pontiff | July 9, 2009The report from the Workshop on Quantum Information Science has now been posted. Color commentary soon :)
pontiff | July 9, 2009Among the winners of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers this year I find a few familiar quantum names: Sean Hallgren (poor Sean was forced to share an office me at Caltech), Adam Smith, and Jason Petta. +10 tenure points awarded. Via @fortnow.
pontiff | July 8, 2009The arXiv is a game changer for how large portions of physics (and increasingly other fields) are done. Paul Ginsparg won a MacArthur award for his vision and stewardship of the arXiv (something other institutions might want to note when they decide that someone trying to change how science is done isn't really doing work that will impact them.) So...Given: The arXiv is great. But there is something that's always bothered me a bit about the arXiv: transparency.
(Note: those of you who wish to complain about the fact that you can't get endorsed on the arXiv, this article is not for you.…
pontiff | July 8, 2009Has the arXiv been hacked or is it offline? When I connect to arxiv.org it shoots me to mirror sites which haven't been updated since Oct 08. Via @MartinQuantum. Also nanoscale views reports the arXiv down.
Since this is a blog we can easily spread rumors by including a link to an article today about cyberattacks going on right now possibly originating from North Korea.
Update 9:03 am PST: At lanl.arxiv.org you can now get papers greater than October 2008 by searching, but the "recents" and "new" isn't working. Also the RSS feed seems to only have yesterdays posts. A comment on Secret…
pontiff | July 4, 2009Never a bad time to take a look at Mr. Jefferson's document (and also thank you Thomas, for serving tubers at Monticello at a time when people thought they would kill you.)
pontiff | July 2, 2009DARPA, you know the people who invented the internet ("100 geniuses connected by a travel agent"), has a new director:
The Department of Defense (DoD) today announced the appointment of Regina E. Dugan as the 19th director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA is the principal agency within the DoD for research, development, and demonstration of concepts, devices, and systems that provide highly advanced military capabilities for the current and future combat force. In this role of developing high-risk, high-payoff projects, DARPA compliments and balances the…
pontiff | July 2, 2009
ArXiview, my arXiv browsing iPhone app, has been updated for the new iPhone OS 3.0. New features include:
Search fields now accept boolean queries and exact phrase queries. Touch the little (i) icon to get info on this feature from the search page.
Search by identifier has been added.
There is now an in application emailer. So when you want to email yourself a reference the program doesn't quit out of the app.
Added the cond-mat category for quantum gases.
The app now sorts resorts in reverse chronological order.
A bunch of bug fixes (search by category in particular was acting buggy.)…
pontiff | July 2, 2009Okay, I'm calling it. We have officially reached the top of the Bacon loving bubble. Why? The dress made of Bacon indicator has been tripped. This indicator has a 50 percent probability of beating the magic 8 ball in predicting the top of past Bacon bubbles. I predict a hard landing for Bacon lovers everywhere. Until they shed their few extra pounds (a lagging indicator) we are entering a dark period for Bacon.
Hat tip: Jorge.
pontiff | July 1, 2009Over at my old blog one thread which keeps on giving is my missive about Dr. Wayne Dyer which now has over 2000 comments. I can always tell when it's PBS pledge drive time by the bump in traffic on my old website and the increase in comments on this post. Today I got a spam comment on the post. Now usually spam comments aren't to exciting (bad Viagra joke deleted), but this one is...well...different.
(Note: Neither I, Scienceblogs, nor my mom endorse what's described below but present the following for your own amusement):
You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But…
pontiff | June 30, 2009This last weekend we made it out to artopia in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood. One of the cool event at artopia was the power tool races. That's right, power tool's or other appliances propelling themselves down a long track! Here, for instance, is my favorite, the Piña Collider:
Won the race, finishing perfectly at the end of the track, where the owner popped open the blender and poured himself a nice Piña Colida (this shot taken by Mrs. Pontiff, who is much better at aiming her iPhone than I am.)
pontiff | June 30, 2009Summer doesn't officially start here in Seattle until the fourth of July, but the summer vibe is definitely here. Which means no teaching, so it's all research all the time. But a man cannot live by his own research alone, which leads me to the vast brain dump that is the internet.
Things found...
The Innsbruck group has a new paper out on a very cool way to shuffle ions in a trap: arXiv:0906.5335
The info processor points to a review of power laws in finance/economics
Via the one honest man a strangely mesmerizing history of yield curve spreads:
It looks like a group has finally gotten…
pontiff | June 29, 2009Is Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Information the first quantum institute to have a twitter feed?
Update: @WaterlooIQC tells me that no they probably aren't the first. That title probably goes to iqoqi.
pontiff | June 29, 2009The Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (the palindromic CQIQC) recently established the John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications. And the first winner is (opening the envelope, wondering whether he will find a dead or live cat inside)....Professor Nicolas Gisin from the Université de Genève:
Nicolas Gisin, Professor of Physics at the Université de Genève, is a true visionary and a leader among his peers. He was among the first to recognize the importance of Bell's pioneering work, and has throughout his career…
pontiff | June 26, 2009NSF awards $400K in stimulus funding to study the impact of stimulus funding on science.
Researchers at the University of Virginia get $199,951 to study the impact of stimulus funding on employment in science and engineering fields, while the University of Michigan receives $199,988 to develop a database of the investments in and outcomes of social science projects funded by the ARRA.
But no one is asking the real question. Who will study the impact of funding these two groups on science? Huh?
pontiff | June 26, 2009Via @calbucci, classic HP calculators on the iPhone.
Very old school geeky. HP 12c, HP 12c Platinum, and HP 15c.
pontiff | June 25, 2009Not sure what it's good for, but heck I'd love to play with one :)
DaVinci (Microsoft Surface Physics Illustrator) from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.
pontiff | June 24, 2009The latest issue of the newsletter of the APS topical group on Quantum Information, the Quantum Times, is now available. Of particular note is the long article summarizing the Workshop on Quantum Information Science.
pontiff | June 24, 2009An old friend from my undergrad days sent me a link to Physics discussion ends in skateboard attack:
A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.
Jason Everett Keller, 40, allegedly accosted another homeless man, Stephan Fava, on the 200 block of Grand Avenue in South San Francisco at about 1:45 p.m. March 30.
At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about "quantum physics and the splitting of…
pontiff | June 24, 2009When I was a postdoc, I made it a habit to try to spend at least one week a year visiting Isaac Chuang's lab at MIT. There were many reason for this, including that Ike has been a collaborator of mine, and Ken Brown, another collaborator was working as a postdoc in the lab. But another reason was...it's damn nice for a theorist to sit in a real experimental lab. Oh sure, you need to keep the theorists away from all the cords and knobs for fear that they might actually touch something. And don't ever let a theorist chose the music being played in the lab or you'll end up hearing some real…
pontiff | June 23, 2009The "slow movement" is a vast beast: there's Slow Food, Slow Travel, Slow Money, and even, I kid you not, Slow Reading. These movements all begin with the premise that modern culture emphasizes ever increasing speed and convenience (cue the Eagle's: "Listen, baby. You can hear the engine ring. We've been up and down this highway; haven't seen a goddam thing.") The prescribed medicine is a moderance in life. More smelling of the roses (but watch out for Ringo), more taking the long road, and most definitely more chewing your food slowly. While the movement suffers from large doses of…