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gregladen | September 23, 2015Hillary Clinton just came out with her climate change plan. Here it is.
Hillary Clinton’s Vision for Modernizing North American Energy Infrastructure
Flipping a light switch, adjusting the thermostat, or turning a car key in the ignition brings predictable results—the light goes on, the temperature changes, the car starts. But where the energy for those everyday tasks comes from has changed dramatically in recent years, due to massive gains in renewable energy and a boom in domestic oil and gas production. And the amount of energy required to perform those tasks has fallen thanks to historic…
gregladen | September 22, 2015By "they" I mean AP. But, really, CSI kinda messed this up too.
Put this one on your list of examples of effective activism that backfired.
AP is throwing out the correct term, 'denier' in favor of a bogus term, to describe climate science deniers. CSI wanted them to stop using 'skeptic'. But the baby got thrown out with the bathwater.
From the CSI:
A small but important victory for science was scored in the public debate over climate change Tuesday, as the Associated Press announced that it would no longer refer to those who deny the reality of climate change as "skeptics" — a change that…
jrosenhouse | September 20, 2015I only have time for a quickie this week. Here's another Troitzky study, simple by his standards but charming nonetheless. It's white to play and win. This is actually a one-liner in which black's moves are all essentially forced, so you might want to have a go at solving it before reading on.
We're going to round up the queen with a knight fork. Play begins 1. Bd8+ Kf5 2. Ne7+
Now 2. ... Kf6 walks right into a discovered check, while 2. Ke5 walks right into a knight form on c6. So black must play 2. ... Kf4 after which we get 3. Bc7+!. Wait a sec. Can't black just take the…
jrosenhouse | September 19, 2015Granville Sewell has a new post up at Uncommon Descent. It's short, but if you don't want to read it, then rest assured it's just the same post he always writes. Could the four fundamental forces of physics assemble iPhones or nuclear power plants? Absurd! The post is framed in the context of an imaginary discussion between him and an imaginary friend who defends evolution. He plays the role of the bemused clear thinker, while his friend is, of course, dogmatic and unreasonable.
I wouldn't bother to address it, except that the title caught my eye. The post is called, “Mathematicians are…
jrosenhouse | September 18, 2015I've made occasional references to the book that I have been editing forever. Well, it has finally entered the home stretch:
The book is a companion volume to the 2013 MOVES Conference in recreational mathematics, organized by the Museum of Mathematics in New York. The publisher is Princeton University Press. It features seventeen papers, mostly based on presentations given at the conference. Be warned: this is not a trade book. Some of the papers are pretty formidable.
“MOVES” is an acronym for “The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects.” Hence the name of the book. We have…
sgorman | September 16, 2015As most people in any empirical or scientific field know, the gold standard for experimenting and establishing causality is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In an RCT, subjects are randomly assigned to one of two conditions: an experimental group or a control group. The experimental group receives the intervention or drug and the control group receives standard care or a placebo (basically, the equivalent of the status quo). The idea behind the randomized controlled trial is to control the circumstances surrounding the experimental question as much as possible. This allows researchers…
gregladen | September 15, 2015OK, not really, I just made that up. But it should be! As all the kiddies are going back to school, especially yours if you've got 'em, and you are going to have your first meetings with the teachers (Parent Night, Conferences, etc.) over the next few days, this is a good time to bring your kid's teacher(s) a nice book.
A book on the Evolution Creation Debate for your kid's biology teacher, or school administrator. A nice science activity book, not necessarily to use in class, but for the elementary school teacher to get some ideas from.
Some ideas:
A local guide to birds or trees or…
gregladen | September 15, 2015Just a quick reminder to check out the Skeptical Science Reader Survey if you've not done so already.
jrosenhouse | September 13, 2015Kevin Drum of Mother Jones magazine is one of my favorite political bloggers. In this post he provides a perfect summary of conservative rhetoric:
These guys wreck the economy, and then complain that Obama hasn't fixed it fast enough. They blow a hole in the deficit, and then complain that Obama hasn't quite filled it yet. They pursue a disastrous war in Iraq, and then complain that Obama ruined it all by not leaving a few more brigades behind. They twiddle their thumbs over Iran, and then complain that Obama's nuclear deal isn't quite to their liking.
It's hard to believe that even their…
jrosenhouse | September 13, 2015Last week's study went over well, so how about another study from Alexis Troitzky? It's white to play and win in this position:
There is an astonishing amount of strategy wrapped up in this simple position!
Let's start with some general considerations. White must try to promote his pawn as quickly as possible. Something like 1. Bd5, to slow down black's pawn, just won't work after 1. ... Bd3. Once white starts pushing his pawn, black will have to do likewise. Both sides will need one move to move their bishops out of the way of their pawns. At first blush, it seems like white will…
gregladen | September 13, 2015Someone just asked on Facebook if humans are naturally carnivores. My response: What is a carnivore? Taxon? A certain percentage of meat in the diet? Some, even if just a few, humans living mostly off meat? What? Then, what is “naturally”? Genetically determined and unavoidable? Required because of our gut, or some nutritional thing? What if we were like cats, genetically driven to be effective hunters but seeming in need of some training from mom. Does that make it not natural? And, finally, of course, define the verb “to be” here. Thank you.
So, with that in mind, what about the sentence…
cmonforton | September 11, 2015This week’s recap of "The Year in US Occupational Health and Safety" concludes with the section dedicated to national reporting on worker health and safety topics.
When Kim and I looked back over the past 12 months and brainstormed topics to include in the report, on the top of our list was the contributions of investigative journalists. The stories we profile in Section IV the report include the following:
The New York Times’ Sarah Maslin Nir exposed the “price of pretty nails” in her investigation of working conditions for nail salon workers in the New York City area. In the May 2015 series…
jrosenhouse | September 7, 2015Classes started last week, but that's not the real start of the semester. No, the real start of the semester is when Problem of the Week returns. Which means the semester starts today!
The theme for the term is “False Proofs.” By this I mean proofs that seem superficially convincing, but lead to an obviously absurd conclusion. Your task as the problem solver is to locate the exact moment when everything goes off the rails. Our problem for this first week is a classic of the genre, in which we, ahem, prove that an elephant weighs the same as a fly. As we go along we shall see that it is…
jrosenhouse | September 6, 2015I have been terribly remiss in my Sunday Chess Problem responsibilities. So how about a charming little amuse bouche from the greatest of all endgame composers: Alexey Troitzky. The position below was composed in 1898 and calls for white to play and win.
A natural first reaction would be to give check with 1. Rc2 or 1. Qh1 or something like that. You're welcome to give that a try, but I think you'll find that white quickly runs out of checks. So we need to find something a bit more subtle.
The only way to win is the shocking 1. Re6+!
For what purpose is white sacrificing the rook?…
jrosenhouse | September 2, 2015Classes started on Monday. I'm actually pretty happy about that. This summer was rather hectic and stressful in many ways. Also productive, but still. It was basically a good counterexample to the clueless types who insist that teachers only work nine months out of the year. For me, the summer tends to be harder work than the regular school year. Teaching isn't easy, and it's rather time consuming, but it's familiar and predictable and routine.
Of course, if all you know about higher education comes from what you hear in the news, you could easily think that modern academic life is an…
aardvarchaeology | September 2, 2015 Registering the bones from this summer's fieldwork at Landsjö.
Getting rid of excess stuff. Azerbaijani dude with a huge beautiful beard showed up on his wife's orders and collected both bike baby seats, the rolling baby stool, the dinner table lamp and the microwave oven. *happy*
My wife's workout app is giving her orders. It sounds like a very, very strange satnav.
User interface fail: our new microwave oven has not only start/stop buttons, but also on/off buttons that control whether the start/stop buttons are responsive or not.
Oh great, LinkedIn. You tried to find a job for me and…
gregladen | September 1, 2015I've got a press release from the University of Southern California that seems important, but I don't have time today to read the study. So, you can look at the press release and tell me what you think of it.
Climate Change Will Irreversibly Force Key Ocean Bacteria into Overdrive
Scientists demonstrate that a key organism in the ocean’s foodweb will start reproducing at high speed as carbon dioxide levels rise, with no way to stop when nutrients become scarce
Imagine being in a car with the gas pedal stuck to the floor, heading toward a cliff’s edge. Metaphorically speaking, that’s what…
gregladen | September 1, 2015Alaska is being called the poster child (state?) for climate change because things have been so strange there lately. One reason for this is the extreme warm conditions in the North Pacific and associated (probably) changes in the jet stream, as well as overall warming, which has caused coastal Alaska to become a warm place, glaciers to melt, and (in the farther north) sea ice to be less. And now, President Obama has made a trip there and given a big speech.
President Obama's speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvIrlaXU28A
More information on the President's trip here.
Meanwhile,…
gregladen | September 1, 2015Be prepared!
Did you now that September is, in the US, National Preparedness Month? The idea is to pay attention to natural threats and how to deal with them. This is a project of the USGS. Good idea to give it some thought on this tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The USGS recommends a scientific approach, and talks about hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, sinkholes, geomagnetic storms, drought, floods, wildfire, and more. For information on all of this, including info on The Great Shakout event coming in October (where we all pretend there is an earthquake) click here…