the World by Ken MacLeod. A first contact novel. Or rather, a pre-first contact novel…
January 1, 2008
Happy New Year! Seattle's fireworks at the space needle had some technical difficulties (and the pyrotechnicians had to light them by hand...yeah I wrote that just to use the word "pyrotechnician"), but were still beautiful as ever:
Welcome 2008! 2008 is the international year of the potato, the…
December 29, 2007
Miguel Pais points to an interesting behavior of Mathematica, where he plots the function which is the square of the square root of x. Now, if the domain of x is taken to be complex numbers, Mathematica's behavior seems to me to be fine. But can anyone explain this behavior
as anything other than…
December 28, 2007
You know you're in rural America when...
Reminds me of one of my favorite bumper sticker ideas of a few years ago (less true today): "Buy American: Do Meth!"
December 26, 2007
What do you call a quantum computer built in the shape of a cubic lattice and containing 450000 qubits?
Noah's ark, of course! Genesis 6:14. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
December 26, 2007
Well I finally made it to the ski slopes. Hopefully my late start to this year's ski season will just mean that I push harder to get up to the slopes. Here is a picture taken from the base of the Mt. Shasta Ski area:
The two lifts servicing advanced terrain were shut down in the morning due to…