jrosenhouse | January 27, 2011By 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 weeknights at eight (except for Mondays, of course, when everyone should be watching House).
Of course, Olbermann's ouster has brought out the self-righteous set, here represented by Laurie Fendrich over at the Chronicle blog:
Self-proclaimed left-leaning Democrat though I am, I could barely tolerate the…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2011Time 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 factoring we get:
\[
a^2=c^2-b^2=(c+b)(c-b).
\]
Let's try this out for a few specific triples:
\[
3^2=(5+4)(5-4)=(9)(1)
\]
\[
5^2=(13+12)(13-12)=(25)(1)
\]
\[
15^2=(17+8)(17-8)=(25)(9)
\]
\[
45^2=(53+28)(53-28)=(81)(25)
\]
In each case we find that c+b and c-b are both perfect squares.…
jrosenhouse | January 20, 2011The 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 that this would be the case. I knew, from having seen other people's Kindles, that it identifies your position in the text via a system of “locations,” and with a little scroll bar along the bottom of the screen. I just assumed (!!) that there was some feature that allowed you to convert from a…
jrosenhouse | January 19, 2011I 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 that for a different post.
Mostly I just wanted to call attention to an amusing statement from one of the opinions:
The following statement of Dr. E.N. Reinke, Professor of Biology in Vanderbilt University, is repeatedly quoted in briefs of counsel for the defense:
“The theory of evolution is…
jrosenhouse | January 18, 2011I'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 admit they have their uses. (During my recent trip to New Orleans I sent my very first text message!) I still buy CD's from time to time.
And ever since I started reading articles about the demise of print books, I have been doing my part to keep the industry afloat. This is partly because I…
jrosenhouse | January 16, 2011It 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 the Pythagorean Theorem. That's the one that says that the sides of a right triangle satisfy the equation:
\[
a^2+b^2=c^2
\]
where c is the length of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle). You might wonder if it is possible for a, b and c to all be integers. Indeed it is, as the…
jrosenhouse | January 4, 2011I'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! See y'all when I return.
jrosenhouse | January 4, 2011Shame 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” feature. At 89 he's still going strong. Here's the interview.
I found this part especially interesting:
Antonio ProhÃas (Spy vs. Spy) was a refugee from Castro's Cuba, and Sergio Aragones' (the margin art in Mad) parents fled to Mexico from Franco's Spain. Considering your own situation, was it common…
jrosenhouse | December 29, 2010I 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 this year less than half of what they were two years ago. In order to cut costs we are mailing out this post card rather than our Annual Report.
It made my day to read that. Of course, one suspects it is not just the bad economy that has cut into their sales and donations. It is also the fact that…
jrosenhouse | December 29, 2010Essays 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 will be able to provide these same opportunities to our own children. No one in my immediate circle has a family member serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, the only sacrifice we were asked to make for our beloved country was to go shopping. Nearly a…
jrosenhouse | December 29, 2010Update: 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 Jews in a room you get eleven opinions. The idea that there is a Jewish view of anything is pretty unlikely.
Jacobs focuses entirely on the question of the age of the Earth, and not of biological evolution. He writes:
To the secularist, the notion that we should flippantly toss aside hundreds of…
jrosenhouse | December 23, 2010I 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 their comments about Pope Benedict. We are labeled “accommodationists” or “appeasers,” and reviled. Just earlier this week I got flak for suggesting that perhaps St. Augustine on original sin was not the last word on the subject and that a more evolutionary friendly interpretation can be found in…
jrosenhouse | December 19, 2010I 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 the conventional wisdom that evolution and Christianity were compatible and that only crazy extremists think differently. Of course, my current view is not nearly so ecumenical. Today I believe that while it is not flatly impossible to reconcile them, it is at least far more difficult than is…
jrosenhouse | December 18, 2010Another 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.
jrosenhouse | December 17, 2010I 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...
jrosenhouse | December 14, 2010The 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 problem, pays careful attention to the hidden assumptions behind the problems, and is written in a witty accessible style that never lapses into flippancy. The reader will find here discussions of the classical three-door problem and N-door variants, progressive versions, how to select the sample space,…
jrosenhouse | December 13, 2010The 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 literature on the subject. I started with classics like William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, which actually made for more interesting reading than you might expect. James' approach to the subject is pretty measured and reasonable, especially given the state of science at the time (his…
jrosenhouse | December 13, 2010Here'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. Months of delay gave Republicans time to make their case against “socialism” and prevented action on more pressing issues, such as job creation. Democrats paid for that with 63 seats.
Here's Paul Krugman rightly calling him out:
Um, that's not what happened -- and I followed the health care…
jrosenhouse | December 7, 2010Here'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 in refundable tax credits (Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and education tax credits), $56 billion in unemployment insurance, and, depending on how you count it, about $180 billion (two-year cost) or $30 billion (10-year cost) in new tax incentives for businesses to invest.
But that's not…
jrosenhouse | December 7, 2010Discovery 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 is sweetly reasoned, I don't only mean that it's well reasoned but that there's an appealing geniality, a sweetness, to the man's writing ...
Geniality? Somehow that was not the word that came to my mind. Here's Wells:
As we saw in Kevin Padian's “cracked kettle” approach to biology, dogmatic…