Commentary on the Endless Dispute Between Evolution and Creationism
Jason Rosenhouse received his PhD in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 2000. He subsequently spent three years as a post-doc at Kansas State University. Observing the machinations of the Kansas Board of Education led to his unhealthy obsession with issues related to evolution and creationism. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, VA.
May 14, 2008
Category: Science
That's the title of a truly excellent article by Stephen Pinker for The New Republic. The subject is the 500+ page report by the President's Council on Biotheics attempting to define what human dignity actually is. I despair of selecting just a few quotes, since the whole article is superb, but I will give it a try beneath the fold.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 9:37 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 13, 2008
Category: Politics
What a charming President we have:
For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization's high commissioner for human rights.
“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, 'It's just not worth it anymore to do.'”
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:40 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
Ed Brayton has an interesting post on one of my favorite subjects. It is based on remarks made by two of Ed's commenters. Let's have a look.
Commenter Sastra begins with the following:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:51 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
David Brooks has a fairly goofy column in today's New York Times. Apparently “hard-core materialism” is on its way out:
Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:47 PM • 40 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 8, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
There's nothing to see here. Let's all move along now...
Oh, and go see Iron Man. Great movie!
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:00 PM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 7, 2008
It's sweet. It's soooo sweet. All the years of hiding, of playing along, of pretending to be one of them, just to get to this point. How many times did I sit there during afternoon tea, throwing darts at the board with Michael Behe's face on it, laughing at their sick little jokes:
How many Creationists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Creationists don't use lightbulbs. They prefer the Dark Ages!!
Hahahahahaha! Hey, that's a good one. Tell me that one about William Dumbski again...
Sure, I went along. I participated in all those morbidly anti-religious initiation rites professors are forced into but agree not to talk about. I recited all the politically correct cant that is the key to success in academe. At times I was so deep under cover I actually got out of bed in the morning hoping for a chance to hound and ostracize some vaguely religious colleague.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:50 PM • 141 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 6, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
Here at EvolutionBlog we're sometimes a bit slow with the routine maintenance. My blogroll over there has long been in need of a massive updating. My brief attempt to come up with a cool banner for the blog foundered on my general lack of motivation for such a project. And I still haven't gotten around to figuring out why my Chess links don't quite format properly.
But if you look carefully you'll notice one change I managed to get around to with all due speed. I received a letter today informing me that I am no longer expected merely to Assist the other professors, I am now entitled to Associate with them.
I got tenure! Yay! By my count it's been about fifteen years getting to this point. I started studying mathematics seriously in my last two years of college (a rather late start in this profession). Then it was five years of graduate school, three years as a post-doc in Kansas, and now five years at JMU. Pretty satisfying. Suddenly that obnoxious and contentless rejection letter I received a month ago on a paper the journal should have been honored to publish doesn't seem to sting so much. (I'll just patch it up and send it off to the next journal, where it will languish for ten months to a year. What do I care? It's not like I'm in any great hurry to publish anymore!)
So there you go. Guess now I can tell you what I really think...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:02 PM • 59 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 1, 2008
Category: Religion
I have often commented that it is the arguments of theistic evolutionists, as opposed to those offered by Creationists, that have convinced me that evolution and Christianity can not be reconciled in any reasonable way. A good case in point is Francisco Ayala.
Via Ed Brayton I came across this profile of Ayala from Tuesday's New York Times. In it we find items such as this:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:55 PM • 191 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 26, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
When I was in elementary school I was taught that if you have a noun that ends in `s', and you want to make that noun possessive, you do it by placing an apostrophe at the end of the word and that is all. Thus, in referring to the theorem proved by Thomas Bayes, you would write Bayes' theorm. In referring to the book wirtten by Richard Dawkins, you would write Dawkins' book.
Lately, though, several people have told me that this is not correct. Apparently we are now supposed to place an `apostrophe s' at the end of all nouns, regardless of whether or not the word already ends in `s'. Thus, I would write Bayes's theorem or Dawkins's book. It would seem that if I want to refer to the beauty of the game of chess, I now have to write chess's beauty, which rather creates the impression that the `s' key is sticking.
Nonetheless, in matters punctuational I am most definitely a conformist. So if this is what I must do then so be it. What do you think?
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:56 PM • 50 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
A common response to the books by Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris involved castigating them for the shallowness of their understanding of religion. In their incessant focus on fundamentalism and more extreme forms of religious belief, they proved themselves unwilling to consider seriously the nuance and subtlety of mainstream religious thought, it was argued.
P.Z. Myers brilliantly satirized this argument, referring to it as The Courtier's Reply. I was moved to think about it once more in light of this exchange of editorials in the British newspaper The Guardian. Representing sunshine and goodness is Daniel Dennett. Preferring darkness and obscurantism is Lord Robert Winston.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:24 PM • 179 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 22, 2008
Category: Anti-Creationism
I went to see Expelled yesterday. I am happy to report it was a private screening. Had the theater to myself. Last time that happened was when I saw Snakes on a Plane (a far more scientifically accurate film, by the way).
Granted, it was a Monday night. Indeed, when I go to see movies I nearly always do so on Mondays or Tuesdays specifically to avoid the crowds. The fact remains that for a new release I can typically count on about a dozen people watching the film with me. And let's not forget that I am living in a town that is -- how shall I put this? -- somewhat right of center politically. Should have been a ready-made audience for this dreck. Indeed, the low turnout even made me scotch my plans to write a letter to the editor of the local paper urging people to check out the Expelled Exposed website. Why call attention to the film if no one else seems to care?
Short review: The best part was the trailer for Get Smart that ran before the movie. (No, Steve Carrell does not do the voice.)
Long review below the fold.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:21 PM • 243 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 20, 2008
Category: Mathematics
Well, I finished the first draft of the big Monty Hall book this past week. Still need to make some diagrams, and there's probably a fair amount of rewriting in my future, but the “words from nothing” phase is now over. Yay!
If anyone would care to give me some feedback, here is the first chapter. And also the bibliography for the book, to make the citations work out properly. I'm already aware of a number of typos, but don't hesitate to point them out anyway. I'm more interested in what people think of the tone and the style. Or anything else it occurs to you to comment on.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:36 PM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 14, 2008
Category: Politics
Here's Slate's Melinda Henneberger commenting on small-town political attitudes:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:25 PM • 33 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anti-Creationism
Meanwhile, the release date for Ben Stein's antievolution propaganda piece Expelled draws nigh. If you've been following any of the press coverage you are probably aware that one of the main charges in the film is that Darwinism in some way led to the Nazis and the holocaust.
In that light, it is worth noting that one of the “scientists” appearing in the film to cast aspersions on evolution spends his free time saying things like this:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:04 PM • 57 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anti-Creationism
William Dembski's lead blogflak DaveScot has stepped in it even more badly than usual. Commenting on Richard Dawkins' recent appearance on Bill Maher's show the other night, he writes:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:43 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 9, 2008
Category: Anti-Creationism
Not because it's false, mind you. There is no reasonable definition of science that includes Intelligent Design and Creationism, and it is perfectly legitimate to point that out. In certain contexts, like when you are arguing that it is unconstitutional to teach ID in public high school science classes, it is even an important and relevant point.
But it is not the main reason serious scientists want nothing to do with the notion and it should not be the first thing you say when debating the subject. Case in point, consider how the usually excellent Steven Novella opens this post about ID:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:28 PM • 158 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 8, 2008
Category: Science
Monty Hall strikes again!
Today's New York Times has this article, by John Tierney, about the latest wrinkle in the Monty Hall problem. According to M. Keith Chen, an economist at Yale University, the results of certain psychological studies are called into question by a sytematic error in their methodology. And the error, it seems, is rather similar to the one found in the classic wrong solution to the MHP:
The Monty Hall Problem has struck again, and this time it's not merely embarrassing mathematicians. If the calculations of a Yale economist are correct, there's a sneaky logical fallacy in some of the most famous experiments in psychology.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:38 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 2, 2008
Category: Religion
I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but I actually enjoyed David Berlinski's talk yesterday in Washington D.C.
Berlinski might be familiar to you as the author of a number of boneheaded articles in Commentary magazine over the last ten years. He has decided to jump on the anti-Dawkins bandwagon with his new book The Devil's Delsuion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. The publisher is Crown Forum. Among their other authors: Ann Coulter and Michael Medved. Get the idea?
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:27 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 31, 2008
Category: Science
Nicholas Kristof has a good column in today's New York Times. Here's a taste:
From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are (Bill Clinton was masterful at hiding a brilliant mind behind folksy Arkansas sayings about pigs).Alas, when a politician has the double disadvantage of obvious intelligence and an elite education and then on top of that tries to educate the public on a complex issue -- as Al Gore did about climate change -- then that candidate is derided as arrogant and out of touch.
The dumbing-down of discourse has been particularly striking since the 1970s. Think of the devolution of the emblematic conservative voice from William Buckley to Bill O'Reilly.
Well said!
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:14 PM • 80 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 28, 2008
Category: Evolution
Christianity Today has now published a review of Michael Behe's book The Edge of Evolution. You might dimly recall this book, since it was briefly big news among the ID folks upon its publication last year. It disappeared pretty quickly on account of it being not only wrong scientifically, but dreadfully boring to boot.
CT got Stephen Webb, a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, to write the review. Bad idea. Unlike Behe's first book Darwin's Black Box, whose major errors could be ferreted out by anyone capable of a bit of logical thinking, the present volume really requires a considerable knoledge of biology to review properly. Webb, one suspects, knows little about any relevant scientific discipline, which is why his review contains little more than mindless cheerleading.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:12 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
The big Monty Hall book is rapidly coming together. I may even have the first draft done in the next few weeks. It's certainly been a lot more work than I expected when I began. Originally I envisioned a straight math book, where each chapter would present a different variation of the problem followed by a discussion of the sorts of mathematics needed to solve it. To a large extent it is still that, but I was a bit taken aback by the sheer quantity of academic literature that has been produced on the subject. My bibliography is likely to contain more than a hundred items. A discussion of some representative sample of this literature seems called for. Alas, that means first reading it, and then understanding it.
One of the more intriguing angles that arose during my research was several papers written by physicists developing quantum mechanical versions of the problem. Alas, after reading these papers it became clear that the level of mathematics and physics involved was well beyond anything I could reasonably discuss in the book. Still, I wanted to say something about these papers, if just to acknowledge their existence.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:58 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
If you are not already familiar with Oxford's series of Very Short Introductions, I recommend having a look. I've read about two dozen of them to this point and have found them to be consistently excellent.
I've just finished reading the volume on Quantum Theory, written by John Polkinghorne. I especially liked his concluding two paragraphs, where in the space of a few sentences he says all that is important in dealing with the woo-meisters who use the subject for their own New Agey ends:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:07 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 25, 2008
Category: Politics
The Olympics are coming, and with them a new opportunity for the holier than thou amongst us to urge boycotts in the service of political agendas. Anne Applebaum of Slate gets the party started with this essay. She doesn't actually call for a boycott, but she seems awfully sympathetic to those who are calling for one:
No wonder, then, that everyone who hates or fears China, whether in Burma, Darfur, Tibet, or Beijing, is calling for a boycott. And the Chinese government and the IOC are terrified that they will succeed. No one involved in the preparations for this year's Olympics really believes that this is “only about the athletes,” or that the Beijing Games will be an innocent display of sporting prowess, or that they bear no relation to Chinese politics. I don't see why the rest of us should believe it, either.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:14 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution in Pop Culture
Have you been following this? P. Z. Myers got recognized at a screening of Expelled and was thrown out. Richard Dawkins, who was with Myers, did not get recognized and was allowed in. Hilarious! I think most people would agree with Dawkins' take:
The blogs are ringing with ridicule. Mark Mathis, duplicitous producer of the much hyped film Expelled, shot himself in the foot so spectacularly that the phrase might have been invented for him. Goals don't come more own than this. How is it possible that a man who makes his living from partisan propaganda could hand so stunning a propaganda coup to his opponents? Hand it to them on a plate, so ignominiously and so UNNECESSARILY.
Quite right. I recommend the remainder of Dawkins' lengthy essay as well.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:32 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 23, 2008
Category: Anti-Creationism
I suspect that everyone reading this has heard the story of what happened when P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins tried to attend a screening of Expelled in Minneapolis last week. Short version: P.Z. got recognized and was not allowed in. Dawkins was not recognized and was allowed in. If you've been living in a cave for the last week you can check out P.Z.'s post here. Then scroll through the remainder of his recent posts to hear about the fallout.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:47 PM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 14, 2008
Category: Religion
Chris over at Mixing Memory argues, both in this post and in the subsequent comments, that he is. I think that claim is deeply silly and trivializes the term fundamentalist. I've been mixing it up with Chris and some of his readers in the comments to his post. Having spilled so many words on the issue, I figured I might as well get a blog post of my own out of it. So go have a look and let me know what you think!
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:56 PM • 194 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 12, 2008
Category: Religion
The New York Times is reporting that Michael Heller, a Roman Catholic Priest and cosmologist from Poland, has won the 2008 Templeton Prize. The Christian Science Monitor offers some further details here.
In case you are unfamiliar with it, the Templeton Prize is a 1.6 million dollar (!!) prize given out to those attempting to reconcile science with religion. Typically it goes to people with genuine scientific credentials who are nonetheless willing to utter comforting bromides about how science and religion are two sides of the same coin.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 9:24 PM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
This paper (PDF format) by British philosopher Simon Blackburn is getting some attention in the blogosphere. Let's have a look.
Blackburn addresses the question of what it means to respect religion, from the perspective of an atheist. The essay is perfect, by which I mean that it says exactly what I think needs to be said on this issue.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:46 PM • 38 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 29, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
As usual, I'm late to this particular party. Over at BayBlab, a blogger calling himself “Anonymous Coward” offers up some choice words for the all-powerful, all-consuming, resistance-is-futile ScienceBlogs combine:
If you examine the elephant in the room, ScienceBlogs, the trend is maintained: politics, religion books, technology, education and music are tagged more often than biology or genetics. This suggests that their primary motives are entertainment rather than discussing science. Why? Because it pays. Seed Magazine and the bloggers themselves profit from the traffic. That's right, Seed actually pays these bloggers for their posts. And the whole ScienceBlogs thing is a little incestuous, they really like linking to each other, but not so much to the little blogs. I'm afraid gone is the amateur blogger, and in is the professional gonzo science journalist. Might as well read Seed magazine.
I'm afraid this is mostly nonsense. More on that in a moment.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:57 PM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2008
Category: Politics
From last night's Tucker:
CARLSON: This was my 20th--literally, I think it was my 20th Oscar night in a row where I didn't watch any of it.WOLFF: It was really bad. I don't know if it's stagflation or bad weather or whatever, but I was just not in the mood, friend. I blame stagflation.
CARLSON: Watching rich people congratulate themselves, no.
Rich people congratulating themselves. The punditocracy in a nutshell.
Oh, and more people watched the Oscars on Sunday than watch Tucker in a year.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:21 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 24, 2008
Category: Religion
That, minus the question mark, is the title of a new article by theologian John Haught in the current issue of The Christian Century. The subtitle is “Why the New Atheism isn't Serious.” Sadly, the article does not seem to be available online.
After reading that headline, I was expecting Haught to offer a variation on The Courtier's Reply. Actually, Haught has something different in mind.
The serious atheists, in his view, are Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. What makes them serious?
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:02 PM • 252 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
The Christian Century has this interesting article about the relationship between evolution and Christianity, written by Amy Frykholm. Interesting not because it actually resolves the question in any satisfactory way, but rather because it states the problem in a more forthright manner than is typical for writing in this genre:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:08 PM • 42 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 11, 2008
Category: Anti-Creationism
Finally, The Christian Century has published this lengthy report of a visit to the Creation Museum. It was written by Jason Byassee. Most of the article is a bemused and slightly cynical account of the exhibits you find at the museum. It was the last paragraph that really caught my eye, however:
Reconciling Christian claims about God, creation and humanity with the findings of Darwin and his successors is an important and daunting task, one that mainline theology has still not satisfactorily accomplished. AiG can hardly be faulted for attempting the task, though its effort is a spectacular failure.
Two excellent sentences. I recommend having a look at the whole thing.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:26 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
The Guardian series also contains this article from theology professor Richard Harries, arguing -- surprise! -- that evolution and Christian faith are compatible. Let's have a look.
Here's paragraph two:
As the Victorian novelist Charles Kingsley put it, God does not just make the world, he does something much more wonderful, he makes the world make itself. More generally, the scientist Asa Gray, a close friend of Darwin, said that there had been no undue reluctance amongst Christians in accepting Darwin's theory. So how it is that some people still think the church was opposed to evolution? And what about creationism?
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:04 PM • 54 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
In other news, the Guardian newspaper has posted a series of articles about various evolution related topics.
First up is this characteristically lucid entry from Richard Dawkins. I especially like this:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:37 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
Meanwhile, over at Town Hall Dinesh D'Souza serves up yet another steaming pile of religious idiocy. His subject is an exchange between Rabbi Jacob Neusner and Pope Benedict. He opens with a gratuitous slap at Richard Dawkins:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:49 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
It will be a little while yet before I can get back to blogging regularly. But as a way of flexing my atrophying blogging muscles, let me direct your attention to another superlative column from Paul Krugman:
What's particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” -- the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons' part, yet the "scandal" became a symbol of the Clinton administration's alleged corruption.
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton's entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.'s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother's campaign -- as adult children of presidential aspirants often do -- asked, “doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.
Go read the whole thing. Then go read The Howler for further commentary.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 2:27 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 2, 2008
Category: Mathematics
Here's a little brainteaser to think about if the Super Bowl ends up being a bit dull. Imagine that you are standing at the baggage carousel at an airport waiting for your bag. A percentage x of the bags from your flight have already appeared on the carousel and yours is not among them. How large does x have to be before there is a probability greater than one half that your bag has been lost by the airline?
Of course, we need to make a few assumptions before we can attempt a proper mathematical analysis of the situation.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:38 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2008
Category: Mathematics
Via Mark Chu-Carroll I just read this article, from the USA Today, about a mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania who believes that fractions have no place in the elementary and middle school mathematics curriculum:
A few years ago, Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, stood at an outdoor podium on campus and proclaimed, "Down with fractions!"“Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation,” DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. “But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are.”
The speech started a firestorm, particularly after the university posted it online.
“There were blogs and rants, and there were some critical e-mails,” said DeTurck, who is now dean of the college of arts and sciences at Penn. “They'd always boil down to: 'What would we do in cooking and carpentry?' ”
DeTurck is stirring the pot again, this time in a book scheduled to be published this year. Not only does he favor the teaching of decimals over fractions to elementary school students, he's also taking on long division, the calculation of square roots and by-hand multiplication of long numbers.
Since I am suspicious of the USA Today's ability to report accurately on this sort of topic, I will withhold final judgment until I have read DeTurck's book. However, based on what is reported in this article I must tentatively conclude that, sadly, he is out of his mind. Mark has already said most of what needs saying, but I have a few disagreements with him as well.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:19 PM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 28, 2008
Category: Chess
If you'll forgive another chess post, the annual grandmaster chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands is now complete. It was the first major tournament of the year, and it had a pleasingly unexpected outcome. Young phenoms Levon Aronian of Armenia and Magnus Carlsen of Norway were the joint winners, with eight points out of thirteen.
For Aronian this was a return to form. His ability to play with the big boys had been established in a number of tournament wins (for example, Wijk aan Zee 2007). Alas, his play had been somewhat shaky since then, but he is plainly back in form.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:16 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Go read Paul Krugman's column. Money quote:
First, those who don't want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don't want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s -- a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy -- are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can't bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).
Bingo!
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 2:38 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2008
Category: Politics
Journalism is dead, folks. Start with that. Can you point to a single mainstream media outlet, whether a cable news channel or network news broadcast or newspaper or newsmagazine, that you trust to give you the basic facts about anything? Cable news is now almost wall-to-wall gossip shows, where right-wingers and properly housebroken liberals gather together to explain how the latest statements from the candidates show that the Republicans are courageous truthtellers, while the Democrats are unprincipled wimps. The sole execption, Keith Olbermann, provides some blessed relief, but even he is not beyond exaggerating and straining a point.
For those who have been paying attention, this has been obvious for quite some time. I recommend reading The Daily Howler every day, which for many years has been doing yeoman's work documenting the gory details. But things have really reached an absurd degree in the coverage of Hillary Clinton. Forget about the right-wing pundits, the creepy thing is how the supposedly liberal pundits have all gotten and absorbed the memo that anything done by a Clinton must be presented in a negative light, even if that means distortions or outright lying. Here are just a few examples:
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:30 PM • 70 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 20, 2008
Category: Anti-Creationism
ID folks make numerous assertions said to represent scientific challenges to conventional evolutionary theory. These claims are uniformly wrong, which is one of the reasons scientists generally ignore them.
But ID folks also claim that adopting a design perspective could lead to great progress in science, if only scientists would take off their materialist blinders. There is an acid test for all such claims: Go discover something! Writers are fond of saying “Show, don't tell,” and that adage applies very well here. If your perspective is so useful, then prove it by discovering something the conventional methods had overlooked.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:00 PM • 194 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chess
Via The Chess Ninja, I see that Gary Kasparov has commented on the death of Bobby Fischer. I have copied his remarks below the fold.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:42 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2008
Category: Chess
Former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer has died of kidney failure at the age of 64. The New York Times has an informative article here.
For chess fans Bobby Fischer was the classic example of the need to separate the art from the artist. Away from the board Fischer was an emotionally disturbed misfit, entirely unable to take care of himself or deal with the world in a reasonable way. His incoherent, hate-filled rants against Jews and America made him more an object of pity than of anger.
But at the board he's the best there ever was. Only Gary Kasparov is a plausible rival for this title, and Kasparov himself, hardly a modest man, has ceded the claim to Fischer. In his prime Fischer was putting up numbers never seen before or since. The gap between him and his nearest competitors was huge. But let's begin at the beginning...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:21 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 15, 2008
Category: Mathematics
We are all familiar with optical illusions. These are situations where your eyes misperceive the nature of some image or physical object.
For some time now psychologists and cognitive scientists have been discussing the reality of cognitive illusions. These are situations where people just don't reason properly about some readily described situation. The Monty Hall problem is sometimes described as an example of such an illusion, which, indeed, is why I have been thinking about this recently.
Below the fold is an interesting example drawn from elemenatry logic. I found it in the book Inevitable Illusions by Massimo Piatteli-Palmarini.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 2:33 PM • 33 Comments • 0 TrackBacks