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jrosenhouse | March 28, 2015I had originally picked out another Circe problem for your enjoyment this week. However, this particular problem was in the genre of “series” movers, and it occurred to me that I had never shown you one of those before. I didn't want your first one to be the rather complex affair I had selected. So, instead I picked out a simpler series problem, just to illustrate how the genre works. But after preparing this problem, I then discovered that the Circe series problem I wanted to use turned out to be cooked. Oh well. You're getting this one anyway!
This problem was composed by George…
jdupuis | March 26, 2015Here's a bunch of graphic novels I've read in the last while that are well worth your time reading and acquiring for your library!
Abadzis, Nick. Laika. New York: First Second, 2007. 208pp. ISBN-13: 978-1596431010
Laika by Nick Abadzis in a fantastic graphic novel recounting the life of the first dog in space, the Russian dog Laika. The book goes into quite a bit of social and political history of the Soviet union in the 1950s, giving a good sense of how totalitarian states sometimes make decisions. We also get an illuminating look into the lives of people around Laika as her fateful one-way…
jrosenhouse | March 23, 2015My main line of research is in algebraic graph theory. In particular I am interested in the eigenvalue spectra of Laplacians on graphs. Those don't often get mentioned over at HuffPo, so I raised an eyebrow when I saw this:
A mathematician by the name of John Urschel recently published a complex paper in the Journal of Computational Mathematics entitled, “A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fielder Vector of Graph Laplacians.”
Mr. Urschel's paper is newsworthy because of this:
A mathematician publishing a math paper wouldn't normally be news, except that John Urschel the…
gregladen | March 23, 2015The podcast for my interview with Anastasia Bodnar is now available HERE. There are also a couple of links there that you might find of interest.
We focuses on the actual process and science of GMOs and spent very little time on the usual issues. I hope many of you find the interview different and refreshing. Total change of pace from the usual yammering, or at least, that was my intent. Also, for those of you who heard the first interview, I assure you, this time the sound quality is excellent!
Enjoy.
jrosenhouse | March 23, 2015As you might have noticed, Sunday Chess Problem had the week off. If you really need to get your fix, though, you can have a look at this web page I made for my chess problems. You'll recognize a few of them from the Sunday Chess Problem series.
I did, however, manage to get the new POTW up. Number seven, this week. I also posted an “official” solution to last week's problem. So go have a look and let me know what you think!
jrosenhouse | March 20, 2015Secondlawapalooza has broken out over at Uncommon Descent, with a series of posts trying one more time to convince the thinking world that either evolution or abiogenesis violates the second law of thermodynamics. They are unmoved by the fact that the violation exists only in their minds.
One recent post, by Eric Anderson, is entitled, “Second Thoughts on the Second Law: Extending an Olive Branch.” He outlines what he sees as myths that each side holds about the other, and then imagines that he is laying down a little clear thinking and common sense. I'm afraid, though, that his olive…
jrosenhouse | March 17, 2015School has started up again, and so has Problem Of the Week! Problem six has now been posted. As I've mentioned, in the second half of the semester the problems get a bit harder. But have a go at it anyway, and feel free to leave solutions in the comments.
gregladen | March 16, 2015I'm going to be interviewing Anastasia Bodnar, an expert on agriculture who is on the board of Biolmogy Fortified, Inc, "... an independent 501(c)(3) that aims to encourage conversation about agriculture, biotech, food, and related subjects. The interview will be Sunday, March 22, DETAILS HERE. She is very interested in the intersection between science and policy when it comes to agriculture." The Interview will be next Sunday, March 22nd, on Atheist Talk Radio.
Anastasia is an expert on GMOs, and that is mainly what we'll be talking about. Mike Haubrich interviewed Dr. Bodnar on Atheist…
jrosenhouse | March 14, 2015With the students returning tomorrow I'm afraid I have to blog and run. But I do want to continue my look at Circe problems this week. So here's a minor effort of mine, published in the U. S. Problem Bulletin all the way back in 1994. The stipulation calls for mate in ten. But remember that we're playing under Circe rules:
Let me remind you how Circe works. Everything proceeds as in normal chess until a piece is captured. When that happens, the captured piece is immediately reborn on its home square in the initial game array. So, for example, if the white queen is ever captured…
jrosenhouse | March 13, 2015Today's date is March 14, 2015. That's 3/14/15. That's the first five digits of pi! And if you're using 12-hour time, then you have two chances to be reading this at 9:26:53. That's the first ten digits of pi! Oh happy day!
And a welcome chance to stick a thumb in the eye of all those buzzkills who would prefer we celebrate tau day instead.
Since pi is an infinite, nonrepeating decimal whose digits, so far as anyone can tell, are statistically random, we might wonder if every ten-digit sequence of digits appears somewhere in its decimal expansion. If the answer is yes, then any…
jdupuis | March 9, 2015We live in a k-cup culture. Focused on the near term but willfully blind to the longer term implications of our daily decisions.
Just before the holidays I was watching the CBC TV show Power and Politics and they were discussing a bunch of "Top 5s" in an end-of year story. You know the type, the Top 5 this's and that's from the previous year, 2014, as well as a couple looking ahead to 2015. With a federal election scheduled in 2015, were the top 5 election issues that Canada that Canadians should keep on their radar in the coming year?
Economy/Jobs
Leadership/Ethics
Energy/Climate Change…
jrosenhouse | March 9, 2015In yesterday's post I mentioned that I wanted to use spring break to make progress on various writing and research projects.
One of those projects is based on one of the Darwin Day talks I gave in February, in which I discussed some of the mathematical arguments used by anti-evolutionists. In my preparations I gathered together far more material than I could possibly include in the talk itself, so I thought I would turn it all into a proper article. The title would be something like, “The Evolution Of Anti-Evolutionary Mathematics.” Partly the intent would be to gather together and refute…
jrosenhouse | March 7, 2015Blogging will continue to be light around here for at least another week. It's spring break, you see. That's hard to believe considering that Thursday and Friday of last week were both snow days, meaning that our spring break opened with a raging blizzard.
Spring break is a good time to make progress on various writing and research projects that inevitably take a back seat during the semester. When the students are in town, being a college professor is pretty much a standard, nine-to-five sort of job. Our days are mostly taken up with classes, preparing for classes, office hours, grading…
cmonforton | March 2, 2015The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) published a book last month featuring a collection of 50 workplace safety and health posters. They were designed for or developed by agencies and advocates between 1925 and 2004.
The book's author, Alfredo Menendez-Navarro, MD PhD, organized the selections into three time periods: the years between WWI and WWII, after WWII, and the post 1960’s. Menendez-Navarro is a professor of the history of science at the University of Granada and an expert in the history of occupational health.
This poster from Poland was one that really caught my eye. No matter…
jrosenhouse | March 1, 2015One of the underappreciated aspects of chess composition is that some problems have a sense of humor. Sure, the real classics show deep and surprising ideas and do so with impressive constructional finesse. But other problems just bring a smile to your face. This week I have two such problems for you. Neither is difficult to solve. In fact, they are both trivial to solve. But both made me smile when I saw them, and that makes them good problems in my book!
Last week I reported on The US Amateur Team East chess tournament. One of the great joys of this tournament is the chess bookstore…
jrosenhouse | February 28, 2015Sad news:
Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.
His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Leonard Nimoy has the distinction of having starred in two of the greatest television series ever. Let us recall that he went straight from Star Trek to…
jrosenhouse | February 26, 2015There's lots of good blog fodder out there, but I don't want to let too much time go by before finishing my discussion of Stephen Fry's presentation of the Problem of Evil. See Part One for the full context.
Of all the responses I've seen to Fry's interview, there was one that was so bizarre and demented that we just have to take a look at it. And it came from an unexpected source--Larry Moran:
This video is making the rounds and a lot of atheists are wetting their pants over Stephen Fry's response to the question of what he would would say to “he, she, or it” if he encountered god when he…
pgleick | February 26, 2015
If there is anything that the past few decades of research and study of major global challenges tells us, it is that truly effective solutions to sustainability challenges require truly integrated approaches across disciplines, fields of study, data sets, and institutions. We are not going to solve 21st century global problems with 20th century tools.
The planet is faced with a wide range of regional and global threats: air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, a rapidly changing climate and new risks from extreme weather events, energy and food security, conflicts over resources such…