Okay, I’m calling it. We have officially reached the top of the Bacon loving bubble. Why? The dress made of Bacon indicator has been tripped. This indicator has a 50 percent probability of beating the magic 8 ball in predicting the top of past Bacon bubbles. I predict a hard landing for Bacon lovers everywhere. Until they shed their few extra pounds (a lagging indicator) we are entering a dark period for Bacon.
Hat tip: Jorge.
Fido Left Behind
Over at my old blog one thread which keeps on giving is my missive about Dr. Wayne Dyer which now has over 2000 comments. I can always tell when it’s PBS pledge drive time by the bump in traffic on my old website and the increase in comments on this post. Today I got a spam comment on the post. Now usually spam comments aren’t to exciting (bad Viagra joke deleted), but this one is…well…different.
Continue reading “Fido Left Behind”
Power Tool Races
This last weekend we made it out to artopia in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. One of the cool event at artopia was the power tool races. That’s right, power tool’s or other appliances propelling themselves down a long track! Here, for instance, is my favorite, the Piña Collider:
Won the race, finishing perfectly at the end of the track, where the owner popped open the blender and poured himself a nice Piña Colida (this shot taken by Mrs. Pontiff, who is much better at aiming her iPhone than I am.)
Summer Time
Summer doesn’t officially start here in Seattle until the fourth of July, but the summer vibe is definitely here. Which means no teaching, so it’s all research all the time. But a man cannot live by his own research alone, which leads me to the vast brain dump that is the internet.
Things found…
Continue reading “Summer Time”
Quantum Twitter
Is Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Information the first quantum institute to have a twitter feed?
Update: @WaterlooIQC tells me that no they probably aren’t the first. That title probably goes to iqoqi.
Gisin Wins Inaugural Bell Award
The Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (the palindromic CQIQC) recently established the John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications. And the first winner is (opening the envelope, wondering whether he will find a dead or live cat inside)….Professor Nicolas Gisin from the Université de Genève:
Nicolas Gisin, Professor of Physics at the Université de Genève, is a true visionary and a leader among his peers. He was among the first to recognize the importance of Bell’s pioneering work, and has throughout his career made a series of remarkable contributions, both theoretical and experimental, to the foundations of quantum mechanics and to their application to practical quantum cryptography systems. His work on the latter, for instance, was highlighted in the February 2003 issue of MIT’s Technology Review as one of the “10 Emerging Technologies that will Change the World”.
We award the inaugural John Stuart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications to Prof. Gisin in recognition of two of his recent contributions – it should come as no surprise that they span theory as well as experiment.
Who Will Study the Studiers?
NSF awards $400K in stimulus funding to study the impact of stimulus funding on science.
Researchers at the University of Virginia get $199,951 to study the impact of stimulus funding on employment in science and engineering fields, while the University of Michigan receives $199,988 to develop a database of the investments in and outcomes of social science projects funded by the ARRA.
But no one is asking the real question. Who will study the impact of funding these two groups on science? Huh?
Old School HP Calcs on iPhone
Via @calbucci, classic HP calculators on the iPhone.
Very old school geeky. HP 12c, HP 12c Platinum, and HP 15c.
Microsoft Surface Physics
Not sure what it’s good for, but heck I’d love to play with one 🙂
DaVinci (Microsoft Surface Physics Illustrator) from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.
Quantum Times Spring 2009
The latest issue of the newsletter of the APS topical group on Quantum Information, the Quantum Times, is now available. Of particular note is the long article summarizing the Workshop on Quantum Information Science.