Notes - "weaned away" / draft Dead 2.1

         Mid-morning. Carol is reading the paper and you have to be ready to go to the vets by eleven. The worst part, usually, is caging the furry little rascals. Cats and people are like that except for caging themselves instead. – Amorella

         0923 hours. O the existential beat goes on. Good one, Amorella

         You are no exception, boy.  – Amorella

         I understand, probably I am more so, caged in my own particulars. As it is easier to work in fiction how is Merlyn caging himself, and what can he do about it?

         Here is the story. In life the spirituality of people is caged in the brain and body; in death the restraint is in memory of brain and body. There is a line in Our Town that fits this particular theatre bill.

** **

“You know as well as I do that the dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth ... and the ambitions they had ... and the pleasures they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved.

They get weaned away from earth-that's the way I_put it,- weaned away.

And they stay here while the earth part of 'em burns away, burns out; and all that time they slowly get indifferent to what's goin' on in Grover's Corners.

They're waitin'. They're waitin' for something that they feel is , comin'. Something important, and great. Aren't they waitin' , for the eternal part in them to come out clear?

Some of the things they're going to say maybe'll hurt your feel- ings-but that's the way it is: mother'n daughter ... husband 'n wife ... enemy 'n enemy ... money 'n miser ... all those ter- ribly important things kind of grow pale around here. And what's left when memory's gone, and your identity, Mrs. Smith?”

From Our Town by Wilder – Act III

** **

        We are going to allude to that line I’ve placed in bold. – Amorella

         0955 hours. This is interesting, Amorella. I always liked that line, but what is left after the memory’s gone?

         Your character is built and uplifted, if you will, and your character, your personality is free to move on. You have accepted who you are, your full personality as is and you start anew. – Amorella

         0959 hours. Do you mean like you are reborn, or are open to be reborn?

         Possibly, but not in your world’s cultural context. In any case this is the surrounding of Dead 2.1. Post. Amorella       

           1606 hours. We had a late lunch at Marx’s Bagels then stopped for a Graeter’s on the way home. I think I need a nap before starting Dead 2.1. Is Merlyn going to have a conversation, if so, with whom? Or, is this philosophical?

         You had a light supper and watched a “Modern Family” and the first hour of a new drama set in the 1980’s centered on building the first IBM clone in Texas, “Halt and Catch Fire” on AMC. It is dusk and you are ready to work on Dead 2.1. Merlyn is going to be talking with the Supervisor. – Amorella

         2233 hours. I am surprised I completed this. I hope it makes sense in the morning.

         Add and post. – Amorella

***

The Dead 2.1 - draft © 2014, rho

         Merlyn is sitting alone in his curragh, his memory of the small wooden frame boat of stretched animal hides, on his memory of a slow moving mountain stream. Glancing to the southeast he sees his never-changing hut and to the east his favorite tall old oak that centers the sanctuary created through the vision of his deeply spirited heartansoulanmind, his humanity. The humanity he took with him when he died back in the seventh century. He thinks, I am a dream in a dream in a dream and let’s it go at that as he cannot imagine more.

         From nowhere and nearby the Supervisor observes, a middle-aged Merlyn sitting in the pleasure of his own company for meditation, which is often a wont of his. He is as a lonely flower blossom on a high rocky mountain crag. Merlyn considers who he is but not what he might in future become. Things are not as they appear in this expanded World of the Dead, this HeavenOrHellOrBothOrNeither as the marsupial humanoid Dead call this place. Merlyn’s position is similar to that Schrodinger’s theoretical cat – he’s half a spirit living in the hands and fingers of Richard Greystone on Earth and half a spirit existing in the Worlds of the Dead. Merlyn’s dreams continue a story that began in the Lightning or so told by the marsupial humanoids and other higher conscious beings scattered about various scattered about universes that began with one after so struck by the continual Light Before even the smallest of things, of matter, existed.

         One doesn’t become a Merlyn without order and reason first. He learns as he thinks and considers the alternatives at his disposal. Right now he is resting, slumbering nearly surrounded by a seemingly ever-present ghostly fog, a blossom unseen and rarely heard except by his dead friends. Richard the Living perhaps heard Merlyn’s voice once, but he is as unsure as he is existentialist who wonders on the same sense of Reality that part of Merlyn now living within.

         “Hello, Merlyn” says the Supervisor. “You hear me well enough.”

         “I do. I do not understand this place anymore. We dead exist. We revolted for a second time and won. We have needed to speak to the Living and I am doing my part. The Worlds of the Dead have changed with this Second Rebellion, earth centuries after the First Rebellion during the time of Homer, the Storyteller. I have explained everything in dream-story forms, these four segments of a chapter, and I have fourteen chapters to go in this unbound book. I rather like not being bound; the dreams are more real this way. But where do we go from here? Universes abound, mostly unfilled from what I gather.”

         “And you too are unfilled Merlyn,” responds the Supervisor. Even half alive and half dead your consciousness remains unfilled.”

         Wide-eyed and sitting tense in the curragh, Merlyn declares, “This then is the natural state of all humanity, Living or Dead.”

         “It is the natural state of the Dead and the Living,” coolly comments the Supervisor.

         Merlyn adjusts his body that does not exist but in memory and peers forward as if he could see the Supervisor directly in front of him above the forward frame of the boat and he simply asks, “What else is there for this individual and collected consciousness of ours?”

         Unseen, the Supervisor smiles as if SheanHe had heard the smallest piece of humor in what would be the longest of time, if SheanHe were the least bit physical. The Supervisor considers HeranHis smile and wonders – what would Merlyn think could he see my slightly upturned smile? He has no eyes yet he still has no sense of what vision is. I would have thought he would have learned something from what he is dead. He moves the memory of his body and brain forgetting he exists without either. He sits in his small boat on a river that is not and never has been but a construction within his six senses.

         The whole collective, consciousnesses of two species here, kept simple for the telling live the memory as if there were nothing else in these Worlds of the Dead. These Worlds are but the dressing, the horse whose hair tips the brush as the rushing Lightning continues from Before through and on the picture that has yet to be painted, so considers the Supervisor.

         Merlyn stares ahead, muttering, “I see nothing.”

***

Notes - imagination in genes / set up for Two / 'hints' /

         Mid-morning. Carol is reading the paper after a later breakfast, you are readying to dig up information on the Beauchamps to feed into the tree later; once this is updated what you have left if the Hubbell’s in England which has controversies. Some do not feel there is enough of a link to support the same Hubbell family in the Hubbell book. You are ready to give up being related to Duncan I of Scotland because in your mind there is nothing better than to have an English ancestor with possibly of having met Chaucer.

         0942 hours. I am not so concerned with this as my DNA through Bryan Sykes’ Oxford Ancestry confirms male ancestors in Scotland five thousand years ago. That’s close enough for me to feel an imaginary ‘genetic closeness’ to Merlyn and Stonehenge and the like, enough that I feel I can write about it in a fiction in any case (even though I was born and raised in the United States).

** **

Bryan Sykes (born 9 September 1947) is a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College.

Sykes published the first report on retrieving DNA from ancient bone (Nature, 1989). Sykes has been involved in a number of high-profile cases dealing with ancient DNA, including those of Otzi the Iceman and Cheddar Man, and others concerning people claiming to be members of the Romanovs, the Russian royal family. His work also suggested a Florida accountant by the name of Tom Robinson was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, a claim that was subsequently disputed.

Sykes is best known outside the community of geneticists for his bestselling books on the investigation of human history and prehistory through studies of mitochondrial DNA. He is also the founder of Oxford Ancestors, a genealogical DNA testing firm.

Blood of the Isles

In his 2006 book Blood of the Isles (published in the United States and Canada as Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland), Sykes examines British genetic "clans". He presents evidence from mitochondrial DNA, inherited by both sexes from their mothers, and the Y chromosome, inherited by men from their fathers, for the following points:

•                The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period, especially in the female line, i.e. those people, who in time would become identified as British Celts (culturally speaking), but who (genetically speaking) should more properly be called Cro-Magnon. In continental Europe, this same Cro-Magnon genetic legacy gave rise to the Basques. But "Basque" and "Celt" are cultural designations, not genetic ones.

•                The contribution of the Celts of Central Europe of to the genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland was minimal; most of the genetic contribution to the British Isles of those we think of as Celtic, came from western continental Europe, I.E. the Atlantic seaboard.

•                The Picts were not a separate people: the genetic makeup of the formerly Pictish areas of Scotland shows no significant differences from the general profile of the rest of Britain. The two "Pictland" regions are Tayside and Grampian.

•                The Anglo-Saxons are supposed, by some, to have made a substantial contribution to the genetic makeup of England, but in Sykes's opinion it was under 20 percent of the total, even in Southern England.

•                The Vikings (Danes and Norwegians) also made a substantial contribution, which is concentrated in central, northern and eastern England - the territories of the ancient Danelaw. There is a very heavy Viking contribution in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, in the vicinity of 40 percent. Women as well as men contributed substantially in all these areas, showing that the Vikings engaged in large-scale settlement.

•                The Norman contribution was extremely small, on the order of 2 percent.

•                There are only sparse traces of the Roman occupation, almost all in Southern England.

•                In spite of all these later contributions, the genetic makeup of the British Isles remains overwhelmingly what it was in the Neolithic: a mixture of the first Mesolithic inhabitants with Neolithic settlers who came by sea from Iberia and ultimately from the eastern Mediterranean.

•                There is a difference between the genetic histories of men and women in Britain and Ireland. The matrilineages show a mixture of original Mesolithic inhabitants and later Neolithic arrivals from Iberia, whereas the patrilineages are much more strongly correlated with Iberia. This suggests (though Sykes does not emphasize this point) replacement of much of the original male population by new arrivals with a more powerful social organization.

•                There is evidence for a "Genghis Khan effect", whereby some male lineages in ancient times were much more successful than others in leaving large numbers of descendants; e.g. Niall of the Nine Hostages in 4th and 5th century Ireland and Somerled in 12th century Scotland.

Some quotations from the book follow. (Note that Sykes uses the terms “Celts” and “Picts” to designate the pre-Roman inhabitants of the Isles who spoke Celtic and does not mean the people known as Celts in central Europe.)

The presence of large numbers of Jasmine’s Oceanic clan … says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic seaboard north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. The mere presence of Oceanic Jasmines indicates that this was most definitely a family based settlement rather that the sort of male-led invasions of later millennia.

The Celts of Ireland and the Western Isles are not, as far as I can see from the genetic evidence, related to the Celts who spread south and east to Italy, Greece and Turkey from the heartlands of Hallstadt and La Tene...during the first millennium BC…The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or about the same time as farming reached the Isles. (…)

The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus. This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland. (…)

They [the Picts] are from the same mixture of Iberian and European Mesolithic ancestry that forms the Pictish/Celtic substructure of the Isles. Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantis chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes…I can find no evidence at all of a large-scale arrival from the heartland of the Celts of central Europe amongst the paternic genetic ancestry of the Isles.

From Wikipedia - Bryan Sykes

** **

         This line of thinking of yours, that you may not have sufficient authenticity genetically to write even a fiction on Merlyn hovers on your doubting nature coupled with being both honest and polite. This is a combination of character traits that plague your notes and Merlyn books. – Amorella

         1024 hours. I realize this Amorella. You can drop the point much more succinctly than I. Thank you. I don’t know that I can do much about my character traits other than to accept them. I have no trouble accepting these traits as you see them. Sometimes I just move on, as I will, to the major editing of the original book two. 

         Post. - Amorella

         1325 hours. We are about to head out for lunch. Holding off on buying fuel until tomorrow, as it is $3.99 for regular. I found and copied material on many a previous Beauchamp through ‘the peerage’. Enough already. I’ll put it in later. When we return I’m ready to work on GMG.Two.

         From my perspective you are a detective, that’s how you see it; and it is fun to dig stuff up, so to speak. Besides, it is a tip of the old black beret to Great Aunt Floy, that’s what is important here. You promised you would continue the work she began and you are living up to that promise. Enjoy lunch wherever you decide to go. Later, dude. - Amorella

         You had an excellent and quiet lunch at Smashburgers and are now at the VOA Park behind the Miami Universe. Carol is reading the article on the Honda Accord Hybrid in the July Consumer’s Report that arrived today instead of her book. Let’s go to Running Through and make a working copy.

         1539 hours. This took awhile. I began a new folder ‘GMG.BK.TWO.WKG’ then cleaned up the original document using a newer format and switching from the Time 12 font to Arial 14. Next I’ll set the twelve chapters separately for separate work following the same format as in GMG.One.

         Sounds like an established plan, boy. Excitement, huh. – Amorella

         Yes, I am getting pumped. Hopefully, this will be easier as I have more experience in the set up and execution.

         You have stopped at Kroger’s on Tylersville for a few essentials before heading home. You also have the folders and documents for the Intro, One, Two and Three. – Amorella

         1606 hours. I have my work cut out for me; I forgot how much I have to cut out and redraft for each chapter, plus I have to add a ‘The Dead’ segment for each. I like the plan though. I’ll finish up the chapters so when I begin with One and can move right on through them one step at a time.

         We are going to set this up a bit differently. We won’t move to the next chapter until you have a secure draft of the first chapter and so on. This way, when these twelve are completed we can work on the final draft at that point. I will help your initial editing and you now have a better idea how this book is going to go as it will follow the dynamics and format of the first book to the letter. Each time you complete a chapter we take a break for a day so you can work on the genealogy for Aunt Floy. – Amorella

         1735 hours. I have completed the folder in separate chapters for work on GMG.Two, plus I placed a copy of this folder in Cloud Page for safekeeping. Turns out there are 14 chapters not 12. I forgot all about the other two. Feeling good, pumped. I am ready to begin.

        Take a break, orndorff. Tonight also update you iBook backup for further safekeeping. We will begin with Dead 2.1 and keep it simple. Later we will work on the introduction and prologue, etc. Post.- Amorella

         You had water and a quarter bag of baby carrots with lite veggie dip for supper while you watched NBC News and a two week old “Believe” and an old “This Old House” on the Jersey Shore. Now you have the working document of Dead.2.1 ready to go and the file systems to place it in when ready. Also, earlier, before supper, you received an automatic note from Ancestry with a list of all your people who have ‘hints’ available sent in the order they are in your Family software. This was a pleasant surprise and while you were on a break you copied a few hints and are going down the list one by one also noting where there are photographs, records to copy later. – Amorella

         2112 hours. I like to be organized. I am more than delighted on how Ancestry works so far. What a help. Aunt Floy could not believe [contemplate] what ancestry research we are able to do in today’s world. I can hardly believe [accept]] it myself.

         You know better, boy. ‘Believe’ as a word is way overused and is taken out of context, much of the time. What would be a better word in the above paragraph’s context? – Amorella

         2125 hours. You are right. I used ‘believe’ out of habit and laziness. We used to teach Kim about such matters as she was growing up. Now I forget to practice them.

         Go ahead and work on the ‘hints’ for a while, then we’ll see how tired you are. I’ll tell you the focus is on Dead 2.1 later or tomorrow morning. - Amorella

Notes - Edward III, John and Geoffrey / synchronized entanglement / Harry Bates / GMG.2

         Mid-morning. Welcome back, boy. – Amorella

         1002 hours. Thank you, Amorella. We were up earlier, had breakfast, read the Sunday paper and I did my exercises while Carol was drying her hair. Presently I am in the shadow of the woods at the far north lot at Pine Hill Lakes Park while Carol is on her walk.

         First, I am surprised that I like ancestry.com so well but I do and of course this new software Family Tree Maker Mac 3, is made for it. I have loaded 250 family members onto the ‘Orndorff-Hammond-Paik’ tree. I am delighted to be continuing the work Great Aunt Floy Orndorff Gray began so many years ago. I think she would be quite happy with the progress. After the last work I did, mainly from 2001-2003 there is a lot more online and other people have filled in and documented many gaps and additional ancestors for me. For instance, John Wakeman 1523-1590 – Joan Beauchamps 1526-1587 in Worchestershire, England we now have evidence that Joan is a direct descendant of John Beauchamp of Warwickshire. (1015)

         1115 hours. We are up at Grandma’s Garden about a half mile north of SR 73 on SR 48. Carol thought it was time for a ride and it helps if there is a destination.

         Boy, the Beauchamps name doesn’t mean anything any more, don’t you think. – Amorella

         1121 hours. No, probably no more than most other names but historically in England it was important and Aunt Floy would like that we were related. I love English history so it means something to me too. Otherwise, it is just a name like Eisenhower, lots of people with that name but few if any are probably ever asked if they are related to the former President and Commander in Chief.

** **

John de Beauchamp, 1st Baron Beauchamp of Kidderminster (1274-1336) was an administrator and landowner. He came from Holt, Worcestershire, and belonged to a cadet branch of the great family of Beauchamp, whose head was the Earl of Warwick. He was the son of another John (born 1319), whom he succeeded in the 1360s. A favourite of the ailing King Edward III King, in the years 1370 to 1375 he received several grants of offices, including the constableship of Bridgnorth Castle. He was elected for Worcestershire to Edward III's last parliament (January 1377) and Richard II’s first (October 1377).

Richard II regarded him warmly, and acted as godfather to his son. Retained in the household, Beauchamp soon received substantial further patronage, and by 1384 he had been made Receiver of the Chamber and Keeper of the King's Jewels. He took the order of knighthood on Richard II's entry into Scotland in 1385. That December he was granted for life the office of Justiciar of North Wales, to which was added in August 1386 a charter of liberties within his recently purchased estate at Kidderminster. Even though the Commons demanded in October that a new Steward of the Household be appointed only in parliament, Richard II refused to comply, and in January 1387 he promoted Beauchamp to the stewardship. Even more provocative was Sir John's creation on 10 October following as ‘Lord of Beauchamp and Baron of Kidderminster’, a new dignity to be maintained from the estates of Deerhurst Priory. This was the first creation of a peerage by letters patent.

Beauchamp's rapid rise from esquire to baron could not be borne by the Lords Appellant, who included his kinsman, Thomas Beauchamp, 12^th Earl of Warwick. The latter probably saw the rise of his cousin as a threat to his dominance of the midlands. Arrested and imprisoned along with three other household knights, Lord Beauchamp was impeached in the Merciless Parliament in 1388 and condemned by the lords for treason. He was beheaded on Tower Hill and buried in Worcester Cathedral. Fortunately for his heir, John Beaucham, 2^nd Baron Beauchamp of Kidderminster, then aged eleven, he had entailed certain of his manors, so these were exempt from forfeiture.

From Wikipedia

** **

         1219 hours. We have stopped at Pinecrest Greenhouse on Rt. 42 near Sharonville for two tomatoes plants. The above shows the fun in genealogy – here we are a famous man in his time no doubt made more infamous as he was beheaded for treason by the House of Lords. (1221)

         Mid-afternoon. You had a late ‘Mother’s Day’ dinner at Outback; Carol had salmon and you the six-ounce special steak. The split salad was on the house and you split the carrot cake dessert also. You offered to pay from your own monies but Carol insisted. Now you are home and you are both going to relax inside this June, summer hot afternoon. A comment I prefer to make is about John de Beauchamp is the ‘surprise’ you noted upon reading while at Grandma’s Garden. This is what caught your heart and soul, boy – Beauchamp was a good friend of King Edward III who was a good friend of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). A bit of your genes may have touched a bit of Chaucer’s genes, second hand, of course, but it is a delight to me.’ That’s the way you see it. And, secretly, ‘there is always a chance John Beauchamp had meet old Geoffrey himself’. - Amorella

** **

In 1360, Chaucer was captured by the French while serving as a soldier; the King paid a ransom of 16 pounds for his release. In 1367, Chaucer became a squire in Edward's household, receiving an lifetime annuity of 20 pounds. At the Feast of the Garter in 1374, Edward granted Chaucer a daily pitcher of wine (a royal sign of special favor).

From - http://home-dot-gwu.edu/~jhsy/chaucer-ppp.html

** **

         1551 hours. The above on Edward III and Chaucer is very cool in my heart and soul. What a wonderful thought, here I taught Chaucer (and loved him for his writings and wit) for thirty-five years and one of my ancestors may have seen and even spoke with him in the king’s presence. The very concept evokes ‘wonderful amazement’ on my part that this was even a possibility. – rho

         This is a good place to post, orndorff. - Amorella

         You both had a piecemeal supper while watching NBC News and then 60 Minutes. Once online and on Facebook you remembered the BBC science article you posted Friday. Here it is. - Amorella

** **

SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

30 May 2014 Last updated at 07:18 ET

Quantum phenomenon shown in $15m D-Wave computer

Scientists says they have obtained the best evidence yet for an important quantum physics phenomenon inside a $15m computer built by a Canadian firm.

D-Wave claims it has built the first practical quantum computer, a type of machine that could solve complex problems faster than is possible today.

Scientists say they have shown that an effect called "entanglement" is present in eight units of quantum information.

Entanglement is a key step towards building a practical platform.

The results have just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review X.

D-Wave, based in Burnaby, outside Vancouver, has courted controversy with its claim to have built a practical quantum computer, a feat that was thought to be decades away.

In a tangle

Quantum computing exploits the strange physics of quantum mechanics, which takes hold at tiny (atomic or sub-atomic) scales.

The basic units of information in classical computers are called "bits" and are stored as a string of 1s and 0s, but their equivalents in a quantum system - qubits - can be both 1s and 0s at the same time.

But the qubits need to be synchronised using a quantum effect known as entanglement, which Albert Einstein dubbed "spooky action at a distance".

"This is the first peer-reviewed scientific paper that proves entanglement in D-Wave processors," Dr Colin Williams, director of business development at D-Wave, told BBC News.

"What's even more remarkable is that this is the largest demonstration of entanglement in any quantum, superconducting computing scheme so far," he said. "It's a big achievement for the field."

They also showed that the entanglement was stable, persisting throughout a critical operation of the processor. The vast majority of academic research into this area of computing is based around the model of "quantum gates". These are the quantum equivalents of the logic gates that form the building blocks of circuits in classical computing. But D-Wave has taken a different approach known as quantum annealing. On a particular type of mathematical challenge known as an optimisation problem, annealing can, in theory, short-cut classical computers to the best answer.

Working together

The authors of the latest study used one of the qubits as a "probe" to provide information on the other qubits in D-Wave's processor. Using this information, they were able to calculate how much entanglement there was in the system.

Dr Federico Spedalieri of University of Southern California's Viterbi Information Sciences Institute and co-author of the paper, said: "There's no way around it. Only quantum systems can be entangled. This test provides the experimental proof that we've been looking for."

Prof Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, told BBC News: "One of the three quantum effects that you need for it to be defined as a true quantum computer is entanglement."

Calling the result "a big deal", he added: "It does appear to be conclusive that they have a large number of qubits entangled and they do see to be working together."

D-Wave's processor uses 512 qubits, but the technique in the latest study was able to characterise only eight qubits.

Sceptics about D-Wave computers such as Prof Scott Aaronson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say the machines show "pretty good" evidence for entanglement at a local level, but not necessarily on a large scale.

But in response, Dr Williams said there was reason to believe entanglement is pervasive across the processor.

"We could have chosen any part of the processor to do this experiment on," he explains, adding: "There's no reason to believe the entanglement is limited to just these eight qubits.

"We've done other experiments to determine entanglement in different unit cells and we see similar results."

Prof Woodward commented: "In quantum physics, one of the really difficult things is to witness something because as soon as you witness something, you interfere with it.

"By being a witness, you have to be careful you don't become part of what you're seeing. But the techniques they've used are generally accepted as showing what they are able to show: entanglement among a fairly large number of stable qubits."

However, sceptics doubt that the machines are leveraging quantum physics for any performance boost relative to classical machines.

While entanglement is required to get quantum "speed-up", they argue that it is perfectly possible to have entanglement without speed-up.

In one study released in 2013, Catherine McGeoch of Amherst College in Massachusetts, a consultant for D-Wave, found the machine was 3,600 times faster on some tests than a desktop computer.

But a study published earlier this earlier year by Matthias Troyer from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and colleagues pitted the D-Wave machine against a standard high-spec desktop computer.

On some tests chosen by the team, D-Wave's machine was found to offer no performance boost over the regular computer.

However, D-Wave maintains that the tests used by Prof Troyer's team were not ones where the company's computer offers any advantage. Indeed, Dr Williams even argues that the random challenges were too easy for the computer, which was designed to tackle a very difficult and specialised class of problems.

Dr Williams said the stability of entanglement revealed in the latest study further underlined that quantum annealing was more robust than the gate model of quantum computing.

Lab devices based on the gate model suffer from dropout, where the qubits lose their ambiguity and become straightforward 1s and 0s. This has in part ensured that quantum computers remain confined to the lab.

Quantum annealing is not as susceptible to this dropout problem, but advocates of the gate model argue that D-Wave's approach can't provide the performance boost theoretically possible with gates.

From BBC News, 30 May 2014

** **

         Qubits - synchronized entanglement – D-Wave and quantum annealing is what hits your mind, but ‘synchronized entanglement’ goes deeper, to the heart. That’s how it reads in here, boy.

         2035 hours. Why is that, Amorella? The way it looks from my perspective is that whatever my ‘heart’ is, it feeds on imagination as much as it does on probability (no matter how little) in science.

         Since you asked, here is what it comes down to – back in 1954 or so you had seen a flying saucer movie at the drive in theatre with the family and you got the idea in your head that it might be possible to communicate with aliens via the short wave radio as you scanned through the dials most every night listening for short wave broadcasts from around the world. Later, in the late seventies you put these concepts to work in your first science fiction novel, Anno Dominae and other ‘starter’ works. The key literary work was a short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates. It was suggested to you by Vladimir R. at Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo in 1970.

** **

"Farewell to the Master" is a science fiction short story written by Harry Bates. It was first published in the October 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It provided the basis of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still and its 2008 remake. In 1973, the story was adapted by Marvel Comics for its Worlds Unknown series with Bates' blessing.

Plot

The story is told from the viewpoint of Cliff Sutherland, a free-lance picture reporter, who is present when a mysterious "curving  ovoid" ship instantaneously appears in the grounds of the  United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Two days later, "visitors from the Unknown" emerge: a "god-like" person in human form and an 8-foot (2.44 m) tall robot made of green metal. The former only manages to state "I am Klaatu and this is Gnut" before he is shot and killed by a lunatic. Klaatu is buried nearby. In the days that follow, Gnut remains motionless, while laboratories and a museum are built around it and the ship. Both prove impervious to the investigations of scientists.

Sutherland discovers that the robot enters the ship each night when no one is watching, emerging to resume its position for the day. Gnut is aware of the reporter, but ignores him. After several odd encounters, Sutherland informs the world what he has learned. Gnut is encased in "glasstex", finally forcing the robot's hand. It breaks out, unaffected by all attempts to destroy it, picks up Sutherland and travels to the mausoleum containing Klaatu's corpse. It opens the tomb and takes a recording of Klaatu's voice stored there. It then returns and goes inside the ship.

Sutherland daringly boards the ship before the entrance closes and learns that the robot is working on a way to create a copy of Klaatu from an audio recording of his greeting. The new Klaatu is flawed, because the recording is imperfect, and he dies soon after speaking with the reporter. Sutherland then suggests retrieving the original recording device, to study it and discover how to compensate for its imperfections. Gnut eagerly adopts this idea. Sutherland arranges that the equipment be brought to it; later, when he intuitively senses that the robot is ready to depart, he impresses upon it the need to tell its masters that Klaatu's death was an accident, leading to a surprise ending. Gnut replies, "You misunderstand, I am the master."

From - Wikipedia

** **

         Deep in your adolescent fantasies you wanted to speak with aliens and learn from them. So, the aliens continued until the late eighties when you happened upon the concept of marsupial humanoids and here we are. – Amorella

         2108 hours. I remember reading the short story while we were overseas and what I remember most was that the short story, was, to me, much more impressive than The Day the Earth Stood Still which was, to me, a wonderful science fiction film in its day. I liked the remake also, but neither had the affect on me that the short story had – to make the mistake that the ‘humanoid’ had to be the master.

         It was the twist that turned my mind inside out. I remember Vlad’s explanation. He looked at me straight on with those honest and mischievous eyes of his, pointed his right index finger to his right eye and his left index finger to his left eye and then flipped his right finger to his left eye and his left finger to his right eye. That was his visual of “You misunderstand, I am the master.” I will never forget that moment. The two of us had an immediate understanding of the other in that context.  

         Enough for tonight. Tomorrow you have some errands. You also need to finish up the work on the early Beauchamps, and then we will begin Great Merlyn’s Ghost, Volume Two. Post. - Amorella