pontiff
Posts by this author
December 24, 2007
Merry Christmas! I don't think this explanation for Santa delivering presents using quantum theory works. But it does bring up the question of whether Santa could get a quadratric speedup using quantum gift delivery?
December 22, 2007
Ernesto points me to Bacon Zen, a collection of savory bacon links. But really? Bacon chocolate chip cookies?
December 22, 2007
Superexchange in optical lattices, factoring 15 in a linear optics quantum computer, quantum plagarism peaceful resolution, silicon and gallium arsinide quantum computers, and quantum mumbo jumbo in support of the ideas popularly known as God.
Superexchange demonstrated in an optical lattice by…
December 19, 2007
More from Johnny Chung Lee on hacking the wiimote system to produce a very cool multitouch display:
Update 12/22/07: More Johnny Chung Lee creations:
December 19, 2007
I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I read all, and I mean all, of the science and math books in my local library (and nearly all of the Scientific American magazines as well.) Because this was before the internet was ubiquitous these were the only resources I had. These days I often wonder how…
December 19, 2007
Here's a list of people who voted for the spending omnibus which totally shafted science and who also voted for the America COMPETEs act. Is your representative on there? Send a letter?
Update: Science article on the budget and science.
December 19, 2007
You know, QEC07 participant, you're supposed to be watching the talks and not reading this blog! But if you are reading this blog, you might as well not just lurk and instead comment. That's right its a QEC 07 open thread.
To start things off, would anyone care to comment on Robert Alicki's final…
December 18, 2007
So simultaneous with QEC07, the conference I'm attending, is the QIP 2008. Anyone at QIP see any interesting talks that they'd be willing to comment on? Come on, don't be shy (or post anonymously :) )
December 18, 2007
Today I watched a talk on skepticism about quantum error correction. Now I don't agree with the particular criticism's leveled, but I'm all for people airing their criticisms and, if the majority view is correct, the majority should be able to answer the questions raised. But this isn't what…
December 18, 2007
Startup weekend will be coming to my backyard in January (literally in my backyard, Adobe is just down the hill from Villa Sophia.) Startup weekend, you say? What the heck is that?
I'd never heard of it either. Luckily, these are computer scientists, so they have a FAQ:What is Startup Weekend…
December 17, 2007
The grades are all done, and the students are gone, and now I'm conferencing. (That sentence should be sung to the tune of "Busted") After a mere hour and a half delay at the airport I arrived last night at USC for QEC07.
Day one is a half day of tutorial talks and then a half day of talks. I've…
December 17, 2007
News from Computing Research Policy Blog that the new omnibus appropriations bill will totally hammer the NSF and NIST. Effectively, factoring in some accounting and inflation, both budgets will be shrunk. So much for the America Competes Initiative. I've appropriately updated the probability…
December 14, 2007
Murray Gell-Mann always makes me laugh. Via Asymptotia here is what Murray said while giving a Ted talk:I won't go into a lot of stuff about quantum mechanics and what it's like and so on...you've heard a lot of wrong things about it anyway!
Which got me wondering: is more said which is wrong…
December 14, 2007
Last week Mitt Romney, in a speech on religion, said that "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom." Or, as I like to put it, "Religion iff Freedom." This bothered me more than a little bit, until I realized that I could turn it into an empirical question. Or a least a…
December 10, 2007
There's a new initiative to get a presidential debate on issues of science and technology: Science Debate 2008 (list of supporting Important People (capital letters) and bloggers (no capital letters).) I'm all for the idea, since I know little about the candidates positions related to science and…
December 7, 2007
Addition, for me, is intimately connected up with my concept of a number. When I think of numbers in my head, I often think of the number in connection with its constituent parts, and when I divide these parts up into equal pieces I "get" multiplication. However, on top of this bare bones…
December 6, 2007
Compare and contrast and compare and constrast.
John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960:I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his…
December 6, 2007
There's some interesting new work out on supersolid helium, a subject of great interest and controversy. The work was performed by John Beamish and James Day at the University of Alberta and is reported in this weeks Nature (Day, J. & Beamish, J. Nature 450, 853-856 (2007). Article here,…
December 5, 2007
Via John Cook's Venture Blog, a song on web 2.0 mania:
December 5, 2007
Since I got into trouble for posting about the need for more, not less, funding for science and engineering, (and, I might add, a reengineering of our approach to what it means to produce a successful Ph.D.), I thought I'd continue the trouble by linking to a post over at the Computing Research…
December 5, 2007
Congrats to Daniel Lidar, Seth Lloyd, and Barbara Terhal, for becoming the first three APS fellows selected through the APS topical group Quantum Information, Concepts, and Computation (GQI). Citations below the fold.
Citations from the aps website:
Lidar, Daniel
University of Soutern California…
December 5, 2007
His Squidiness points to a real whopper of a silly article titled "Was Einstein Wrong About Special Relativity?" by Darrell Williams who is listed as a "Mathematician" and a "graduate of Arizona State University."
You know you're in for a "good" article when it beginsMany notable scientists such…
December 5, 2007
Chad 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…
December 4, 2007
SQuInT program and deadline, Rush Limbaugh on quantum cosmology, and the parallel worlds of Hugh Everett's son
The 2008 SQuInT conference deadline for registration is fast approaching, December 12. The program is now available online as well. Looks like a good lineup.
Rush Limbaugh talks about…
December 2, 2007
Books off the queue and lodge securely somewhere behind my eyes: "A Mathematician's Apology" by G.H. Hardy and "A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation" by Richard Bookstaber
A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (with a foreword by C.P. Snow)I was…
December 1, 2007
Researchers Dispute Notion That America Lacks Scientists and Engineers in the Chronicle of Higher Education is a fine example of how thinking that scientific or engineering degree's are like technical training degrees will lead you to say all sorts of funny things. Yep, it's another edition of…
November 30, 2007
...is finding a homework stuck to my door, with duck tape, along with the note "Gone to Mt. Baker" (Mt. Baker is a local ski area.) Actually this reminds me of a policy I've always wanted to try: require every student to NOT attend class at least a few times a term. The idea being that it is…
November 29, 2007
From the magazine Seattle Metropolitan, comes the article "Smartest city ever: 50 ways Seattle will change the world." I hope the claim is true, but like all magazine articles from rags denoted entirely to a city, the lens is more than a little biased.
What I find interesting about Seattle, and…