Category Archives: The Loony Bin Called Academia

What If Papers Had APIs?

Posted on March 27, 2015 by dabacon

API is an abbreviation that stands for “Application Program Interface.” Roughly speaking an API is a specification of a software component in terms of the operations one can perform with that component. For example, a common kind of an API … Continue reading →

Posted in Extralusionary Intelligence, Science 2.0, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 13 Comments

When I Was Young, I Thought It Would Be Different….

Posted on October 8, 2013 by dabacon

When I was in graduate school (back before the earth cooled) I remember thinking the following thoughts: Quantum computing is a new field filled with two types of people: young people dumb enough to not know they weren’t supposed to … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Computing, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 9 Comments

Why I Left Academia

Posted on September 22, 2013 by dabacon

TLDR: scroll here for the pretty interactive picture. Over two years ago I abandoned my post at the University of Washington as a assistant research professor studying quantum computing and started a new career as a software developer for Google. … Continue reading →

Posted in Extralusionary Intelligence, Go Ahead, Waste Your Time, Off The Deep End, Programming, Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self., The Loony Bin Called Academia | 12 Comments

4 Pages

Posted on May 8, 2013 by dabacon

Walk up to a physicist at a party (we could add a conditional about the amount of beer consumed by the physicist at this point, but that would be redundant, it is a party after all), and say to him or … Continue reading →

Posted in Go Ahead, Waste Your Time, Off The Deep End, Physics, Quantum, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 4 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

How people in science see each other

Posted on August 15, 2011 by sflammia

via.

Posted in Funny Ha Ha, Science, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 2 Comments

US Quantum Computing Theory CS Hires?

Posted on February 16, 2011 by dabacon

I’m trying to put together a list of people who have been hired in the United States universities in CS departments who do theoretical quantum computing over the last decade. So the requirements I’m looking for are (a) hired into … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Science, Quantum Computing, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 15 Comments

Hoisted From the Comments: Funded Research

Posted on October 18, 2010 by dabacon

A while back Michael Nielsen posted a comment in one of my blog posts that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: Re your last two paragraphs: a few years ago I wrote down a list of the ten papers … Continue reading →

Posted in Funny Ha Ha, Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self., The Loony Bin Called Academia | 13 Comments

"I sound my lonely trumpet in the dark trying to relax at the edge of precipice which once again faces me"

Posted on September 21, 2010 by dabacon

Steve sends me this gem, arXiv:0905.1039.  The title of this blog post being a line from the paper: Citation entropy and research impact estimation Z.K. Silagadze A new indicator, a real valued $s$-index, is suggested to characterize a quality and … Continue reading →

Posted in Funny Ha Ha, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 4 Comments

Portrait of a Reviewer as a Young Man

Posted on June 7, 2010 by dabacon

Science is dynamic. Sometimes this means that science is wrong, sometimes it means that science is messy. Mostly it is very self-correcting, given the current state of knowledge. At any given time the body of science knows a lot, but … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Scientific Publishing, The Loony Bin Called Academia | 6 Comments