pontiff | May 28, 2009Recently I've been thinking it might be fun to set up some sort online weekly colloquia in quantum computing. Fun? Well, okay maybe that's not quite the right word. But it would be an interesting experiment. So I went out looking for good live webinar/videoconferencing software and well...I was a bit disappointed. Sure there are a lot of videoconference companies out there...which almost all have limited version for use for free. But these limited versions almost all seem to restrict to only a few participants. Anyone know of some software which might be appropriate for attempting to…
pontiff | May 27, 2009Katamari Damacy is a very cool game, if for no other reason than it is a game in which "scale" changes. The basic idea is that you roll a ball around which picks up objects that aren't too big for the ball and then the ball grows. Usually you are racing a clock to make your ball big enough. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but it's highly addictive.
But this, this is way cool. A controller for the game which is....a big shiny metal ball:
pontiff | May 27, 2009Via his squidiness, a test on which pope you are. Me?Seek help now!
You are a giddy combo of the weirder Popes, Stephen VI, Benedict XVI and St Peter
But we knew that already, no?
pontiff | May 27, 2009One of the more interesting "problems" in Science 2.0 is the lack of commenting on online articles. In particular some journals now allow one to post comments about papers published in the journal. As this friendfeed conversation asks:Why people do not comment online articles? What is wrong with the online commenting system[s]? I think this is one of the central issues in Science 2.0.
Or as Carl Zimmer commented on comments appearing at PLOS One a few years back:What I find striking, however, is how quiet it is over at PLOS One. Check out a few for yourself. My search turned up a lot of…
pontiff | May 27, 2009As an alumnus of the California Institute of Technology (thats "Caltech" not "CalTech" peoples!) and a member of the Caltech alumni association, I get a quarterly copy of Engineering and Science (E&S). In this month's issue there is a letter from the editor concerning the future of the print version of Engineering and Science. It seems that, like much print media today, this esteemed publication's print edition may go the way of the dodo.
In particular editor Douglas Smith asks what the readers of his rag think of the decision to axe the print edition:Which brings me to the other hand…
pontiff | May 26, 2009Ah, the games people play:A 23-year-old Tacoma man and an 18-year-old Lakewood woman are suspected of throwing rocks from a railroad trestle onto at least 14 vehicles traveling southbound on Interstate 5 early Monday.
...
Investigators told KOMO-TV that the couple was playing a stripping game that involved each of them shedding a layer of clothing for every headlight they managed to break.
pontiff | May 26, 2009Here is an article at physorg.com about a result in quantum computing (see here for my own article on this result.) And here is an article on the website fudzilla describing this physorg result. How in the world do you get from the physorg article to fudzillas: "Top boffins who have been looking under the bonnet of Quantum computers are starting to think that they may not be the future of computing"?
Is the internet version of the game telephone more or less noisy than the spoken game?
pontiff | May 26, 2009This Intel ad cracks me up:
Reminds me of the classic Onion: Stephen Jay Gould Speaks Out Against Science Paparazzi.
pontiff | May 26, 2009Via the man of many B's, dates for QIP 2010 have been set. QIP 2010 will be in Zurich from January 18 to January 22. Website here.
Hmm, Switzerland in January for skiing?
pontiff | May 21, 2009He of uncertain principles asks Which do you prefer: transverse waves, or longitudinal waves? The fact builder chimes in with a clarification of a common misconception.
Myself, certainly I'm going to go for transverse waves. Not only are all the cool waves transverse (well sort of), electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves, stadium waves, etc, but you can't surf on a longitudinal wave.
And of course, how cool are gravitational waves? So cool they produce this mesmerizing action on a ring of particles:
Interestingly while light is often used as the quintessential example of transverse…
pontiff | May 21, 2009From Pravda, some pretty serious funny: Quantum transition to transform mankind in 2012.
We begin, as on any other day, with prediction of doomsday:Russian scientists predict another doomsday. In their opinion, quantum transition will begin in 2012 according to the ancient Maya calendar.
But how, you ask, will this quantum transition occur?Scientists say that an extremely powerful catalyst will be neccesary to trigger quantum transition. They say that a powerful solar flare will be enough.
Of course, why didn't I think of that: a solar flare to set off a quantum transition. But wait, shouldn…
pontiff | May 21, 2009A letter
Dear My Senator,
Thank you very much for being one of the 90 senators who voted for Amendment 1133 to H.R. 2346. I have long felt, as I'm sure you do, that keeping terrorists out of my own backyard is of vital importance to the security of our Great nation (not to mention to the security of my dog, who also uses my backyard. And I say this even though my backyard has lots of weeds and I could use some help cleaning it up.) It is, I'm sure you'll agree, completely and totally wrong to attempt to deal with these people by giving them the same sort of justice that we Americans enjoy…
pontiff | May 19, 2009Jorge sends me a link to The Best (Bacon) Dessert Ever?: a bacon-topped blue cheese panna cotta. Uh oh, Mrs. Pontiff has competition! Luckily this creation is just down the hill from our home at the Palace Kitchen, so we'll be able to compare and really find out if it is the best bacon desert ever.
pontiff | May 19, 2009Okay, well not quite a music video(!), but my coauthor Steve Flammia has done a videoabstract for our paper (on quantiki at http://www.quantiki.org/video_abstracts/09050901):
pontiff | May 19, 2009A song we (Steve, Elwyn, and ??) wrote while at Caltech. I write it down here because last night I struggled with reconstructing all the verses.
The Frosh Arrived (sung to the tune of "Cat's in the Cradle")
the frosh arrived just the other day
they came to Tech in the usual way
but there was work to do, grades were at stake
staying here was a big mistake
they were flicking for I knew it as I watched I'd say
you're going to be like me, frosh
you know you're going to be like me
and the math's on the table and the chem's on the floor
ain't got sleep in the past twenty four
when you coming out s…
pontiff | May 15, 2009Via the CCC Blog, an announcement concerning an NSF funded opportunity for new PhDs in Computer Science, CIFellows (http://cifellows.org):The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and the Computing Research Association (CRA), with funding from the National Science Foundation, are pleased to announce an opportunity for new PhD graduates in computer science and closely related fields to obtain one-to-two year positions at host organizations including universities, industrial research laboratories, and other organizations that advance the field of computing and its positive impact on society.
The…
pontiff | May 15, 2009Via torque: In-N-Out...Now with Bacon. No, unfortunately In-N-Out is not adding Bacon to it's secret menu. But dude: Bacon and a Double Double. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
pontiff | May 14, 2009If only there had been open access, maybe it wouldn't be called Moore's law:I didn't go to Midland after all, but went instead to the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, which has roughly the same relationship to Johns Hopkins that JPL has to Caltech, and where I could continue to do basic research in areas related to what I had done before. But I found myself calculating the cost per word in the articles we published and wondering if the taxpayers were really getting their money's worth at $5 per word. Just as I was starting to worry about the taxpayers, the group I was…
pontiff | May 13, 2009Martin Plenio writes in with a link to a new site he created with Daniel Burgarth Videoabstracts (Joe got an email too):I am writing to you to bring to your attention some new tool that we (Daniel Burgarth and myself) have developed that has the aim of making science papers just a little more accessible. Its called Videoabstracts and consists of 'homemade' videos in which an author of the paper explains the key point of the paper in front of a whiteboard. The videos should not be longer than 5 minutes to force people to get to the point efficiently. We feel that these 5 minutes clarify the…
pontiff | May 13, 2009Over at TechFlash there is an article about some words Ed Lazowska, professor extraordinaire here in the computer science & engineering department at UW, had for the Seattle tech scene (see also xconomy):"It seems to me that the issue with this state is that we are one big happy family in which everybody is doing extremely well. Everyone's college program is above average. And everyone's company is above average. And everyone's venture fund is above average. And if you go a little bit more above average than the next guy, then they get all Dirty Harry and whack you down. It is a state of…