Author: dabacon

Posted on

Krugman: I'm For Math!

Krugman clarifies:

I’ve been getting some comments from people who think my magazine piece was an attack on the use of mathematics in economics. It wasn’t…So by all means let’s have math in economics — but as our servant, not our master.

Word.
(Of course the point I was trying to make was that I read the end of his article as suggesting that because economics must deal with the irrational and unpredictable behavior of humans, that it must therefor be messy and beyond elegant mathematical description. I don’t buy this line of reasoning, as I think it is unknown whether the conclusion is true, but apparently, reading comments to my article, I’m the only one who doesn’t like to put his mathematics before his solution 🙂 )
But anyway, is anyone going to explain inflation without using gauge theory? (Channeling Eric Weinstein)

Posted on

Apocalypse Avoided

As I discussed a few blog posts ago a serious hole in our apocalypse protection network was about to be compromised with the non-renewal of the website http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/. But it seems that Domenic has come to the rescue! See comment in the above blog post and the RSS feed update:

Domenic (a true fan of this site) was so distraught at the thought of missing out on further reassurances of the earth’s continued existence that he’s ponied up the registration cost for another year. So, we’re not going anywhere after all.

1. The world has not ended. 2. The website is still going. Hence 3. Keeping the website going is what is keeping the world from ending. Err.

Posted on

An Everything But Merger Act?

I have been riveted by yesterday’s re-argument of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission before the United States Supreme Court. I mean who hasn’t? At stake, as they say in media newspeak, is the entire state of campaign finance law (the astute reader will note the choice of words in this sentence and smile.) The Quantum Pontiff is not a lawyer, but he is the son of a lawyer, and greatly admires the ability of supreme court justices to herd the truth in directions more palatable to their preexisting exquisite judicial tastes (why is everyone staring at Justice Scalia?) So I would like to present to the court, if I may, some unintended consequences of their ruling in this case which they perhaps have not yet considered and which may sway the bench in its final, unbiased, empathetic, states-right based decision.
Continue reading “An Everything But Merger Act?”

Posted on

ICQIT 2009

Any quantum people in the area of Japan in early December might be interested in ICQIT 2009. Submission deadline fast approaching (Sep 30):

The International Conference on Quantum Information and Technology ICQIT2009 will be held at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, Japan from 2nd to 5th December 2009. ICQIT2009 focuses on the following topics:
QKD and quantum networks,
Large Scale QIP and architecture design.
Quantum Information Theory
Quantum Algorithms
Measurement Based QIP
Optical QIP Implementations,
Solid State QIP implementations,
SQUID systems
ICQIT2009 is now open for submissions of papers. The conference will consist of keynote talks, invited talks, contributed talks, and a poster session. Contributors can choose a preferred presentation type from Poster only, or Oral or Poster. A one-page abstract needs to be sent to to icqit [at] qis1.ex.nii.ac.jp by 30th September.
The keynote speakers for the conference will be,
Keith Harrison (HP Labs, Bristol)
Gerard Milburn (University of Queensland)
Miklos Santha (LRI, University of Paris-Sud)
The list of invited speakers will be found online at
www.qis.ex.nii.ac.jp/icqit/index.html
The important dates are
Submission Deadline: 30 September 2009
Notification of Acceptance: 5 October 2009
Registration Deadline: 15 October 2009
THERE IS NO REGISTRATION FEE FOR THIS CONFERENCE, however a conference dinner will be organized at a cost of approximately 5000 Yen (~50 USD) per person.
This conference is co-organized by the National Institute of Informatics (NII) and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and is being held in conjunction with the JST-CNRS workshop on Quantum Computation: Theory and Feasibility.
Best Regards,
The Organizing Committee:
Kae Nemoto,
Masahide Sasaki,
Iordanis Kerenidis,
Simon Devitt.

Posted on

Weinstein v. Krugman v. Orzel (Mathematical Elegance Death Match)

Over at the most uncertain blog, he of uncertain principles (aka Chad) takes up a challenge posed by @EricRWeinstein on twitter concerning Paul Krugman’s recent article on why economists got the economic crisis so wrong. Since I know even less economics than anyone around here this seems like a great opportunity for me to weigh in (this is, after all, the blogosphere!)
Continue reading “Weinstein v. Krugman v. Orzel (Mathematical Elegance Death Match)”

Posted on

The World Is Ending (or at Least a Website)

One RSS feeds I subscribe to is the one at http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/. I mean, if the world is going to end, I certainly want Google reader to be the first to tell me. But today’s RSS update is, instead of the traditional “no”, different:

Bye bye everyone. This domain is not being renewed. It’s been fun.

Which means that soon when you check www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com, you may not get an answer. Which may or may not mean the LHC has destroyed the world (oh noes!) Or it may just mean that your going to find a web page filled with spam from a domain name squatter. Which is kind of the same thing, I guess.

Posted on

Live Worldwide Monopoly Game

Tomorrow, September 9, 2009 is apparently the date for a worldwide game of monopoly: Monopoly City Streets

Welcome to Monopoly City Streets. You versus the world in the biggest live game of MONOPOLY in history!
On the 9th SEPTEMBER, a world of property empire building on an unimaginable scale will be launched! A live worldwide game of MONOPOLY using Google Maps as the game board. The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence.
Own any street in the world. Build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent. Use MONOPOLY Chance Cards to sabotage your mates by building Hazards on their streets.
Which strategy will you employ? Determined drive? Ingenious daring? Intelligent caution? Will you thrive under the pressure of a fast growing global property empire – or will you crumble? Find out if you’ll thrive, or even survive, in the amazing world of MONOPOLY City Streets. It’s going to be epic fun!

Having spent many days in my childhood playing epic games of monopoly I’m tempted. How does one play an epic game of monopoly? Easy, just modify the rules to allow you to go in debt and be stubborn as a mule even when your opponent owns both Boardwalk and Parkplace. (Good lesson: even though there is randomness in rolling dice, when the board gets stacked against you, you may have statistical fluctuations which feel good, but eventually you are doomed. Multiple rolls of bad odds eventually catch up.)

Posted on

Puzzle for the Day

How do you build a computer out of fire?
(Motivated by the observation that if you take three pieces of string and tie them together at a single point, you can make an OR gate. If we denote the presence of fire on a string as a 1 and the absence of fire as a 0, then this contraption clearly computes the OR function. But OR by itself is not universal.)