pontiff
Posts by this author
January 13, 2010
Bad New Scientist has an article up today entitled Brain 'entanglement' could explain memories, which certainly must have sent Roger Penrose's brain into a state of multiple correlated back-flips (twistor flips?) However, from the article:Subatomic particles do it. Now the observation that groups…
January 13, 2010
Missed this over the break: a facebook note about the future of funding of the arXiv. The post points to two documents of interest, the first a statement about support:...We intend to establish a collaborative business model that will engage the institutions that benefit most from arXiv --…
January 13, 2010
"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." - E. P. Wigner
Our universe, or at least our understanding of the universe, appears to allow us to see its naked underbelly…
January 13, 2010
As you can imagine, due to extenuating circumstances, I won't be able to attend QIP in Zurich. Luckily my collaborator Steve Flammia will be there to give the talk on our recent work on adiabatic protocols (arXiv:0905.0901 and arXiv:0912.2098.) I know there will probably be a few bloggers…
January 12, 2010
Richard, a long while back (yes, I'm cleaning my inbox!), sent me some cartoons that were apparently floating around in the 70s when he did his BS in Chemistry that are quite amusing:
January 12, 2010
Another one from Michael, who spotted an article about one of my favorite mathematical words to use in everyday speech (much the chagrin of non-scientists) used in the Supereme Court of the United States:Supreme Court justices deal in words, and they are always on the lookout for new ones.…
January 11, 2010
Michael sends along an entry in the best title ever competition, this time a special baby Bacon edition: The pulse wave arrival time (QKd interval) in normal children
The Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 95, Issue 5, Pages 716-721
B. Bercu, R. Haupt, R. Johnsonbaugh, D. Rodbard
"In this household,…
January 11, 2010
A while back I posted a short, hopefully jocular, note about the machine learning algorithm for catching card counters at blackjack. Here is a more substantial article about the system. I wonder if systems like these will find use outside of gambling: anywhere an employee performs a repeated…
January 7, 2010
Katherine passes along an amusing article about Bacon:As America's bacon-frenzy illustrates, when culture, technology and economy allow mankind the option of unlimited bacon -- for bacon to fill every moment and aspect of its life -- Mankind will hit the "Bacon Me" button like an unhinged mandrill…
January 5, 2010
About that talk at UBC which I posted about on Sunday...
Q: How'd the talk in Vancouver go Monday, Dave?
D: The slides were awesome and the animations dazzling.
Q: So the talk went well?
D: Don't know. I didn't give the talk.
Q: Didn't give the talk? Why not?
D: Well at the time I was supposed to…
January 3, 2010
Late notice, but I'm giving the theory seminar at UBC tomorrow, January 4, 2010 at noon:Title: Adiabatic Cluster State Quantum Computing
Location: Hennings 318
Abstract:
Models of quantum computation are important because they change the physical requirements for achieving universal quantum…
December 17, 2009
The Optimizer has gotten tired of everyone asking him about D-wave and gone and written a tirade about the subject. Like all of the optimizer's stuff it's a fun read. But, and of course I'm about to get tomatoes thrown on me for saying this, I have to say that I disagree with Scott's assessment…
December 17, 2009
Yep, Bacon Christmas tree ornaments at etsy. Better not show this one to the Mrs. Pontiff.
December 16, 2009
Lately I feel like my reading material has gotten stuck in a rut. The feel is that everything I'm reading is a rehash of something I've read before. Okay, maybe it is just that the rain has returned to Seattle :) Since I'm a subscriber to the belief that books that show you something outside of…
December 14, 2009
A paper dance today! Yes, indeed, it's another slow dance (scirate, arXiv:0912.2098):Adiabatic Cluster State Quantum Computing
Authors: Dave Bacon, Steven T. Flammia
Abstract: Models of quantum computation are important because they change the physical requirements for achieving universal quantum…
December 10, 2009
Ha, well, not nearly the soap opera that is the "University of East Anglia" emails, but fun to watch, nonetheless. A letter from American Physical Society president Cherry Murray:Dear APS Member:
Recently, you may have received an unsolicited email from Hal Lewis, Bob Austin, Will Happer, Larry…
December 3, 2009
I'm in D.C, attending the sorters meeting for the APS March meeting. Traveling in early December is always nice as the planes seem to be empty (*stretch*) and sheesh, it's downright balmy here in D.C. Now I've absconded to a second rate hotel in the middle of what I can only guess is somewhere…
November 30, 2009
Stuff to read while you wait around for finals and the Christmas holidays:
Via alea one of the odder invocations of NP-completeness: Rowing and the Same-Sum Problem Have Their Moments
An update on the status of US science funding for the next budget year at Computing Research Policy Blog
An…
November 27, 2009
The list of talks accepted at QIP 2010 is now online. As a member of the PC I can tell you that there were way more good papers than available speaking slots and made some of the final decisions hard to make.
One talk that I think will be a highlight is the invited talk by the optimizer: "…
November 24, 2009
Some notes for quantum computing people:
IARPA will be hosting a Proposers' Day Conference for the Quantum Computer Science (QCS) Program on December 17, 2009 in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation in support of the program. Details here
Submissions for TQC 2010 in Leeds are now open…
November 23, 2009
@EricRWeinstein is at it again in twitterland, this time on the subject of the funding of science. For an intriguing read about the glut of Ph.D.s versus science funding, he links to his (circa 1998?) article titled: "How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor…
November 19, 2009
Too often in life I am sending out a check to some charitable organization, or to resubscribe to Bacon magazine, and I think "damn this would be a lot better with Bacon." And now via the honest one, I find out that there is a solution to this vexing problem: Bacon flavored envelopes! From the "…
November 18, 2009
Last Friday I went to at talk by Brian David Johnson from Intel. That sentence sounds like any other that an academic could write--always with the going to seminars we acahacks are. That is until you hear that Brian David Johnson is a "consumer experience architect" in the Digital Home - User…
November 13, 2009
Friday the 13th is, apparently, a day of must read articles. This time it's Steven Pinker's review of Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. Readers who have taken linear algebra will be amused:He provides misleading definitions of "homology," "saggital plane" and "power law"…
November 13, 2009
This interview with Cormac McCarthy by the Wall Street Journal is well worth reading (Coincidentally(?) I just started rereading the Border Trilogy.)
This amused me[CM:] Instead, I get up and have a cup of coffee and wander around and read a little bit, sit down and type a few words and look out…
November 11, 2009
Last month a local restaurant group, Chow foods---among whose restaurants is one of our favorite Sunday breakfast spots, The Five Spot---ran a contest/charity event: "Chow Dow." The game: guess the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the close of the market on October 29th, 2009. The…
November 9, 2009
It's like, nearly, a genre (via Martin Schwarz):
I once saw a talk where Bill Nye said "systematic directed genocide."