Today is graduation day for me. Wait, Dave, haven’t you already graduated before. Thrice? Yep, indeed, but today I get to participate in graduation from a totally different perspective. I get to be the commencement speaker for my high school graduation ceremony. Yep, Yreka High School class of 2007 gets to sit and listen to me pontifficate. Well hopefully they will survive! 🙂
The speech, or a rough approximation of what I said, is posted below the fold.
Continue reading “Graduation Day”
It Was Either Level 1 or Level 6
Is it bad that limbo doesn’t sound that bad to me?
The Dante’s Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell – Limbo!
First Level of Hell – Limbo Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief’s abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
Level Score Purgatory (Repenting Believers) Very Low Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) Very High Level 2 (Lustful) Moderate Level 3 (Gluttonous) Low Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) Very Low Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) Low Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics) High Level 7 (Violent) Low Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) Moderate Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous) Low Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test
Computer Science. Is it Really About Computers?
From Bruce Sterling’s Wired blog: Computer Science. Is it Really a Science, and What’s It a Science About? with a link to The Great Principles of Computing. Debating whether computer science is science is sure to illicit elicit forth great gobs of passioned points and counterpoints. This will be followed, of course, by ad hominen attacks relating to the fundamental status of a particular discipline. Finally the whole thing will terminate with everyone going home in a big tizzy.
Me, however, I’ve been spending too much time in computer science theory land so I’m not worried about whether computer science is a science. Me, I’m more worried about whether computer science is really about computers 🙂
NIC@QS07
Conference in Italy, applications due June 30th:
Dear Colleague,
we would like to remind you that the conference:
“Noise, Information and Complexity @ Quantum Scale”
http://fisica.unicam.it/nic@qs07
will be held at E. Majorana Centre (Erice, Italy)
4th- 10th November, 2007.
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS JUNE 30th, 2007.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Fabio Marchesoni,
Stefano Mancini
Physics Department
University of Camerino
Italy
Embiggened is a Perfectly Cromulent Word
An American Physics Student in England points out a very unusual word appearing in hep-th/0610212. If only I wasn’t a kwyjibo, I might understand the actual paper.
Browsers, Browsers, Everywhere
Very cool, Google Gears, which makes adding offline functionality for web applications easier. The online/desktop application line blurs. Even for lowly neophyte coders like me.
Multiday View in Scirate.com
I’ve added a new feature to Scirate.com: the ability to view the votes over differing timespans than just one day. Thus, for instance, you can now view all of the papers in the last month order by the number of votes. To get to these views, click on the view menu at the top of the page. Thus, for example, over the last 30 days the top papers are
9 cites: 0705.4077
Title: The power of quantum systems on a line
Authors: Dorit Aharonov, Daniel Gottesman, Julia Kempe
9 cites: 0705.2784
Title: Quantum algorithms for hidden nonlinear structures
Authors: Andrew M. Childs, Leonard J. Schulman, Umesh V. Vazirani
7 cites: 0705.2742
Title: A toy model for quantum mechanics
Author: S. J. van Enk
Balancing Work and Play
Some kids never grow up. Here for example is my nephew Marcus. Watching his uncle Dave, a very overgrown kid, balance a pipe on his nose:
Note the volcano in the background.
Rumors
Higgs rumor spreads to Slate.com. Me, I want to start a rumor that a Manhattan project for quantum computing has already built a large scale quantum computer (now wouldn’t that make a certain company which has built a small special purpose analog classical computer mad.)
Karma's Gonna Getcha
A while back, I wrote a post, Laugh Therapy where I described a paper, quant-ph/0610117 by M. I. Dyakonov entitled “Is Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation Really Possible?” The tone of my post was flipant and commentors (both online and offline) rightly pointed out that the proper way to resond to such a post is not with my bad jokestering, but by pointing out the technical flaws in the argument. i.e. to respond like a professional and not like a clown (which, of course, is my first reaction to nearly everything in the world.) At the time I didn’t think much about it, except that I agreed with the commentors. But I also thought, but yeah, when will this ever really be important? I mean no offense but large chunks of what I see on the arxiv everyday is, well, kind of junky (and I don’t exclude myself from this category.) So what harm is there in one more paper which I strongly disagreed with on the arxiv?
Karma, however, must have heard these musing in my head, since today I received a rejection for a grant proposal and what did I find in one of the reviews? Yep, you guessed it, a reference to quant-ph/0610117. Doh.