Back of the Envelope

This post was written on May 11, 2004. The timestamp was set to put this post at the top of this page in the archives, since this seems to be the entry point for people looking for information on Bhuwan Singh.

I've gotten a lot of hits on this page from people looking for information about Bhuwan Singh. I'm afraid I don't know any more about his death than anyone else, but you can find some information here. The only other bit of information I have is that he was found in the afternoon, and he was seen in the Ashdown dorm around 7 am. The post that brought you here is this one, which contains a list of some of the papers our lab produced, one of which we were co-authors on.

And once again, I take a break from the usual politics to talk about webcomics.

Sluggy Freelance -- Pete draws a huge, beautiful Sunday comic that is unfortunately so confusing that he spends the next several days trying to explain it. It's a rehash. With stick figures. There ought to be a law against that. At least the ghost of Secret Cranky Office Temp is doing well. Once that's out of the way, Sam makes a return visit to the farm and runs into the vampires.

Day by Day -- Chris Muir takes on John Kerry, Corrine Brown, and relaxed fit jeans.

It's Walky! -- Walky and Joyce make up, Sal makes a mistake. As Jason would say, "Crikey! Every time I think that girl's about to make some sense out of her life, she bloody well screws it up again." Sorry, I don't do the bad British dialect as well as Mr. Willis.

College Roomies from Hell! -- Marsha and April fight each other to unconsciousness, Margaret dreams of Dave, Dave dreams of Blue, and Roger tries to keep Dave's insides from becoming his outsides.

General Protection Fault -- Trent installs Wi-Fi on GPF's network and Sharon goes ballistic.

Schlock Mercenary -- Xinchub arrives with plans to clean up after his liabilities. Of course, first he has to make them liabilities, otherwise he doesn't get to have the fun of doing the clean up. But does Jeevee have a plan for yet another double-cross?

One of the fun parts about having a blog is all the tools that link blogs together. One thing that I like to do is check out all the places that are linking to me. There are lots of way to do that.

First, there's Sitemeter. They're the ones who provide the counter for this site. The counter has lots of features, but my favorite is that it lets me track visits by referrals. This lets me tell who's linking to me. I don't know how reliable it is, because sometimes I've traced it back to blogs where I couldn't find a single link to Back of the Envelope, but it's fun to check out. Most of it comes from other blogs that have me on their blogroll, usually Blogs for Bush who automatically reference me through the Blogs for Bush blogroll (see, I knew joining up would get me more hits).

Next, there's Technorati, which finds all the blogs linking to a site, even non-blog sites. Try it out on your own blog, or any random webpage. My blog has 28 blogs linking to it, mostly Blogs for Bush again.

Third, there's Blog Pulse. Blog Pulse looks for key phrases that are occuring with some frequency on blogs. I got a hit from someone looking at the phrase social security system. This post somehow managed to turn up at the top.

Fourth, there's the venerable Truth Laid Bear Blogosphere Ecosystem, where I'm still in the lowly realm of the Crawly Amphibian. I hope someday to make it up to Primate, or even--dare I dream?--Mortal Human. Unfortunately, there's no way this Blog is big enough, nor am I dedicated enough, to launch myself into the realm of Higher Beings, where Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan dwell.

Well, now that I've had fun pointing out all the ways you can find this blog on the Internet, which helps to lead plenty of people here who'd otherwise never have an interest in anything I have to write, what's my point? Well, I did want to point to a few people who've linked to me. For example, Alessandra, whose blog, Reflections in Order Not to Go Insane, is just a day older than mine, comments on my article on the Complementarity of the Sexes, both in a blog post and the comments section; it's only the fourth comment I've gotten overall. Then there's The Pryhills, which clearly has very different ideas than I about the Federal Marriage Amendment. I'm not quite sure how I ended up on its blogroll, considering.

Of course, when a big blogger links to me, it has a cascading effect. When Captain Ed found my Why Iraq? post interesting, Slings and Arrows picked up on it (Although, he may have found it independently, but it's hard for me to imagine someone just browsing my blog without a pointer. I'm modest that way.). And I still haven't managed to find everyone who linked to my post on Dave Barry's Kerry DYKWIA story that started a Cornerlanche.

Update: Added a pointer to Alessandra's comment.

Update: I forgot to mention Technorati's Breaking News, which looks for references to hot stories. I got a few hits when I picked up on Orrin Hatch's proposed amendment.

New Post: More above.

I've been writing some fiction recently. As usual, it's hard to get started, but difficult to stop myself once I get going. Today's been one of those days of off and on writing. Ten minutes here, an hour there, another thirty minutes as I try to work out a particularly tangled thought. It's probably not the best way--I'd rather have a full two hours of uninterrupted writing--but since I write for pleasure, I often have more urgent things that need to be done. Plus, I'm just easily distracted. In any case, here's a sample:

The long shadows cast by the disappearing sun cast their darkness on his as he navigated the raised stepping stones that gave pedestrians some hope of staying out of the muck which covered the pave streets. Buildings loomed several stories high on either side of him, and it was already late enough to leave some particularly narrow stretches, where the overhanging buildings nearly hid the sun at high noon, in deep shadow. Aulus wished that Artura has the same system of street lamps as Novaro, but a few private homes had lamps, and those were only lit in anticipation of the return of the patrician master or mistress. No one wanted to waste lamplight on those wretched strangers still out as evening set in.

Aulus had to move quickly to the side as one of those wealthy patricians came by. Slaves carrying torches took the lead, followed by a tight knot of burly slaves with clubs around a litter, heavy velvet curtains blocking out the sights and sounds of the street. Not the smells, I bet, Aulus thought. Just then the overpowering perfume which served that purpose swept over him, its sick sweetness causing him to break out in a loud coughing fit. One of the thugs who guarded the litter glared at him, taking a step in his direction. Fortunately, the litter was moving too fast to give him a chance to indulge in a little violence, and he had to hurry after it as the rear torchbearers caught up to him and Aulus. He barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief when he heard the screaming.

It's rough, of course, and will go through three or four revisions before it's ready for public consumption, assuming it ever is. It's a continuation of Fire, on my website, which I suppose is as ready for public consumption as it will ever be. It can be found here. And frankly, I consider it highly unlikely that I will ever tire of pushing my fiction on my blog. You better get used to it.

Old Post: It looks like I was onto something.

The opposition to gay marriage among Black churches is growing. As I suggested earlier, this works strongly to President Bush's advantage. More to the point, it's strongly to the advantage of the Federal Marriage Amendment. If Bush and the Republicans are crafty enough to go with Orrin Hatch's proposal, it can happen and happen quickly. As I said before, I'd like to make the Amendment a little stronger, to make it clear that no court can cram it down the throats of an unwilling populace, but I think he's on the right track. The political aftermath could be a catastrophic break between Black voters and the Democratic party, which could very well change the shape of American politics for the next few decades.

Old Post: I first discussed quantum computation in this blog here.

I'd like to take a moment to expand on the subject of quantum computation, and that means starting with the term "qubit." A qubit is a quantum bit, and it refers to any quantum system that has two states which can serve as zero and one. Examples include spin states of nuclei in a molecule, an electron's orbital states in an atom, photon polarization, or, in a system such as superconductors which exhibit macroscopic quantum coherence, current circulating in a loop. If it's quantum, it's been proposed as a qubit.

Not every quantum system makes a good qubit, however. The criteria necessary for a quantum system which can be used in a quantum computer were formalized by DiVincenzo. The requirements are the following:

First the two states, called the |0> and |1> states, must be measurable. It must be possible to tell the difference between them. This may seem trivial, but quite a few quantum states are difficult to differentiate.

Second, the states must be controllable. This means that one can first place the system in the |0> state accurately. Then, one must be able to rotate the qubit in order to achieve every possible state. The possible states are not just |0> and |1>. If a and b are complex numbers, such that |a|^2+|b|^2=1, a|0>+b|1> describes all the possible states of the qubit. Thus it is possible for the qubit to be in state |0> and |1> at the same time (called a superposition), as long as the proportions add up to 1. Since a and b are complex, it's not simply a matter of achieving the right proportions, but also the correct phase--the correct complex values.

Third, the qubit must be addressable. One needs to be able to decide which qubit to control and measure. If there's a solution filled with millions of identical molecules, and there's a way to rotate the oxygen atom nucleus in all the molecules at the same time, that's still only have one useful qubit (more precisely, it's an ensemble of that qubit). Now if it's possible to address the two carbon atom nuclei and the oxygen atom nucleus on each molecule separately, that's three qubits, and an ensemble of those three qubits. This is what is done in nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computing.

Fourth, one needs to be able to couple qubits together so that they affect one another. Thus one qubit will rotate only if another qubit is in a certain state. This is how one makes quantum gates.

Finally, one needs to be able to isolate the qubits from the environment. The environment, which means everything other than the qubits themselves, causes the qubits to decohere. Information is lost as the qubits dephase, drift from the intended phase, and relax, fall to the lowest energy states. If one waits long enough, qubits in just about any system eventually fall to |0>. Only if they remain in the desired states long enough to perform a useful calculation can you make a quantum computer.

And that's the second episode of quantum computation for the layman. Tune in next time as I tell you how you can build your very own quantum computer (with a $1 million grant and a Ph.D., of course).

Lileks has some comments on the "exploitive" ad:

Another suggested ad: “Some say that we shouldn’t haven’t invaded Iraq. Even after the discovery of mass graves. Even after the realization that the UN’s Food-for-Oil program diverted billions to Saddam’s pockets. Even after seeing how the terrorists have poured into Iraq to make a last desperate stand against freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Some say we should have listened to our allies.” A stock shot of Marcel Marceau in full-mime makeup, pretending to be trapped in a box. “Some people are a little too worried about what the waiter will think the next time they take a trip to Paris.” Shot of a Kerry lookalike in a bistro, saying “No, really, I’m Canadian.”

Reality check. That’s a cruel mean harsh nasty ad.

As they say, RTWT (read the whole thing).

Plenty of people have already noticed that Kerry seems unable to speak in a straightforward manner. From the looks of things, the problem's even deeper than that. Debra Saunders reports from an interview with Kerry:

Kerry's answer was that Washington insiders believed that Bush didn't mean what he said. "I think that you had a hard-line group (then Pentagon adviser) Richard Perle, (Deputy Defense Secretary) Paul Wolfowitz and probably (Vice President Dick) Cheney. But when Brent Scowcroft and Jim Baker (former advisers to the first President Bush) weighed in, very publicly in op-eds in The New York Times and the (Washington) Post, the chatter around Washington and (Secretary of State Colin) Powell in particular, who was very much of a different school of thought, was really that the president hadn't made up his mind. He was looking for an out. That's what a lot of people thought."

What about what Bush said to the United Nations? That was "rhetorical," Kerry answered. And "a whole bunch of very smart legitimate people" not running for president thought as he did. "So most people, actually on the inside, really felt that (Bush) himself was looking for the way out to sort of satisfy Cheney, satisfy Wolfowitz, but not get stuck," Kerry continued. "The fact that he jumped and went the other way, I think, shocked them and shocked us."

So not only is Kerry incapable of straight talk himself, he can't recognize it when it asks for his support for a war.

Say what you will about Bush, he says what he means and he means what he says. Lots of people hate him for that. One wonders if the reason is that he exposes their own fraudulence.

There have been some complaints about the use of 9/11 in President Bush's ad campaign. Having watched the ads in question, all I can say is "Huh?" Yes, 9/11 will be mentioned in Bush's ad campaign. It was the defining event of his presidency. You'd have to go through incredible contortions to sell his record--heck, to even talk about his record--without mentioning 9/11. The two ads I saw were hardly exploitive, and the image from 9/11 was a sad but hopeful picture of damaged buildings behind the American flag. Now, if you wanted incendiary, you could show the famous image of the plane ramming into the building, or pictures of those who chose to die by jumping rather than being burned alive. That might have disturbed me. The image shown was the least offensive image from 9/11 that you could find and still have something recognizable to show while mentioning it.

Update: Clarified what I meant about incendiary images.

Old Post: My last post on this matter is here

Orrin Hatch takes my advice. Well, not quite, but here is what he is proposing for the Federal Marriage Amendment(from National Review):

Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman.

It's very close to what I suggested, although I would go slightly farther, and add after Constitution "nor any state constitution, nor federal nor state law." This, of course, requires an additional phrase at the end which says "unless explicitly stated otherwise." Hey folks, it might happen.

Update: For once, my Old Post, New Post scheme made my post less clear. For that reason, I repeated the Title at the beginning of the post.

New post: More here.

I've been wanting to comment on this, but every day I get further behind on the required reading, so it's becoming hard. Let me put in a couple of less-than-well-thought-out words:

First, Glenn Reynolds may think he's mainstream, but he's not. His libertarian outlook gives him a strongly progressive view on science, more progressive than that of most scientists I know. Definitely more progressive than most of the general populace. Therefore, I have a hard time taking his worries about council stacking seriously, since I think balanced in his view is a far cry from balanced in most other views.

And that's really the question here. A balanced council is useful, but balanced in what sense? Balanced where? The council is meant to advise the President, and as such, it needs to share certain core assumptions with him. Anyone too far removed from the president's worldview would have difficulty giving him coherent advice. He wouldn't be starting at the same place.

Second, I am personally against embryo stem cell research. I think there is a danger here that embryonic human life will become a commodity, and that is a dangerous attitude. Moreover, there's reason to believe that adult stem cell research holds more promise, and I'm all in favor of that.

Third, many have taken great offense that Leon Kass has stated that greatly extending human life expectancy would decrease quality-of-life. Put aside the fact that immortality has long been a dream of humans everywhere, does anyone deny that this is true? We are already facing a runaway Social Security system because life expectancy has increased by ten years since its founding. What if it extended by another ten, or a hundred? While we work hard to prevent premature death, no one lives forever. The death rate is still 100%. I'm troubled that some people never question whether increasing human life expectancy is a good thing, that they insist that there is, in fact, a moral imperative to do so. Would we really be better off if we lived forever? Sure, I'd like to live an extra hundred years, but if I were given the opportunity, I wouldn't jump at it without considering the cost.

Jonah Goldberg rightly criticizes those Democrats now arguing against a Federal Marriage Amendment on the basis that the Constitution is a sacred document that should not be amended. First, no one, least of all the Founders, thought the Constitution so perfect that it shouldn't be changed. That's why they included the amendment process in the first place, and then proceeded to add ten amendments(commonly called the Bill of Rights) immediately after it was accepted. Second, the Constitution, as originally written, definitely gets some stuff wrong, particularly slavery and voting rights. Now I'll grant that what these Democrats really mean is not that it shouldn't be amended, but that it shouldn't be amended lightly. I agree, and I'm quite reluctant to amend the Constitution for something like defining marriage. However, these same Democrats are all for judicial activism which treats the Constitution as a "living document" that can be interpreted by unelected judges to the point of incoherence. This is hypocritical and unconstitutional. To the extent that the Constitution can be changed, or even re-interpreted, by anyone by any reason, that's what the amendment process is there for. It is no harder to remove an amendment than to add it: both are hard, but both are determined by legislators who face re-election every 2-6 years. A change in public opinion can, within the course of a decade, remove an amendment. Removing a judicial interpretation is much harder than making it. Making a US Supreme Court judicial interpretation takes an agreement of five justices, while removing a judicial interpretation takes an agreement of five justices. It's much easier to make than an amendment, and theoretically easier to remove. Justices, however, don't go up for re-election. They serve for life, or retirement. A complete turnover of the court takes decades, and even then there's no guarantee that the new justices will be in line with popular will. They're selected by one man, the President, then approved by the Senate (which, until recently, pretty much rubber stamped the President's selections unless there were real ethical problems). That's one degree removed from popular choice, and since one president rarely appoints more than a couple of justices, the court tends to be mixed.

I can respect those who are against judicial activism and an amendment. I can even respect those against judicial activism while for an amendment. I have a problem with those who'd cede our national will to a few unelected judges, then argue against the Constitutional and democratic way to express that national will.

Some of those defending marriage as the union of one man and one woman argue from the basis of child-rearing. The two parent, male and female, model for a family is most able to raise well-adjusted children. This is true, but it fails to go as deep as it should. Why should children have a mother and father? What's so special about this combination? Well, they should have a male and female role-model. And why is that? What it all boils down to is the widely recognized truth that men and women are different. Many liberals would have us believe that the only difference between men and women is social, cultural, and some minor physical differences. Psychological studies show that there's more than that; that, in fact, men and women do think differently. They see the world in different ways. They interact with it differently, solve problems differently.

In fact, when God married Adam and Eve in Genesis 2, it wasn't solely so they could have children. Marriage makes two people one, not just in some metaphysical sense, but as a social unit which has a more complete understanding of the world than either one has alone, and who face it as a united front. A couple of two men or two women is incomplete. A single person, such as myself, is incomplete. There's not much that can be done socially or legally to change this reality.

Captain Ed takes Kerry to task:

For example, he's [Kerry] continually carped over and over that Bush "lied" to him when Kerry voted for military action in Iraq, and derided Bush's attempts to get UN support for an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein (which he spent five months negotiating before finally giving up on France and Russia). However, as soon as Haiti popped up, Kerry derides Bush for taking five days to get a UN resolution creating the multinational force that Kerry insisted Bush should have waited for in Iraq!

Kerry (D-Mass.) said he would have sent troops to Haiti even without international support to quell the revolt against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "President Kerry would never have allowed that to get where it is," Kerry said, though he added he's not "a big Aristide fan." (via Tim Blair)

This is part of a pattern of equivocations by a completely reactive Kerry, who keeps playing both sides of every argument.

You know, I'm not too sure I agree with the Captain here. I think Kerry is being consistent, at least in the sense that he's always for supporting the despot.

Sorry, folks, I just haven't had much of a chance to post much today. I've wanted to address Glenn Reynolds' pro-cloning position (which is hardly surprising), and Joe Carter's response to it, but that'll have to wait until I have enough free time to read the relevant articles (as opposed to just the blog posts). Try me again tomorrow.

Carnival of the Bush Bloggers is up at Blogs for Bush. I didn't have an entry this time, but I'll probably submit something for next week.

I didn't watch the Academy Awards (Watch three and a half hours of Hollywood people telling each other how wonderful they are for three and a half minutes worth of information? I don't think so.), but I did read Captain Ed's live blogging of them. It looks like The Return of the King won not just Best Picture, but every other category for which it was nominated. I'm happy.

The Graduate Christian Fellowship at MIT, in which I participated during my graduate career, has a feature on its web page called Skeptics Anonymous. It's a web from that allows people to ask questions of our fellowship, which we try to answer and then post on our webpage or e-mail directly to the questioner. Unfortunately, it hasn't been in great repair since I left, so I can't guarantee you'll get a timely response if you use it.

The quality of the questions varies. Sometimes they are actually quite personal, and sometimes they are serious theological questions, often deeper than the questioner realized. Our first questioner was a Muslim who was more interested in converting us than reading the answers to his questions, which you could tell when he started repeating questions without commenting on the previous answers. Our most recent question (I'm still on the e-mail list) illustrates another major trend of the questions:

THE PREFERED DEATH FOR ACCUSED PERSONS HAS BEEN HANGING THRU HISTORY- IS EASIER AND SHOCKING, CRUCIFIXION IS TOO COMPLICATED AND EXPENSIVE, SO MOST PROBABLY IF JESUS EXISTED HE WAS HANGED THER IS A PLACE IN THE NEW TESTM. THAT SAYS SO PLESAE SOMEBODY ELABORATE.

This question's just silly. Of course Jesus was crucified. It was a common form of execution in the Roman empire. Were there easier ways? Sure, but the Romans used crucifixion precisely because it was so drawn out and painful. To directly answer his question, the gospels go into quite a bit of detail about the crucifixion, and there's no doubt that this is the sort of death Jesus endured. Mark 15:24 uses the Greek word for crucifixion for what was done to him. If this person had given an e-mail address, it would be possible to reply to him directly. Since he didn't, we'd have to put the answer on the web page, which is supposed to act as a resource for people with serious questions, while this one... Well, I'm not responsible for Skeptics Anonymous anymore, so I can just ignore it. Which doesn't necessarily mean that I will.

Update: Somehow this got posted multiple times. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but it's fixed now.

Update: I edited the post to make it read better. Nothing substantive.

I've updated my personal homepage, fixing broken links and the counter, adding some hopefully non-broken links, as well as some pictures and a short story, "A Stranger in the Library." The story had previously been on the webpage, at that time called "Trial and Error," until I took it down, revised it, submitted it to some print mags for publication, received some rejection notices, and then returned it to the webpage. I think the time I spent trying to get it published has improved it.

Well, I haven't said anything about quantum computation yet. Honest, if I had noticed anything in the news, I'd comment on it. Right now, there's plenty of buzz in the physics world, but there's just not much that would be very interesting to a layman. Here, in any case, is a quick explanation of what quantum computation is, so that my blog isn't completely devoid of anything about it:

In classical computers, information is stored in the form of bits which hold a value of either 1 or 0. Quantum computers have qubits which can be both 1 and 0 at the same time, in differing proportions: half 1 and half 0, or two-thirds 1 and one-third 0, etc. A classical computer can store any number between 0 and 255 in a single byte, which consists of 8 bits. A quantum computer can store all the numbers between 0 and 255 at the same time on a byte of 8 qubits. Whereas a classical computer performs a calculation on its byte and produces a single answer for the single number on that byte, a quantum computer can perform one calculation and get all the answers for all the numbers on the byte at the same time. This gives you massive parallelism. Of course, it's not as easy as that--getting information out of a quantum computer is a lot harder than putting it in. Thus it's only really good at answering questions that have sharply "peaked" answers, meaning questions where you put in a lot of inputs while lookng for only one answer, such as an unordered search.

(Adapted from The Donald S. Crankshaw Newsletter, Vol. 24, Iss. 1.)

Meanwhile, I have a couple of publications on my specific work, which is on a superconducting qubit, called the persistent current qubit. If you're interested, you can find preprints of the papers online:

Impact of time-ordered measurements of the two states in a niobium superconducting qubit structure
K. Segall, D. Crankshaw, D. Nakada, T.P. Orlando, L.S. Levitov, S. Lloyd, N. Markovic, S.O. Valenzuela, M. Tinkham, K.K. Berggren
Published in Physical Review B, 67, 220506, 2003.

DC measurements of macroscopic quantum levels in a superconducting qubit structure with a time-ordered meter
D.S. Crankshaw, K. Segall, D. Nakada, T.P. Orlando, L.S. Levitov, S. Lloyd, S.O. Valenzuela, N. Markovic, M. Tinkham, K.K. Berggren
Accepted for publication in Physical Review B

Energy Relaxation Time between Macroscopic Quantum Levels in a Superconducting Persistent Current Qubit
Yang Yu, D. Nakada, Janice C. Lee, Bhuwan Singh, D. S. Crankshaw, T. P. Orlando, William D. Oliver, Karl K. Berggren
Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

These articles describe a series of experiments done on a persistent current qubit fabricated in niobium (which goes superconducting at 9 K), demonstrating a high Q and, by all indications, a long coherence time. Ask me sometime and I'll explain what that means, but for now, just trust me that these are good things.

Update: Now that Doc Rampage has linked to me, I figured that I needed to clean up the post a bit for clarity.

New Post: So what is a qubit, anyway? I go into more detail here.

This is my weekly review of the major posts and threads for the week.

Day by Day on Barry on Kerry -- Chris Muir picks up on Dave Barry's Kerry DYKWIA story with a cool comic

George W. Bush and the African-American Vote -- The reasons why I think the African-American vote may be in play this year, and some actions to make it happen.

Syria Conspiracy Theory Redux -- Evidence for and against my Syria conspiracy theory.

Federal Marriage Amendment -- The first of many, many posts on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Just keep clicking the link under New Post to read more.

But is he one of us? -- My thoughts on bloggers and their love/hate relationship with George W. Bush.

Pakistan's Nuke Codes -- My thoughts on what is now a pretty old news item.