May 3, 2010
The big chess match continues apace. In Game Five the players plowed down the same line of the Slav Defense they explored in Game Three. No doubt Topalov had an improvement in mind, but Anand varied first. Topalov pressed, but in the end he was the one who was happy to call it a draw.
Game Six…
April 28, 2010
Two more games down in the big chess match. Game Three saw the first draw of the match. Topalov once more opened with his queen pawn, but Anand wisely avoided the Grunfeld this time. Instead he played the super-solid Slav Defense, and a fairly conservative variation at that. Topalov got the…
April 27, 2010
If for some incomprehensible reason you are not interested in the big chess match, and are looking for something evolutiony to read, let me suggest Jerry Coyne's big review of the recent books by RIchard Dawkins and Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini. The review was published in The Nation…
April 26, 2010
Two games down in the big chess match and it is shaping up to be a barn burner. The defending champion is Viswanathan Anand of India, though you would never have guessed it from the faceplant he did in Game One. His opponent is Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria. By my reckoning this is the first World…
April 22, 2010
Are you as excited as I am?
April 15, 2010
I learned something new the other day while preparing for my History of Math class. And since I have not done a math post in a while, I thought I would tell you about it. Specifically, I learned a new, and very clever, method for proving Fermat's Little Theorem.
Fermat's Little Theorem is a…
April 14, 2010
Massimo Pigliucci thinks Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have naive views about science and the supernatural:
My problem with Dawkins and Coyne is different, but stems from the same root: their position on morality is indeed distinct from Harris' (at least Dawkins', I don't recall having read…
April 9, 2010
This time from the Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society. The reviewer is Paulo Ventura Araujo, a mathematician at the University of Porto in Portugal. Interestingly, he notes at the start of the review that he had never heard of the Monty Hall problem prior to reading my book. Here…
April 9, 2010
I am afraid I have been so lax in keeping up with my internet reading that I only just found out that Vassily Smyslov has died. Smyslov was the World Chess Champion from 1957-1958. His rivalry with Mikhail Botvinnik throughout the 1950's would not be matched until the epic Karpov-Kasparov matches…
April 8, 2010
Peter Hess, Faith Project Director for the National Center for Science Education, argues that it is. He makes his case in this paper in the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy I learned of the article from this post over at Josh Rosenau's blog. Josh writes, “I think that…
April 7, 2010
Which is to say that the Big Monty Hall Book got a (mostly) favorable review from the London Mathematical Society. The reviewer was David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge.
I should admit that I don't generally use the Monty Hall problem with students, as I am not…
April 1, 2010
Don't see this at very many math conferences:
This is from the Gathering for Gardner, which took place last week in Atlanta. That's Martin Gardner, who wrote the “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American for thirty years. He also wrote prolifically about magic and psuedoscience. Or…
March 31, 2010
In the next day or two I will post a detailed account of my experiences at the Gathering for Gardner, which I can honestly say is one of the most enjoyable math conferences I have ever attended. In the meantime, you might enjoy this essay by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross. Polster is a…
March 23, 2010
I will be leaving for Atlanta, GA tomorrow to participate in the Ninth Gathering for Gardner. That's Martin Gardner, of course. I will be giving a short talk about the Monty Hall problem on Thursday morning, and then it will be three days of math, magic and other cool things. Gardner contributed…
March 17, 2010
I am slowly making progress on the big evolution/creation book. I passed the 25,000 word mark yesterday (Whoo hoo!) but my contract calls for 100,000 words (D'oh!). I am nowhere near running out of things to say, but I am such a painfully slow writer that 75,000 more words seems like an awful lot…
March 9, 2010
A little point to ponder from Jason Lisle, a young-Earth creationist with Answers in Genesis. This is from his book The Ultimate Proof of Creation:
Laws of logic pose a very serious problem for the evolutionist. Almost all evolutionists know they should be logical, and yet they have no basis for…
March 5, 2010
From Yahoo News:
To shed light on why humans often fall short of the best strategy with this kind of problem, scientists investigated pigeons, which often perform quite impressively on tasks requiring them to estimate relative probabilities, in some cases eclipsing human performance. Other animals…
March 4, 2010
Before leaving behind Denis Lamoureux's book I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution, there is one lengthy excerpt I would like to present. If I presented only a small portion of this you would think I was taking it out of context. If I paraphrased it you would not believe me. I will simply have to…
March 4, 2010
In my recent post on Interpreting Genesis, one of the commenters suggested to me the writing of Denis Lamoureux as a good example of defending a non-literal interpretation of Genesis. A quick visit to Amazon revealed that his big book on this subject, Evolutionary Creation, was over four hundred…
February 24, 2010
Browsing through Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth the other day I came across the following sentence: “The slow drifting apart of South America and Africa is now an established fact in the ordinary language sense of `fact', and so is our common ancestry with porcupines and pomegranates…
February 18, 2010
Via Jerry Coyne I came across this essay regarding the interpretation of Genesis. (Click here for Part One of the essay.)
The article is by Kenton Sparks, a professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University. His argument will be entirely familiar to connoisseurs of this issue. The Bible, you…
February 9, 2010
Writing in the religious journal First Things University of Delaware physics professor Stephen Barr lays into the ID Movement. Here's the first paragraph:
It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our…
February 7, 2010
I am currently reading the book Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America by Jeffery Sheler, published in 2006. There is a chapter about Wheaton College in Illinois, which is generally considered one of the best, if not the best, evangelical college in the nation. Sheler recounts part of a…
February 4, 2010
In a couple of recent posts I have mentioned the book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion edited by Ronald Numbers. Since I have now finished reading it, I figure it is time for a proper review.
Short review: Mixed. As a compendium of interesting facts about the…
February 1, 2010
Blogging will continue to be sporadic for a while, sorry about that. But having dragged myself down to Washington D.C. last weekend to see the new movie Creation, I figured I should at least get a blog post out of it.
Short review: Excellent! Completely engrossing, and historically accurate on…
January 22, 2010
Here's a quote from the book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion:
In Augustine's influential view, then, knowledge of the things of this world is not a legitimate end in itself, but as a means to other ends it is indispensable. The classical sciences must accept a…
January 22, 2010
Well, this is just great:
The White House Correspondents Association has picked Jay Leno -- also known as this week's most publicly unpopular stand-up comic -- to headline the White House Correspondents Dinner in May.
An NBC rep confirmed the invitation to The TV Column.
To be clear, the…
January 21, 2010
I thought Rachel Maddow had a very smart take on the fallout from the Massachusetts Senate race. I've placed a lengthy excerpt below the fold.
On paper, after Al Franken was finally certified as winning in Minnesota, Democrats had a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority. On paper, that's what they…
January 20, 2010
Just in case you were thinking that religious institutions have not always bathed themselves in glory in their relations with science, here's Ronald Numbers to set you straight:
Historians of science have known for years that White's and Draper's accounts are more propaganda than history. ... Yet…
January 20, 2010
Here's a prominent Democratic congressman commenting on the effect of the Massachusetts Senate race on health care reform:
I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make…
