The Quantum Pontiff

As seen on an advertisement in the Denver airport: Carve diem!

The homeless man who I saw many times walking up and down King street, the one with the sign asking for a twoey, stood in front of the picture perfect gazebo. In the heavy heavy snow, he sat, hunched over his cart, listening to the blaring song coming from the gazebo’s speakers. “He knows if [...]

Sometimes you slog through tons of papers and wonder how much the whole huge mess really matters. But then there are days like today where I found two papers which I think completely and totally rock. Maybe they don’t really matter, but they are really interesting. The first paper appear on the arXiv today, so [...]

Who are you and who am I To say we know the reason why? Some are born; some men die Beneath one infinite sky. There’ll be war, there’ll be peace. But everything one day will cease. All the iron turned to rust; All the proud men turned to dust. And so all things, time will [...]

Only time will tell if and when the problems of building a quantum computer can be overcome….As information becomes the world’s most valuable commodity, the economic, political and military fate of nations will depend on the strength of ciphers. Consequently, the development of a fully operational quantum computer would imperil our personal privacy, destroy electronic [...]

Perhaps it is time for me to get religion.

Here is a list of school rankings of graduate physics and computer science departments. These schools should all be doing quantum computing, No? phys cs phsy+cs Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5 4.9 9.9 Stanford University (CA) 4.9 4.9 9.8 University of California�Berkeley� 4.9 4.9 9.8 Princeton University (NJ) 4.9 4.3 9.2 California Institute of Technology [...]

Yreka mourns death of Larry Bacon
Updated: Tuesday, January 6, 2004 6:06 AM PST

YREKA – The city of Yreka lost one of its most well-known residents Friday when former city attorney Larry Bacon was found dead at his cabin near Callahan.

According to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department, Bacon had gone to his cabin earlier in the day and when he failed to contact his family by late afternoon, a neighbor was asked to check on him. The neighbor found Bacon lying on the floor of his workshop, which was detached from the cabin. The exact cause of death is pending the medical examiner’s report.

Bacon, 63, had recently retired from his 32 years as Yreka’s city attorney and was busy enjoying his retirement when he died, friends said.

He will not only be remembered for his service to the city, but also for his work as former manager of the Yreka Western Railroad and Blue Goose Excursion Train. In May 1994, he was honored as the Yreka Citizen of the Year.

“Larry Bacon … has been the glue that has held Yreka together,” said Bacon’s friend and neighbor Jim Eckman during the 1994 Yreka Citizen of the Year Banquet. Eckman was quoting Bacon’s former law partner, Siskiyou County Superior Court Judge Robert Kaster.

A native of Phoenix, Ariz., Bacon was born on Sept. 11, 1940, to Glenn and Helen Bacon. In 1947, his family moved to Sacramento, where he worked as a brakeman for Southern Pacific Railroad while attending high school and college. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1963 and married Nancy J. Morris.

In 1966, Bacon, Nancy and their three children, Kathy, Mike and David, moved to Yreka, where he took a job as an assistant public defender with the law firm Tebbe, Correia and Kleaver. He became a full partner in 1969.

In 1970, Bacon was appointed as Yreka city attorney and was involved in several high profile projects that have virtually changed the face of Yreka. During an interview with the Siskiyou Daily News on Oct. 2, 2002, Bacon said he considered one of his greatest achievements his involvement in helping to obtain the Fall Creek water supply for the city.

“Before Fall Creek, Yreka was very much prone to water rationing in the summer time and residents often couldn’t water their lawns in dry years,” he said.

Bacon also helped to draft the building of the Yreka Community Center and Theater complex, and countless improvements to the city’s infrastructure. His work helping to establish the city’s historical district dramatically improved efforts to help preserve Victorian-style houses as well as the downtown historic section of Miner Street.

“I love history and this area has some fascinating history,” Bacon said after his retirement in October 2002. “When I first came to Yreka, Miner Street was a disaster with high vacancies and very few businesses. There was even talk of tearing down the historic district and putting up a mall. Fortunately, people saw the benefit of trying to preserve those areas.”

In 1986, Bacon put his love of history to good use by volunteering to operate the Blue Goose Excursion Train. The Blue Goose, with its fully restored No. 19 steam engine, not only helped attract tourists off the freeway, but it also helped to preserve the Yreka Western Railroad. Bacon’s position with the Blue Goose remained volunteer from 1986 to 1989. His duties became a paid position when the railroad was purchased by Kyle Railways in 1989.

Throughout his years at Yreka Western, Bacon did what he could to add to the historical ambiance of the train – going so far as to ride a large Penny Farthing replica bicycle in the parking lot while passengers were loading the train.

“I won the bike in a raffle at a softball game,” Bacon explained. “It took me about a week to learn how to ride it. Learning how to get on and off is the secret. Once you master that, riding is easy.”

Although Bacon retired on Sept. 30, 2002, he was retained by the city in a temporary, part-time capacity to help in the transition phase for the new city attorney, Mary Francis McHugh.

“What most people don’t realize is that Larry Bacon, while staying behind the scenes as the city attorney, was the key advisor to every city council member and city manager over the last 32 years,” said Eckman, who served with Bacon on the council during the 1970s. “Every major project in this town could not have been accomplished without his guidance and knowledge.”

While accomplishing much, Bacon was also known for his likable personality and his firm belief in “living out loud.”

“Larry was known as a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky prankster,” Eckman said. “And he really was. He loved the bagpipes and sometimes he’d go outside and bang out this awful noise on his bagpipes at 10 p.m. … He also liked to stand outside during thunder storms and scream every time he saw lightning.”

Yreka City Manager Brian Meek said Bacon has always been his role model.

“We lost a lot of history there,” Meek said, his voice choking with emotion. “He was a real moral leader over the last 30 years. He really was Mr. Yreka. He can never be replaced. He was just a good friend to all the citizens of Yreka and he serves as a model and inspiration on how we should all live our lives.”

In addition to his achievements, Bacon enjoyed hiking, gardening and spending time with family and friends. He was a member of the Yreka Rotary Club and was current vice president of the United Scholarship Incorporated on which he served as a board member since 1972.

Bacon is survived by his beloved wife Nancy; his daughter Cathy; son and daughter-in-law Mike and Melinda Bacon of Surrey, British Columbia; and son David Bacon of Pasadena. He is also survived by his mother Helen of Sacramento; one brother, Glenn of Tucson, Ariz.; and two grandchildren.

A celebration of his life will be on Tuesday, Jan. 6 at the Yreka Community Center at 4 p.m.

“He was a wonderful person, someone I’ve always looked up to,” said Yreka Police Chief Don Callahan. “I could always depend on him for help whenever I needed it. He was just a wonderful person. I’m really going to miss him.”

Yreka Mayor Eric Harms said he has known Larry for 20 years as both a neighbor and more recently as a city councilman.

“He really liked kids and helped them out by hiring them to work on the train,” Harms said. “I think he was probably one of our best historians around town. I remember one day he came up with an old city council minutes from in the late 30s that had my family company’s name in it that sold gravel to the city. He was always someone we could call and ask questions of while working on the council.”

In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that memorial contributions be made to United Scholarships Incorporated at P.O. Box 1328, Yreka; Siskiyou County Historical Museum, 910 S. Main St., Yreka; or Friends of the Yreka Library at 719 Fourth St. Contributions may also be made to the Etna Volunteer Fire Department “fire engine fund,” P.O. Box 460, Etna, CA. – SDN story by Lori Sellstrom

From Foxtrot: TV: Welcome to the BCS national championship football game, here at the Louisiana Superdome. TV: Let’s begin by acknowledging that there’s been some controversy concerning the teams chosen to play for this year’s title, but they were determined by the computer, and who can question that? TV: Whoa, Nelly! M.I.T. has fumbled the [...]

Courtesy Ben Toner, via a math preprint by Craig Feinstein: And the author welcomes and challenges anyone to produce a rigorous version, as he has no plans of even trying, because he is pretty tired of working on this problem and if he had to do it over again would never have even attempted it, [...]

Well I will be away from blogging a bit. My dad (Larry) passed away suddenly last Friday at my family’s cabin in northern California. I’m now at home in Yreka among family and friends. Of course, normally this would be a depressing post, but there was little to nothing depressing about my father so instead [...]

From The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick: Dreams of poverty excited universal enjoyment in Berkeley, coupled with the hope that the political and economic situation would worsen, throwing the country into ruin: this was the theory of the activists. Misfortune so vast that it would wreck everyone, responsible and not responsible alike [...]