jrosenhouse | June 1, 2010On most issues my politics are decidedly left-wing, but there is one big exception to that. That exception is Israel. On the subject of Isreal I get very right-wing.
When I look at Israel I see a Western-style democracy that has achieved extraordinary things in just sixty years. Their universities and technological achievements are among the most impressive in the world. They have achieved a standard of living for their people that puts the surrounding, mostly despotic, Arab regimes to shame. This they have done while facing relentless terrorism and threats to their existence from…
jrosenhouse | May 26, 2010Or so Karl Giberson seems to think. Early in his essay he writes:
This might suggest that Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., are becoming less relevant, as they speak for -- and to -- an increasingly smaller band of hyperconservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are exactly what Waltke warned us about -- a cult, with their own separate science.
And later:
There is something profoundly un-American about demanding that people give up cherished, or even uncherished, beliefs just because they don't comport with science.
Faith Giberson doesn't like?…
jrosenhouse | May 26, 2010The Dalai Lama had an op-ed in The New York Times the other day. Alas, he got off to a very bad start with this:
WHEN I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best -- and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.
Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical…
jrosenhouse | May 24, 2010Martin Gardner has died at the age of 95. He was a prolific writer in three different areas: mathematics, magic and debunking pseudoscience. Since those happen to be three of my favorite things in life you can imagine how big a fan I was of his writing. His book Puzzles From Other Worlds made a big impression on me when I stumbled onto a copy when I was about ten. It was a great thrill for me when Gardner volunteered to write a jacket endorsement for my book on the Monty Hall problem.
Obituaries are available all over the internet, but I think this profile, published in 1995 in Scientific…
jrosenhouse | May 20, 2010I have now had a chance to read Elaine Howard Ecklund's new book Science vs. Relgion: What Scientists Really Think. It is worth reading, despite her annoying decision to include social scientists, but not mathematicians, in her definition of “scienitst.” I also did not care for her obvious preference for those scientists willing to talk sweetly about religion, but what can you do?
Most interesting to me were the statistics she gathered regarding the religious beliefs of scientists at major American research universities. The picture I had prior to reading this book was that scientists…
jrosenhouse | May 11, 2010Could this fantastic match have ended in any other way than with a tremendous tactical slugfest?
The final game of the big chess match took place today, with the score tied and Topalov playing white. Topalov did what Topalov does: he overplayed a slightly better position, allowing Anand to unleash the forces of hell upon him. The game started with one of the stodgiest and most conservative openings, but ended with a breathtaking flurry of tactics. Let's have a look.
Position after 7. ... Nf6-e4
This introduces the Lasker Variation of the Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined, an old…
jrosenhouse | May 9, 2010I've gotten a bit behind in my chess match coverage. Time to remedy that!
Last we saw Anand had blundered away an easily drawn endgame in Game Eight. This allowed Topalov to tie the match. Undeterred, Anand came out swinging in Game Nine. Topalov decided he had had enough of Anand's Catalan, and played the Nimzo-Indian Defense instead. Everything proceeded along normal lines until Topalov allowed an endgame with his queen pitted against Anand's two rooks. If you remember your basic chess arithmetic, rooks are worth five points each, while the queen is nine points. So two rooks count as…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2010You didn't think I'd forgotten about the big chess match, did you?
Topalov won game eight to tie the match with four games to go. His win had more to do with Anand's carelessness than it did with his own cleverness, but hey, a win is a win. The momentum has completely shifted to Topalov now. It will be interesting to see if Anand can get it together down the home stretch.
The game was another Slav. Once again Anand was the first to vary, but he got a bit careless in the queenless middlegame.
Position after 22. ... f5-f4
Anand has just moved his f-pawn one square forward, attacking…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2010Via Jerry Coyne, I came across this essay over at the BioLogos website. The author: Steven Benner. The title: The Dangers of Advocacy in Science. The key paragraphs:
This provides another reason why it is easy to be confused about what science is and what scientists do. The imagery of science and scientists is widely expropriated in the public square by non-scientists.
The temptation to participate in the public dialogue as an advocate is considerable. I myself have been interviewed by reporters who become impatient if I actually practice science before their eyes. It is generally simpler…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2010As part of his ongoing campaign to make himself as buffoonish as possible, Joe Lieberman devised a brilliant idea for dealing with American terror suspects:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) thinks he's found a work-around on the whole Miranda rights debate for U.S. citizens accused of terrorism: Strip their citizenship and ship them to Guantanamo.
Lieberman plans to introduce a bill that would amend a decades-old law aimed at yanking citizenship from U.S. citizens who fight for a foreign military.
“I'm now putting together legislation to amend that to [specify that] any individual American…
jrosenhouse | May 3, 2010The 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 was another Catalan. Anand's two knights looked to be dominating Topalov's two bishops, but in the end he could not break through. Another draw.
But the real excitement came with today's Game Seven. Anand got his second white in a row. The schedule for the match calls for a rest day after every…
jrosenhouse | April 28, 2010Two 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 requisite small advantage out of the opening, but he was never close to breaking through Anand's solid defense.
The real action came in game four. Anand, playing white, once more went with the Catalan Opening, which worked so well for him in Game Two. Twenty-One moves later he reached this position…
jrosenhouse | April 27, 2010If 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. Here's a nugget:
Indeed, virtually none of the biologists who study the “constraints” described by F&P share their dim view of natural selection. That's because, over and over again, selection has wrought the most improbable and unpredictable changes in animals and plants. F&P claim, for…
jrosenhouse | April 26, 2010Two 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 Chess Championship in which neither player is from the former Soviet Union since Lasker-Capablanca in 1920. Here is the key position from Game One:
Position After 23. ... Kg8-f7
Topalov is known as a very tactical player who loves materially unbalanced positions. Given that, it was…
jrosenhouse | April 15, 2010I 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 classic result from elementary number theory, first stated by Fermat but first proved by Euler. It can be stated in a number of different ways, but here is the version most useful for what I am about to do:
Let k be a positive integer and let p be a prime number. Then kp - k is a multiple of p.
This…
jrosenhouse | April 14, 2010Massimo 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 anything by Coyne on morality), but they insist in applying science to the supernatural, which is simply another form of the same malady that strikes Harris: scientism, the idea that science can do everything and provides us with all the answers that are worth having.
Jerry Coyne replies by explaining…
jrosenhouse | April 9, 2010This 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 are the final two paragraphs of the lengthy review:
The non-mathematical portions of the book, and even the least demanding mathematical portions, are very good reading and are suitable for a large non-specialist audience. In the cognitive chapter, for instance, we are made aware of two basic types…
jrosenhouse | April 9, 2010I 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 of the 80's and early 90's. Smyslov played three matches with Botvinnik. The first ended in a 12-12 tie and featured a string of eight consecutive decisive games, Smyslov winning four and Botvinnik winning the other four. The tied match meant Botvinnik kept the title. Smyslov then won the…
jrosenhouse | April 8, 2010Peter 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 Peter makes a strong case for ID being blasphemous.” My reaction is considerably less charitable.
We will come to the part about ID in a moment, but first we must address the following from Hess:
The reception of On the Origin of Species was not as the “warfare myth” portrayed it, with godless…