I missed this last year, but Yale has established a Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering. Who will be the first to file out a tax for with “Occupation: Quantum Engineer?”
Update: Oh, and I missed this one too. The University of Maryland, NIST, and the NSA have established the Joint Quantum Institute under the direction of Christopher J. Lobb and Carl J. Williams. It will be hard for west coast types to avoid jokes about what they are smoking at this institute, won’t it? 🙂
Deals Missed
Glancing over OVM Venture Partners website I noticed they had a list of companies they backed, but also a list of deals missed. Why am I posting this? Because last night our puppy destroyed a new rug we had purchased and I need something to pick myself up. Nothing like seeing a company that passed on Starbucks and still has a sense of humor about to lift you up.
QIP Party Animals
Mick writes to tell me that Aggie is not having a QIP party. Um, I mean they are having a Not-QIP party. Thought you might like to know, in case, you know, you’re reading this blog instead of listening to the talks. I’d love to go to the party, but well I appear to be on nearly the other side of the world. And I have to give a midterm friday (insert evil laugh here.)
Been Around the World and I, I, I,…
Via pharyngula, via Carl Talk, via the The York Group, this interesting map
(Click for the full sized version.) Interesting, of course, because of my intense Americanocentrism! Heh, just kinding of course. No interesting because it shows how badly America needs to take a vacation to many of those countries listed 🙂
No More iSilence
Apple releases the iPhone, causing millions of white earphone zombies campuswide to break their vows of silence. I guess you’d have to walk around a college campus to find this fragment even remotely funny 🙂
Merry Christmas!
Happy Santa Day!
Speed Equals Job?
Job title advertisement as seen on the APS job website:
Ultrafast Staff Physicists
Slow physicists, need not apply.
Energy Research Spending, What Energy Research Spending?
From a friend, with a byline “why it’s nice to plot on a linear scale”: this NYTimes graphic (accompanying article here)
Quantum Percent Sign?
Okay, so when we talk about classical systems, our description of the configuration of the different states is given by a probability. So I might say my bit is a mixture of 50% 0 and 50% 1. Now when we move to quantum theory we no longer have probabilities but instead have complex numbers. But what symbol am I supposed to use for this? My state is a mixture of 1/sqrt(2) q% 0 and 1/sqrt{2} q% 1? Mabye we should invent a new symbol which is the % sign but with the slash the other direction? Or turn those 0s in the % sign into “q”s?
What's wrong? House ran away? Dog on fire?
Why visit this blog? For such stellar content as Talking Dogs.