pontiff | December 9, 2008In this era of the impending apocalypse, what the hell is a report about United States students actually showing gains in mathematics doing in the New York Times? Dude, media, get on message and send us some more doom and gloom! I especially need more gloom here in Seattle where the sun rises at 7:47 a.m. and sets at 4:18 p.m.
Update: Ah, science results are flat, so it's the end of the world as we know it, according to The Washington Post. Thank's WaPo for restoring pessimism into my world.
pontiff | December 5, 2008News from the other coast: MIT has won an IGERT to start an interdisciplinary graduate program in quantum information science. From the press release:
MIT has been awarded a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a pioneering doctoral-study program in the growing field of quantum information science (QIS), which has evolved rapidly recently with a new influx of ideas from quantum physics and poses great potential in supercomputing.
Website up an running here.
Isaac Chuang sends me some info on the program. Note for undergraduates: looks like a summer program is…
pontiff | December 4, 2008Robert Ebert: Win Ben Stein's Mind.
Peter R. Saulson: Review of "Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture" by Alan Sokal
Skewers of "Expelled" from the first:
This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of…
pontiff | December 4, 2008Via Michael Nielsen's friendfeed, I am led to ACM Classic Books Series. If you've got ACM subscription access, some of the book are even in electronic form. Cool. I love the introduction to "The Computer and the Brain" by John von Neumann:
Since I am neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist, but a mathematician, the work that follows requires some explanation and justification. It is an approach toward the understanding of the nervous system from the mathematician's point of view. However, this statement must immediately be qualified in both of its essential parts.
I feel like I need to…
pontiff | December 3, 2008Buried under way too much work right now. So for your viewing pleasure (ha) an epic story of Christmas tree hunting in the great pacific northwest.
They trekked over land (no sea):
And spotted a tree on a small cliff. But how to get it down?
Successful hunters:
And yes, it will fit in the car:
pontiff | December 2, 2008Nature article on El Naschie. (See also The Case of M.S. El Naschie, Continued.)
Opening scene from the Nature article, the greatest of all euphemisms, "retirement" starts off the show
The editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself, is set to retire early next year.
Scene two, the story so far:
Five of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie. And the year to date has seen nearly 60 papers written by him…
pontiff | December 1, 2008Postdoc with some awesome Canadian quantum researchers:
Quantum Information Processing Program
JUNIOR (POSTDOCTORAL) FELLOWSHIPS
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a private not-for-profit research institute. It is a catalyst for discovery, incubating ideas that revolutionize the international research community. CIFAR identifies emerging fundamental research questions concerning society, technology and the very nature of humanity and the universe, and creates interdisciplinary networks of leading scholars from around the world to explore them in a way that is…
pontiff | December 1, 2008The blackberry hole (aka the Perimeter Institute) has swallowed another person. Most fittingly, however, this time the observer will exist both inside and outside of the Perimeter Institute, thus giving us an answer to the black hole information paradox:
WATERLOO, Ontario, Canada, November, 2008 - Dr. Neil Turok, Director of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), is pleased to announce the appointment of internationally regarded scientist Prof. Stephen Hawking to the position of PI Distinguished Research Chair.
Prof. Hawking will conduct regular stays at PI in coming…
pontiff | November 25, 2008The deadline for SqUinT abstracts for posters and talks is Nov 26th. See here.
pontiff | November 24, 2008How did I miss this, an obvious entry into the best title ever contest:
arXiv:0810.2587
A photonic cluster state machine gun
Authors: Netanel H. Lindner, Terry Rudolph
Quick, duck for cover, Terry is shooting us with cluster states!
pontiff | November 24, 2008Today is the 149th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. I'm probably just suffering from a bout of dewy eyed pastoralism, but when was the last time a book which was readable by the general public was also a major work of science? (Not Here That's For Sure)
And you will say "but science it is so complicated nowadays!" and "but science is so big these days!" And you will say "only smart people can understand string theory!" and "there is so very much that one must learn in order to even understand today's science!"
So then you will go back to your…
pontiff | November 22, 2008This is rivalry week
In a battle of two of the most craptacular teams in college football, Washington State turned out to be less craptacular and beat Washington 16-13 in double overtime. Congrats Washington State, you stink just a little less than the worst team in football (okay maybe Wyoming is worse?)
In the battle that really matters to me, my Cal Bears beat the Stanford Jr. University Red Thingees 37-16. Go Bears!
All right, here we go with the kickoff. Harmon will probably try to squib it and he does. The ball comes loose and the Bears have to get out of bounds. Rodgers is along the…
pontiff | November 21, 2008Johnny Chung Lee has some cool videos up about wiimote tacking mods and.....more.
Tell me which of these is stranger:
or
?
pontiff | November 20, 2008A reminder from Ivan for those who want to attend SqUinT
Dear SQuInTers,
Please remember that abstract submission for contributed talks and posters are due in one week, Nov. 26.
http://panda.unm.edu/SQuInT/contribute.php
Registration payment deadline -- Dec. 12.
http://panda.unm.edu/SQuInT/register.php
Hotel reservation deadline -- Jan. 19.
http://panda.unm.edu/SQuInT/local.php
pontiff | November 20, 2008If only I were Michael J. Fox, a letter I would send back in time.
Dear Respected Mathematician/Scientist/Researcher:
First of all let me tell you want an honor it is to write to you from the future. Your work is so important in my time that we have named the main theorem which you proved in your paper "Megamathematical functorial categories which nearly commute" after you. Yes the JoeRandomName theorem is well known and used every day in my field. Thank you for thinking it up and proving it!
But I'm writing to you today, not because of this great piece of work. Instead I'm writing to…
pontiff | November 19, 2008Over at Uncertain Principles, the uncertainty father has a couple of posts up about parallel universes the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Which reminded me of a rant I've been needing to write (sorry a bit of technical jargon to follow.)
History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: 'I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself.' The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: 'Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like…
pontiff | November 18, 2008Observations on time.
One hour of exercise is much more important for my well being than one hour of sleep.
Why does the physics department at the University of Washington have a sundial on the building? I mean, yes it is very cool, but no there are not many opportunities to use it!
Michael Nielsen blogs about Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers: The Story of Success
and about the 10000 hour rule. Supposedly one needs 10000 hours of practice to truly master a subject. That's over a year in time! That's like seven years straight if I work four hours a day with no breaks. That doesn't…
pontiff | November 17, 2008Registration for QIP 2009 is now open:
QIP 2009 -- 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING -
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009.
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN at http://qipworkshop.org/
Deadline for special conference hotel rates: December 1st.
Quantum Information Processing is the recasting of computer
science in a quantum mechanical framework. QIP 2009 is the twelfth
workshop on theoretical aspects of quantum computing, quantum
cryptography and quantum information theory in a series which
started in Aarhus in 1998. QIP 2009, like its previous editions,
will feature invited…