Sure quantum computers can find a needle in an unstructured haystack quadratically faster than their classical brethren, but I didn’t think the word “quantum” and “search” would appear in the press quite this soon: Ex-Googlers reinvent web search: Quantum porn (not safe for work! i.e. they show the quantum porn!) and Quantum porn engine foiled by strawberries and muffins: How the Cuil kids live. And yes, I “cuil”ed my own name, and no, this blog doesn’t come up (nor any quantum porn.)
Change We Believe In, But Tenure?
Turning down a tenured position at the University of Chicago Law School:
Soon after, the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.
Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.
File this one away in regards to (1) deans don’t always know what they are talking about and (2) turning down a tenured position has the potential of leading you to be one of the two leading candidates for the position of president of the United States.
You who are reading this, could you make a similar such decision?
The Bar Scene
Someone at Caltech’s PR office sure was having fun:
Caltech Astronomers Describe the Bar Scene at the Beginning of the Universe
PASADENA, Calif.–Bars abound in spiral galaxies today, but this was not always the case. A group of 16 astronomers, led by Kartik Sheth of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, has found that bars tripled in number over the past seven billion years, indicating that spiral galaxies evolve in shape.
Oh, I can tell you all about the bar scene near Caltech. Dive bar: The Colorado. Beer for graduate students: Lucky Baldwin’s. Quantum margarita night: Amigos. Quantum beer night: drive five hours north to Albatross in Berkeley, CA.
Physics Personified
Physical Theories as Men, a tit for tat response to Physical Theories as Women. Go ahead, you know you want to click on both of them.
SciRate Papers: 7/18 to 7/25
In attempt to keep my reading more current, I’m going to try to post the top rated arXiv papers on SciRate each week and hopefully add about the papers. Let’s see how long I can keep it up (bets?)
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Doorbell Telephone
Yesterday I started to trace the wiring for our doorbells and figure out why they aren’t working (they haven’t worked since we moved in.) So I’m happily tracing away (a bit difficult since part of the basement has been finished and hence obstructs me figuring out where the wires are going) and then, whah, why the heck does the doorbell wiring appear to be connected to the telephone system? Anyone seen something like this before or am I just going crazy? (Okay we know the answer to the last one.)
Bat's Sizzling on an Open Fire
Last night we went to see the new Batman movie. After attempting to see it at Paul Allen’s Cinerama (it was sold out), we headed down to the standard mall theater in downtown Seattle to view said film. Verdit for me: meh.
But what I found interesting was thinking about the reason for why I didn’t much like the movie. This is obviously because I am not a bat nor a superhero nor a heroine nor do I live in Gotham. Plus the portrayal of Two Face just hit to close to home. See how easy it is, kids, to analyze movie reviews when you just take reviewers biases into account!
Monday’s are snarky, snark snark days.
Hacking Vision?
An interesting idea from Mark Changizi from RPI: can one design pictures which, when interpreted by your vision, perform a computation? Press release here (note to RPI public relations department: you should probably make it so that the webpage address of your press releases can be copied from the browser address bar. Somewhere a web designer should be shot.) and paper in Perception published here.
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Every Thursday I Go Jeffersonian On You
Yesterday the New York Times, ran an article Absaroka, a proposed state between Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota which never was. Which reminded me of the state that I grew up in, the great state of Jefferson. What, you’ve never head of the great State of Jefferson?
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We Beat the Reaper by Living Well
Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, passed away early today. If you haven’t watched Pausch’s last lecture, you should:
This lecture, when I first saw it, reminded me how important humor is for teaching. In other words, my students from last term can blame all my silly jokes on Randy.