Author Archives: sflammia

Pop goes the discord bubble

Posted on December 31, 2012 by sflammia

Well, the rat is out of the bag; Schroedinger’s Rat, that is. That’s the new quantum blog by Miguel Navascues and boy is it snarky! I was keeping it under my hat for a while so I could enjoy it privately, but the … Continue reading →

Posted in Hype, Quantum Basterdizations | 14 Comments

Science Code Manifesto

Posted on December 29, 2012 by sflammia

Recently, one of the students here at U. Sydney and I had the frustrating experience of trying to reproduce a numerical result from a paper, but it just wasn’t working. The code used by the authors was regrettably not made … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers, Programming, Scientific Publishing | 3 Comments

Plagiarism horror story

Posted on October 31, 2012 by sflammia

Halloween is my favorite holiday: you aren’t strong armed into unhealthy levels of conspicuous consumption, the costumes and pumpkins are creative and fun, the autumn colors are fantastic, and the weather is typically quite pleasant (or at least it was … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 13 Comments

Greg Kuperberg: a paladin fighting against the ogres of hype

Posted on October 22, 2012 by sflammia

Nothing much to add here, but Greg Kuperberg has an excellent article at Slate which clarifies the power and limitations of quantum computers. The article is brief, accessible, and highly accurate. The next time a science journalist contacts you for … Continue reading →

Posted in Fragment, Quantum Computing | 4 Comments

Is science on trial in Italy?

Posted on October 22, 2012 by sflammia

Big news from Italy today, where a regional court has ruled that six Italian scientists (and one ex-government official) are guilty of multiple manslaughter for the deaths of 309 people that were killed in the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009. The reaction … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Science | 7 Comments

Sean Barrett

Posted on October 20, 2012 by sflammia

I am very sad to learn that Sean Barrett of Imperial College London, who made important contributions to fault tolerance and optical quantum computing, among other areas, was tragically killed in a traffic accident in Perth on Friday. He was … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituary | 5 Comments

12 things a quantum information theorist should do at least once

Posted on October 8, 2012 by sflammia

By popular demand… prove (or disprove) something by going to the Church of the Larger Hilbert Space apply amplitude amplification in a non-trivial way convince yourself you’ve proven that NP is contained in BQP, or at least that you have … Continue reading →

Posted in Funny Ha Ha, General | 13 Comments

Down Under

Posted on October 6, 2012 by sflammia

I have just moved to the University of Sydney to begin a permanent position here in the Department of Physics. I had a great time at the University of Washington, and I’ll miss working with the fantastic people there. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Announcement | 11 Comments

Uncertain on Uncertainty

Posted on September 27, 2012 by sflammia

Over at BBC News, there is an article about a recently published paper (arXiv) by Lee Rozema et al. that could lead to some, ehm, uncertainty about the status of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP). Before dissecting the BBC article, let’s look at the paper … Continue reading →

Posted in Nitpicker's Paradiso, Science By Press Release | 6 Comments

Taken to School

Posted on September 25, 2012 by sflammia

Here is a fine piece of investigative journalism about a very wide spread scam that is plaguing academia. Definitely worth a watch.

Posted in Education, Fragment, Funny Ha Ha, The Loony Bin Called Academia | Leave a comment