Go Ahead, Waste Your Time
pontiff | June 21, 2008Real? I always wanted to design bumps in the road so that vibrations in your car would say something when you went over them...
pontiff | June 20, 2008One of the most amusing things about writing a blog is that people you've never met form an impression about you from your blabberings, and then, often, when they actually meet you they are astounded that you aren't "an old grumpy guy" or whatever image they had in their mind. So, in order to confuse you even more, here are some things which I've been reading and thinking about and doing while not working on efficient quantum algorithms for the hidden subgroup problem.
Spanish Treasury to Exclude Italian Government Bonds. Could this be an indication of problems ahead for the Euro?…
pontiff | May 22, 2008The telectroscope:
Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel will finally be completed. Immediately afterwards, an extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope will be installed at both ends which will miraculously allow people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.
pontiff | February 29, 2008Another checkmark in front of the "antrhopic reasoning is whack":
arXiv:0802.4121
Title: Ants are not Conscious
Authors: Russell K. Standish
Anthropic reasoning is a form of statistical reasoning based upon finding oneself a member of a particular reference class of conscious beings. By considering empirical distribution functions defined over animal life on Earth, we can deduce that the vast bulk of animal life is unlikely to be conscious. As a side effect of these deliberations, I also show that naturally occurring fragmentation/coalescence processes give rise to a power law distribution of…
pontiff | December 5, 2007Chad of Uncertain Principles asks what's on our office doors. Here in the Paul Allen Center, our doors are too pretty to put things on, but the little square beside our door is perfect for attaching odds and ends. Here is my door in all its glory:
A. Quantum computing warning sign. The cat is in a superposition of sleeping and scratching.
B. Me jumping off a cornice. Weeee! Mmm, cornices.
C. Spherical cow warning sign. This one causes great confusion in a computer science department.
D. Villa Sophia in the snow. Our Christmas card.
E. M.I.A
F. The Clifford group
G. Occam warning sign…
pontiff | November 6, 2007SQuInT 2008. Quantum postdocs. Christianity as a laser. Toshiba opens lab with a quantum bent.
SQuInT 2008, my favorite conference, has been announced and will be Feb 14-17 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Speakers include
Eddie Farhi (MIT)
Patrick Hayden (McGill University)
Alex Kuzmich [unconfirmed] (Georgia Tech)
Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano (University of Pavia)
Irina Novikova (College of William & Mary)
Ray Simmonds (NIST Boulder)
along with tutorials
Steven van Enk (University of Oregon) "Entanglement and Verification"
John Martinis (University of Californian, Santa Barbara) "…
pontiff | November 5, 2007Oftentimes I've been asked what the purpose of this blog is. As if everything in life must have a purpose:pfft, I say! But because an answer is required, what I usually answer is that the purpose of my blog is to slow down my fellow researchers. I mean sheesh, the people in quantum computing are the modern polyglots of science, speaking physics, computer science, and mathematics with ease. And they're universally a brainy crowd. So what better purpose can this blog serve that to slow these readers down by offering them great opportunities to surf the intertubes and procrastinate.
Along…