January 27, 2011
By now you have no doubt heard that MSNBC, apparently fretting that their ratings were not low enough, has fired Keith Olbermann. Brilliant move! They have replaced him with the milquetoast, CW spouting Laurence O'Donnell, meaning that reruns of NCIS are probably now the best option for…
January 24, 2011
Time to finish what we started last week.
We saw that if a, b, c was a primitive Pythagorean triple, then at least one of a and b is even and one is odd. Let us declare, then, that we will use a to denote the odd length and b to denote the even one. By rearranging the Pythagorean equation and…
January 20, 2011
The book gods have punished me for my apostasy. It turns out the Kindle has no mechanism for telling you the physical page number you are on in the book. This makes it problematic for scholarly purposes, since page numbers are usually expected for a proper citation.
It never even occurred to me…
January 19, 2011
I am currently working on a section of the BECB (the big evoluition/creation book) in which I discuss some of the legal history of the issue. Towards that end I just read the opinions of the Tennessee Supreme Court in the Scopes Trial. The Court addressed a number of issues, but we shall save…
January 18, 2011
I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point technology left me behind. I still can't play those first-person video games without getting dizzy and confused. On those rare occasions when I want to record a television program, I use videotape. I despise cell phones, though I do begrudgingly…
January 16, 2011
It just so happens that I am teaching elementary number theory this term. So how about the triumphant return of Monday Math!
For those playing the home game, the course textbook is A Friendly Introduction to Number Theory (Third Ed.) by Joseph Silverman. Let's begin.
I'm sure we all remember…
January 4, 2011
I'll be in New Orleans for the next few days for the annual math extravaganza known as
the Joint Mathematics Meetings I'll be speaking on Friday, about the Monty Hall problem of course. As my reward, I will be seeing Ellis Marsalis perform at the Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro that night. Should be fun…
January 4, 2011
Shame on you if you don't know Al Jaffee. He's been a cartoonist for Mad Magazine going back to its founding in 1954. He is best known for the “Fold-Ins” which are hard to describe if you've never seen them. Click here to have a look. He also wrote the “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”…
December 29, 2010
I am on the mailing lists of a number of creationist organizations, including the Access Research Network. A few days ago I received a postcard from them. It opens with the following, encouraging paragraph:
The economy has taken its toll on us here at ARN with our donations and product sales…
December 29, 2010
Essays like this must be the reason I am a fan of Sam Harris.
While the United States has suffered the worst recession in living memory, I find that I have very few financial concerns. Many of my friends are in the same position: Most of us attended private schools and good universities, and we…
December 29, 2010
Update: I have revised the original post to reflect the observation made by ProgJohn in comment five, and Raka in comment eleven.
Over at HuffPo, Rabbi Adam Jacobs presumes to explain “The Jewish View of Creationism.” The title alone is a bad sign. The standard line is that if you put ten…
December 23, 2010
I am sorry to do yet another post about Michael Ruse, but I do feel the need to reply to his latest. Partly I feel compelled to reply because of this remark:
In the case of people like me, those who endorse the independence option, our fellow nonbelievers are scornful to an extent equaled only by…
December 19, 2010
I had intended to devote this post to Michael Ruse's latest column for HuffPo. It turns out, though, that first we need to consider this earlier column from Ruse.
When I first started writing about evolution and creationism I took a highly accommodationist line. I was perfectly happy to parrot…
December 18, 2010
Another semester has come and gone. Turned in my course grades today. Much happiness.
Oh, and DADT was repealed. Eight Republicans decided to stop being evil for a few minutes and voted the right way.
December 17, 2010
I realize that other people have the cat blogging beat nailed down, but this story is just too heart-warming to pass up.
Now, back to grading finals...
December 14, 2010
The Big Monty Hall Book has now been reviewed in Mathematical Reviews. The reviewer is Paul Humphreys, a philosophy professor at the University of Virginia. Let's have a look:
Those intrigued by the original Monty Hall problem will find that this book is a superb source of variants of the…
December 13, 2010
The BECB (that's the big evolution/creation book) is slowly winding its way towards a complete first draft. I just finished writing a chapter about religious experiences. Creationists routinely tell me they have had them, you see.
So over the last few months I have read my share of the…
December 13, 2010
Here's Dana Milbank making stuff up in The Washington Post:
This is a hopeful sign that Obama has learned the lessons of the health-care debate, when he acceded too easily to the wishes of Hill Democrats, allowing them to slow the legislation and engage in a protracted debate on the public option…
December 7, 2010
Here's an interesting nugget from Ezra Klein:
If you look at the numbers alone, the tax cut deal looks to have robbed Republicans blind. The GOP got around $95 billion in tax cuts for wealthy Americans and $30 billion in estate tax cuts. Democrats got $120 billion in payroll-tax cuts, $40 billion…
December 7, 2010
Discovery Institute flak David Klinghoffer is getting all misty-eyed about the tenth anniversary of Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution. Doubtless you recall the book, which contained very little that was true. What struck me, though, was this statement from Klinghoffer:
When I say the book…
December 6, 2010
Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers, those little scamps, are kvetching about the NCSE again. It seems that the NCSE posted a link to this series of videos defending the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. Here is the NCSE's post:
Interested in exploring the issues raised by science and faith?…
December 5, 2010
Over at HuffPo, John Farrell has an interesting post up about the dissatisfacton with ID expressed by many Catholics. He writes:
The Discovery Institute has from its beginning claimed it would in short order get actual scientists to consider intelligent design as a viable scientific theory, by…
December 2, 2010
It used to be that Kentucky was known primarily for bourbon and horse racing. But now they seem determined to add creationism to that list:
Gov. Steve Beshear said Wednesday that a creationism theme park, expected to open in Northern Kentucky in 2014, would have a $250 million annual impact on…
November 30, 2010
When people ask the question in the post's title, or the roughly equivalent question, “What is the meaning of life?” my reply is that I don't understand what is being asked. They both seem like category errors to me; universes don't have purposes and lives don't have meanings. If I were to…
November 29, 2010
As a way of easing our way back into regular blogging, let's take a quick look at what Michael Ruse has been up to. This was posted at HuffPo on October 28:
Neither I nor the well-known philosopher Philip Kitcher believes in the existence of God or in the claims of the major (or minor) religions…
November 11, 2010
In happier news, the BSB (that's the Big Sudoku Book) is now finished! Yay! It will take a while to turn it around into an actual book, so look for it next summer. Now it's time to get back to the BECB (the big evolution/creation book). I'm still hoping to have a first draft of that done by the…
November 11, 2010
That way, if you have a flood in your basement that completely submerges the bottom shelves of your bookcases, you don't lose anything especially valuable.
Early on Monday morning a water main burst in front of my house. This caused water to back up through the toilet and shower drain in my…
November 3, 2010
Not much to say about last night's elections. Basically the Republicans just got rewarded for their policy of obstructionism and cynicism. Now they can return to their back rooms and laugh at all the suckers they fooled into voting for them. There are many villains behind this election, but we…
November 1, 2010
The Washington Post recently published an op-ed by mathematician G. V. Ramanathan. The subject? Mathematics education. It is a mix of good points and bad points. Let's have a look.
Twenty-seven years have passed since the publication of the report “A Nation at Risk,” which warned of dire…
October 31, 2010
Your humble blogger went to the big rally yesterday. Here's what it looked like:
I never noticed it before, but the National Mall looks a lot like the Vienna/Fairfax Metro stop. But let me start at the beginning.
I hit the road at 8:30 in the morning, which normally would get me to DC well…
