la, la, la

Pasadena is lovelier than ever.

Steinn Sigur𳳯n: maybe I'll run into you on campus today, or tomorrow (Tuesday 17 April 2007) when Scott Aarsonson lectures of weird quantum complexity stuff in the CS Department.

email me if you want to coordinate.

They have done something about the traffic, and its called the Gold Line. Pasadena to downtown LA in a few minutes, convenient for a burrito on Olvera Street or a concert at Disney Hall. Have you tried it yet?

Sadly I don't think I will make it to campus, I am sequestered at an undisclosed secure location and being kept annoyingly busy. All in a good cause.

I'd actually like to hear Scott's talk, but there's no way I can make it.

If I ever have an occasion to go to downtown LA I'd think about the Gold Line, but I don't know quite why I would. And there's not rail to LAX is there?
Somehow I gots to get out of this place, again...

Downtown Los Angeles has charms of its own. To mention one: the two restaurants (Cole's and Philippe's) each one of which claims to have invented the French Dip Sandwich.

Ironically, the Stanley Mosk Superior Courthouse is both where my wife and I were married, and where we lost law suits exceeding $2 x 10^6 despite winning a unanimous opinion against the defendants in state Supreme Court. Long story, not for this venue. Oh, the irony being that the unanimous 7-0 decision was with an opinion written by the late great Stanley Mosk himself.

The Gold Line also stops in Chinatown, or really in a Vietnamese interface to Chinatown, and other useful places.

The definitive documentary on what happened to the old Red Line was, of course, "Who Killed Roger Rabbit?", adapted from the more punfully named novel "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

Rail to the major airport? Don't be silly. That would be cost effective and logical. We're talking lawyers and politicians here, and cartoon Physics.

When you run off the edge of a cliff, don't look down!

Sadly, there is no direct line to LAX. To get there by MTA you must transfer at least 3 times, then to a shuttle bus because they ran out of money to extend the Green Line into the airport. Not convenient for someone with baggage or children.

However, downtown LA is getting more attractive each year. Many people are buying condos and lofts there. There is the Spring Street Market, MOCA, Little Tokyo and Chinatown too.

On the physical science funding side of this post, is there any way to lessen this lag time? First, one should give well deserved recognition to low and medium energy research that continues to soldier on. Though with budget belt tightening, I wouldn't be surprised if even these projects feel some pinch.

Even with a new administration that would open up further 'big physics' funding, are we still looking at the doldrums in US based work for at least a decade?

Well, I was sprung free early and made it to campus for a couple of hours.
Caught Juna's talk and couple of unsuspecting colleagues.

Man, what is with that Broad Institute - talk about out of place...

Annoying thing is that 2 out of 3 old favourite restaurants in old town had closed.
So I ended up at Barney's.
Didn't get scary till these two undergrads walked in...

This is also on Scott Aaronson's blog, but since I mentioned it first here (and then found that I had the day wrong)...

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but, from my front-row seat in 74 Jorgenson, the ground (basement) floor of the Computer Science department building at Caltech, Scott Aaronson gave a wonderful presentation, slightly over an hour long, commencing at 4:00 p.m., local time.

The audience applauded and laughed at the right places, but were strangely subdued, perhaps dazzled or intimidated, for questions at the end.

People from other departments were there, as august at Kip Thorne from Physics.

Because Scott mentioned one of the few areas in which QC can be expontially better than classical computers, I asked the following question.

"Let me ask this in the context of three Caltech professors.
(1) Richard Feynman was the greatgrandfather of Quantum Computing. We don't do it the way he suggested, but you seem to agree with him that one good use for QC is to do QM calculations [for Physics, Chemistry].
(2) Since you mention Wolfram, to jest at his belief that we live in a video game or the Matrix, let me remind you that he was, first, a Caltech professor of Computational Physics.
(3) When you see William Goddard tomorrow, be sure to let him know that you know that Richard Feynman was also the greatgrandfather of Nanotechnology.
In that context, can you discuss the Anthropic principle?"

Scott gave an optimum answer: "No." Then added: "Am I seeing William Goddard?" I knew that this was indeed on the itinerary.

Afterwards, we chatted briefly about non-unitary transformations, in theory and experiment; the Penrose take on nonlinear Schrodinger effects in consciousness, and Penrose's student's paper:

Sparling, George A. J. "Germ of a synthesis: space-time is spinorial, extra dimensions are time-like." Proc. R. Soc. A. doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1839

We agreed we'd see each other next on [his] blog.

We didn't have time to discuss the Physical Review Letters article titled, "Experimental Realization of Deutsch's Algorithm in a One-Way Quantum Computer." by Mark Tame and the Queen's group in Belfast, including Mauro Paternostro and Myungshik Kim, and a group from the University of Vienna, including Robert Prevedel, Pascal Bohi, and Anton Zeilinger.

I really really hope that Caltech makes a faculty offer to Scott, whose talk was very exciting.

This is also on Scott Aaronson's blog, but since I mentioned it first here (and then found that I had the day wrong)...

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but, from my front-row seat in 74 Jorgenson, the ground (basement) floor of the Computer Science department building at Caltech, Scott Aaronson gave a wonderful presentation, slightly over an hour long, commencing at 4:00 p.m., local time.

The audience applauded and laughed at the right places, but were strangely subdued, perhaps dazzled or intimidated, for questions at the end.

People from other departments were there, as august at Kip Thorne from Physics.

Because Scott mentioned one of the few areas in which QC can be expontially better than classical computers, I asked the following question.

"Let me ask this in the context of three Caltech professors.
(1) Richard Feynman was the greatgrandfather of Quantum Computing. We don't do it the way he suggested, but you seem to agree with him that one good use for QC is to do QM calculations [for Physics, Chemistry].
(2) Since you mention Wolfram, to jest at his belief that we live in a video game or the Matrix, let me remind you that he was, first, a Caltech professor of Computational Physics.
(3) When you see William Goddard tomorrow, be sure to let him know that you know that Richard Feynman was also the greatgrandfather of Nanotechnology.
In that context, can you discuss the Anthropic principle?"

Scott gave an optimum answer: "No." Then added: "Am I seeing William Goddard?" I knew that this was indeed on the itinerary.

Afterwards, we chatted briefly about non-unitary transformations, in theory and experiment; the Penrose take on nonlinear Schrodinger effects in consciousness, and Penrose's student's paper:

Sparling, George A. J. "Germ of a synthesis: space-time is spinorial, extra dimensions are time-like." Proc. R. Soc. A. doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1839

We agreed we'd see each other next on [his] blog.

We didn't have time to discuss the Physical Review Letters article titled, "Experimental Realization of Deutsch's Algorithm in a One-Way Quantum Computer." by Mark Tame and the Queen's group in Belfast, including Mauro Paternostro and Myungshik Kim, and a group from the University of Vienna, including Robert Prevedel, Pascal Bohi, and Anton Zeilinger.

I really really hope that Caltech makes a faculty offer to Scott, whose talk was very exciting.

Darn, Scott spoke on wednesday, not tuesday?
I could have made that then.
Juna's colloquium was pretty good though.