The Quantum Pontiff

Theoretical Musings

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!

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Fido Left Behind

Over at my old blog one thread which keeps on giving is my missive about Dr. Wayne Dyer which now has over 2000 comments. I can always tell when it’s PBS pledge drive time by the bump in traffic on my old website and the increase in comments on this post. Today I got a spam comment on the post. Now usually spam comments aren’t to exciting (bad Viagra joke deleted), but this one is…well…different.

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Comments (9)

The Quantum Pontiff Has Landed

Look, up in the air, is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No. Is it the quantum pontiff? Yes! Yes! The Quantum Pontiff! Um, okay….but what exactly is the quantum pontiff? Besides, of course, the juxtaposition of two words which don’t often find themselves seated together at the dinner table…

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Comments (42)

Dr. Wayne Dyer Makes Me Cry

Watching PBS tonight: “Dr. Wayne Dyer: The Power of Intention.” Holy moly bad stuff. Religion dressed up in authority soaked in pseudoscience. Use the word “energy” enough and people will believe anything you say. “Spirititual energy is the energy of abundance.” What does this even mean? So here is the real question. Why doesn’t the word Hamiltonian achieve as high a standing as energy? Or at least the Lagrangian, for gosh sake! And why no talk of the action. I mean that’s my favorite quantity, the action! No eigenvectors, no eignenvalues, no renormalization group. If you’re going to talk to me, and convince me of your self-help mumbo jumbo, you’d better be talking my launguage!

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