text:
Because life is surreal, just a few days ago I wrote this post that describes the event that led Professor Tombrello and I down entwined paths, my enrollment in his class Physics 11. Physics 11 was a class about how to create value in the world, disguised as a class about how to do "physics" research as an undergraduate. Indeed, in my own life, Professor Tombrello's roll was to make me think really really hard about what it meant to create. Sometimes this creation was in research, trying to figure out a new approach or even a new problem. Sometimes this creation was in a new career, moving to Google to be given the opportunity to build high impact creations. I might even say that this creation extends into the far reaches of Washington state, where we helped bring about the creation of a house most unusual.
There are many stories I remember about Professor Tombrello. From the slightly amusing like the time after the Northridge earthquake when an aftershock shook our class while he was practicing his own special brand of teach, and we all just sort of sat still until we heard this assistant, Michelle, shout out "That's it! I'm outta here!" and go storming out. To the time I talked with him following the loss of one of his family members, and could see the profound sadness even in a man who push optimistically forward at full speed.
Some portraits:
After one visit to Professor Tombrello, I actually recorded my thoughts on our conversation:
This blog post is for me, not for you. Brought to you by a trip down memory lane visiting my adviser at Caltech.
Do something new. Do something exciting. Excel. Whether the path follows your momentum is not relevant.
Don't dwell. Don't get stuck. Don't put blinders on.
Consider how the problem will be solved, not how you are going to solve it.
Remember Feynman: solve problems.
Nothing is not interesting, but some things are boring.
Dyson's driving lesson: forced intense conversation to learn what the other has to say.
Avoid confirmatory sources of news, except as a reminder of the base. Keep your ear close to the brains: their hushed obsessions are the next big news.
Learn something new everyday but also remember to forget the things not worth knowing.
Technically they can do it or they can't, but you can sure help them do it better when they can.
Create. Create. Create.
Write a book, listen to Sandra Tsing Loh, investigate Willow Garage, and watch Jeff Bezos to understand how to be a merchant.
Create. Create. Create.
So tonight, I'll have a glass of red wine to remember my professor, think of his family, and the students to whom he meant so much. And tomorrow I'll pick myself up, and try to figure out just what I can create next.]]>
In 1993, fresh out of Yreka High School, I found myself surrounded by 200+ geniuses taking Caltech's first year physics class, Physics 1 (med schools sometimes ask students at Caltech to verify that they know Calculus because the transcripts have just these low numerical course indicators on them, and of course Physics 1 couldn't actually be physics with calculus, could it?) It would be a lie to say that this wasn't intimidating: some of the TAs in the class where full physics professors! I remember a test where the average score was 0.5 out of 10 and perhaps it didn't help that my roommate studied with a Nobel prize winner as a high school student. Or that another freshman in my class was just finishing a paper with his parents on black holes (or that his dad is one of the founders of the theory of inflation!) At times I considered transferring, because that is what all Caltech students do when they realized how hard Caltech is going to be, and also because it wasn't clear to me what being a physics major got you.
One day in Physics 1 it was announced that there was a class that you could gain entrance to that was structured to teach you not physics, but how to do creative research. Creativity: now this was something I truly valued! It was called Physics 11 and it was run by one Professor Tom Tombrello (I'd later see his schedule on the whiteboard with the abbreviation T2). The only catch was that you had to get accepted into the class and to do this you had to do you best at solving a toy research problem, what the class termed a "hurdle". The students from the previous class then helped select the new Physics 11 students based upon their performance on the hurdles. The first hurdle also caught my eye: it was a problem based upon the old song Mairzy Doats which my father had weekly sung while showering in the morning. So I set about working on the problem. I don't remember much of my solution, except that it was long and involved lots of differential equations of increasing complexity. Did I mention that it was long? Really long. I handed in the hurdle, then promptly ran out of time to work on the second hurdle.
Because I'd not handed in the second hurdle, I sort of expected that I'd not get selected into the class. Plus I wasn't even in the advanced section of physics 1 (the one TAed by the professors, now those kids were well prepared and smart!) But one late night I went to my mailbox, opened it, and found…nothing. I closed it, and then, for some strange reason, thought: hey maybe there is something stuck in there. So I returned and opened the box, dug deep, and pulled out an invitation to join physics 11! This story doesn't mean much to you, but I can still smell, feel, and hear Caltech when I think of this event. Also I've always been under the impression that being accepted to this class was a mistake and really the invitation I got was meant for another student in a mailbox next to mine. But that's a story for another session on the couch.
So I enrolled in Physics 11. It's not much of a stretch to say that it was the inspiration for me to go to graduate school, to do a postdoc, and to become a pseudo-professor. Creative research is an amazing drug, and also, I believe, one of the great endeavors of humanity. My small contribution to the racetrack playa story was published in the Journal of Geology:
The basic mystery was what caused these rocks to move. Was it the wind? It seemed hard to get enough force to move the rocks. Was it ice? When you placed stakes around the rocks, some of the rocks moved out of the stakes and some did not. In the above paper we pointed out that a moving layer of water would mean that there was more wind down low that one would normally get because the boundary layer was moving. We also looked for the effect of said boundary layer on the rocks motion and found a small effect.
The answer, however, as to why the rocks moved, turned out to be even more wonderful. Ice sheets dislodged and bashing the rocks forward. A sort of combination of the two competing previous hypothesis! This short documentary explains it nicely
So, another mystery solved! We know more about how the world works, not on a level of fundamental physics, but on a level of, "because it is interesting", and "because it is fun", and isn't that enough? Arthur C. Clarke, who famously gave airtime to these rocks, would, I think, have been very please with this turn of events
The website is up for QIP 2015, which will be held this year in beautiful Sydney, Australia. Here is a timeline of the relevant dates:
And students, don't worry, there are plans to include some student support scholarships, so we hope that many of you can attend. We're looking forward to seeing you all here!]]>
Against this backdrop, the travesty that is scientific publishing may feel like small potatoes. But now we are starting to find out just how many potatoes. Tim Gowers has been doing an impressive job of digging up exactly how much various British universities pay for their Elsevier subscriptions. Here is his current list. Just to pick one random example, the University of Bristol (my former employer), currently pays Elsevier a little over 800,000 pounds (currently $1.35M) for a year's access to their journals. Presumably almost all research universities pay comparable amounts.
To put this number in perspective, let's compare it not to the F-35, but to something that delivers similar value: arxiv.org. Its total budget for 2014 is about 750,000 US dollars (depending on how you count overhead), and of course this includes access for the entire world, not only the University of Bristol. To be fair, ScienceDirect has about 12 times as many articles and the median quality is probably higher. But overall it is clearly vastly more expensive for society to have its researchers communicate in this way.
Another way to view the £800,000 price tag is in terms of the salaries of about 40 lecturers ( assistant professors), or some equivalent mix of administrators, lecturers and full professors. The problem is that these are not substitutes. If Bristol hired 40 lecturers, they would not each spend one month per year building nearly-free open-access platforms and convincing the world to use them; they would go about getting grants, recruiting grad students and publishing in the usual venues. There are problems of collective action, of the path dependence that comes with a reputation economy and of the diffuse costs and concentrated benefits of the current system.
I wish I could end with some more positive things to say. I think at least for now it is worth getting across the idea that there is a crisis, and that we should all do what we can to help with it, especially when we can do so without personal cost. In this way, we can hopefully create new social norms. For example, it is happily unconventional now to not post work on arxiv.org, and I hope that it comes to be seen also as unethical. In the past, it was common to debate whether QIP should have published proceedings. Now major CS conferences are cutting themselves loose from parasitic professional societies (see in particular the 3% vote in favor of the status quo) and QIP has begun debating whether to require all submissions be accompanied by arxiv posts (although this is of course not at all clear-cut). If we cannot have a revolution, hopefully we can at least figure out an evolutionary change towards a better scientific publishing system. And then we can try to improve military procurement.]]>
I think the high gloss on these videos has the potential to sway low-information bystanders into thinking that there really is a debate about whether quantum computing is possible in principle. So let me be clear.
There is no debate! The expert consensus on the evidence is that large-scale quantum computation is possible in principle.
Quoting "expert consensus" like this is an appeal to authority, and my esteemed colleagues will rebuke me for not presenting the evidence. Aram has done an admirable job of presenting the evidence, but the unfortunate debate format distorts perception of the issue by creating the classic "two sides to a story" illusion. I think it's best to be unequivocal to avoid misunderstanding.
The program that Gil lays forth is a speculative research agenda, devoid of any concrete microscopic physical predictions, and no physicist has investigated any of it because it is currently neither clear enough nor convincing enough. At the same time, it would be extremely interesting if it one day leads to a concrete conjectured model of physics in which quantum computers do not work. To make the ideas more credible, it would help to have a few-qubit model that is at least internally consistent, and even better, one that doesn't contradict the dozens of on-going experiments. I genuinely hope that Gil or someone else can realize this thrilling possibility someday.
For now, though, the reality is that quantum computation continues to make exciting progress every year, both on theoretical and experimental levels, and we have every reason to believe that this steady progress will continue. Quantum theory firmly predicts (via the fault-tolerance threshold theorem) that large-scale quantum computation should be achievable if noise rates and correlations are low enough, and we are fast approaching the era where the experimentally achievable noise rates begin to touch the most optimistic threshold estimates. In parallel, the field continues to make contributions to other lines of research in high-energy physics, condensed matter, complexity theory, cryptography, signal processing, and many others. It's an exciting time to be doing quantum physics.
And most importantly, we are open to being wrong. We all know what happens if you try to update your prior by conditioning on an outcome that had zero support. Gil and other quantum computing skeptics like Alicki play a vital role in helping us sharpen our arguments and remove any blind spots in our reasoning. But for now, the arguments against large-scale quantum computation are simply not convincing enough to draw more than an infinitesimal sliver of expert attention, and it's likely to remain this way unless experimental progress starts to systematically falter or a concrete and consistent competing model of quantum noise is developed.]]>
The key thing I want to mention is the imminent 15 Feb submission deadline.
I also want to mention that TQC is continuing to stay ahead of the curve with its open-access author-keeps-copyright proceedings, and this year with some limited open reviewing (details here). I recently spoke to a doctor who complained that despite even her Harvard Medical affiliation, she couldn't access many relevant journals online. While results of taxpayer-funded research on drug efficacy, new treatments and risk factors remain locked up, at least our community is ensuring that anyone wanting to work on the PPT bound entanglement conjecture will be able to catch up to the research frontier without having to pay $39.95 per article.
One nice feature about these proceedings is that if you later want to publish a longer version of your submission in a journal, then you will not face any barriers from TQC. I also want to explicitly address one concern that some have raised about TQC, which is that the published proceedings will prevent authors from publishing their work elsewhere. For many, the open access proceedings will be a welcome departure from the usual exploitative policies of not only commercial publishers like Elsevier, but also the academic societies like ACM and IEEE. But I know that others will say "I'm happy to sign your petitions, but at the end of the day, I still want to submit my result to PRL" and who am I to argue with this?
So I want to stress that submitting to TQC does not prevent submitting your results elsewhere, e.g. to PRL. If you publish one version in TQC and a substantially different version (i.e. with substantial new material) in PRL, then not only is TQC fine with it, but it is compatible with APS policy which I am quoting here:
Similar exceptions [to the prohibition against double publishing] are generally made for work disclosed earlier in abbreviated or preliminary form in published conference proceedings. In all such cases, however, authors should be certain that the paper submitted to the archival
journal does not contain verbatim text, identical figures or tables, or other copyrighted materials which were part of the earlier publications, without providing a copy of written permission from the copyright holder. [ed: TQC doesn't require copyright transfer, because it's not run by people who want to exploit you, so you're all set here] The paper must also contain a substantial body of new material that was not included in the prior disclosure. Earlier relevant published material should, of course, always be clearly referenced in the new submission.
I cannot help but mention that even this document (the "APS Policy on Prior Disclosure") is behind a paywall and will cost you $25 if your library doesn't subscribe. But if you really want to support this machine and submit to PRL or anywhere else (and enjoy another round of refereeing), TQC will not get in your way.
Part of what makes this easy is TQC's civilized copyright policy (i.e. you keep it). By contrast, Thomas and Umesh had a more difficult, though eventually resolved, situation when combining STOC/FOCS with Nature.]]>
Quantum computers can outperform their classical brethren at a variety of algorithmic tasks….[yadda yadda yadaa deleted]… This talk will assume no prior knowledge of quantum theory…
The other day I was looking at recent or forthcoming interesting quantum talks and I stumbled upon one by a living pontiff:
In this talk, I'll describe connections between the unique games conjecture (or more precisely, the closely relatedly problem of small-set expansion) and the quantum separability problem… [amazing stuff deleted]…The talk will not assume any knowledge of quantum mechanics, or for that matter, of the unique games conjecture or the Lasserre hierarchy….
And another for a talk to kick off a program at the Simons institute on Hamiltonian complexity (looks totally fantastic, wish I could be a fly on the wall at that one!):
The title of this talk is the name of a program being hosted this semester at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing….[description of field of Hamiltonian complexity deleted...] No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics or quantum computation will be assumed.
Talks are tricky. Tailoring your talk to your audience is probably one of the trickier sub-trickinesses of giving a talk. But remind me again, why are we apologizing to theoretical computer scientists / mathematicians (which are likely the audiences for the three talks I linked to) for their ignorance of quantum theory? Imagine theoretical computer science talks coming along with a disclaimer, "no prior knowledge of the PCP theorem is assumed", "no prior knowledge of polynomial-time approximation schemes is assumed", etc. Why is it still considered necessary, decades after Shor's algorithm and error correction showed that quantum computing is indeed a fascinating and important idea in computer science, to apologize to an audience for a large gap in their basic knowledge of the universe?
As a counter argument, I'd love to hear from a non-quantum computing person who was swayed to attend a talk because it said that no prior knowledge of quantum theory is assumed. Has that ever worked? (Or similar claims of a cross cultural prereq swaying you to bravely go where none of your kind has gone before.)]]>
The universe, as many have noted, is kind of like a computer. Or at least our best description of the universe is given by equations that prescribe how various quantities change in time, a lot like a computer program describes how data in a computer changes in time. Of course, this ignores one of the fundamental differences between our universe and our computers: our computers tend to be able to persist information over long periods of time. In contrast, the quantities describing our universe tend to have a hard time being recoverable after even a short amount of time: the location (wave function) of an atom, unless carefully controlled, is impacted by an environment that quickly makes it impossible to recover the initial bits (qubits) of the location of the atom.
Computers, then, are special objects in our universe, ones that persist and allow manipulation of long lived bits of information. A lot like life. The bits describing me, the structural stuff of my bones, skin, and muscles, the more concretely information theoretic bits of my grumbly personality and memories, the DNA describing how to build a new version of me, are all pieces of information that persist over what we call a lifetime, despite the constant gnaw of second law armed foes that would transform me into unliving goo. Maintaining my bits in the face of phase transitions, viruses, bowel obstructions, cardiac arrest, car accidents, and bears is what human life is all about, and we increasingly do it well, with life expectancy now approaching 80 years in many parts of the world.
But 80 years is not that long. Our universe is 13.8ish billion years old, or about 170ish million current lucky human's life expectancies. Most of us would, all things equal, like to live even longer. We're not big fans of death. So what obstacles are there toward life extension? Yadda yadda biology squishy stuff, yes. Not qualified to go there so I won't. But since life is like a computer in regards to maintaining information, we can look toward our understanding of what allows computers to preserve information…and extrapolate!
Enter error correction. If bits are subject to processes that flip the values of the bits, then you'll lose information. If, however, we give up storing information in each individual bit and instead store single bits across multiple individual noisy bits, we can make this spread out bit live much longer. Instead of saying 0, and watching it decay to unknown value, say 000…00, 0 many times, and ask if the majority of these values remain 0. Viola you've got an error correcting code. Your smeared out information will be preserved longer, but, and here is the important point, at the cost of using more bits.
Formalizing this a bit, there are a class of beautiful theorems, due originally to von Neumann, classically, and a host of others, quantumly, called the threshold theorems for fault-tolerant computing which tell you, given an model for how errors occur, how fast they occur, and how fast you can compute, whether you can reliably compute. Roughly these theorems all say something like: if your error rate is below some threshold, then if you want to compute while failing at a particular better rate, then you can do this using a complicated larger construction that is larger proportional to a polynomial in the log of inverse of the error rate you wish to achieve. What I'd like to pull out of these theorems for talking about life are two things: 1) there is an overhead to reliably compute, this overhead is both larger, in size, and takes longer, in time, to compute and 2) the scaling of this overhead depends crucially on the error model assumed.
Which leads back to life. If it is a crucial part of life to preserve information, to keep your bits moving down the timeline, then it seems that the threshold theorems will have something, ultimately, to say about extending your lifespan. What are the error models and what are the fundamental error rates of current human life? Is there a threshold theorem for life? I'm not sure we understand biology well enough to pin this down yet, but I do believe we can use the above discussion to extrapolate about our future evolution.
Or, because witnessing evolution of humans out of their present state seemingly requires waiting a really long time, or technology we currently don't have, let's apply this to…aliens. 13.8 billion years is a long time. It now looks like there are lots of planets. If intelligent life arose on those planets billions of years ago, then it is likely that it has also had billions of years to evolve past the level of intelligence that infects our current human era. Which is to say it seems like any such hypothetical aliens would have had time to push the boundaries of the threshold theorem for life. They would have manipulated and technologically engineered themselves into beings that live for a long period of time. They would have applied the constructions of the threshold theorem for life to themselves, lengthening their life by apply principles of fault-tolerant computing.
As we've witnessed over the last century, intelligent life seems to hit a point in its life where rapid technological change occurs. Supposing that the period of time in which life spends going from reproducing, not intelligent stuff, to megalords of technological magic in which the life can modify itself and apply the constructions of the threshold theorem for life, is fast, then it seems that most life will be found at the two ends of the spectrum, unthinking goo, or creatures who have climbed the threshold theorem for life to extend their lifespans to extremely long lifetimes. Which lets us think about what alien intelligent life would look like: it will be pushing the boundaries of using the threshold theorem for life.
Which lets us make predictions about what this advanced alien life would look life. First, and probably most importantly, it would be slow. We know that our own biology operates at an error rate that ends up being about 80 years. If we want to extend this further, then taking our guidance from the threshold theorems of computation, we will have to use larger constructions and slower constructions in order to extend this lifetime. And, another important point, we have to do this for each new error model which comes to dominate our death rate. That is, today, cardiac arrest kills the highest percentage of people. This is one error model, so to speak. Once you've conquered it, you can go down the line, thinking about error models like earthquakes, falls off cliffs, etc. So, likely, if you want to live a long time, you won't just be slightly slow compared to our current biological life, but instead extremely slow. And large.
And now you can see my resolution to the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox is a fancy way of saying "where are the (intelligent) aliens?" Perhaps we have not found intelligent life because the natural fixed point of intelligent evolution is to produce entities for which our 80 year lifespans is not even a fraction of one of their basic clock cycles. Perhaps we don't see aliens because, unless you catch life in the short transition from unthinking goo to masters of the universe, the aliens are just operating on too slow a timescale. To discover aliens, we must correlate observations over a long timespan, something we have not yet had the tools and time to do. Even more interesting the threshold theorems also have you spread your information out across a large number of individually erring sub-systems. So not only do you have to look at longer time scales, you also need to make correlated observations over larger and larger systems. Individual bits in error correcting codes look as noisy as before, it is only in the aggregate that information is preserved over longer timespans. So not only do we have too look slower, we need to do so over larger chunks of space. We don't see aliens, dear Fermi, because we are young and impatient.
And about those error models. Our medical technology is valiantly tackling a long list of human concerns. But those advanced aliens, what kind of error models are they most concerned with? Might I suggest that among those error models, on the long list of things that might not have been fixed by their current setup, the things that end up limiting their error rate, might not we be on that list? So quick, up the ladder of threshold theorems for life, before we end up an error model in some more advanced creatures slow intelligent mind!]]>
US biologist Randy Schekman, who shared this year's physiology and medicine Nobel prize, has made prompt use of his new bully pulpit. In
How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science: The incentives offered by top journals distort science, just as big bonuses distort banking
he singled out these "luxury" journals as a particularly harmful part of the current milieu in which "the biggest rewards follow the flashiest work, not the best," and he vowed no longer to publish in them. An accompanying Guardian article includes defensive quotes from representatives of Science and Nature, especially in response to Schekman's assertions that the journals favor controversial articles over boring but scientifically more important ones like replication studies, and that they deliberately seek to boost their impact factors by restricting the number of articles published, "like fashion designers who create limited-edition handbags or suits." Focusing on journals, his main concrete suggestion is to increase the role of open-access online journals like his elife, supported by philanthropic foundations rather than subscriptions. But Schekman acknowledges that blame extends to funding organizations and universities, which use publication in high-impact-factor journals as a flawed proxy for quality, and to scientists who succumb to the perverse incentives to put career advancement ahead of good science. Similar points were made last year in Serge Haroche's thoughtful piece on why it's harder to do good science now than in his youth. This, and Nature's recent story on Brazilian journals' manipulation of impact factor statistics, illustrate how prestige journals are part of the solution as well as the problem.
Weary of people and institutions competing for the moral high ground in a complex terrain, I sought a less value-laden approach, in which scientists, universities, and journals would be viewed merely as interacting IGUSes (information gathering and utilizing systems), operating with incomplete information about one another. In such an environment, reliance on proxies is inevitable, and the evolution of false advertising is a phenomenon to be studied rather than disparaged. A review article on biological mimicry introduced me to some of the refreshingly blunt standard terminology of that field. Mimicry, it said, involves three roles: a model, i.e., a living or material agent emitting perceptible signals, a mimic that plagiarizes the model, and a dupe whose senses are receptive to the model's signal and which is thus deceived by the mimic's similar signals. As in human affairs, it is not uncommon for a single player to perform several of these roles simultaneously.]]>
Here is a list of talks, loosely categorized by topic (inspired by Thomas's list from last year). I'm pretty sad about missing my first QIP since I joined the field, because its unusually late timing overlaps the first week of the semester at MIT. But in advance of the talks, I'll write a few words (in italics) about what I would be excited about hearing if I were there.
There are a lot of new entropies! Some of these may be useful – at first for tackling strong converses, but eventually maybe for other applications as well. Others may, well, just contribute to the entropy of the universe. The bounds on entanglement rate of Hamiltonians are exciting, and looking at them, I wonder why it took so long for us to find them.
1a. A new quantum generalization of the Rényi divergence with applications to the strong converse in quantum channel coding
Frédéric Dupuis, Serge Fehr, Martin Müller-Lennert, Oleg Szehr, Marco Tomamichel, Mark Wilde, Andreas Winter and Dong Yang. 1306.3142 1306.1586
merged with
1b. Quantum hypothesis testing and the operational interpretation of the quantum Renyi divergences
Milan Mosonyi and Tomohiro Ogawa. 1309.3228
25. Zero-error source-channel coding with entanglement
Jop Briet, Harry Buhrman, Monique Laurent, Teresa Piovesan and Giannicola Scarpa. 1308.4283
28. Bound entangled states with secret key and their classical counterpart
Maris Ozols, Graeme Smith and John A. Smolin. 1305.0848
It's funny how bound key is a topic for quant-ph, even though it is something that is in principle purely a classical question. I think this probably is because of Charlie's influence. (Note that this particular paper is mostly quantum.)
3a. Entanglement rates and area laws
Michaël Mariën, Karel Van Acoleyen and Frank Verstraete. 1304.5931 (This one could also be put in the condensed-matter category.)
merged with
3b. Quantum skew divergence
Koenraad Audenaert. 1304.5935
22. Quantum subdivision capacities and continuous-time quantum coding
Alexander Müller-Hermes, David Reeb and Michael Wolf. 1310.2856
This first paper is something I tried (unsuccessfully, needless to say) to disprove for a long time. I still think that this paper contains yet-undigested clues about the difficulties of non-FT simulations.
2a. Exponential improvement in precision for Hamiltonian-evolution simulation
Dominic Berry, Richard Cleve and Rolando Somma. 1308.5424
merged with
2b. Quantum simulation of sparse Hamiltonians and continuous queries with optimal error dependence
Andrew Childs and Robin Kothari.
update: The papers appear now to be merged. The joint (five-author) paper is 1312.1414.
35. Nested quantum walk
Andrew Childs, Stacey Jeffery, Robin Kothari and Frederic Magniez.
(not sure about arxiv # – maybe this is a generalization of 1302.7316?)
It is interesting how the first generation of quantum information results is about showing the power of entanglement, and now we are all trying to limit the power of entanglement. These papers are, in a sense, about toy problems. But I think the math of Tsirelson-type inequalities is going to be important in the future. For example, the monogamy bounds that I've recently become obsessed with can be seen as upper bounds on the entangled value of symmetrized games.
4a. Binary constraint system games and locally commutative reductions
Zhengfeng Ji. 1310.3794
merged with
4b. Characterization of binary constraint system games
Richard Cleve and Rajat Mittal. 1209.2729
20. A parallel repetition theorem for entangled projection games
Irit Dinur, David Steurer and Thomas Vidick. 1310.4113
33. Parallel repetition of entangled games with exponential decay via the superposed information cost
André Chailloux and Giannicola Scarpa. 1310.7787
Somehow self-testing has exploded! There is a lot of information theory here, but the convex geometry of conditional probability distributions also is relevant, and it will be interesting to see more connections here in the future.
5a. Self-testing quantum dice certified by an uncertainty principle
Carl Miller and Yaoyun Shi.
merged with
5b. Robust device-independent randomness amplification from any min-entropy source
Kai-Min Chung, Yaoyun Shi and Xiaodi Wu.
19. Infinite randomness expansion and amplification with a constant number of devices
Matthew Coudron and Henry Yuen. 1310.6755
29. Robust device-independent randomness amplification with few devices
Fernando Brandao, Ravishankar Ramanathan, Andrzej Grudka, Karol Horodecki, Michal Horodecki and Pawel Horodecki. 1310.4544
I had a bit of trouble categorizing these, and also in deciding how surprising I should find each of the results. I am also somewhat embarrassed about still not really knowing exactly what a quantum double is.
6. Quantum interactive proofs and the complexity of entanglement detection
Kevin Milner, Gus Gutoski, Patrick Hayden and Mark Wilde. 1308.5788
7. Quantum Fourier transforms and the complexity of link invariants for quantum doubles of finite groups
Hari Krovi and Alexander Russell. 1210.1550
16. Purifications of multipartite states: limitations and constructive methods
Gemma De Las Cuevas, Norbert Schuch, David Pérez-García and J. Ignacio Cirac.
A lot of exciting results. The poly-time algorithm for 1D Hamiltonians appears not quite ready for practice yet, but I think it is close. The Cubitt-Montanaro classification theorem brings new focus to transverse-field Ising, and to the weird world of stoquastic Hamiltonians (along which lines I think the strengths of stoquastic adiabatic evolution deserve more attention). The other papers each do more or less what we expect, but introduce a lot of technical tools that will likely see more use in the coming years.
13. A polynomial-time algorithm for the ground state of 1D gapped local Hamiltonians
Zeph Landau, Umesh Vazirani and Thomas Vidick. 1307.5143
15. Classification of the complexity of local Hamiltonian problems
Toby Cubitt and Ashley Montanaro. 1311.3161
30. Undecidability of the spectral gap
Toby Cubitt, David Pérez-García and Michael Wolf.
23. The Bose-Hubbard model is QMA-complete
Andrew M. Childs, David Gosset and Zak Webb. 1311.3297
24. Quantum 3-SAT is QMA1-complete
David Gosset and Daniel Nagaj. 1302.0290
26. Quantum locally testable codes
Dorit Aharonov and Lior Eldar. (also QECC) 1310.5664
If a theorist is going to make some awesome contribution to building a quantum computer, it will probably be via this category. Yoshida's paper is very exciting, although I think the big breakthroughs here were in Haah's still underappreciated masterpiece. Kim's work gives operational meaning to the topological entanglement entropy, a quantity I had always viewed with perhaps undeserved skepticism. It too was partially anticipated by an earlier paper, by Osborne.
8. Classical and quantum fractal code
Beni Yoshida. I think this title is a QIP-friendly rebranding of 1302.6248
21. Long-range entanglement is necessary for a topological storage of information
Isaac Kim. 1304.3925
The math in this area is getting nicer, and the protocols more realistic. The most unrealistic thing about two-party crypto is probably the idea that it would ever be used, when people either don't care about security or don't even trust NIST not to be a tool of the NSA.
10. Entanglement sampling and applications
Frédéric Dupuis, Omar Fawzi and Stephanie Wehner. 1305.1316
36. Single-shot security for one-time memories in the isolated qubits model
Yi-Kai Liu. 1304.5007
It is interesting how quantum and classical techniques are not so far apart for many of these problems, in part because classical TCS is approaching so many problem using norms, SDPs, Banach spaces, random matrices, etc.
12. Efficient quantum protocols for XOR functions
Shengyu Zhang. 1307.6738
9. Noisy Interactive quantum communication
Gilles Brassard, Ashwin Nayak, Alain Tapp, Dave Touchette and Falk Unger. 1309.2643 (also info th / coding)
I hate to be a Philistine, but I wonder what disaster would befall us if there WERE a psi-epistemic model that worked. Apart from being able to prove false statements. Maybe a commenter can help?
14. No psi-epistemic model can explain the indistinguishability of quantum states
Eric Cavalcanti, Jonathan Barrett, Raymond Lal and Owen Maroney. 1310.8302
update: A source on the PC says that this is an intriguing mixture of foundations and Bell inequalities, again in the "Tsirelson regime" of exploring the boundary between quantum and non-signaling.
17. Almost quantum
Miguel Navascues, Yelena Guryanova, Matty Hoban and Antonio Acín.
I love the part where Daniel promises not to cheat. Even though I am not actively researching in this area, I think the race between surface codes and concatenated codes is pretty exciting.
18. What is the overhead required for fault-tolerant quantum computation?
Daniel Gottesman. 1310.2984
27. Universal fault-tolerant quantum computation with only transversal gates and error correction
Adam Paetznick and Ben Reichardt. 1304.3709
I love just how diverse and deep this category is. There are many specific questions that would be great to know about, and the fact that big general questions are still being solved is a sign of how far we still have to go. I enjoyed seeing the Brown-Fawzi paper solve problems that stumped me in my earlier work on the subject, and I was also impressed by the Cubitt et al paper being able to make a new and basic statement about classical Markov chains. The other two made me happy through their "the more entropies the better" approach to the world.
31. An improved Landauer Principle with finite-size corrections and applications to statistical physics
David Reeb and Michael M. Wolf. 1306.4352
32. The second laws of quantum thermodynamics
Fernando Brandao, Michal Horodecki, Jonathan Oppenheim, Nelly Ng and Stephanie Wehner. 1305.5278
34. Decoupling with random quantum circuits
Winton Brown and Omar Fawzi. 1307.0632
11. Stability of local quantum dissipative systems
Toby Cubitt, Angelo Lucia, Spyridon Michalakis and David Pérez-García. 1303.4744


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Over the last few weeks it has not been good news in the media for the Oregon Ducks Men's Basketball program following the release of three players who were accused of an off campus rape. Damyean Dotson, Dominic Artis, and Brandon Austin were released from the team on May 5th following an investigation from Eugene Police and the University on the incident. Moving forward rather than having a solid front court in 2015 Oregon Head Coach Dana Altman now faces, for the most part, a rebuilding process.
Several key pieces remain to work with including Senior Joseph Young and NCAA Tournament Standout Elgin Cook. The Oregon Ducks have also added several recruiting pieces including Altman's first five star player in JaQuan Lyle and three star Casey Benson. The school received word on Thursday that Three Star Point Guard Ahmaad Rorie will also be joining the Oregon Ducks for the Fall. Rorie committed to the Cal Bears in 2012, but with the retirement of Head Coach Mike Montgomery he reopened his recruitment. He becomes the seventh newcomber to the program for the upcoming season as the team looks to make a turn.
The Oregon Ducks Basketball team still has three scholarships to fill for the 2014-15 season. Expect Altman to look for some back court assistance with the remaining scholarships on the table. Rorie decided on the Oregon Ducks over Washington State among others.
For more on the Oregon Ducks , the rest of the Pac-12 and any cool tidbits we find along the way follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Tags: Ahmaad Rorie Oregon Basketball Oregon Basketball Recruiting Oregon Ducks

subset: commoncrawl


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There is a great battle to be fought, a battle with ourselves. We tug at chains, pull at ropes, most of all tear at own inhibitions, our fears and our beliefs of old.
There is great strength in all of this. Strength of heart and mind and courage to allow yourself to be stripped bare, torn apart, even at your own hands.
There is also immense strength in the bond created when someone shares your battle, helps you fight the demons within and loves you for it after.


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Films I Like the Most of All - as of right now .
(58/130) | Can't Hardly Wait (1998, dir. Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan)
Girl Whose Party It Is: That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen! What is wrong with you people?
This movie's the bomb.
I'm not even sure If I have the balls to make a list of my Top 100 movies, but I'm prit-tay prit-tay prit-taay sure this...
So much love for this movie.
Watching this with my kid. We just watched it last night. Hee.
Best teen movie. Ever.
Aman-duh. I met him and he's actually super adorable and smells lovely.


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History of the Federal Judiciary
Biographical Directory of Federal Judges
Kethledge, Raymond M.
Born 1966 in Summit, NJ
Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Nominated by George W. Bush on March 19, 2007, to a seat vacated by James L. Ryan. Confirmed by the Senate on June 24, 2008, and received commission on July 7, 2008.
University of Michigan, B.A., 1989
University of Michigan Law School, J.D., 1993
Professional Career:
Law clerk, Hon. Ralph B. Guy, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 1993-1994
Private practice, Michigan, 1994, 1998-2001, 2002-2008
Judiciary counsel, U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham, Michigan, 1995-1997
Law clerk, Hon. Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court of the United States, 1997-1998
Counsel, Ford Motor Company, 2001-2002
Nominated to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, June 28, 2006; no Senate vote
Judges of the United States Courts
- Biographical Directory of
Federal Judges
- Bankruptcy Judgeships
- Magistrate Judgeships
- Impeachments of Judges
- Judicial Salaries
- Milestones of Judicial
- Diversity on the Bench
- A Guide to Preservation of
Judges' Papers (PDF)
Courts of the Federal Judiciary
Teaching Judicial History
Talking Points on Judicial History
Historic Federal Courthouses
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Landmark Judicial Legislation
Federal Court Historical Programs
Submit Questions About Judicial History


text:
News from WTOP
News from the AP
Mike Causey
Shows & Panels
Shows & Panels
- The 2014 Big Picture on Cyber Security
- AFCEA Answers
- American Readiness: Renewable Power and Efficiency Technologies
- Ask the CIO
- Building the Hybrid Cloud
- CDWG/NetApp
- Connected Government: How to Build and Procure Network Services for the Future
- Continuing Diagnostics and Mitigation: Discussion of Progress and Next Steps
- Delivering the Digital Government Mission
- Federal Executive Forum
- Federal News Radio's National Cyber Security Awareness Month Special Panel Discussion
- Federal Tech Talk
- The Future of Government Data Centers
- The Future of IT: How CIOs Can Enable the Service-Oriented Enterprise
- Government Perspectives on Mobility and the Cloud
- The Intersection: Where Technology Meets Transformation
- Maximizing ROI Through Data Center Consolidation
- Mitigating Insider Threats in Virtual & Cloud Environments
- Modern Mission Critical Series
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- Targeting Advanced Threats: Proven Methods from Detection through Remediation
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Shows & Panels
Dan Madrzykowski, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Homes and buildings aren't built the way they used to be, and when they catch fire, they don't burn the same way either. Newer buildings have more open floor plans and much more use of plastics and synthetic materials. Now the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Underwriters Laboratory have teamed up to educate firefighters on the modern fire. The course is based on a series of controlled burn experiments, performed with the help of the New York City Fire Department. Daniel Madrzykowski, a fire protection engineer and leader of the Fire Fighting Technology Group at NIST, told Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Emily Kopp what firefighters learn through the course.


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Over the course of the summer, more than 100 new albums crossed my desk. And, yes, I listened to each one. However, I didn't have time to write about all of them when they came out. So, before the season slips away entirely, I'd like to share some songs that made my summer soundtrack, including familiar country stars, longtime Americana favorites and newcomers who are worth the attention.
Let's start with the big names. Trace Adkins' insightful "Proud to Be Here" recalls his tougher times -- playing for tips, spending too much on beer -- and acknowledges the guardian angel that's blessed him all these years. Although he's known for his goodtime hits, Luke Bryan tones down the goofiness on "Tailgate Blues," which captures the essence of a sad Southern night.
Eric Church smokes another kind of smoke when his ex-lover gets hitched. To borrow the title, she got a rock and ... "I'm Getting Stoned." Meanwhile, Jake Owen's "The One That Got Away" is an ode to a summer love that fades with the season.
If you're curious about new albums by the Pistol Annies, Blake Shelton, George Strait or Chris Young, check out the title tracks. Pistol Annies' sultry "Hell on Heels" proves that Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley are a force to be reckoned with. Lambert also harmonizes on Shelton's "Red River Blue," a lovely breakup ballad. Strait co-wrote his latest upbeat single (his 84th Top 10 hit) with his son Bubba and songwriter Dean Dillon. Finally, Young's twangy "Neon" gets its buzz from the glowing sign in the bar window.
For country stars on the rise, check out the Eli Young Band's "Even if It Breaks Your Heart," Randy Montana's "Back of My Heart," Ashton Shepherd's "Rory's Radio" and Sunny Sweeney's "Staying's Worse Than Leaving," which are all inspired, in their own way, by a look in the rearview mirror.
Country stars are popping up on other people's albums as well. Listen for Zac Brown on Sonia Leigh's sing-along "Bar," Vince Gill on Keb Mo's clever "My Baby's Telling Lies" and Sugarland on Matt Nathanson's dramatic "Run." Also, don't miss Pam Tillis on Blackie & the Rodeo Kings' "This Town Has Moved Away" and Lee Ann Womack on Stoney LaRue's "Travelin' Kind."
If you've been listening to country music for a long time, you'll be happy to hear some old favorites. Suzy Bogguss' folk album delivers pleasing campfire classics like "Get Along Little Dogies" and "Red River Valley." Glen Campbell's latest album features the poignant farewell song, "Any Trouble," while Ronnie Milsap and Connie Smith keep on plugging with new tunes like "Almost Mine" and "Long Line of Heartaches," respectively.
For fans of '80s country, seek out Michael Martin Murphey's "Texas Cowboy," Ricky Skaggs' "Heartbroke" (newly recorded in a bluegrass style) and Gene Watson and Rhonda Vincent's "Out of Hand."
In the fall, Nashville hosts the Americana Music Festival and Conference, as well as the IBMA's World of Bluegrass. To get up to speed, here are a few playlists inspired by the genres.
For bluegrass fans, add these picks to your mix: Darin and Brook Aldridge's "Lonely Ends Where Love Begins," Blue Highway's "Sounds Like Home," Dale Ann Bradley's "Leaving Kentucky," Cumberland River's "Harlan Man," Dehlia Low's "Ravens & Crows," Rodney Dillard & the Dillard Band's "Don't Wait for the Hearse to Take You to Church" and Elephant Revival's philosophical "What Is Time?"
Other favorites include the Greencards' bright "Adelaide," Jim Lauderdale's "Reason and Rhyme," Michelle Nixon & Drive's "Your Kind of Love," NuBlu's "Other Woman's Blues" (an answer song to Dolly Parton's "Jolene"), Donna Ulisse's "An Easy Climb," April Verch's "Indian Ate a Woodchuck," Paul Williams & the Victory Trio's spiritual "Satisfied" and Robin & Linda Williams' "Stonewall Country."
Meanwhile, Americana listeners might enjoy Paul Burch's "Words of Love," Kasey Chambers' "Little Bird," John Hiatt's "Til I Get My Lovin' Back," Robert Earl Keen's "I Gotta Go," NRBQ's "Keep This Love Goin'," John Oates' "Dance Hall Girls," Jimmie Vaughan's "I Ain't Never" and Gillian Welch's "The Way It Will Be." Also check out new, live versions of "One of You" by the Bottle Rockets, "L.A. Freeway" by Guy Clark, "Horseshoe Lounge" by Slaid Cleaves and "Perfume" by the Old 97's.
The Texas music scene continues to offer an array of interesting music, from Red Dirt to folk to blues to straight-up country. Some recommended tunes coming from the Lone Star State this summer include Ariel Abshire's "The Great Pretender," Back Porch Mary's "Drove Her to Drinkin'," Beck & Cauthen's "The Country," Cody Canada & the Departed's "Staring Down the Sun," Jason Cassidy's "Why Not Now," Suzanna Choffel's "Hold of the Night," Charlie Faye's "Whirlwind," Kevin Fowler's "Chippin' Away," Philip Gibbs' "Gallows Orphan," Gary Nicholson's "Listen to Willie," Rich O'Toole's "Kiss of a Liar," Sarah Pierce's "Twenty Dollar Silver Ring" and the Wheeler Brothers' "Mississippi."
If you're interested in discovering singer-songwriters, these tracks might introduce you to a new favorite: Zee Avi's "Siboh Kitak Nangis," Ray Bonneville, "Funny 'Bout Love," Ange Boxall's "The Salt Plains," Paul Brady's "Living the Mystery," David Adam Byrnes' "She Only Wanted Flowers," Grayson Capps' "Highway 41," Chris Cook's slow-burning "Get Over the One" and Jonny Corndawg's "Night Rider."
Other cool singer-songwriter tracks include John Doe's "Lucky Penny" (with guest Patty Griffin), Angela Easterling's "A Married Man," Jonathan Edwards' "Johnny Blue Horizon," Eilen Jewell's "Queen of the Minor Key," Amy LaVere's "A Great Divide," Alexis Marceaux's "Only One Basket" and Tom McBride's "Tell Her Majesty." This music video for Musikanto's "Every Which Way" is worth a look, too.
Rounding out the list of singer-songwriters, seek out Claudia Nygaard's "Big Country," David Olney's film noir-inspired "Frank Is Gone," Stephen Simmons' "Spark," Eurhythmics star Dave Stewart's "Country Wine," Chadwick Stokes' "Black Bottle" and Jason White's "The Longing."
As for indie bands, there's never a shortage. Personal highlights from the stack include the Cabin Dogs' "Out of the Country," Dead Man Winter's "House of Glory," Dex Romweber Duo's "Is That You in the Blue?", Fiery Blue's "Our Secret," Girls Guns and Glory's catchy "Maryanne," the Hickman-Dalton Gang's "Elizabeth" and Hungrytown's "Any Forgotten Thing."
And if you're still hungry for more, try Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three's "Head to Toe," J.D. Malone & the Experts' "Do What You Can Do," Richie Owens & the Farm Bureau's "Goodnite," Reluctant Saints' "I'll Miss You When I'm Broke," The Wilders' "She Says (I Say)," The Wilderness of Manitoba's "Hermit" and Zach Williams & the Reformation's "P.O. Box and a Postcard."


text:
Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends
344 pages
January 1991, Wiley-Blackwell
Notes on the Transcription of the Conversations.
Transription Conventions.
1. 'This is on tape you know': The Origins of the Book.
2. 'She's just a very very special person to me': Women and Friendship.
3. 'We never stop Talking': Talk and Women's Friendships.
4. 'We talk about everything and anything': An Overview of the Conversations.
5. 'D'you know what my mother did recently?': Telling our Stories.
6. 'The Feminine shape....is more melding in together': The Organization of Friendly Talk.
7. 'You know so I mean I probably...': Hedges and Hedging.
8. 'It was dreadful wasn't it': Women and Questions.
9. 'I just kept drinking and drinking and drinking': Repetition and Textual coherence.
10. 'Thank God I'm a woman': The Construction of differing Femininities.
11. 'Talk's absolutely fundamental':Being a Friend.
- The first book to explore in detail how women talk to each other rather than to discuss women's miscommunication with men
- Jennifer Coates is a leading feminist linguist and author of the most successful introductory book on language and gender.
"While this text is important reading for specialists in discourse, it is accessible to lay readers as well, so it is both an important research text as well as a good tool to use in introducing students to discourse analysis" Timothy Frazer, Western Illinois University
"Jennifer Coates celebrates and describes friendships and talk among women; at the same time, she provides an argument for feminist ethnographic research methods. She writes a clear, detailed and rich study based on the transcripts of 20 conversations among women, and on the transcripts of interviews with 15 women .... Women Talk is likely to become a pivotal publication.....This book offers a very useful conversation about women friends' talk." Cheris Kramarae, University of Illinois


text:
Hello, My name is Ivan Lopez, commonly known as Stickeater, I am a learning video game developer who has failed to complete anything thanks to distractions.
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text:
wii game where you swing the wiimote a lot and it leaves you worn out and sore as hell the next day.
Dude, after boxing on Wii Sports, I was so sore I couldn't get up the next morning!
ayon kay Nessykins :D ika-17 ng Pebrero, 2007
nagte- trend
klase o uri


text:
Rachel Wells Google+
Fault halts trains on five Metro lines
Rachel Wells An equipment fault is causing widespread disruptions to Metro and V/Line train services.
Call for betting limits as poor lose more
Rachel Wells and Adam Cooper Victorians lost at least an extra $30 million on the pokies last financial year, blowing more than $2.68 billion.
$300 rise tipped for energy bills
Rachel Wells Average Victorian household to pay $300 more for energy this financial year, says report.


text:
Get ideas and inspiration, find easy to use patterns
and tutorials for your next sewing project.
by 4girls
by Jadehh
by lelie
by Irina Schwab
by sfshaza
by Sue Parrott
by macatrose
by ryzajabestia
by melthorley
by iewa
by peneloping
by RashaT
by Lotus Black
by Kalinah Khan
by Einat Last
by missmelodies
by hodgeba2
Meg's Magazine Mash Up 2014
Check out Meg's finished Mash Up project of her denim suit and see how you can sew along!
Fashion & Trends
Dress like your favorite heroine from Disney's Frozen.
Web Seminar
This web seminar will teach you tricks to sewing and cutting silk successfully!
Editors' Pick
Go far afield in wrap dresses, detailed jackets, and comfy separates for fall.
Make the Parka with Lambskin Cuffs and Collar 11/2011
See one of the techniques you'll learn in November's Fabric Design course.
You must allow our "request for permission" request to login to Burdastyle with Facebook.


text:
A life full of dreams
by Menina Lisboa
Canvas Print
Fine art print on bright white, fine poly-cotton blend, matte canvas using latest generation Epson archival inks. Individually trimmed and hand stretched museum wrap over 1-1/2" deep wood stretcher bars. Includes wall hanging hardware.
- 58Promote
OMG! No way!! Really? These vintage campers can be had for so little over here on Craigslist! I wanted one, but hubby didn't want something he couldn't see over. We got a popup camper instead. I can imagine one of these would be a great way to travel all over Europe!
really... i had never seen these before, i think i must have seen them for the first time three years ago or so!


text:
Six Feet Under
American Death Metallers SIX FEET UNDER will embark on a 10-date tour through Germany under the name 'X-Mas In Hell Tour 2014' in December!Read More
Dutch necromantic death metallers AntropomorphiA have just released their new video for 'Nekrovaginal Secretions' from the album 'Rites ov Perversion.' Watch the video now at www.metalblade.com/antropomorphiaRead More
Dan Briggs, Walter Fancourt, and Matt Lynch, the trio behind the brilliant progressive/jazz act Trioscapes will be back on the road for a brief run of dates beginning on November 30th.Read More
Anaal Nathrakh
Anaal Nathrakh's eighth studio offering, Desideratum, is out now in North America via Metal Blade Records. If you missed it, get traumatized by the sounds of Desideratum, still streaming in full at Revolver Magazine HERE.Read More
With the release of 'Deathless', REVOCATION have completely revamped and re-launched their official website. Check it out at http://revocationband.comRead More
New Releases
Metal Blade TV
Upcoming Releases
Latest News
ENTRAILS to release brand new 7″ "Berzerk" at the end of February!
- February 3rd, 2014 – Swedish Death Metallers ENTRAILS have just...Read More
Rivers of Nihil confirm tour dates leading up to Best in Brutality Tour, SXSW
- February 3rd, 2014 – Alan Balamut joins Rivers of Nihil as new...Read More
The Ocean prepare for co-headline tour with Scale The Summit
- January 31st, 2014 – Live video posted from The Summer Slaughter Tour...Read More
TÝR debut "The Lay of Our Love" at RevolverMag.com
- January 30th, 2014 – North American tour with Children of Bodom...Read More
BEHEMOTH posts final "The Satanist" prologue: part IV exclusively on MetalSucks.net
- January 29th, 2014 – BEHEMOTH has posted a brand new behind the...Read More
Mount Salem to release "Endless" on Metal Blade Records
- January 29th, 2014 – Chicago, IL based psychedelic rock/doom act...Read More
BEYOND THE SHORE set to tour North America with headliners Arsonists Get All The Girls
- January 29th, 2014 – Lexington, KY's Beyond The Shore are...Read More
BEHEMOTH launches "Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer" lyric video
- January 28th, 2014 – "The Satanist" to be released...Read More


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8.16.2012 – Drag Roulette – Roxanne vs Acid
8.16.2012 – Drag Roulette – Roxanne vs Acid
June 26 - #THIRSTY GAY PRIDE
THE CRIB is San Francisco's famed 18+ destination for Gay Boys, Girls and thier friends! Join us for the best in pop, hip-hop, rap and video, with crazy giveaways and hot surprises every week!
715 Harrison Street, SF, CA
Doors @ 9:30 PM / 18+
Entry is FREE before 10PM on the Crib guest list.
Click here for Guest List


text:
Select () or exclude () categories to narrow your recipe search.
As you select categories, the number of matching recipes will update.
Find exactly what you're looking for with the web's most powerful recipe filtering tool.
Prep Time:
Cook Time:
30 mins
3 mins
i came across this recipe in a magazine few years ago tried &it turned out to be tasty
Units: US | Metric
Serving Size: 1 (258 g)
Servings Per Recipe: 2
The following items or measurements are not included:
curry leaves
Your life in the kitchen will never be the same.


text:
Try our Advanced Book Search
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Search books by title, genre, publication month, publication year, and rating or search by any combination of these options (i.e. all Mysteries published in January 2001 with 4.5 rating).
If you want to search for a name or phase, include quotation marks around your search term (example: "Deborah Smith")
Visitor login is required to post a review and comment on the blog and other interactive features on the site. Use your same username and password to register for the RT Forums.
Genre: Series, Love Inspired Historical, Current Series Imprints
BRIDES OF THE WEST (4) by Victoria Bylin, Janet Dean & Pamela Nissen: In "Josie's Wedding Dress" by Bylin, Ty Donner is back in Wyoming after serving five years in prison. As he works to help Josie save her family ranch, can she forgive him for leaving her at the altar? Dean's "Last Minute Bride" has Elise with a rough row to hoe as an unwed mother. When Dr. David Wellman abandons her, she loses her faith in him, but David has a good excuse for his absence. In "Her Ideal Husband" by Nissen, Lydia returns to Colorado to avoid an arranged marriage. There she is reunited with Jebediah, the man she loved but who rejected her. Here are three delightful stories that show true, God-blessed love is worth waiting for.
Reviewed By: Susan Mobley
Publisher: STEEPLE HILL
Published: April 2012


text:
CASE 39 - Blu-ray review
Paramount Vantage completed the horror thriller "Case 39" in 2007 and then sat on it. Although the studio showed it to most of the world in 2009, they waited yet another year before they opened it in the U.S. in 2010. It's never a good sign when a film sits around for years before a studio decides what to do with it.
Actually, it's surprising to me the film didn't go straight to video. It was probably on the strength of its stars--Renee Zellweger, Ian McShane, and Bradley Cooper--that Paramount chose to distribute it theatrically. In any case, the studio had good reason to be hesitant. It's not a very good, and certainly not a very original, movie.
If you've ever seen a horror film, any horror film, you've probably already seen this one. It begins in a dark, spooky, old house at night, with two people creeping up a staircase to look in on somebody asleep upstairs. Following this enigmatic opening, the story switches to the main character, Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger), an unmarried social worker doing her best to cope with a heavy case load, while all the time a relentless musical score pounds at the audience for no discernible reason except that that's what these kinds of movies are supposed to do.
Next up, we meet Lilith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland), a ten-year-old girl with a sweet, innocent look and disposition. Emily visits Lilith and her parents because Lilith has reported that her parents are trying to do her harm. When Emily interviews the mother and father, they don't just seem weird, they seem downright scary, and Emily contacts her friend, Detective Mike Barron (Ian McShane), to help her prove the child is in danger.
Shortly thereafter, with testimony from Mike, Emily, and Emily's child-therapist boyfriend, Doug (Bradley Cooper), the court takes Lilith away from the parents for her own protection. Seems the parents tried to fry little Lilith in the oven.
I suppose our first clue to what's going on should be the name "Lilith," a female demon found in Babylonian, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Mesopotamian myths, and Adam's first, unfaithful wife in Jewish folklore. No good can come of a person with such a name in a horror flick.
Yes, young Lilith is sweet and innocent all right, which is the real sign that something is amiss. But we really know something is up when the girl insists that Emily take her home and be her guardian, and people start dying all around them. Yep. It's a possessed-child movie. And the fun begins. Well, fun if didn't know what to expect.
Neither the the direction acting nor is the problem here. It's the script that does the picture in. To be fair, despite our knowing pretty much everything that's going to happen, director Christian Alvart ("Pandorum") does create a few creepy scenes, like one where Emily is investigating Lilith's old house on her own. Nevertheless, there are far more scares that come out of nowhere and for no good reason, like a dog jumping against a window, meant only to startle us. So we get a couple of moments of genuine suspense combined with a whole lot of cheap thrills.
Also, be careful of bugs in your ear, particularly hornets. Before long, the movie degenerates into silliness. From about the halfway point on, screenwriter Ray Wright pulls out every horror-movie cliché he can find. From about the three-quarters point on, the movie becomes downright unbearable in its ridiculously contrived absurdity. By the time it was over, I was very glad to be done with it.
However, we can take some comfort from the fact that "Case 39" at least provides a valuable moral lesson: Never take your work home with you. Especially if she's named "Lilith."
The picture looks OK, although there is nothing about it that jumps off the screen and calls for one's attention. The Paramount video engineers use an MPEG-4 codec and a dual-layer BD50 in transferring the movie to Blu-ray in its native aspect ratio, 2.35:1. The colors are fairly natural, with skin tones realistic most of the time and a bit pale at other times. Definition is average for an HD transfer, tending to the soft side. Even so, close-ups look good, where the picture seems to brighten up, hues become deeper, and the image more detailed. Deep, solid black levels set off the colors nicely, and a clean, clear screen helps, too, with only the faintest degree of fine, inherent film grain in evidence.
The disc uses lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 for the soundtrack, and it scores in the big, melodramatic scenes. Mostly, the movie is dialogue driven, so there isn't a lot of surround activity except in a couple of action sequences. Then they come to life, like during a thunderstorm; otherwise, they provide some musical ambiance material and a few crowd noises. Fortunately, there's a good midrange for all that dialogue, smooth and realistic and easy on the ears; a wide front-channel stereo spread; and some pretty hefty bass when needed.
There's the usual assortment of extras on the Blu-ray disc, all of them in standard def and all of them except the deleted scenes pretty much just promos. The first things are some short featurettes, four of them. There's "File Under 'Evil': Inside Case 39," about eight minutes on the making of the film, where the filmmakers and cast tell us how great the film is. Next is "Turning Up the Heat on the Chill Factor," about four minutes on the special effects and make-up in one particular scene. After that is "Inside the Hornet's Nest," about three minutes on the special effects in another particular scene. And then there's "Playing with Fire," about four minutes on the special effects in one of the movie's final scenes. Most important is a series of eighteen deleted or alternative scenes, lasting about half an hour. They make more sense than the movie.
The extras conclude with fifteen scene selections; bookmarks; English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
Didn't anyone involved with "Case 39" think that maybe another movie about a demon-possessed child had already been done to death? Didn't anyone realize that the movie said nothing new about the subject? Didn't anyone recognize that everything that was happening in the movie had happened in about 800 previous horror films? And didn't anyone notice that the movie became increasingly more preposterous as it went along? I mean, didn't anyone read the script beforehand?
Still, there is one thing for which we can all be grateful: "Case 39" did so poorly at the box office, we probably won't be seeing a "Case 40."