jrosenhouse | February 20, 2013I spent the last weekend in scenic Parsippany, NJ, participating in the annual chess extravaganza known as the U. S. Amateur Team East. As big a chess fan as I am, I am mostly retired from tournament play. It's too hard and stressful! For the first time in a long while, however, I managed to make some decent moves, so you can be sure that you will hear all about it shortly! Alas, since I am digging out from all the work that didn't get done while I was away, that might have to wait for the weekend.
In the meantime, you can take some comfort from this article, that appeared recently in…
jrosenhouse | February 14, 2013I am slowly working my way through the anthology Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative, edited by Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur. The book includes an excellent essay by mathematician Timothy Gowers titled, “Vividness in Mathematics and Narrative.” It makes a point that has often bothered me about mathematical discourse.
Gowers opens with two passages meant to describe the beginning of an academic year. Here's the first:
It is September again, and the campus, which has been very quiet for the last couple of months, is suddenly full of cars bringing students…
jrosenhouse | February 10, 2013Philosophers William Lane Craig and Alexander Rosenberg recently debated everyone's favorite question: the existence of God. You can find the video here. The entire event is close to three hours long, and so I have not yet watched the whole thing. I watched the twenty-minute opening statements, and then did a bit of random sampling from the remainder of the debate. Just in case you're not familiar with these gentlemen, Craig is the theist and Rosenberg is the atheist.
From my perspective as an atheist, Rosenberg was pretty disappointing. Stylistically Craig was the clear winner. He is a…
jrosenhouse | February 7, 2013Sorry for another post that's all about me, but I received a pleasant surprise today. The Association of American Publishers just gave out their annual PROSE awards. The awards recognize excellence in scholarly publishing in some forty categories. One of those categories is “Popular Science and Mathematics.” The winner in that category? None other than Taking Sudoku Seriously! Yay!
jrosenhouse | February 5, 2013Writing in the academic journal Metascience, philosopher Stefan Blancke has reviewed Among the Creationists. Blancke is a postdoc in the Department of Philosophy at Ghent University in Belgium. Together with fellow philosophers Maarten Boudry and Johan Braeckman, is the author of an important paper calling into question some of the arguments made by the pro-evolution side with regard to methodological naturalism. Since I quote their paper favorably in the book, I was especially interested to know what Blancke thought of the book. Did he like it? Well, here's the opening paragraph:
On a…
jrosenhouse | February 1, 2013Here's a charming story for your Friday afternoon:
Be careful what you post on Reddit. It may just get you canned.
Earlier this week, an Applebee’s waitress posted a photo on Reddit of a receipt from an alleged pastor who, instead of leaving the suggested 18 percent tip, wrote “I give God 10%, why should you get 18.” Now, after the bill went viral, Applebee's has fired the waitress, according to Consumerist.
“I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical,” the waitress, whose name is Chelsea, told Consumerist. “I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it…
jrosenhouse | January 23, 2013Writing in the online statistics magazine Significance, Angie Wade, of University College London, has posted a review of Taking Sudoku Seriously. That's the book about the mathematics of Sudoku puzzles that I cowrote with my JMU colleague Laura Taalman, published by Oxford University Press, for those not in the know.
Anyway, did Wade like the book?
In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and do not have any criticisms to make. The authors have produced a lovely addition to any budding or practiced mathematician’s bookcase. Well-presented and readable for both the novice and the maths…
jrosenhouse | January 22, 2013Remember that scene in A Fish Called Wanda, where Kevin Kline, talking to a British woman who has cornered him in rhetorical combat, says, with maximal sarcasm, “Oh, you British are soooooo superior.”
That's pretty much how I feel when I read essays written by agnostics. By all means make whatever arguments it amuses you to make for not taking a stand on the God question. But please stop acting like you're soooooo superior. You're not the sensible middle ground between two extremes, and you're not the clear-thinking pluralist calmly sifting the evidence. You're just a wimp.
The latest…
jrosenhouse | January 21, 2013One thing I noticed during the years I spent attending YEC conferences was the extent to which pseudointellectualism was an integral part of their culture. The leaders of the movement frequently behaved in ways reminiscent of how non-scientists imagine that scientists behave.
This is definitely a point of commonality between YEC and ID. A recent case in point is this post from Cornelius Hunter, a frequent contributor to Uncommon Descent. If you are unfamiliar with Hunter's writing, his big theme, repeated in almost every one of his posts, is that evolution is purely a religious belief,…
jrosenhouse | January 20, 2013I finally got around to seeing Lincoln yesterday. Great movie! Daniel Day-Lewis is as good as you've heard. James Spader probably deserved a supporting actor nomination for playing the leader of a group of three people dispatched by Lincoln to encourage, cajole, and openly bribe wavering Democratic representatives. (The Republicans were the good guys in those days, at least on this issue.)
This is not a biopic about Lincoln, but instead focuses exclusively on the months leading up to the passage of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. It is natural, when watching such a film,…
jrosenhouse | January 15, 2013Today we have cause to celebrate. I am breaking the months-long chess drought at this blog. You see, the future game of the year was just played in the big chess tournament at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands, and I could not live with myself if I did not share it with you.
Playing white is Levon Aronian, currently ranked number two in the world. Playing black is Viswanathan Anand, the current World Champion. Anand's results over the last few years have not been up to his historical standards. He barely managed to keep his title last year, and he has not won a tournament in over four…
jrosenhouse | January 11, 2013As part of their ongoing campaign to botch as many personnel decisions as possible, the Obama administration recently announced that the Reverend Louie Giglio, of Atlanta, would deliver the benediction at the forthcoming inaugural. They rescinded the invitation, however, when an anti-gay sermon preached by Giglio many years ago came to light. The administration should have thought to look for such things before inviting him, but at least they belatedly did the right thing.
Some of the mopier denizens of the religious right are less pleased, however. This article, over at HuffPo, rounds up…
jrosenhouse | January 10, 2013The annual Joint Mathematics Meetings are taking place in San Diego this week. For the first time in more than a decade, they are taking place without me. Well, if I can't actually go this year, I might as well write about it. I have a guest post up over at the Oxford University Press blog doing just that. Enjoy!
jrosenhouse | January 9, 2013In this post, from last year, I mentioned that I regard Victor Hugo's Les Miserables as the finest novel ever written. I also think the musical version actually captures the spirit of the novel pretty well, far better than any of the non-musical film adaptations that have appeared over the years.
You can imagine, then, my excitement at the release of the movie version of the musical. I saw it last week. Short review: Good enough that I plan on seeing it again in the theater, but not quite the knock-your-scoks-off excellent that I wanted.
There are two big weaknesses that are hard to…
jrosenhouse | January 8, 2013Yesterday's mail brought the new issue of “Prayer News,” the newsletter of Creation Ministries International. (What can I say? I'm on several creationist mailing lists. At least it arrived along with the new issue of Free Inquiry to dilute the effect.) The lead article is called “Why Don't They Get It?” by Scott Gillis, and opens as follows:
Most readers, at some time, have probably asked this question. “When the evidence supporting the biblical Creation and Flood account is presented in a clear and convincing manner, why is it summarily denied and dismissed by evolutionists?” In short,…
jrosenhouse | January 7, 2013I am happy to report that my back is now completely healed up from its recent travails, and I can now sit in perfect comfort for arbitrarily long periods of time. So let's see if we can wake up this sleepy little blog...
My friend Dave Pruett, recently retired from a long and successful career right here in the JMU Math Department, seems determined to keep me in blog fodder for a while. He's recently been writing for HuffPo. We considered his first post here. Now he's back with a new entry. Jerry Coyne has already weighed in. Let's have a look of our own.
Dave is arguing for some sort…
jrosenhouse | December 21, 2012Go have a look at this post over at HuffPo. It's called “Science and Faith: Reconciling After the Divorce,” by Dave Pruett. To judge from that title, you might surmise that's it's not exactly my cup of tea, and you'd be right. The catch, though, is that Dave is a very good friend of mine, having just retired after many years in the math department right here at JMU.
Dave has a new book out called Reason and Wonder: A Copernican Revolution in Science and Spirit, from which the present essay has been drawn. I'm about fifty pages in so far and I am finding it a fascinating read, even…
jrosenhouse | December 20, 2012This is encouraging:
The Orleans Parish School Board, which controls the curriculum and policies for six schools in New Orleans, voted Tuesday to ban the teaching of creationism as science and a “revisionist” history course touted in Texas.
Although none of these six New Orleans schools currently teaches creationism or “intelligent design,” outgoing Orleans Parish School Board President Thomas Robichaux is making sure they never will, The Times-Picayune first reported in November.
The newly approved policy bans teachers from including “any aspect of religious faith” in science courses and…
jrosenhouse | December 19, 2012I don't have anything in particular to say in response to the massacre in Newtown, CT. The usual folks are making the usual arguments, of course. Many are suggesting that teachers and principals should be packing heat. Unless you're going to make combat training part of teacher certification, that sounds like a bad idea. Having more guns in schools does not sound like a recipe for increased safety. From the other side, it just seems obvious to me that certain forms of weaponry, automatic weapons and enormous ammunition clips for example, are so inherently dangerous and serve no function…
jrosenhouse | December 18, 2012Jerry Coyne has an interesting post up reporting on an e-mail he received from Paul Nelson. Nelson is a prominent young-Earth creationist, though he also circulates freely among the ID folks. Nelson, annoyed by Coyne's emphasis on the importance of natural selection in evolution, sent Coyne an e-mail, part of which I now reproduce:
Skepticism about the efficacy of natural selection is widespread within evolutionary biology (see below). Jim Shapiro is hardly alone in this regard. So when you tell your WEIT audience that natural selection is the only game in town for building complex…