pontiff

This blog has moved. The new location is http://dabacon.org/pontiff. So long and thanks for all the fish! Over the past three years I've had a good time blogging here at Scienceblogs. Though I rarely agree with much they say (haha, classic curmudgeon that I am) I can honestly say my fellow…

Yep, it's that time again. Paper dance time! arXiv:1006.4388 Making Classical Ground State Spin Computing Fault-Tolerant Isaac J. Crosson, Dave Bacon, Kenneth R. Brown We examine a model of classical deterministic computing in which the ground state of the classical system is a spatial history of…

Oh, damn, I missed Bacon Camp. Well I'll just have to go camping myself :) Also: Colored Bacon and Bacon cupcakes.

Congrats to Rahul Jain, Zhengfeng Ji, Sarvagya Upadhyay, and John Watrous for being selected a best paper at STOC 2010 for their paper "QIP=PSPACE". (The best paper award was shared with "An improved LP-based approximation for Steiner Tree" by Jaroslaw Byrka, Fabrizio Grandoni , Thomas Rothvoss…

I grew up in the small town of Yreka, CA ("Yreka Bakery" backwards is...) that sits just minutes south of the Oregon-California border on Interstate 5. Yreka, population a little over 7000 brave souls, is the county seat of Siskiyou county. Siskiyou county is "god's country" meaning, yes, (a) it…

Over at Daily Speculations, Alan Corwin writes about database programming jobs that will never return. The gist of Alan's piece is that the tools for databases are basically so turn-key and so easy that those who were trained to build their own database code by hand will be unlikely to see those…

Fellow Yrekan Austin Sendek's quest to get "Hella" the official prefix for 1027 has scored a Googol-sized success. Err I mean a Google-sized success: Austin also writes to inform me that there is an official petition, which can be found here. Also I'm amused to note that the google-monster also…

Science is dynamic. Sometimes this means that science is wrong, sometimes it means that science is messy. Mostly it is very self-correcting, given the current state of knowledge. At any given time the body of science knows a lot, but could be overturned when new evidence comes in. What we…

One result of a workshop held in 2008 that "broad research themes within theoretical computer science...that have potential for a major impact in the future, and distill these research directions into compelling "nuggets" that can quickly convey their importance to a layperson" is this set of…

One interesting thing about quantum computing is that because it is a very new field, a large amount of the research in the field is on the arXiv (interestingly the worst users have historically been computer scientists.) Back in 2006 whenever I would sit around BSing about the arXiv with other…

Rob sends me information about an interesting new position at the Perimeter Institute (more info here): The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) is looking for a Scientific IT specialist -- a creative individual with experience in both scientific research and information technology (IT…

Customer X: Hi, D-wave? So, I hear that you have this computer that can be used to solve computationally hard problems. Oh, yes, sorry, should have said a quantum computer, my bad. Well, you know we've got this hard computational problem, [Editor: problem description deleted to protect identity…

Yes, dear Gray Lady, you certainly sound more sophisticated when you use the word "prime number" in your newspaper. But perhaps you might want to look up the actual meaning of the word before placing those words prominently beside two times five times five.

OMG hilarious: arXiv vs. snarXiv.

Mary Beth Ruskai sends a note about a travel grant program for a quantum information theory conference in Sweden this fall: US NSF Travel Grant Program for Nordita/Mittag-Leffler Conference on Quantum Information Theory 4-8 Oct. 2010 This program will provide funds to support travel and lodging for…

Another interview from the Science Watch special topic on quantum computing interview series: Gerard Milburn. Most interestingly is Milburn's comments on linear optics quantum computing funding: SW: How has the field of quantum computing changed in the past decade? Where do you hope to see it go…

Martin Gardner has passed away at age 95. I fondly remember going back through the back issues of "Scientific American" as a kid and devouring Gardner's "Mathematical Recreations" column (along with the similar columns written by Hofstadter and Dewdney.) If I have any mathematical skills, I…

AQIS'10 submission and registration is now open: ============================== ============================== The 10th Asian Conference on Quantum Information Science (AQIS'10) http://www.qci.jst.go.jp/aqis10/ Tutorials: August 27, 2010 Conference: August 28 - 31, 2010…

Bacon has been overflowing my inbox. Some bits... Hahaha: Email and Bacon. Also: Kosher Fail. Bringing home the bacon. I bring it home every night. Your own Bacon Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who cares (enough to harden you arteries.) Then of course there is the double down.…

My first real visceral realization of the non-commutative nature of driving a car was the first time I tried to parallel park and attempted to pull front end first into the space.

Chris sends me arXiv:1005.1381: A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronization of Cows Authors: Jie Sun, Erik M. Bollt, Mason A. Porter, Marian S. Dawkins Abstract: We formulate a mathematical model for daily activities of a cow (eating, lying down, and standing) in terms of a piecewise…

Here's an interview with Daniel Lidar whose was the postdoc who first taught me quantum error correction (and more.) No, not that LIDAR! Note to all you job seekers, even in your darkest hours know that you have friends out there who are working to change the abysmal state of quantum computing…

What prefix do you use for 1027? If Austin Sendak has his way, it will be hella (also Time article here.) The diameter of the observable universe is about one hellameter. As a fellow member of the club "people from Yreka, CA who do physics," I strongly support Austin's idea. Indeed it now tops…

Over at masteroftheuniverse, the master has posted a great list of prop bets. Among his bets is one that probably won't work on many computer scientists (or it shouldn't if they've had even a decent theory course) based upon the birthday problem. Sometimes the birthday problem is called the…

Items sharing a similar topic, meandered onto in the depths of a major outpouring of procrastination... The path less traveled by Andrea Schweitzer (via @mattleifer) on a different way to have a career as a scientist. And for a description of one of the most successful scientists from quantum…

A bunch of you sent me Like my father used to say when we'd cook Bacon: "Check your toes!" Also, someone is addicted...to bacon salt. I tried it on popcorn and I have to say that I wasn't hooked. But then again I like "Spike" on my popcorn. And, on a not so safe for work bacon note (NUDITY…

Lest you think I'm not working: