{"id":1700,"date":"2007-11-03T20:35:40","date_gmt":"2007-11-04T03:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2007-11-03T20:35:40","modified_gmt":"2007-11-04T03:35:40","slug":"the-quantum-pontiff-has-landed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2007\/11\/03\/the-quantum-pontiff-has-landed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quantum Pontiff Has Landed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Look, up in the air, is it a bird?  No.  Is it a plane?  No.  Is it the quantum pontiff?  Yes!  Yes!  <a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/\">The Quantum Pontiff!<\/a>  Um, okay&#8230;.but what exactly <em>is<\/em> the quantum pontiff?  Besides, of course, the juxtaposition of two words which don&#8217;t often find themselves seated together at the dinner table&#8230;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nSome quick digging turns up the following disturbing list of facts about &#8220;The Quantum Pontiff&#8221;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The quantum pontiff&#8221; is, according to Google, the second most likely thing you are looking for if you have searched for the word pontiff.  At one point it was the number one thing you were looking for when you typed &#8220;pontiff&#8221; into Google&#8217;s search engine, but that was before Google realized that its role in life was to direct searchers directly to wikipedia pages.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The quantum pontiff&#8221; is somehow also the source of  a wide variety of poorly planned <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog\/?p=88\">neologisms<\/a>.  Words like &#8220;extralussionary intelligence,&#8221; &#8220;philosonomicon,&#8221; and &#8220;circumpolitical,&#8221; occur far to often in the context of quantum pontification and are a sure sign of the degradation of civil society (and the fact that the Quantum Pontiff has a B.S. in literature.)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The quantum pontiff&#8221; also appears to be a <a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1267\">front<\/a> on the vast ethereal battlefield between physics and computer science.  These twin titans of twentieth century transfiguration have been at each others throats ever since the computer scientists noticed how good physicists were at waving their arms and still getting the correct answer and the physicists needed computer help.  Today this battle is waged all over the world, but most particularly in places where quantum computing is studied.  Which is to say Canada.  (Yes, dear public, there is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perimeterinstitute.ca\/\">brain drain<\/a> of quantum computing theorists across the Canadian border.  What with their strong currency and all, I&#8217;m sure Canadians will soon be masters of the entire quantum universe.  Your <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/RSA\">RSA keys<\/a> mean <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shor%27s_algorithm\">nothing<\/a> to our future Canadian masters.)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The quantum pontiff&#8221; is also apparently a place where you can go if <a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1261\">Wayne Dyer makes you cry<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The quantum pontiff&#8221; seems to be a blog of little note (nor long remembrance) written by a <a href=\"http:\/\/homes.cs.washington.edu\/~dabacon\/\">theoretical ski bum<\/a> who also appears to be a either a theoretical physicist, a theoretical computer scientist, or a wacky guy at a keyboard with way too much spare time on his hands.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thats right, after many years at <a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/\">dabacon.org\/pontiff<\/a>, my blog (me being a guy named Dave Bacon), the Quantum Pontiff has moved to a <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pontiff\/\">new home<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\">Scienceblogs.com<\/a>.  Why, you ask?  Why, you scream!  Why, you extol with tears in your eyes?  Okay, well maybe that&#8217;s a bit far.<br \/>\nReason numero uno: one can ask for no better locale to log rhetorical blows against such monsters of the blogosphere as <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/\">Pharnygula<\/a> (squid monster), <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/\">Uncertain Principles<\/a> (dog monster), and <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/catdynamics\/\">Dynamics of Cats<\/a> (cat monster) than a spot on the scienceblogs roster.  Plus, you know, change is good.  Without change, I&#8217;d still be, like, a baby.  (That last sentence should be said with a California surfer dude accent for those of you reading along out loud.)<br \/>\nReason numero dos: Well scienceblogs.com operates under the umbrella of Seed Media Group.  Which means that by moving my blog, I can say &#8220;I&#8217;m going to Seed.&#8221;  I had a good friend who swore if he had a daughter he would name her &#8220;Destiny&#8221; so that some lucky guy would get to say &#8220;I have a date with Destiny.&#8221;  Did I mention I find bad jokes really punny?<br \/>\nBut more seriously, what should you expect at &#8220;The Quantum Pontiff?&#8221;  Well as I wrote when I first started my blog (back before the earth cooled, when I was a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology), I have no idea what you should expect!  And that is what makes it so exciting.  So sit back, relax, take a sip of that glass of wine you almost just spilled on your new laptop, and enjoy the ride.  Quantum computers, physicists wielding axes of equations against algorithm armed theoretical computer scientists, and poker-playing-ski-bums are likely to soon dance across your screen.  I&#8217;m pretty sure of one thing.  That is that I&#8217;m going to have a good time, and I&#8217;m guaranteed at least one audience member who will find my posts interesting.  Sure that one guaranteed reader is my mom, but you&#8217;ve got to start somewhere&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Look, up in the air, is it a bird? No. Is it a plane? No. Is it the quantum pontiff? Yes! Yes! The Quantum Pontiff! Um, okay&#8230;.but what exactly is the quantum pontiff? Besides, of course, the juxtaposition of two words which don&#8217;t often find themselves seated together at the dinner table&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self-meet-center-center-meet-self"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}