{"id":141,"date":"2006-10-09T06:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-09T06:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=141"},"modified":"2021-10-12T20:55:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T01:55:18","slug":"ja-ein-klein-wienerschnitzel-entscheidungsproblem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=141","title":{"rendered":"Ja! Ein klein Wienerschnitzel Entscheidungsproblem"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\nI arrived yesterday in Innsbruck, Austria — a lovely medieval town set in a valley in the Tyrolean Alps. Here the Pontiff<\/a> and I are sharing an office at the Institut f\u00fcr Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation<\/a>, and will have to work out a comedy routine to be performed Friday morning, when we’re supposed to open the QIPC meeting<\/a> at Ike Newton’s old stomping grounds, the Royal Society in London.<\/p>\n

Since I’m too jetlagged to write a coherent entry, I hope you’ll be satisfied with some lists:<\/p>\n

The three secrets of air travel (distilled from a decade of experience flying to four continents, and offered free of charge to you, my readers):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Bring a book. Don’t even try to work on the plane; just read read read read read. If you get stuck in the airport for hours, all the more time to read!<\/li>\n
  2. If you must work, do it with pen and paper, not a laptop.<\/li>\n
  3. Put your laptop case in the overhead bin, not under your seat. This will give you more room to stretch your legs.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The only three German words you’ll ever need to know:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Danke (thank you). To be said after any interaction with anyone.<\/li>\n
    2. Ein (one). As in: I will have one of those (pointing).<\/li>\n
    3. Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem). The problem of deciding whether a first-order sentence is true in every interpretation, proven to be undecidable by Church and Turing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The two things I saw yesterday that I wish I’d taken a photo of but didn’t:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. A jewelry store display case, proudly displaying “SCHMUCK” brand designer watches. (Important Correction: Ignorant schmuck that I am, I hadn’t realized that “schmuck” is not a brand name, but just the German word for jewelry. Apparently the meaning in Yiddish migrated from “jewels” to “family jewels” to “person being compared to the family jewels,” which is a bit ironic. “Oh my turtledove, the apple of my eye, my priceless schmuck…”)<\/li>\n
      2. A campaign poster for one of Austria’s far-right politicians, which graffiti artists had decorated with a Hitler mustache, a forehead swastika, and salutations of “Heil!” (Just what point were the graffiti artists trying to make? I wish I understood.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        I arrived yesterday in Innsbruck, Austria — a lovely medieval town set in a valley in the Tyrolean Alps. Here the Pontiff and I are sharing an office at the Institut f\u00fcr Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, and will have to work out a comedy routine to be performed Friday morning, when we’re supposed to open the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-meatspace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5996,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/5996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}