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.
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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iPhone Apps (Free)
When people ask me about my iPhone, I usually tell them that it is a great gadget, but not really a terrific cell phone. I’m going to have to modify that a bit now, I think. With the addition of third party applications, the iPhone is now a super duper great gadget, but not really a terrific cell phone. Here are some of the free apps I’ve been loving (I haven’t yet looked at the paid ones, cheapo that I am!)
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Fill 'Er Almost Up?
I recently rented a car and got dinged with a 13 dollar fee because I didn’t drive 75 miles (and, did not see the tiny sign indicating the new rule that if I drove so little I would be rewarded by not having to fill up the fuel tank for a mere 13 dollars. Having a receipt could have gotten this fee waved.) My first thought on seeing this fee was wondering if they actually took their average mile per gallon for seventy five miles and set the fee so that at current fuel prices they would always make money on this? A sort of rental car arbitrage?
My second thought was, I wonder if they actually fill my fuel tank up? I mean sure when I get in the dial points to full, but we all know that doesn’t mean the tank is actually really full. And, well, given their new desire to milk some dollars from me because apparently they don’t trust me to fill up the fuel tank, I’m not exactly in a trusting mood when it comes to rental car companies. So next time I rent a car, I suppose I should immediately drive to a gas station and see if I can put fuel into the car. Anyone else care to test this experiment? If they don’t you should charge then a 13 dollar fee for not filling up your tank, don’t you think? And if they are filling up the tank: well why don’t we design a method for allowing them to not fill up completely and sell it them?
Away From the Red Eyes of the Crowd
Red Eye:
- A drink made from beer and tomato juice, drunk by Canadians
- A kind of cicada.
- Tomato ketchup. Or is it catsup?
- A European fish, the rudd, Leuciscus erythrophthalmus. I was once a rudd, of a different kind.
- What Dave will be doing tonight to get to the East coast. BINGO! From the OED:
White House Diary 31 Mar. (1970) 642 Lynda was coming in on ‘the red-eye special’ from California, about 7 A.M., having kissed Chuck good-by at Camp Pendleton last night as he departed for Vietnam
Bonus points if you can guess who Lynda is. Double bonus if you can explain where the title of this post comes from.
Woke Up, Got Out of Bed, Dragged a Comb Across my Head
One of the most amusing things about writing a blog is that people you’ve never met form an impression about you from your blabberings, and then, often, when they actually meet you they are astounded that you aren’t “an old grumpy guy” or whatever image they had in their mind. So, in order to confuse you even more, here are some things which I’ve been reading and thinking about and doing while not working on efficient quantum algorithms for the hidden subgroup problem.
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Rhythm is a Quantum Concatenated Code
I do believe this is the first time I’ve performed the paper dance on the scienceblogs incarnation of this blog. Yep, it’s that time again: it’s the paper dance!
“A far away light in the futuristic place we might be; It’s a tiny world just big enough to support the kingdom of one knowledgeable; I feel a wave of loneliness and head back down I’m going too fast (I’m going too fast)”
arXiv:0806.2160
The Stability of Quantum Concatenated Code Hamiltonians
Authors: D. Bacon
Abstract: Protecting quantum information from the detrimental effects of decoherence and lack of precise quantum control is a central challenge that must be overcome if a large robust quantum computer is to be constructed. The traditional approach to achieving this is via active quantum error correction using fault-tolerant techniques. An alternative to this approach is to engineer strongly interacting many-body quantum systems that enact the quantum error correction via the natural dynamics of these systems. Here we present a method for achieving this based on the concept of concatenated quantum error correcting codes. We define a class of Hamiltonians whose ground states are concatenated quantum codes and whose energy landscape naturally causes quantum error correction. We analyze these Hamiltonians for robustness and suggest methods for implementing these highly unnatural Hamiltonians.
WTFA to LOLCAT Conversion
What I drew on the whiteboard during today’s final:
School's Out For Summer…Almost
Today is the final exam for the course I’ve been teaching this summer. So I need some reading material for when I’m not watching the students take their exam. Here are two fun ones I just downloaded (one via Alea):
arXiv:0803.3913:
The Reverse of The Law of Large Numbers
Authors: Kieran Kelly, Przemyslaw Repetowicz, Seosamh macReamoinn
Abstract:The Law of Large Numbers tells us that as the sample size (N) is increased, the sample mean converges on the population mean, provided that the latter exists. In this paper, we investigate the opposite effect: keeping the sample size fixed while increasing the number of outcomes (M) available to a discrete random variable. We establish sufficient conditions for the variance of the sample mean to increase monotonically with the number of outcomes, such that the sample mean “diverges” from the population mean, acting like an “reverse” to the law of large numbers. These results, we believe, are relevant to many situations which require sampling of statistics of certain finite discrete random variables.
and
arXiv:0806.0485
Complex and Unpredictable Cardano
Aurthor: Artur Ekert
Abstract: This purely recreational paper is about one of the most colorful characters of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano, and the discovery of two basic ingredients of quantum theory, probability and complex numbers. The paper is dedicated to Giuseppe Castagnoli on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Back in the early 1990s, Giuseppe instigated a series of meetings at Villa Gualino, in Torino, which brought together few scattered individuals interested in the physics of computation. By doing so he effectively created and consolidated a vibrant and friendly community of researchers devoted to quantum information science. Many thanks for that!