Ice Cream
Today I bought a book. Thats a strange opening for a post with the title “Ice Cream”, but it leads on, I promise. The book was one I’d ordered at an independent bookshop in Morningside, and it’s ostensibly a course-related text. I feel like this paragraph has been building up to the title of this volume, and I honestly can’t identify why. Just to break the growing suspense, the book was “A Shortcut Through Time” by George Johnson, and it is a relatively undemanding introduction to quantum computing.
I’m really enjoying the book so far. I’m about halfway through, and I expect to have finished it by the end of play tomorrow, maybe even before I go to sleep tonight. If you have any interest in quantum mechanics, computing, or information theory, I’d recommend checking it out.
Anyway, on to the title. As I left the bookshop, my eye was caught by a sign that you’d find irrestible if you grew up where I did: S. Luca. For the record, where I grew up was Musselburgh, just on the cusp of Edinburgh: a smallish town with a racecourse, an expensive private school, and the best ice cream on the East coast. There are a lot of things that people think are the best because they originate from the same place, but in this case the bias is justified.
I really like ice cream, and so I try it wherever I go. The only places I’ve been with ice cream that comes close to Luca’s are Orkney and Northern Italy. Creaminess, smoothness, depth of flavour: Luca’s is hard to beat.
So that was my afternoon: bought a book, ate great ice cream. How was yours?
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