jrosenhouse | April 26, 2011Over at The New Republic, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin writes:
No group in American politics gets more respect than independent voters. Pundits and reporters probe what these allegedly moderate citizens think about this issue and that candidate, major party strategists seek the golden mean of messaging that will attract independents to their camp and/or alienate them from the opposing one. Presidential nominees and aides struggle to come up with phrases and settings that will soothe or excite them. But what if millions of independents are really just a confused and…
jrosenhouse | April 25, 2011Like all moderately curious people, I'm sure you've often wondered whether it's possible for
\[
N=a^k-1
\]
to be a prime number, where a and k are positive integers. Well, I'm here to answer that for you!
To avoid trivial cases, we shall assume that k is at least two. Of course, I'm sure we all remember the basic factorization formula:
\[
a^2-1=(a+1)(a-1),
\]
which can only be prime if a=2. A prime number can only be written as a product of two others if one of those numbers is one, you see.
Let's grind out a few cases to see what happens when the exponent is three or four:
\[
3…
jrosenhouse | April 23, 2011I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but the U. S. Chess Championship is currently going on in St. Louis. I have been dutifully following the games online, of course.
It is one of the great cruelties of chess that forty perfect moves can be undone by one moment of carelessness. We amateur players blunder all the time, of course, but somehow it's always a bit comforting to see the top players do likewise. For example, here's a position that occurred in the game between Benjamin Finegold (playing white) and Yasser Seirawan:
We have come to the finale of a long endgame. Finegold had…
jrosenhouse | April 22, 2011Update: Saturday, 2:48 am. The original version of this post contained an unkind remark directed towards Josh Rosenau. My intention was facetious hyperbole, but upon further reflection I've decided that my remark is too easily misunderstood as personally acrimonious. For that reason I have revised that sentence, while leaving unchanged the substantive points I was making.
That's the title of a new study (PDF format) by psychologist Wll Gervais, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Here's the abstract:
Although prejudice is typically positively related to…
jrosenhouse | April 21, 2011As soon as I am done teaching this afternoon I will hop into the Jason-mobile and sally forth to scenic Roanoke, Virginia. I will be giving my Monty Hall talk at Roanoke College this evening at 7:00. If anyone reading this is familiar with the campus, I will be speaking in Massengill Auditorium. See you there!
jrosenhouse | April 19, 2011Given all the semi-coherent venom coming from people like Michael Ruse and Jacques Berlinerblau lately, I'd say the Chronicle of Higher Education is lucky to have David Barash in its stable of bloggers. This recent post is a most welcome affirmation:
Two decades ago, I wrote a book proposal for a volume to be titled “The Atheist's Bible.” It was embraced by a major publishing house but not by my wife, who worried that such a book, appearing in the Age of Endarkenment then known as the Reagan Administration might well subject our children to ostracism, verbal abuse and even possible physical…
jrosenhouse | April 18, 2011Prior to my journey to the University of Maryland last week, I mentioned to my classes that I would be seeing Richard Dawkins speak. On a whim, I asked how many of them had heard of Dawkins. I have about sixty students in three courses this term. The number who raised their hands? Six.
Submitted for what it's worth.
jrosenhouse | April 18, 2011The Guardian has an interesting dialogue between Sam Harris and Robert Winston on the subject of science and faith. I have some problems with both gentlemen, but, surprise!, I have bigger problems with Winston. Let's consider some excerpts. Harris first:
Religious language is, without question, unscientific in its claims for what is true. We have Christians believing in the holy ghost, the resurrection of Jesus and his possible return -- these are claims about biology and physics which, from a scientific point of view in the 21st century, should be unsustainable.
I certainly agree with…
jrosenhouse | April 8, 2011Having had so much fun during my last sojourn to the University of Maryland, I decided to repeat the experience this past Wednesday. Richard Dawkins was speaking, you see.
Here he is on stage during the introductions:
I attended with Douglas Gill and Clinton Jenkins, both of the University of Maryland Biology Department. And since we are all highly connected VIP's, we wound up sitting in the center of the second row. Impressed? I sure was!
Dawkins had little trouble filling the venue:
There was an overflow room as well. My informal impression was that a significant majority…
jrosenhouse | April 5, 2011Time to lighten the mood around here. So how many of these are you doing wrong?
jrosenhouse | April 4, 2011Let's get clear on one thing. Terry Jones, the delightful Florida pastor who burned the Koran the other day, thereby setting in motion a sequence of events that has led to several days of violence and bloodshed, is a bigot, and a jerk, and many other unsavory things. But if he is made to suffer anything more than the severe disapprobation of every reasonable person it will be an offense far greater than his actions themselves.
It's been very depressing to find so many bloggers desperately longing for the law to catch up with the wicked pastor. Here's Laurie Essig expressing a common…
jrosenhouse | April 3, 2011CNN's Fareed Zakaria has by far the most intelligent take that I've seen on the Quran burning by pastor Terry Jones of Florida:
Let's talk for a moment about the Quran burning in Florida and it's consequences. Most Americans are repulsed by the offensive actions of Pastor Terry Jones, a publicity-seeking extremist. But they must wonder how an isolated act like that could produce so much violence halfway across the world in Afghanistan.
So let's trace the event.
The Quran burning took place two weeks ago - to not much publicity. It was not highlighted by the international media and was not a…
jrosenhouse | March 30, 2011As a professional mathematician I get to visit a lot of scenic tourist destinations. Like Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania! I'll be giving a colloquium talk to the math dept. at Slippery Rock University tomorrow afternoon. The topic? The Monty Hall problem. Surprise!
See ya when I get back.
jrosenhouse | March 30, 2011My number theory course has recently moved on to things that are a bit more technical and esoteric than our earlier fare, so I haven't felt they would make good blog fodder. If you need a quick math fix (and who doesn't?), you can have a look at this guest post I wrote for the Oxford University Press blog. It contains a few musings about pi, inspired by a recent satirical post over at HuffPo. Enjoy!
jrosenhouse | March 29, 2011Having communicated for so long by blog and e-mail, it was a pleasure to finally meet Jerry Coyne in person last night. He was speaking at the University of Maryland. It was not the easiest trip in the world. Driving was out of the question since it would have involved braving the Beltway near rush hour. With all due respect to Jerry, there ain't no one worth that kind of trouble. But UM has its own Metro stop. So I drove to the Vienna station, took a long train ride that involved three of DC's five Metro lines, then a bus over to the campus, and then the following conversation:
ME (to…
jrosenhouse | March 29, 2011The Bronx Zoo has misplaced one of its cobras:
Lookout, New York -- a poisonous cobra snake may be on the loose today from the Bronx Zoo.
In a statement released Saturday, the Bronx Zoo said that their reptile house was closed after a staff member noticed that an adolescent Egyptian cobra was missing from an off-exhibit enclosure.
"After learning the snake was missing yesterday afternoon, we immediately closed and secured the building as we took steps throughout the evening to recover the snake," the statement read.
Egyptian cobras are known for being uncomfortable in open areas, so the…
jrosenhouse | March 28, 2011I get it that some people do not like the New Atheists. But surely when you're writing things like this:
And this is why I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party.
you have simply placed yourself outside the community of people who care about civil discourse or calm argumentation.
That quote comes from Michael Ruse. Really ponder it for a moment. Marvel at its sheer obliviousness, its absurdity, its complete trivialization of important issues. Let's place the NA's and the Tea Party side by side shall we?
The Tea Party,…
jrosenhouse | March 26, 2011Well, here's a happy development. It seems that today is Richard Dawkins' seventieth birthday. So happy birthday and best wishes for many more!
jrosenhouse | March 24, 2011Permit me an amusing juxtaposition.
Here's Mira Sucharov, a political scientist at Carleton University in Canada, explaining why atheists and religious folks often talk past each other:
Put simply, believers are asking the question, “Can a commitment to contemplating the sacred help us better appreciate the everyday?” (They reply yes.) And atheists are asking the question, “Is the existence of God plausible from the standpoint of reason?” (They reply no.)
And here's what happened to a pastor in North Carolina for suggesting that hell was not a place of eternal torment:
When Chad Holtz…