John Zogby, of the Zogby polling agency gave a talk on campus earlier tonight. I have to say, having heard him speak, that whoever came up with the word “wonk” probably had somebody like Zogby in mind– he had poll numbers for absolutely everything he talked about, and for every single question he was asked… Continue reading King of the Wonks
Counterfactual Physics Blogging
OK, let’s say you want to explain something really difficult, like counterfactual computation with quantum interrogation, but you don’t want to actually sit down and do all that typing (let’s say you have a big stack of lab reports to grade, or something). There’s a way to pull this off. What you do is, you… Continue reading Counterfactual Physics Blogging
Boskone 43
The following will be of interest only to people who were at Boskone, or who for some reason care deeply about what I did there, so I’ll put the bulk of the text below the fold.
Study in Contrasts
Thursday was “Founders Day” at Union, and there were two major speaking events on campus. The official Founders Day address was given at lunchtime by Rev. Peter J. Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School. That evening, there was a second talk, not officially associated with Founders Day, by Chuck D,… Continue reading Study in Contrasts
Top Eleven: We Have a Winner!
The votes are in, and have been carefully tabulated by our bleary-eyed accounting firm (that is, me– I would’ve posted last night, but I went to see Chuck D speak (because I’m down with the old-school rap), and he went on for more than two hours…) . What looked like a runaway victory for Michelson… Continue reading Top Eleven: We Have a Winner!
The Classical Zeno Effect
A Dramatic Presentation of a Classical Analogue to the Quantum Zeno Effect A Play in One Act: John Boy: Good night, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen: Good night John Boy. JB: Are you asleep? ME: No. JB: Are you asleep? ME: No. JB: Are you asleep? ME: No. Repeat several more times Exeunt, pursued by a… Continue reading The Classical Zeno Effect
Top Eleven: Polls Close at 5pm Eastern
This is your last chance to vote for your favorite experiment.
You Can’t Get There From Here
Buried beneath some unseemly but justified squee-ing, Scalzi links to an article about “counterfactal computation”, an experiment in which the group of Paul Kwiat group at Illinois managed to find the results of a quantum computation without running the computer at all. Really, there’s not much to say to that other than “Whoa.” The article… Continue reading You Can’t Get There From Here
The True Purpose of the Internet
Theory 1: “The Internet exists to make me look smart.” —John Scalzi A question for folks more computer-savvy than I: Whenever I cut and paste quotes from some other page into the editing window on Movable Type, quote marks and dashes get mangled into non-standard characters. They look just fine when I’m editing, but when… Continue reading The True Purpose of the Internet
Email Management
Pretty much every academic on-line has already commented on the New York Times piece on student email today. As usual, Timothy Burke says most of what I’d like to say: Much of the complaint recorded in the article also seems much ado about nothing. As Margaret Soltan observes, what’s the big deal about answering the… Continue reading Email Management