About
If you came to this about page you’re probably here to learn the answer to the question which nearly everyone asks: “How do you quantize a Pope?” No?!? That wasn’t your question? Okay, well maybe later I’ll get around to talking about whether the Pope is a fermion or a boson. Until then you’ll just have to read this much more boring “about page.”
The Quantum Pontiff is a blog where some theoretical physicist who calls himself Dave Bacon pontifficates. Sometimes he makes sense, but often he seems like a raving loony. He has a particular fondness for anything having to do with quantum theory, and saying silly things about the laws of the quantum world has been known to cause him to bash his head against his keyboard (which makes his neighbors rather concerned and causes funny bumps on his forehead.) Dave works in the field of quantum computing, which many computer scientists think of as physics and many physicists think of as computer science. Because his research area sits in between disciplines, he obtains an immense amount of pleasure watching the culture of physicists and computer scientists collide (Eat your heart out, C. P. Snow.) His sworn mortal enemy is Shtetl-Optimized which sucks for Dave because the Optimizer is a genius.
From September 2003 to October 2007, The Quantum Pontiff resided at this here website, where the most commented upon post was, strangely enough, about Wayne Dyer. At one point in time the top hit for “pontiff” on google led to this website, allowing Dave to cross off from his list of things to do “Become more popular on the internet than the Pope.” Now, however, wikipedia has gained the top spot and Dave has had to uncross out this entry on the Pope.
From October 2007 to July 2010, The Quantum Pontiff was a member of the Seed magazine’s Scienceblogs and the blog resided at this website. The Sciencebloggers are a rowdy lot, and the quantum pontiff thoroughly enjoyed his time there, but in January of 2010, Mrs. Pontiff gave birth to Baby Pontiff and, well, let’s just say that blogging is fun, but not as fun as wiping snot off your son’s nose, or being peed upon from three feet away (dude!)
More information about Dave can be found at his academic web page here or on his research groups homepage here. All of his academic papers are located here and all of his talks are located here. Here is a picture of Dave’s dog.
A magic portal to the mind behind this website can be opened by emailing dabacon(atatat)gmail.com.
Disclaimer: Nothing Dave says on this blog should be construed as having anything to do with his employer or his dog.
Details of this server: This blog is hosted at dreamhost.com. I’ve been very pleased with dreamhost, including some super quick tech support, and if you are looking for a good hosting solution, I highly recommend them. Clicking here and signing up for dreamhost will give me a referral payment. You know you want to!
