jrosenhouse | March 9, 2014Last week I introduced the idea of Allumwandlung, abbreviated AUW. This refers to a problem in which all four pawn promotions, to queen, rook, bishop and knight, appear in some way. The problem I showed last week was a crystal clear illustration of the theme, and deservedly won second place in the annual selfmate tourney in The Problemist magazine.
As it happens, the third place winner in that tourney also showed AUW, but it makes for quite a contrast with last week's problem. Whereas that showed impressive elegance and clear logic, this one is just a demented, brilliant mess. It was…
jrosenhouse | March 9, 2014Check it out!
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My new book Four Lives: A Celebration of Raymond Smullyan has just been released by Dover Publications. Don't know who Raymond Smullyan is? Well, buy the book and find out! Or you can read his Wikipedia page.
Smullyan is best known for his many books of logic puzzles, but he has also written widely in mathematics and philosophy. He had a big influence on me growing up. I stumbled on to his book What Is the Name Of This Book? when I was about nine, He's currently 95, and he's still churning them out.
So, for me, being asked to edit this tribute volume to him was a bit…
jrosenhouse | March 4, 2014We just had our second straight snow day around here (in a winter that has already had a lot of snow days). That did provide me with some unexpected free time, which I used to watch the big debate between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig. All two and a quarter hours of it! Click here for the video.
If you're unfamiliar with the players here, Sean Carroll is a physicist at CalTech, specializing in cosmology. He is the author of a terrific book called From Eternity to Here: The Search for the Ultimate Theory of Time. More recently he is the author of The Particle at the End of The…
jrosenhouse | March 2, 2014Throughout this series I have endeavored to bring to your attention some of the major themes that problem composers use. So far, though, there is one big one that has not been featured. I am referring to Allumwandlung, typically abbreviated AUW. This is a German word that translates loosely as “All conversion.” To chess composers it refers to a problem in which promotions to all four pieces (queen, rook, bishop and knight) appear in the course of the problem. A lovely example appears in the current issue of The Problemist, which is the official magazine of The British Chess Problem…
jrosenhouse | March 1, 2014The book review I discussed in Wednesday's post is an example of a “hatchet job.” This is a literary form in which the goal is not merely to criticize an opponent's work, but to show that it is utterly worthless. Hatchet jobs are often marked by large amounts of snark and snideness, often at the expense of making a cogent argument.
Such was the case in the essay at the heart of Wednesday's post. We were discussing William Deresiewicz's review of the book Jane Austen: Game Theorist, which was written by UCLA political scientist Mark Suk-Young Chwe. The review appeared in The New Republic,…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2014I sometimes write about the relationship of the problem of evil to evolution. Darwinian natural selection is a rather unpleasant business, you see, making you wonder why a loving God would employ it as his method of creation. My experience with anti-evolutionists has been that this is a point of special concern for them. Virtually every book proposing to reconcile evolution with Christianity devotes a chapter to this (or at least a major section), and some theologians write whole books about it. I devote a chapter to it in Among the Creationists.
You hardly need Darwin to point out that…
jrosenhouse | February 26, 2014Upon surveying the American landscape these days, it's hard to believe that an over-reliance on science is something we need to worry about. That hasn't stopped some in the humanities from manufacturing the entirely fictitious threat of “scientism.” It's a hard term to pin down, since it is seldom defined the same way twice, but mostly it just means that someone is whining about the lack of respect accorded to his discipline. Theologians and philosophers seem especially keen on leveling the charge.
It certainly happens occasionally that someone writing in the name of science intrudes into…
jrosenhouse | February 25, 2014It's time to get caught up on a few things. The Nye/Ham debate attracted reams of commentary, some of it sensible, some not so much. Two of the sillier entries came from William Saletan over at Slate He's very worked up about Bill Nye's claim that creationism poses a threat to our scientific future. Saletan writes:
Ham presented videos from several scientists who espoused young-Earth creationism. One said he had invented the MRI scanner. Another said he had designed major components of spacecraft launched by NASA and the European Space Agency. If the spacecraft guy had botched his work,…
jrosenhouse | February 22, 2014Regular blogging will resume next week, once I have finished digging out from the pile of work that didn't get done during my recent travels. But since Sunday Chess Problem waits for nobody, I've picked out a tasty little morsel for you.
One of my favorite motifs in chess is that of a fortress draw. This refers to a position that is drawn simply because the attacker has no possible way of making progress against the defender's set-up. Typically the term is applied to a situation in which the defender is down a substantial amount of material, so that it is surprising that the attacker…
jrosenhouse | February 11, 2014I've had a chance now to watch Questioning Darwin. Twice. Short review: I liked it quite a bit. Now for the long review.
I'm obviously a bit partial, since this film represents my television debut! I was one of the talking heads interviewed in the film, and it was a thrill to be in the company of people like Rebecca Stott, Steve Jones and James Moore, among others. I show up around forty-five minutes in, to say a few things about the Scopes trial and the importance of Sputnik in bringing the creationism issue back to prominence in the United States. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed…
jrosenhouse | February 10, 2014Blogging is likely to be light for the next week or so. I'm gearing up for some traveling, starting at the end of the week. On Thursday I'll leave for Chicago, to participate in the annual AAAS Conference. Over the weekend I will be in Parsippany, New Jersey to participate in the annual chess extravaganza known as the U. S. Amateur Team East. Me and my homeys are getting together for another, no doubt forlorn, go at the title. Then on Tuesday I'll be in Princeton to meet with an editor from Princeton University Press to discuss a new project. Stay tuned on that one!
Sadly, because of…
jrosenhouse | February 9, 2014Some chess problems are the equivalent of a big, Thanksgiving dinner. They have numerous variations and complex strategy. And that's fine, if a big dinner is what you want.
Sometimes, though, you just want a pleasant little amuse bouche. And that's what we have today. The problem below was composed by William Shinkman, one of the finest chess composers of the nineteenth century. It is white to move and mate in three.
Remember that white is moving up the board and black is moving down the board. Vertical files are labeled from left to right as a--h, while horizontal ranks are numbered…
jrosenhouse | February 7, 2014Philosopher John Wilkins has responded to yesterday's post about conflicts between evolution and religion. Sadly, he so grossly distorts what I said that I don't think he has replied very effectively.
John quotes only a single short excerpt from my lengthy post:
So, after all, that, let us return to Plait’s argument. He tells us that the problem is too many people perceiving evolution as a threat to their religious beliefs. Indeed, but why do they perceive it that way? Is it a failure of messaging on the part of scientists? Is it because Richard Dawkins or P. Z. Myers make snide remarks…
jrosenhouse | February 6, 2014Writing at Slate, Phil Plait has a post up about the big Ham vs. Nye debate. He gets off to a good start:
Last night, science advocate Bill Nye “debated” with creationist Ken Ham, the man who runs the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I was torn about the event; I think it's important that science get its advocacy, but I also worry that by even showing up to such a thing, Nye would elevate the idea of creationism as something worth debating.
But I've thought about it, and here's the important thing to remember: Roughly half the population of America does believe in some form of creationism or…
jrosenhouse | February 5, 2014In yesterday's post, I remarked that the clear loser in yesterday's debate was the intelligent design crowd. They've been trying for years to persuade people that anti-evolutionism has nothing--nothing--to do with blinkered religious obscurantism. And in one widely viewed, widely covered, debate Ken Ham went and messed it all up.
The Discovery Institute seems to agree with my assessment. In a blog post bearing the desperate title, “In the Ham-Nye Debate, Not So Much as a Glove Was Laid on Intelligent Design,” they write:
Here's an important point to register: Whatever you think of the Ham…
jrosenhouse | February 5, 2014Among the people unimpressed with Ken Ham's performance yesterday is televangelist, and former Republican Presidential candidate, Pat Robertson:
In a video of his appearance on the 700 Club TV program, captured by Right Wing Watch, Robertson reacted to the debate between Ham and Nye by reiterating his previously stated belief that Young Earth Creationism is false.
“There ain't no way that's possible,” he said, referring to the belief put forth by Bishop James Ussher that the earth is 6,000 years old.
“We have skeletons of dinosaurs that go back 65 million years,” Robertson stated. “To say it…
jrosenhouse | February 4, 2014The big debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham was tonight. Click here for the video. The whole thing is close to three hours, so get comfortable if you want to watch it all.
I was watching it live, but about two-thirds of the way through I kept losing the signal. I would reload the page, but then I'd get an error message twenty seconds later. So I gave up. They were just starting the “questions from the audience” phase, and I was not optimistic that that would be worth wading through. P. Z. Myers has the live blog if you want the abridged version. I mostly agree with his comments.…
jrosenhouse | February 3, 2014I had not intended to do another post on this topic so soon after the last one. But I have just readan astonishingly bad post over at Uncommon Descent that discusses this issue, and I cannot resist responding.
The post is called, “Where Do We Get the Probabilities?” It was written by Winston Ewert, and it opens like this:
What is the probability of a structure like the bacterial flagellum evolving under Darwinian processes? This is the question on which the entire debate over Darwinian evolution turns. If the bacterial flagellum’s evolution is absurdly improbable, than Darwinism is false.…
jrosenhouse | February 1, 2014This week's problem was composed by Mircea Manolescu in 1956. In the position below, it is white to move and mate in two.
Remember that white is always moving up the board, while black is always moving down. Vertical files are labeled as a--h from left to right, while the horizontal ranks are labeled 1--8 from bottom to top. So in the diagram we see that the white king is on a6 while the black king is on c4. When we write down moves, an “x” indicates a capture.
This problem is our first example of a multi-phase problem. To understand what that means, have another look at last week's…
jrosenhouse | January 30, 2014California is running out of water:
California is dry as a bone, and the effects are like something out of an apocalyptic film.
Cities are running out of water. Communities are fighting over what little water there is. Local governments are imposing rationing coupled with steep fines. Fires are ravaging the state. Entire species and industries are threatened.
For California, 2013 was the driest year since the state started measuring rainfall in 1849. Paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram says that, according to the width of old tree rings, California hasn't been this dry for about 500 years.…