Quantifying the Roe Effect

Old Post: I originally talked about the Roe effect below.

It took me all day to do this, which explains why this is the only post today. I've been wondering about whether it's possible to quantify the Roe effect. According to Pia de Solenni's column in National Review:

Approximately 40 percent of American women under 45 have had at least one abortion. Twenty-five percent of all pregnancies end in abortion. Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, over 40 million abortions have taken place.

What I basically did was calculate what the 2000 population of each state would be if those 40 million had been born, then derive the electoral college representation for the revised population. Since I didn't have access to the complete statistics for abortions performed in each state, I used this source for the abortion rate per 1000 women aged 15-19. I took this rate to be representative, so that this rate times the total population of the state is proportional to the total number of abortions in the state over the last 30 years. (For state populations, I used the 1990 US census. Since the abortion rates were for the years 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, I used the rates from the year 1988 for simplicity.) This gives me a set of numbers proportional to the number of abortions per state, which I normalize to 40 million. I then reapportioned the House seats for each state given the new population. Any statistician can point out the multitude of problems in this analysis: taking one year to be representative for an entire three decades (which ignores changes in demographics and abortion laws), assuming the rate for teenage girls is representative of the rate for all women, not accounting for population migration, etc. A lot of these would be solved if someone could point me to a simple listing of the number of abortions received by the residents of each state since Roe v. Wade. In any case, with my limited information, I've calculated what the electoral vote would have been in the 2000 election using the Electoral college as apportioned by the 2000 census (NOTE: The 2000 election used the apportionment of the 1990 census, so this result differs from the electoral votes the candidates actually won.), and what it would have been if the 40 million citizens had been born. This is assuming that each candidate won the same states (unlikely, considering the millions of extra voters) and received all the electoral votes from those states (not all states are winner-take-all). You'll note that if the election had taken place under the 2000 Census, Bush would have won 278 to 260. Whereas with the revised population, it would only be 270 to 268. In the table below, those states that voted for Bush are in red, and those that voted for Gore are in blue.

State	Population (thousands)	Electoral Votes	Revised Population (thousands)	Revised Electoral Votes
Alabama	4447	9	4916	9
Alaska	627	3	703	3
Arizona	5131	10	5662	10
Arkansas	2673	6	2903	6
California	33872	55	42067	59
Colorado	4301	9	4767	8
Connecticut	3406	7	4096	8
DC	572	3	814	3
Delaware	784	3	902	3
Florida	15982	27	18420	27
Georgia	8186	15	9055	14
Hawaii	1212	4	1485	4
Idaho	1294	4	1356	4
Illinois	12419	21	14200	21
Indiana	6080	11	6583	11
Iowa	2926	7	3198	6
Kansas	2688	6	2931	6
Kentucky	4042	8	4336	8
Louisiana	4469	9	4821	9
Maine	1275	4	1408	4
Maryland	5296	10	6353	11
Massachusetts	6349	12	7504	12
Michigan	9938	17	11589	18
Minnesota	4919	10	5379	9
Mississippi	2845	6	2994	6
Missouri	5595	11	6151	10
Montana	902	3	972	3
Nebraska	1711	5	1866	4
Nevada	1998	5	2255	5
New Hampshire	1236	4	1409	4
New Jersey	8414	15	10095	16
New Mexico	1819	5	2011	5
New York	18976	31	22953	33
North Carolina	8049	15	9130	14
North Dakota	642	3	684	3
Ohio	11353	20	12572	19
Oklahoma	3451	7	3758	7
Oregon	3421	7	3864	7
Pennsylvania	12281	21	13745	21
Rhode Island	1048	4	1179	4
South Carolina	4012	8	4429	8
South Dakota	755	3	793	3
Tennessee	5689	11	6237	10
Texas	20852	34	22760	33
Utah	2233	5	2327	5
Vermont	609	3	684	3
Virginia	7079	13	8110	13
Washington	5894	11	6723	11
West Virginia	1808	5	1919	5
Wisconsin	5364	10	5825	10
Wyoming	494	3	532	3

Candidate	Current Elect. College Total	Revised Elect. College Total
Bush	278	270
Gore	260	268

Update: Talk about irony. I posted this on what La Shawn Barber notes is the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers.

Update: It figures. I get a link from Best of the Web and it's on a post where I messed up the Old Post, New Post scheme. It's fixed now.

Update: One of my commenters says that unless I can show that women who've had abortions have less children overall (in other words, that they don't make up for the aborted children with children later in life), then my statistics don't hold. He has a point, but it would be hard to separate that from other correlations. I think the analysis is valid as long as the abortion is treated as a form of contraceptive. The Alan Guttmacher Institute argues that most women have more children than they want, and abortion is a necessary means for keeping that from happening. Doc Rampage argues that abortion is a symptom, not a cause, of lower family size with some groups. I'd be interested in seeing more data on this, if anyone wants to point me in the right direction.

It seems like everyone has a blog these days

It looks like even sentient slime molds have beat me to blogging.

The Roe Effect

James Taranto at Best of the Web on Opinion Journal has been talking about the Roe effect for a while now:

Our theory is that abortion is making America more conservative than it otherwise would be.

We base this on two assumptions. First, that liberal and Democratic women are more likely to have abortions. Second, that children's political views tend to reflect those of their parents--not exactly, of course, and not in every case, but on average. Thus abortion depletes the next generation of liberals and eventually makes the population more conservative. We call this the Roe effect, after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court's 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

It's not the sort of thing that should make conservatives happy. If conservatives are gaining in relative numbers, we should find it appalling that it's happening because of state-sanctioned murder, no matter that we've done our best to fight it every step of the way. While Mr. Taranto initially presented this as a theory sans facts, he's begun to gather facts and figures which back him up, as his most recent column shows. Personally, I found this hard to believe initially, especially since the impression I have is that most women who have abortions are teenage girls. This skews things significantly, since many of them are scared and seeking a quick solution rather than sticking with their values. Many are pressured into it by boyfriends and parents. Those who do carry the pregnancy to term often give the baby up for adoption, and the political beliefs of the adoptive parents aren't correlated to those of the birth mother. Again, these are impressions rather than hard numbers. However, Mr. Taranto's column does show a correlation between liberal beliefs and abortion rates for girls aged 15-19 on the state level. This is something I can more easily believe, since we're now talking a correlation between the society's attitude toward abortion and the rate at which pregnant teenagers attain abortions. A frightened teenager is more likely to act against her personal beliefs and get an abortion if the community in which she lives is accepting of the practice. I think Mr. Taranto's conclusion that the red states are growing in population more rapidly than the blue states may very well be the case. As a reader points out in a newer James Taranto column,

The main impact in liberal states is the invisible impact on representation, because they are growing more slowly than conservative ones. Between the 1990 and 2000 censuses alone, six of 20 Gore states lost representatives, and only one (California) gained. The result is that Gore would lose 278-260 under new apportionment; the margin in 2000 (before a faithless District of Columbia elector abstained) was 271-267.

Working backward, if he carried the same states, Gore would have won under the apportionment systems of 1980 (271-267) and 1970 (278-260). That's also a 36-member swing in House representation for the red states after Roe, which is greater than the Republican margin of control.

I'll need to work through the numbers more carefully (my initial, admittedly naive, calculations aren't in line with the dramatic shift in reapportionment). While this is certainly nothing to gloat over, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that abortion, like many of the great evils of the twentieth century, is ultimately self-defeating.

New Post: I calculate the change in electoral votes due to the Roe effect above.

Doc Rampage Writes

My own web-published fiction inspired Dave at Doc Rampage to post some of his own. Unfortunately, it's only a small segment, but it's good stuff nonetheless. He appears to have a taste for Greco-Roman culture similar to my own.

The Hatch Amendment -- who came up with it first?

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review is wondering who first came up with the Hatch Amendment proposal, himself or James Taranto of Best of the Web. If he'd been reading my blog, he'd know that pretty much everyone and his brother proposed something along these lines at some point.

Volokh and Hatch's FMA

Old Post: My last post on this issue is here.

Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy has come out in support of Orrin Hatch's Federal Marriage Amendment. Weakly, with plenty of caveats, to be sure, but still it's nice to see.

New Post: More on this here.

Kerry and the Black Vote

Old Post: I first pointed out that this election year provides an opportunity for Bush to make inroads with African-Americans here.

Yet another reason that the Black vote may be in play: Kerry's ineptness.

"John Kerry is not a black man — he is a privileged white man who has no idea what it is in this country to be a poor white in this country, let alone a black man," said Paula Diane Harris, founder of the Andrew Young National Center for Social Change.

(Thanks to Captain Ed for the link.)

Carnival of the Bush Bloggers

This week's Carnival of the Bush Bloggers is up on Blogs for Bush. See what the Bush bloggers have to say about recent issues. My post on letting the state legislatures decide the gay marriage question made it. I also liked La Shawn Barber's comments on the judiciary memos... in fact, I liked her blog so much I added her to my blogroll. This wasn't based just on this post, though. I only add blogs to my blogroll when I find myself going back to their site time and again over at least a week--I had already seen the post in question before the Carnival went up. Check out her site, La Shawn Barber's Corner.

Ralph Nader at U of R

Ralph Nader is coming to the University of Rochester, where I work, to speak about Consumer Advocacy on March 24th. Normally, I'd rather pull my own teeth without the benefit of anesthetic than go to a talk by Ralph Nader, but I'm a blogger now, which means I have responsibilities. I'm still trying to live down the fact that I didn't even hear about John Edwards's visit to Rochester until after it had made the news due to his total lack of disability etiquette. So I should go and report back to you guys. Post in comments if you want me to go, or if you have any specific questions you want me to ask him. I might even be able to live blog the event if someone wants to buy me the laptop on my Amazon Wish List.

New Post: It looks like I will indeed be blogging Ralph Nader, and it might even be live.

Fire Reviewed

Doc Rampage has given me my very first online review of Fire. He liked it. Fire is free, and will likely remain so forever (or at least until I have to start paying for online storage space). I can't say the same about the sequel, assuming I ever finish writing it. Hey, we engineer/blogger/writer types have to eat too.

Ethical Considerations in Quantum Computation

I was going to comment on President Bush's Bioethics Council, but then I thought I should start closer to home.

I have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, which generally means that I am either a professor or a researcher. In my case, I am a researcher who runs experiments and analyzes the data. My area of research is quantum computation, as you may have figured out from other things I've said around here. Quantum computation has its own ethical dilemma. To date, we've discovered that it's very good at two useful applications, performing unordered searches and factoring large numbers. The first may be useful, while the second is definitely useful. It's much easier to find a prime number and multiply it by another large prime number than to factor a large product of primes. When I say much easier, I'm talking about it taking the same computer a few seconds to do the finding and multiplying, versus a few million years to do the factoring. This sort of one-way problem forms the basis for public key encryption (although it is of course more complicated than that), such as that used in RSA, the encryption protocol used to transmit information on the Internet. For more information on RSA, check this FAQ from the sci.crypt newsgroup. A quantum computer with a sufficient number of qubits could factor a large product of primes faster than a classical computer create it in the first place. If someone were to produce such a computer today, all Internet transactions would suddenly be vulnerable.

You can tell what use people are planning for a quantum computer by looking at where the funding is coming from. Right now, the people giving out the funds are the Army Research Office, the Defense Department, and, oh yes, the NSA. It's clear that the main objective is decryption (or, perhaps, to prove that a quantum computer is so far from realizable that public key encryption is secure).

In my experience, very few scientists working on quantum computation projects think about the ethical implications at all. For the most part, they console themselves with the fact that a quantum computer capable of factoring a decent sized key is so far in the future that by the time it gets here (~25 years or so), we'll have better encryption (hopefully, quantum encryption). That may or may not be the case. I've heard that the federal government may be pushing for a five-year program to develop a quantum computer that can factor 128-bit encryption. (I've been looking for confirmation but I haven't found it yet.) This is wildly ambitious--I don't think it will happen--but how many scientists, who previously considered quantum computation safe because it was decades away, would jump at the chance to partake of this funding?

For the record, I have thought a bit more in-depth about quantum computation, partially because I took part in a discussion group with MIT's Graduate Christian Fellowship based on the book Responsible Technology. To a large degree, the questions about developing a quantum computer revolve around who would get it. Quantum computers aren't going to be available on the open market anytime soon, and they'll probably be as regulated as nuclear power. So, assuming I helped create a quantum computer, would I trust the NSA to use it wisely? I certainly don't mind them cracking a terrorist's e-mail, but I wouldn't want them reading mine. So, I don't think that the technology itself is wrong, but I am concerned over how it would be used.

Dave Barry on the Deficit

Dave Barry's newest column takes on the budget deficit in a convenient question and answer format:

Q. But surely we -- the baby boomers and senior citizens -- are not going to selfishly steal the future from our kids, and generations yet unborn!

A. Of course not! We're going to let the government steal it for us.

Q. Well, OK, then! It sure is a good thing that young people and generations yet unborn do not, as a rule, read the newspaper.

A. I'll say! If they ever found out about this, they'd be putting anthrax in the nation's Metamucil supply!

One thing Dave Barry forgets is that while we do not read the newspaper, we young people do read the Internet, so as long as his columns are posted online, we will find out about these things.

Getting traffic

Old Post: This train of thought started below.

Doc Rampage joked a bit about how much traffic I get in a comment. I'm hardly high traffic, but I've done pretty well for being less than a month old. My average daily traffic these days is 25-35 visitors according to Sitemeter. It's partly luck and partly salesmanship.

Most of my traffic probably comes from Blogs for Bush. It's the only blogging consortium I'm on so far, although I'd like to join up with blogs4God, but they prefer blogs that are at least a month old. Joining these sorts of consortiums are probably the best way to gain traffic and make a name for yourself. Consortiums, aside from linking to all the blogs on their main page, usually ask their members to include some form of their blogroll as well. Blogs for Bush is especially good for this because it uses a rolling blogroll that puts the blog with the most recent update at the top, which means I'm pretty much guaranteed a few hits every time I post. Of course, just joining isn't enough... participating in Carnivals, posting in comments (with links to specific posts), and using trackback with those blogs that have it are all good ways to get attention.

Carnivals are pretty much consortium specific, but comments and trackbacks are good ways to get attention whenever they're available on a higher traffic blog. Then, of course, there's occasionally selling a post to one of those high traffic blogs by e-mailing a link. I haven't been doing that too much recently... the odds are pretty low considering the amount of e-mail they get. Sometimes you get lucky, though.

Also note that some blogs also have a reciprocating policy--you put them in your blogroll and they put you in theirs. Some of them use automated blogrolls to do this, powered by a service such as Blogrolling.

And of course, I post at a pretty good clip. I have something new every day, even if it's just a note that I don't have much today. Aside from giving visitors a reason to check back often, just in case I updated, it puts me at the top of those rolling blogrolls more often.

Don't overdo it, though. It's frustrating when you have good material that nobody's reading, but there's no point in getting attention when you don't have good material. You can get them to come, but they won't come back. Right now, I'm really not making much effort to sell my blog. A comment when I have something on my blog that's relevant to someone else's blog post, a trackback ping whenever I refer to someone else's blog in one of my posts, and participating irregularly in the Carnival of the Bush Bloggers. I like the traffic I currently get, and I want to make sure those who are coming by have something worth reading, which means I better stop with these self-indulgent posts about blogging and get back to politics. I never really did rake Glenn Reynolds over the coals properly...

Week in Review

Here's a quick review of the topics I touched on the previous week.

Quantum Computation -- I finally introduce the topic of quantum computation, with a quick introduction and pointers to some of my papers.

Skeptics Anonymous -- I complain about the misuse of this resource made available by MIT's Graduate Christian Fellowship.

The Complementarity of the Sexes -- I point out that men and women are, you know, different, and that in and of itself may make heterosexual marriage advantageous as a social unit.

The Bioethics Council -- After a week of promises, I finally get around to commenting on the controversy surrounding the President's Bioethics council.

What is a qubit? -- I talk a bit more about quantum computation, explaining what a qubit is.

The Blogosphere -- I comment on some of the utilities out there that link blogs together, especially those which have gotten me visits.

Bhuwan Singh

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.

Weekly Webcomic Update

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?

The Blogosphere

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.

Writing

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.

Opposition to Gay Marriage among Black Churches

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.

What is a qubit?

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).