Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.
pontiff | October 2, 2008Take a look at Google circa 2001. Yes that's right you can search like it's 2001! Oh my: apparently I was everything and nothing: 2001 Google search for "Dave Bacon".
pontiff | October 1, 2008DonorChoose, an organization which matches teachers requests for funds with donors, is running their annual blogger challenge. Already Cosmic Variance is trying to harness their vast resources of physicists, The Optimizer is appealing to the base nerd in everyone, He of Uncertain Principles is offering up his dog's services for donations (does the dog know?), and the moral Mathematician is offering solutions to math homework problems (err I mean blog posts on a chosen topic.) But I think you shouldn't fall in this trap and support those blogs....
Because, of course instead you should…
pontiff | September 25, 2008Reminder that Sandra, Maria, Grrl, and I will be Ozzies this Saturday. Translation: beer! That's Saturday, Sept. 27th at 4 pm in the upstairs mezzanine at Ozzie's. The address is 105 W. Mercer St., Seattle, WA 98119. That's in lower Queen Anne just east west of that gigantic need with a spaceship stuck on top of it.
pontiff | September 18, 2008This blog post is for me, not for you. Brought to you by a trip down memory lane visiting my adviser at Caltech.
Do something new. Do something exciting. Excel. Whether the path follows your momentum is not relevant.
Don't dwell. Don't get stuck. Don't put blinders on.
Consider how the problem will be solved, not how you are going to solve it.
Remember Feynman: solve problems.
Nothing is not interesting, but some things are boring.
Dyson's driving lesson: forced intense conversation to learn what the other has to say.
Avoid confirmatory sources of news, except as a reminder of the base…
pontiff | September 16, 2008Scienceblogs has now passed its millionth comment! In celebration many of us are having our own local Scienceblogs million comment parties. See here for your local party.
What does all that boring writing mean in the last paragraph? No need to read it. Just read this one if you're going to be in Seattle at the end of September:
Join Sandra Porter, Maria Brumm, (hopefully) GrrlScientist, and myself for our millionth comment shin dig at Ozzie's in lower Queen Anne (105 W Mercer St.) That's right: beer, beer beer! At 4pm on September 27th. Considering the themes of three of four of the…
pontiff | September 15, 2008Dum, dum, dum, DUM DUM
No, it's not the monolith from 2001, but instead Millikan library at Caltech which I'm visiting. If you're ever around Caltech on Halloween, be sure to check out the pumpkin drop where frozen pumpkins are dropped off this gigantic monolith. I thought I saw a blue spark...
Always a bit strange going back to the place where you spent seven plus years of your life. Especially when it's a place like Caltech, I suppose.
pontiff | September 13, 2008The new father, he of uncertain principles, has analyzed whether his science posts gain viewership over time. My biggest problem with writing scientific content into posts is that when I do that it totally messes up my google searching. I mean when I do that then I end up finding my own blog post when I search for something I'm trying ton understand. On the other hand, it saves a click because I can be pretty certain that the link to my blog doesn't lead to the answer I'm looking for (or if it does it's time to get my memory checked out.)
pontiff | September 1, 2008Ironically, of all the posts I scheduled to run while I was away on vacation last week, the only one which didn't get automatically posted was the one saying that I'd be away and that the next weeks posts would be scheduled. Doh. So yeah, I was away.
For your viewing pleasure, Greek boats
and a Greek church
Bonus points for anyone who can identify this Greek town:
pontiff | August 28, 2008Quantum error correction and quantum hard drives in four dimension. Part IV of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing:
Prior parts: Part I, Part II, Part III.
Quantum Error Correction
Classical error correction worked by encoding classical information across multiple systems and thus protecting the information better than if it was encoded just locally. Fault-tolerant techniques extend these results to the building of actual robust classical computers. Given that quantum theory seems to be quite different from classical theory, an important question to…
pontiff | August 26, 2008The physics of classical information storage. Why is it that your hard drive works? A modern miracle, I tell you! Part III of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing: "self-correcting quantum computers." Prior parts: Part I, Part II
The Physics of Classical Information Storage
Despite the fact that Shannon and von Neumann showed that, a least in theory, a reliable, fault-tolerant computer could be built out of faulty, probabilistic components, if we look at our classical computing devices it is not obvious that these ideas matter much. I mean really,…
pontiff | August 25, 2008Why is classical computing possible at all? A silly question, but one which never ceases to amaze me. Part II of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing: "self-correcting quantum computers." Prior parts: Part I
Last time I discussed how quantum computing was a lot like classical probabilistic computing. Given this, one can think about a question which seems silly at first: how is it possible to compute when you have a classical probabilistic computer?
Why Is Classical Computation Possible?
Classical computers are both digital and deterministic. But…
pontiff | August 21, 2008Quantum computing is hair-brained, but then again so is classical probabilistic computing. Part I of my attempt to explain one of my main research interests in quantum computing: "self-correcting quantum computers."
Quantum Computing, a Harebrained Idea?
Quantum computing, at first sight, sounds like a hairbrained idea with absolutely no possible possibility of actually working in the real world. The reasons for this are plentiful, at least when you first start learning about quantum computers. Quantum states (aka wave functions) are described by a continuum of values. Uh, oh, that sounds…
pontiff | August 12, 2008I knew there was a reason I called this blog "The Quantum Pontiff." Amazon-ing my name:
pontiff | August 12, 2008Interested in quantum error correction (who isn't!) Daniel Lidar informs me that the talks from the QEC07 conference are now all available online.
See such amazing acts as
Tutorials
Dave Bacon [ppt][video]
Daniel Gottesman [ppt][video]
Raymond Laflamme [pdf][video]
Lorenza Viola [pdf][video]
Keynote
David Cory [ppt][video] (no audio)
John Preskill [pdf][video]
Peter Shor [ppt][video]
David Wineland [ppt][video]
Invited
Robert Alicki [pdf][video]
Panos Aliferis…
pontiff | August 10, 2008Me, personally, I wake to the smell of Bacon every morning. But others may need help. Here it is: the Wakin' with Bacon alarm clock.
pontiff | August 4, 2008Yep, it's paper dance time. This one is less of a dance and more of a shuffle:
arXiv:0808.0174 (scirate)
Title: Simon's Algorithm, Clebsch-Gordan Sieves, and Hidden Symmetries of Multiple Squares
Author: D. Bacon
Abstract: The first quantum algorithm to offer an exponential speedup (in the query complexity setting) over classical algorithms was Simon's algorithm for identifying a hidden exclusive-or mask. Here we observe how part of Simon's algorithm can be interpreted as a Clebsch-Gordan transform. Inspired by this we show how Clebsch-Gordan transforms can be used to efficiently find a…
pontiff | July 29, 2008Someone at Caltech's PR office sure was having fun:
Caltech Astronomers Describe the Bar Scene at the Beginning of the Universe
PASADENA, Calif.--Bars abound in spiral galaxies today, but this was not always the case. A group of 16 astronomers, led by Kartik Sheth of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, has found that bars tripled in number over the past seven billion years, indicating that spiral galaxies evolve in shape.
Oh, I can tell you all about the bar scene near Caltech. Dive bar: The Colorado. Beer for graduate students: Lucky Baldwin's. Quantum…