pontiff | April 22, 2008Andrew Landahl (who really should have a blog because he is certainly one of the most interesting people I get to talk to when I attend a conference) sends me a note about recent appearances of quantum computing on prime time TV which he has graciously let me post below.
I thought you'd be amused to know that quantum information has finally made it to prime time. Using TiVo, I just caught up on back-to-back episodes of CBS's "Big Bang Theory" from the past two weeks that make prominent references to quantum teleportation and Shor's algorithm. The week before last, the episode opened with a…
pontiff | April 22, 2008Over at Machine Learning (Theory), the Learner points to a Scientific American article on Science 2.0 which discusses various efforts in bringing scientists into the 21st century, and scientists reluctance to openly discuss their research in progress in public forums. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I started blogging about my own research. First of all, I'm pretty sure it would bore a large number of people into a deep comatose sleep from which they would never emerge. On the other hand, I'm not a very smart guy, so exposing my work to the vast power of the intertube's collective…
pontiff | April 21, 2008Friday I gave out a survey in the course I'm teaching this quarter asking for feedback. Among the many helpful responses, was one, which pointed out that I say "so" a lot. Now, I know that when I write I use "now" a lot, but I really hadn't noticed how much I say "so." In class today I realized that there were places where I couldn't even proceed without saying "so." So this is a post to remind myself to try harder to figure out how to not say "so." Its not so easy, I must say.
pontiff | April 19, 2008We've seen these demos before, but Johnny Lee's TED talk still wows:
Not only does it seem that interfaces are undergoing some radical redesigning right now, but also methods to take existing "cheap" products and leverage them into something which would normally cost a lot more, seems to be catching on.
Just yesterday I saw a talk by Shwetak Patel from Georgia Tech which leverages things like existing power lines, plumbing, or HVAC systems to detect activities occurring in a house. What was nice about the work, in my mind, was the fact that it leveraged current infrastructure and thus…
pontiff | April 18, 2008I sure wish I could get my dog to do this so that I wouldn't have to exercise her:
pontiff | April 17, 2008You know you are spoiled when the place to put your beer is the top of the dugout:
So close, the kid next to me waved at Ichiro as he returned to dugout and Ichiro waved back. Oh, and the guy with the two foot tall Ichiro bobble head doll was kind of scary.
pontiff | April 17, 2008David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail, both Nobel dudes, have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the presidential candidates choosing not to participate in a debate over science and technology policy:All three candidates declined. Apparently the top contenders for our nation's highest elective office have better things to do than explain to the public their views on securing America's future.
Of course they have better things to do: bowling and taking shots and being under phantom sniper fire! Don't these Nobel prize winners read Fafblog? Without bowling and shots, where will America's…
pontiff | April 17, 2008A word I accidentally mumbled in class: "crudimentary." I think it means both rudimentary and crude. Anyway, I like it, and am going to try to start weaseling it into as many talks as I possibly can. Speaking of which, here are slides for a guest lecture I gave to the local alternative models of computing class at UW.
pontiff | April 15, 2008One year ago:
Today: still playing on the floor with the kiddies and loving it!
pontiff | April 15, 2008It was an unassuming blue-grey volume tucked away in the popular science section of the Siskiyou County Library. "Spacetime Physics" it announced proudly in gold letters across the front of the book. Published in 1965, the book looked as if it hadn't been touched in the decades since 1965. A quick opening of the book revealed diagrams of dogs floating beside rocket ships, infinite cubic lattices, and buses orbiting the Earth, all interspaced with a mathematical equations containing symbols the likes of which I'd never seen before. What was this strange book, and what, exactly, did those…
pontiff | April 15, 2008For those interested in accessing the arXiv on your iPhone, here is a web based iPhone page:http://arxiv.mobi. Sweet! This has been on my list of things to do, and now I can cross it off without having to do it myself!
pontiff | April 14, 2008I just learned the very sad news that John A. Wheeler has passed away. Wheeler was one of my heroes and inspired me in many ways to be where I am today. I'm buried under a heap of work today, but will write more when I can come up for air. Below I've pasted a post from my old blog describing a result I first learned about by reading a Wheeler paper.
Note: This post originally appeared at my old blog site.
When I was an undergraduate at Caltech visiting Harvard for the summer I stumbled upon Volume 21 of the International Journal of Theoretical Physics (1982). What was special about this…
pontiff | April 11, 2008Last week, in the class I'm teaching, we talked about the basics of deterministic finite automata. In week two we moved on to more interesting and slightly less basic material. In particular we introduced the notion of a nondeterministic finite automata and, by the end of the week, had showed that the class of languages accepted by deterministic finite automata is exactly the same class of languages accepted by nondeterministic finite automata.
What I love about this basic material is that you take a seemingly crazy idea: machines that can follow multiple computational paths at the same…
pontiff | April 9, 2008Come on, you know you want to watch it, "How It's Made: Bacon":
That's some awesome background music, I must say. Good to know they check for pieces of metal which might have fallen onto the pork bellies.
pontiff | April 9, 2008The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI:
And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?
pontiff | April 8, 2008Whatever you do, Mr. and Mrs. Joe and Mary America, make sure to tell everyone you know not to go into science and engineering! You see those who major in science and engineering are certain to not get jobs, because, as many commenters love to point out, all those jobs are being exported overseas! But wait, what is this:
The overall unemployment rate of scientists and engineers in the United States dropped from 3.2% in 2003 to 2.5% in 2006...according to data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT). This is the lowest…
pontiff | April 8, 2008Did the Monte Hall problem, trip up a huge number of psychologists? So claims this New York Times article. For a good detailed explanation see here. For even more detail see the actual paper.