The Quantum Pontiff

Did Adam and Eve go to heaven?

This weekend I drove 10+ hours and passed many cars. Invariably these cars were adorned with bumper stickers. Then it hit me. I had not realized that America had sneezed.

From Wired: John Alan Simon, who produced The Getaway with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, and his partner, Dale Rosenbloom, are trying to get studio backing for films based on three Dick novels – Radio Free Albemuth, Valis, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said How the hell do you make a movie out of [...]

From the LA Times: In another measure of the evolving social structure of U.S. politics, those who drink wine with dinner prefer a Democrat over Bush for 2004 by 7 percentage points. Those who drink beer back Bush over a Democrat by 23 percentage points.

What is this? It seems this charmonium-like state is a bit of a mystery. Theoretical calculations for the possible identity of this particle are off by ~50 sigma. I’m betting the theory just needs tweeking, but who knows? Anyone want to take the bet?

Join now: The Presidential Prayer Team! Make sure you don’t forget the “additional leaders to pray for this week.” No, I don’t know that [a]theists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under [g]od. George Bush the First

Famously, classical general relativity tells us that black holes “have no hair”: the mass, electric charge, and angular momentum of the black hole are the only parameters about the black hole measurable by us “outside the horizon” observors. Silly me it was only today while exercising that I realized that it might be interesting to [...]

Oh how it taunts me, this “Powder” magazine. Confined to my office writing applications for jobs, it sits, silly little magazine, on my desk and taunts me. “Ski,” it jeers, “Snow” it whispers. But no! I must apply for jobs. Of course it affects my judgement. Of course I dream of the academic jobs where [...]

Sometimes papers on the ArXiv are crazy. From the amusing but more than a bit scary department comes this paper comparing astrophysics and prostitution.

Here is a Powerpoint copy of the talk I gave at MIT: QIP seminar talk. If you can’t view powerpoint, here is an html version.

Today I will be giving a talk at the MIT QIP seminar. Here is the abstract for the talk There are distinct physical reasons why classical computers act as naturally error free devices. Not all classical systems can act as robust classical computers. Similarly we should not expect all quantum systems to be useful for [...]