I said “good morning” to Alexa on Thursday and after greeting my new day, she informed me it was National Bologna Day. Bologna is an ever popular deli meat found in different varieties in communities across our country. I thought that she was mistaken because nearly every day the White House, Justice Department and our fearless leader smother us in Baloney. Turns out the “phony baloney” phrase is an offshoot of the fine famous cured lunch meat. The baloney definition is “foolish or deceptive talk; nonsense”. Some of you are too young to remember ad campaigns from the early 1970’s. The adorable little boy sang-about the name of his bologna, OSCAR-MAYER, and in a catchy tune stated as he rhymed “have a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.“ Those ads hit the air just before the end of the Presidency of Richard Nixon. No boloney, history does often repeat itself!
Perhaps science will be our salvation. The theory of relativity, Pythagorean theorem, Pi, Bernoulli distribution, and the list goes on, no spin in science. It would take 1:28 seconds at the speed of light to reach the moon and only 4.36 minutes to reach Mars. Comforting to know there are some indisputable facts.
Quantum mechanics is in the news this week as Google claims supremacy in this field. In a leaked story that its 53-qubit computer performed in 200 seconds a computational task it would take 10000 years for Summit, an IBM built super computer to calculate. Summit was built for the Department of Energy and it is thought to be the world’s fastest computer. IBM challenged the claim by saying basically that given proper instruction Summit can handle the task in 2.5 days. Quantum computing does not depend on “bits” which can be set to zero or one but “qubits” which allow values to be set to zero or one and thanks to Quantum mechanics, any combination of the two digits at the same time. The math is a bit complex but with quibits 1024 inputs are possible at once as opposed to one. As I read on about the future of the quantum computer it was clear applying computational speed and interpreting the output are down the road. I was reminded that Artificial Intelligence was in it’s infancy in the 1970’s and only in recent years has met its original aspirational goals. Of interest, Einstein put this quantum relationship in a formula in the early 1900’s that has since been proven accurate in all aspects. Einstein was the focus of J. Edgar Hoover, who was certain he was a communist based on his outspoken view against racism, nationalism, and nuclear bombs.
Einstein said “unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of the truth.” I think Einstein, a non tested but obvious genius, would be concerned today about America. There is no alternative theory of relativity and the ‘truth will set the country free’.
Enjoy the week end. M