Kent: Mike, can you factor 25?
Mike: No. I'm not a quantum computer.
Vampires seem to be everywhere in the media. Not even New Scientist is safe.
The Twilight Zone: where consciousness goes while you are under the knife.
Kelly Oakes' winning physics essay in this years Science Challenge:
The standard model describes the behaviour and interactions of all of the most fundamental particles we have seen — and one other particularly elusive one that, physicists hope, we will see in the near future. The model was developed throughout the 20th century and finalised when the existence of quarks, the particles that make up protons and neutrons, was confirmed in the 1970s. At the time many of the particles predicted by the standard model were yet to be seen. Over the years since then, physicists have ticked these particles off, one by one, like items on a shopping list. Now they are left with just one remaining unfound particle — the Higgs boson.
You Need a Budget is an excellent piece of budgeting software that I highly recommend. Today they are having a one day sale. Get it while its hot.
A few years back I watched Sergio Leone's masterpiece The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I have been meaning to watch the rest of the Dollar trilogy, so last night I rented A Fistful of Dollars from the iTunes movie store. Twenty minutes in iTunes crashed and took my movie rental with it. iTunes only has email support, so I have to wait at least 24 hours before the Apple pixies can restore my download. The poor iTunes support is jarring considering Apple's support is usually excellent. It is only fitting as iTunes has become the one application I now dread opening.
Twenty minutes into the movie and I was shocked at how closely it followed Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece Yojimbo. The plot is identical; even the individual shot are framed in the same way. A quick trip to Wikipedia confirmed that Leone indeed ripped off remade Yojimbo.
I am looking forward to finishing A Fistful of Dollars when Apple lets me. I already know how it ends, but it is a story worth sitting through again. And Ennio Morricone's iconic score is alone worth the price of admission.
UPDATE: Apple has refunded my rental. I am going to try to download the movie again.
A little poster I made about Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). When steam turns to water or water turns to ice it is known as a phase-transition. If you were to keep cooling ice it will undergo a number of other transitions into new states of matter.
But how cold can you go?
Using some special techniques, it is possible to cool a cloud of dilute atoms down to a a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero. When these temperatures are reached, the atoms all suddenly enter their lowest energy state (known as the ground state). When this happens, the atoms begin to act collectively. It is even possible to create a laser made out of atoms in a BEC.
In 2001 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle for their work creating the first BECs. I recently came across the Nobel lecture given by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman; a fascinating read about the history behind the making of the first BEC.
(Image Credit: NIST)
Octopi are fascinating creatures.
But new evidence suggests a breathtaking possibility. Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and University of Washington researchers found that the skin of the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, a color-changing cousin of octopuses, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the light-sensing retina of the eye. In other words, cephalopods—octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid—may be able to see with their skin.
(via Justin Blanton)
Great reporting by Naomi Wolf on the motivations of the occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters and the resulting violent crackdown:
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.
No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
[...] Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.
The XKCD comic from this past week really put things in perspective for me. The disparity in the US between the wealthy and poor is staggering; this kind of inequality is what leads to class warfare.
This video from Open University covers Zeno's paradox, the grandfather paradox, the Chinese room, Hilbert's infinite hotel, the twin paradox, and Schrödinger's cat.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zVaFjSxAZs
A great line from the twin paradox segment:
Time might fly when you are having fun, but when clocks fly they run more slowly in relativity.
This summer I was asked to give a lecture at the Quantum Cryptography School for Young Students. Some of the brightest high school students from around the world gathered at the Institute for Quantum Computing (where I work) to learn about what we do. I spoke about Bell's Inequalities, one of the fundamental ideas that is the foundation for much of what we do in my field.
The lecture is aimed at a more advanced enthusiasts. I was impressed by how well the students were able to keep up. Bell's inequalities is not easy to explain and the subtleties are even lost on many physicists. I have been searching for a way to convey the critical results of Bell's inequalities to a ten year old, but have so far failed. If anyone knows of a clever explanation, let me know. (I don't think the standard explanations using the colour of ones socks or baking cakes are clear for a general audience.)
This is one of my favourite TED talks. John Bohannon completely blew my mind. In the space of eleven minutes using dancers he talks about laser cooling, super fluids, slow light, and cellular biology. This talk, especially the first half, is a synthesis of all the things I have come to believe about science communication. Incredible choreography and timing.
John also runs the popular Dance your PH.d contest I entered a couple years back. My favourite line from the talk:
I think that bad Powerpoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy.
My only criticism is that during the second half, when he is making his point about Powerpoint and arts funding, the dancers were distracting. The attention should have been solely on John and what he was saying, not the lazy boy the dancers formed. I think it would have been more powerful to have the dancers leave the stage and then rush back in for the finale. The absence of the dancers would have fit nicely with his point about what would happen if arts funding is cut. Still, this is a very minor quibble. I loved this talk and will be watching it over and over again.
(via Madhur Anand)
I recently came across a character study of John D. Rockefeller written more than a century ago by Ida Tarbell. At the time Rockefeller had amassed one of the largest personal fortunes in history by turning the Standard Oil company into a feared monopoly that patiently destroyed its competitors. Reading this piece I was struck by one of Rockefeller's early habits that led to his success–when he took his first job, as a clerk in a warehouse, he maintained a ledger book that tracked all of his expenses.
This document is his first account book, "Ledger A" he calls it. It is not too much to say that this book has been more conspicuous than the Bible itself in the religious instruction which John D. Rockefeller has given for years to Baptist Sunday-schools. This is not strange, for in Mr. Rockefeller's own judgment its brief entries explain his success...
And so "Ledger A" goes on with a painstaking record of every cent received and expended for a period of several years. Every cent earned could be accounted for, not a loose thread in his weaving, and one cannot help but feel that each particular penny was spent only after deliberation, and perhaps prayer.
Rockefeller knew at every moment where he stood financially. Every dollar was accounted for and given a job. He made sure that his money was always working for him to generate more money. This put Rockefeller in a position to take advantage of the business opportunities that eventually came his way.
A modern day Rockefeller ledger
Over the years I have developed poor financial habits. Being a student I have been used to living week-to-week without ever having a clear overview of my finances. Fortunately I never got into serious debt, but I have not been building my savings either. It has become clear that I need to take control of my finances and start budgeting.
I considered a number of different options. One of the simplest is the envelope budget: put your money in a number of different envelopes each labeled with a particular budget category, like groceries, rent, utilities, and so on, and then only spend the money in that envelope. I know people who replicate the budget envelope system using a spread sheet. For a while I considered using a spread sheet, but this was too cumbersome for me. I would get lazy and stop using it.
What I want is a program that is easy to keep up to date and has accountability built in. I looked at Mint.com, Quicken for Mac, MoneyWell, and iBank.
Mint makes it easy to keep track of your transactions; because Mint scrapes your account1, it automates most of the entry tasks. There is very little in the way of budget options or accountability though. Mint lets you know what you are spending your money on, but this does not lead to a change in habits alone. I have tried similar systems in the past, but have failed. Knowing that my account data is being automatically downloaded and categorized provides a sense of accomplishment, but it does not stop me from overspending. There is no planning built in.
Quicken for Mac is a disaster, and iBank works like a more sophisticated version of Mint. MoneyWell provides some budgeting options, but again there is very little in the way of accountability. What I wanted was a modern day version of Rockefeller's ledger: something that would allow me to easily enter my expenses, track my spending, and stick to a budget. A software program that would help me get my money working for me.
You Need a Budget (YNAB) is the closest thing in spirit and execution to Rockefeller's ledger that I have found. The program operates around four principles:
- Give every dollar a job.
- Save for a rainy day.
- Roll with the punches.
- stop living paycheck to paycheck.
The most important principle I have found is to give every dollar a job. When money comes in you manually assign it to a task. For example, our food budget is $400 per month. $400 of my salary each month is tasked with feeding my wife and I. This is simple, but it brings in accountability. At the beginning of each month you know exactly where each dollar will be spent.
There is flexibility in the system too. If you overspend in one category you must take it from some place else. This could be another category with extra money left over or from your savings. YNAB allows you to download your account files from your online banking site, but I don't recommend doing this. The system works best when you manually enter in your transactions at the end of each day. It takes a couple of minutes longer, but keeps you accountable by forcing you to reconcile and review your budget.
YNAB does have a steep learning curve, but also excellent online support. There are numerous videos that walk you through the program step-by-step. They also offer teleseminars and have an active forum. I strongly recommend following the tutorials when setting the program up; if you try to wing it you will most likely end up frustrated. I made this mistake when starting. The first thing I did was to import several months worth of transactions into the program and then categorize them. YNAB prefers that you start with a clean slate. You import your starting balances (any debt is categorized as "pre YNAB debt") and then assign the money you have available to your various budget categories.
My wife and I use Dropbox to sync our budget file between our computers. This makes it easy for us to update and keep our budget current. To keep the budget file from becoming corrupted we have to make sure that only one of us is working on the file at a time. I wish YNAB would build in better Dropbox support to automatically resolve conflicts, and also support other services like iCloud.
YNAB also offers an iPhone companion app that syncs with the program over a local wifi connection. Syncing is fast, but it would be nice if the app was able to automatically sync using Dropbox or iCloud so that the program is always up to date. I also wish that the software was available through the Mac app store, but the licensing terms are quite generous (only one license is needed per family).
YNAB does not allow you to track and manage your stock and investment portfolio or provide options to prepare your tax returns. it also does not provide traditional double entry account management either. YNAB is designed entirely around budgeting, and it does this exceptionally well. If you are not interested in or have no need for budgeting, you are better served by another program like iBank
My wife and i have been using YNAB for two months now and the results have been amazing. Our expenses have dropped dramatically–YNAB saved us over $350 in the first month alone, paying for itself several times over. Two months in and we have paid off the rest of our residual debts and now have some savings. For the first time in my life I feel in control of my finances. The principles are simple, but YNAB provides the structure and support to help put them into practice.
YNAB is one of the few pieces of software that I can say has changed my life. Now the discipline and effectiveness that led to Rockefeller's early success is available to anyone.
Software: You Need a Budget
Price: $60
Available for Mac and PC.
Strongly recommended
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In Canada there is a chance that using Mint.com will lead to a bank denying you fraud protection (via Money Sense). ↩
UPDATE: @mexicanuck asked @RBC if this is true. @RBC confirmed it with this tweet.
Another great example of using typography to powerfully convey an idea.
(via Design Your Way)
If anyone is wondering what to buy me for Christmas, this shirt in either navy, black, or forest green (size=L) is a good place to start.
Quantum Mechanic: Tweaking your reality one atom at a time.
I would also accept a shirt with the Schrödinger cat dead and alive design as well.
This has been going around Facebook. A great use of negative space to convey a deep concept in physics. Kudos to the artist who designed this (I have not been able to track down the original yet).
Markus Reugels is a talented photographer who captures incredible photos of liquid splashing. These kinds of high speed captures are typically accomplished using a flash that illuminates the scene for only a fraction of second, freezing the subject. Markus uses multiple water drops and precise timing to sculpt and capture shapes that exist for less than a ten-thousandth of a second.
Here are some of my favourite photos of his (from Flickr):
Randall Munroe has put together this incredible visualization of money and what things cost. Starting with the cost of a Starbucks coffee ($2) it works its way through the economic system until the entire economic production of humanity ($2,396,950,000,000,000) is accounted for. From Randall:
Six things I learned researching this chart:
- The world's most expensive thing by weight is probably the Treskilling Yellow postage stamp.
- The US's 400 richest people have a greater combined net worth than the poorest 50% of the country.
- The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System is arguably the most expensive public works project in the history of mankind.
- We spend roughly the same amount on cancer treatment as we do on cigarettes. I'm not sure what lesson to take from that.
- Given their annual marketing budget, Coca-Cola could afford to literally buy the world a Coke. However, singing lessons for every person on Earth would be prohibitively expensive.
This chart puts our entire financial system into perspective.
The photos are online from TEDxUW 2011. A big thanks to all the photographers at the event.