Happy New Year! Seattle’s fireworks at the space needle had some technical difficulties (and the pyrotechnicians had to light them by hand…yeah I wrote that just to use the word “pyrotechnician”), but were still beautiful as ever:
Welcome 2008! 2008 is the international year of the potato, the international year of planet earth, and the international year of sanitation. Oh, and it is a leap year! And of further note, according to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in “The Mote in God’s Eye” 2008 is the year that faster than light travel was invented. Now that should be exciting.
Is This a Mathematica Bug?
Miguel Pais points to an interesting behavior of Mathematica, where he plots the function which is the square of the square root of x. Now, if the domain of x is taken to be complex numbers, Mathematica’s behavior seems to me to be fine. But can anyone explain this behavior
as anything other than a bug?
Update: Oops. That wasn’t the one I was trying to paste. See what happens when I disconnect from the intertubes for a few days. How about this one:
Foxworthy Material
You know you’re in rural America when…
Reminds me of one of my favorite bumper sticker ideas of a few years ago (less true today): “Buy American: Do Meth!”
Quantum Gravity – Topological Quantum Field Theory Blues
TGFT inspires the blues:
Biblical Quantum Humor
What do you call a quantum computer built in the shape of a cubic lattice and containing 450000 qubits?
Continue reading “Biblical Quantum Humor”
Ski Day: Mt Shasta Ski Park
Well I finally made it to the ski slopes. Hopefully my late start to this year’s ski season will just mean that I push harder to get up to the slopes. Here is a picture taken from the base of the Mt. Shasta Ski area:
The two lifts servicing advanced terrain were shut down in the morning due to the wind, the wind chill factor was brutal, and the snow looked liked it had been shipped out directly from the East Coast: all ice and crud. But hey, it was the first day skiing!
Merry Quantum Christmas!
Merry Christmas! I don’t think this explanation for Santa delivering presents using quantum theory works. But it does bring up the question of whether Santa could get a quadratric speedup using quantum gift delivery?
Bacon Zen
Ernesto points me to Bacon Zen, a collection of savory bacon links. But really? Bacon chocolate chip cookies?
Happenings in the Quantum World: December 22, 2007
Superexchange in optical lattices, factoring 15 in a linear optics quantum computer, quantum plagarism peaceful resolution, silicon and gallium arsinide quantum computers, and quantum mumbo jumbo in support of the ideas popularly known as God.
Continue reading “Happenings in the Quantum World: December 22, 2007”
Bacon Flowchart
The title says enough already: Bacon Flowchart.
