pontiff | October 23, 2009Oh man sometimes even I, a staunch Caltech grad, wish I could be at MIT. The MIT QIP seminar this next Monday looks...intriguing (Monday 10/26 at 4:00 in 36-428 silly MITers and their numbered buildings, so cold.):
David Kaiser (MIT)
How the Hippies Saved Physics
Abstract:
In recent years, the field of quantum information science-an amalgam of topics ranging from quantum encryption, to quantum computing, quantum teleportation, and more-has catapulted to the cutting edge of physics, sporting a multi-billion-dollar research program, tens of thousands of published research articles, and a…
pontiff | October 21, 2009The Dutch book argument of Bruno de Finetti is an argument which is supposed to justify subjective probabilities. What one does in this argument is gives probabilities an operational definition in terms of the amount one is willing to bet on some event. Thus a probability p is mapped to your being willing to make a bet on the event at 1-p to p odds. In the Dutch book argument one shows that if one takes this operational meaning and in addition allows for the person you are betting to take both sides of the bet, then if you do not follow the axiomatic laws of probability, then the person…
pontiff | October 20, 2009Two notes on chairs. Michael Green is the new Lucasian chair of Mathematics replacing the esteemed Stephen Hawking. Green helped sparked the great optimism in string theory by discovering with John Schwarz the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism.
Elsewhere, the Perimeter Institute has named ten new distinguished research chairs, among them a host of the quantum computing afflicted:
Dorit Aharonov is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has made major contributions to the theoretical foundations of quantum…
pontiff | October 19, 2009The grapes have been picked up
and the fermenting has (hopefully!) begun. This year I'm trying two types of grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese.
pontiff | October 15, 2009The deadline for submissions to QIP 2010 is next week, October 22. Website here
pontiff | October 14, 2009Blackjack, or 21, is a game that many enjoy wasting their money playing at casinos. For those who don't like to waste their money, or at least want to waste it more slowly than others, card counting is a time honored tradition for moving the odds away from the casino and in the players direction (blessed be Ed Thorp.) In other words it makes the game at least slightly enjoyable for those who like to win. But now a graduate of the University of Dundee, Kris Zutis, is going to ruin this small smidgen of fun:
A University of Dundee graduate has created a computer system with the potential to…
pontiff | October 14, 2009From the annals of high idiocy, I enjoyed this sequence of emails at BofA:
"Unfortunately it's screw the shareholders!!" Charles K. Gifford wrote to a fellow director in an e-mail exchange that took place during the call.
"No trail," Thomas May, that director, reminded him, an apparent reference to the inadvisability of leaving an e-mail thread of their conversation.
...
Shortly after Mr. May's remark about an e-mail trail, Mr. Gifford said his comments were made in "the context of a horrible economy!!! Will effect everyone."
"Good comeback," Mr. May replied.
You have to give Mr. Gifford at…
pontiff | October 14, 2009You all scoff at me for subscribing to the RSS feed http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/rss.xml but on Oct. 12 it told me
NO AND NOR WILL IT IN 2012
Aha! What will this do to the sales of 2012 end of world books? (Crap, yeah you're right it will probably make them go up.)
pontiff | October 12, 2009Update 10/13/09: corrected for ice cream flavor and location, thus merging two related universes.
There is a story about Richard Feynman that while he was at Princeton MIT he had a hard time with dessert. Apparently they always served either chocolate or vanilla ice cream and Feynman would agonize over which he wanted that night. Then one day he decided that he was wasting his time making this decision and so he would solve this by only choosing vanilla chocolate and from that point on in life that is what he did. He no longer wasted time choosing, and, apparently, ate a lot of vanilla…
pontiff | October 9, 2009A physicist at CERN has been arrested for suspicions of ties to Al Qaeda. Don't worry I already checked www.hasthelhcdestoryedtheearth.com and www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com and both assured me that, so far, Al Qaeda has not managed to generate black holes that would consume the planet.
But what a great opportunity to muse along with a New York Times article..
"His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism," said the statement from the center, whose formal name is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Like, what…
pontiff | October 9, 2009James Simons, he of the Chern-Simons form, and also, of late, from the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies Corporation, is retiring. The infamous Medallion fund was up last year, apparently, only a mere 80 percent.
Quite a feat, turning
into
pontiff | October 9, 2009Barack Obama has been awarded an honorary degree from Arizona State University the Nobel Prize in Peace for "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
I recommend a bag of popcorn, a big soda, and a nice recliner to watch the consternation and just plain craziness that will surely follow this announcement :)
pontiff | October 8, 2009Yes it's that time of year. The nights are cooler and the days shorter and so all thoughts turn to...skiing, of course. Via @dannysullivan and @eric_hoffman, ski resorts on twitter. Who will be the first to tweet opening day?
pontiff | October 8, 2009The Nobel prize in Politics Literature has been awarded to Herta Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."
pontiff | October 7, 2009The Nobel in Chemistry for 2009 has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath for "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." And because I am (or was, or am, or..whatever) a physicist, I will note that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has a Ph.D. in physics :)
And today is even more busy than yesterday!
pontiff | October 6, 2009Israel Gelfand, one of the great mathematicians of our age, apparently passed away yesterday at the age of 96. Check out the list of results that bear his name on the above linked Wikipedia page. Wow. Today I will, in his honor, think a bit more about Gelfand-Tsetlin basis and what they can be used for in quantum computing.
pontiff | October 6, 2009The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 has been announced and goes to Charles K. Kao for "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication" and to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor."
I'm crazy busy so don't have time to comment on the physics of these awards at the moment, but the thing that struck me about this selection will probably strike a few others and can be summarized in two words: Bell labs. Boyle and Smith are retired from Bell labs which is…
pontiff | October 5, 2009Postdocs at Caltech's IQI. Now in the new Annenberg Center (named, of course, after Caltech's Ann of the Steele tower :) ):
INSTITUTE FOR QUANTUM INFORMATION
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Postdoctoral Research Positions
The Institute for Quantum Information at the California Institute of Technology will have postdoctoral scholar positions available beginning in September 2010. Researchers interested in all aspects of quantum information science are invited to apply. The appointment is contingent upon completion of a Ph.D.
Please apply on-line at http://www.iqi.caltech.edu/…