Category: Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.

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So Long and Thanks For All the Fish!

This blog has moved. The new location is https://dabacon.org/pontiff.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Over the past three years I’ve had a good time blogging here at Scienceblogs. Though I rarely agree with much they say (haha, classic curmudgeon that I am) I can honestly say my fellow Sciencebloggers are a great bunch of people, and I’m sure I’ll continue to get irritated at what they write for many years to come (just kidding, I always agree with the physicists! 😉 )
“Great Dave, thanks for taking a stand against the PepsiCo blog!” Well actually, I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while, so it would be disingenuous of me to claim this is all about the PepsiCo blog. You see about six months ago, something quite miraculous happened (for some definition of miracle). He’s pictured above being indoctrinated into the liberal media that is the New York Times. Since baby Bacon’s birth, my blogging has dropped off a cliff (Grand Canyon style.) Choosing between spending time with baby Bacon and quantum pontifficating is, well, a simple choice. In light of my light blogging it seems natural to leave Scienceblogs and return to my original blog https://dabacon.org/pontiff where I can occasionally blog when in between changing diapers and getting peed on from three feet away (dude!)
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Scienceblogs decision to host the PepsiCo blog is “bad! bad! bad!” I’m happy that my fellow Sciencebloggers have protested violently against this. Had I not been on the brink of leaving, I probably would have given the overlords the benefit of a doubt for a few days. Everyone makes mistakes, to get cliche, and I’d rather measure my reaction after watching how people react to their mistakes (I believe this comes from being part California surfer dude.) So I guess what I’m saying is that this is about 80 percent pre-existing condition and 20 percent the Pepsi fiasco. I’m sorry if that offends the more activist passionate among you, but it’s my own truth. Or at least my own biased perception of how I feel. Which is the best you’re going to get.
Anyway, on to more positive thoughts, please come on by and check out my new local: https://dabacon.org/pontiff. Here is the rss feed. Oh, and moving back to my old location means one good thing: LaTex! Mmmm, juicy mathy blog posts.

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Pr(Future Dave Bacons|Library Cuts) is Small

I grew up in the small town of Yreka, CA (“Yreka Bakery” backwards is…) that sits just minutes south of the Oregon-California border on Interstate 5. Yreka, population a little over 7000 brave souls, is the county seat of Siskiyou county. Siskiyou county is “god’s country” meaning, yes, (a) it votes strongly Republican 🙂 and (b) its scenery is awesome:
Siskiyou county is, however, not a wealthy part of the United States (yes, if you measure wealth in dollars :)) Unemployment in the county is currently 19 percent (not seasonally adjusted), the median income is $29,530, and about 18 percent of the population is below the poverty line. Most employment is in the services or retail trade, with government and agriculture/mining/timber being the next highest employers. The collapse of the timber industry during the 70s and 80s took a hard toll on the county and no industry has really arisen to take its place.
As you might imagine, given the above facts, the recent recession has cause some financial hardships for Siskiyou county. It comes as no surprise, then to read an article in the local newspaper, the Siskiyou Daily News, regarding drastic cuts in the funding of the Siskyou County library. The county is running a $3.7 million deficit, and many cuts are now on the county supervisor’s agenda. Among the cuts is one that hits dear to my heart, cutting the county library’s budget from $712,000 to $50,000, the later being enough to keep the utilities running at the library buildings. The county library in Siskiyou county is in danger of dying.
Read about this made me sad. Now I’m not a bystander without personal interest in this situation: my handicapped sister has worked or volunteered at the county library in Yreka for many many years. The “gainful” employment the library has given her has been a blessing for her and, I think, for those who get to spend time with someone who is much more wonderful than her oafish brother. It would be a shame if her job where to end, not because she costs the county much (she is a volunteer now) but because it brings great joy to her day, and I suspect, to many people who interact with her.
But I’m also sad for a different reason. I’m sad because of Spacetime Physics 1ST Edition. 1st edition, peoples, not the later editions! I picked up this book from the county library at who knows what age and learned all about special relativity (chapter 1 is available here: note the dog and spaceship.) Indeed learning about hyperbolic sine and hyperbolic cosine were of great use when I finally, years later, had to learn trigonometry (which I taught myself in order to calculate how the size of the moon’s shadow is changed by refraction in the earth’s atmosphere. NERD!)
I’m sad because of a county library Calculus book whose author I do not remember, but where I first learned about Newton’s (and friend’s) great discovery involving wacko ideas like limits and infinitesimals. It will come as no surprise to learn that I was led to this book by a book on quantum theory. The quantum theory book started out with a discussion of something called blackbody radiation, and it was very important that the big sigma (I new this stood for a sum) was used instead of a big flat “S.” A science teacher said “Ah that’s an integral sign from Calculus.” Ah the indignation of having to learn calculus before you could learn quantum theory (now we know better!)
I’m sad because of all of the back issues of Scientific American with their wonderful articles on the game of life, computer bugs that evolved, and tinkertoy machines for playing tic-tac-toe (and whose author, in later life, seems to have become rather sadly confused.)
I’m sad for all of the many popular science books on the “mysteries” of quantum theory that allowed me, when it came time to really learn quantum theory, to know exactly where the line to those mysteries lay and that crossing that line tonight at 2 a.m. was not going to help me solve my problem set by 10 a.m. I’m sad for A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to Black Holes where I learned that I disagreed with Hawking about many things, none of them involving physics.
Now I can’t say that I’ve been any great contribution to my country, given how big of a user of its library I once was. I live in Seattle and visit Yreka only occasionally now. But I do know with high certainty that a major factor in me ending up with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and performing research on quantum computing can be traced back to that county library. And I’m guessing that for many others the library has provided a path towards their own self-education: may it be on black holes, sewing, or learning about the history of the world. If I had a soapbox I’d probably also go on about studies showing businesses not moving to the county due to it’s low literacy rate. But enough of the political whining. Tonight, I’m just going to be sad for the future kids who don’t even know that they just lost one more opportunity to expand and better their future world.

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Lidar Interview

Here’s an interview with Daniel Lidar whose was the postdoc who first taught me quantum error correction (and more.) No, not that LIDAR!
Note to all you job seekers, even in your darkest hours know that you have friends out there who are working to change the abysmal state of quantum computing hiring:

I would also hope to see a wave of new faculty positions at US institutions for quantum computation theoreticians and experimentalists. We now have the first generation of students and postdocs trained in this field, many of whom are finding it very difficult to land faculty positions in the US, and are forced to seek such employment in other countries. This is most unfortunate, and I hope that US universities will reverse this trend.

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OneBusAway

Congrats to OneBusAway, winners of the 2010 WTIA Industry Achievement Award for “best use of technology in the government, nonprofit or education sector”. OneBusAway was started by University of Washington students and provides real time access to transit information here in the Seattle area. I know it best through it’s iPhone app, which is by far my most regularly used app (sure I probably use email more, but the iPhone app I use every weekday nearly without exception.) Yeah, yeah I know you fancy European cities will scoff at our backward nature, but I will tell you that the iPhone app is great: it tells you whether your bus is early or late and…best of all I can use it to walk an extra block and catch a bus at a prior stop…thus allowing me some exercise as well as the chance to get a better seat on the bus (What’s up King County Metro bus drivers with your heavy feet? :)) If you’re a Seattlite who uses public transport, I highly recommend OneBusAway (there are also Android and phone apps.)

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2010 Pi Day Contest

Scienceblogs and Serious Eats are teaming up this year for the 2010 Pi Day Bake-Off. I wonder if Mrs. Pontiff is up to defending her crown?

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Recent Progress in Quantum Algorithms

Shameless self-promotion: an article I wrote with Wim van Dam, “Recent Progress on Quantum Algorithms” has appeared in the Communications of the ACM. Indeed if you have a copy of the magazine you can check out an artists rendition of a quantum computer/quantum algorithm on the cover. Clearly quantum computing is the new string theory: so abstract that it must be represented by beautiful, yet incomprehensible, figures. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. (The article was actually written quite a bit back, so “recent” is a bit off. If we had to write it today I’m guessing we would include the quantum algorithm for linear equations as well as the quantum Metropolis algorithm.)

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About the UBC Talk

About that talk at UBC which I posted about on Sunday…

Q: How’d the talk in Vancouver go Monday, Dave?
D: The slides were awesome and the animations dazzling.
Q: So the talk went well?
D: Don’t know. I didn’t give the talk.
Q: Didn’t give the talk? Why not?
D: Well at the time I was supposed to be giving the talk I was on the US / Canada border.
Q: Oh so you were late for your talk …due to being stuck at the border crossing?
D: Actually I was heading back into the US at the time.
Q: Huh? Why were you heading the wrong direction?
D: Well because the fireman called.
Q: The fireman? Why did the fireman call you?!?
D: Well he called me to tell me I needed to call my wife.
Q: Why in earth would the fireman call you to tell you to call your wife?
D: Well he called to tell me to pick up my wife’s call. Oh and he called on account of the mess in the bathroom.
Q: Mess what mess?
D: Oh well the mess was from the boy.
Q: Boy? Your little boy made a mess in the bathroom and the fireman had to call you?
D: Well the boy himself really didn’t make a mess, because well he wasn’t quite mobile at the time.
Q: Not mobile? But how was he involved in the mess?
D: Well he was the one who made my wife call the fireman on account of deciding to be born today.
Q: Born today! Well I’ll be…. So the talk went well?

Mrs. Pontiff and Baby Bacon are both doing well and soon we will be heading home from the hospital (bringing home the Bacon, so to speak.) This sleep deprivation brings back fond memories of handing in my homework(s!) after an all nighter at Caltech. But at Caltech only a few of my fellow techers spit up quite this much.