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jrosenhouse | February 24, 2015Let's consider a hypothetical situation.
Professor Jones, who has tenure, learns that a graduate student in a different department has conducted a class in a manner he finds objectionable. So Jones writes a blog post in which he attacks the graduate student by name. He uses incendiary rhetoric he could reasonably know would lead to threats, harassment and intimidation directed at the student. In describing what transpired, he makes several errors of fact that are defamatory toward the people being discussed. It is later revealed that he has done this before. That is, he has attacked…
jrosenhouse | February 23, 2015The fifth Problem Of the Week has now been posted at the big website. I've also posted an “official” solution to Problem Four. POTW will be taking two weeks off after this one, so you will have to make this last. (Spring break is almost upon us, which seems incredible considering how cold it is outside.)
In other news, I see that Jerry Coyne is spotlighting the videos of British comedian Philomena Cunk, such as this one about evolution:
Great stuff! It reminded me of this old Bob and Ray routine about the Komodo dragon:
gregladen | February 23, 2015A newly published study has identified changes in precipitation patterns in the US Northeast, which are likely caused by human pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses, which has resulted in global warming. According to the study, there has been an increase in extreme precipitation events, and an increase in the clumping across time of precipitation, with longer or more intense rainy periods, and longer dry periods.
Generally, climate and weather watchers have noticed that arid regions are drier, wetter regions are wetter, and many feel this is a consequence of global warming.…
jrosenhouse | February 22, 2015My favorite philosophical conundrum has been back in the news lately, thanks to a recent interview with British actor Stephen Fry:
Asked by the interviewer what he would say to God were he to discover, after his death, that He existed, Fry replied:
I'd say, bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God, who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? That's what I'd say.
Skipping…
jrosenhouse | February 21, 2015All my hard work in Baltimore, and all the frustrations of the various drives, paled to insignificance upon arriving at the Parsippany Hilton. You see, it was time for another go at the U. S. Amateur Team East chess tournament. It's one of the biggest chess parties of the year, with more than 1300 players in attendance.
Me and my homies got together for one more run at the title:
Closest to the camera is our board four, lawyer-extraordinaire Brian Cige, sporting a rating of 1315. I never got around to asking him what his knight was doing on h5 here. Next to him is Ned Walthall, rated 1390…
jrosenhouse | February 21, 2015It's snowing again. Pretty hard, actually. So, since it looks like I won't be going anywhere today, how about I tell you about my recent travels?
My adventures started last Thursday. I hopped into the Jasonmobile around noon, and headed out to Baltimore. This entails driving on I-495, better known as “The Beltway.” When you hear folks in Washington DC described as living “inside the beltway,” that's what they mean.
Now, let me tell you something about the Beltway. There is no good time to be driving on it. I've been there at midnight and found myself stuck in traffic. So I expected…
jrosenhouse | February 17, 2015My recent travels, to Parsippany, NJ via Baltimore, MD, which involved three talks in two days, followed by multiple games of chess, bookended by two long drives, came to a dramatic conlcusion yesterday when I had to drive home in the snow. Not fun! There was so much snow on the road that you frequently couldn't see the lane markings, making it difficult to orient yourself. And let me tell you, the truckers who use that particular road weren't going to let a little snow slow them down. Then, after creeping along at thirty miles per hour for long stretches (on what is usually a seventy…
esiegel | February 10, 2015When you think of thermodynamics, and how energy, temperature, heat and entropy are all related in a system full of particles so numerous you could never hope to count them all in a thousand lifetimes, there are only a few names that stand out as titans in the field.
Paul Ehrenfest, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Boltzmann and Ehrenfest are perhaps two of the best-known, and while Boltzmann's tragedy is well known, Ehrenfest's story is perhaps even more heartbreaking, and has an even sadder ending.
Paul Ehrenfest, his son Paul Jr. and Albert Einstein, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Paul…
jrosenhouse | February 8, 2015The third problem of the week is now up at the big website. I've also posted the official solution to Problem Two. So go have a look and let me know what you think. Feel free to present solutions in the comments.
Unless, of course, you just want to pick micronits with the problem statement. In that case you don't need to let me know what you think.
jrosenhouse | February 8, 2015I will be in Baltimore at the end of week to give a couple of talks in honor of Darwin Day.
On Thursday, February 12, I will be speaking to the Baltimore Ethical Society. Pot luck dinner at 6:30 pm, with the talk beginning at 7:30. I will give a talk entitled Among the Creationists; I seem to recall a good book with that title. The talk will present some anecdotes from my experiences at creationist conferences, and will also discuss the various sources of conflict between evolution and religion.
Then, on Friday the 13th, I will be delivering a colloquium talk at the UMBC Math Department…
denialism | February 8, 2015It is amazing how powerful a free lunch is. And the data are real, that people tend to favor those who do nice things for them. That is why, despite new rules about the amount drug companies can give to doctors, or all the rules on disclosure, the pharma reps are always going to push the boundary to try to gain any advantage because it results in real world financial benefits to pharmaceutical companies.
Leave it to John Oliver to nail this. Reps are pervasive. They are influential. Their influence comes not necessarily from the right impulses of science and data, but from attractiveness…
jrosenhouse | February 8, 2015It's time to take a break from helpmates and return to selfmates. This week's problem was composed by Andrey Selivanov in 2014. The stipulation is selfmate in three:
Recall that in a selfmate, white plays first and forces black to give checkmate in no more than the stipulated number of moves. Black, for his part, will try despeartely not to give mate. It's a complete inversion of normal chess logic!
Selivanov is something of a wizard when it comes to selfmates. He routinely churns out problems that make other composers weep with envy. This is actually one of his lighter efforts, but…
jrosenhouse | February 7, 2015Here's something that happened this week: David Brooks wrote a bad column about secularism. In fairness, it gets off to a decent start:
Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who are atheist, agnostic or without religious affiliation. A fifth of all adults and a third of the youngest adults fit into this category.
As secularism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insistently argued that secularism should not be seen as an absence -- as a lack of faith -- but rather as a positive moral creed. Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer…
denialism | February 7, 2015My favorite news story of the week, herbal supplements don't contain anything at all apparently. Why should we be surprised that big placebo is selling placebos?
The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances…
jdupuis | February 3, 2015The default mode, politically-speaking, for most scientists seems to be professionally neutral. In other words, most scientists would tend to see their personal political beliefs as more or less completely separate from their work as scientists. Even for politically sensitive topics like climate change, the tendency is to focus on the the best available evidence rather than commenting more directly on the potential policy implications of that evidence. Only by maintaining that politcal neutrality with scientists will be able to maintain their surface veneer of objectivity. If you're too…
egrossman | February 2, 2015When negotiations over legislation to reform the 39-year-old Toxics Substance Control Act (TSCA) broke down this past fall, among the major points that remained unresolved were how a revised TSCA would treat state and other local chemicals management regulations and how – and under what timelines – the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would prioritize chemicals for safety review. As of early this year, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate have issued statements about their commitment to produce a bipartisan bill. Chemical industry trade associations and…
jrosenhouse | February 2, 2015The second Problem of the Week has now been posted. Also posted is an official solution to the first problem. Go have a look, and let me know what you think in the comments.
But don't get cocky. The problems get harder as we go along...
jrosenhouse | February 1, 2015Broadly speaking, there are two general strategies for proving that God exists. One we might call the scientific approach. This is where you point to some empirical fact and argue that it is beyond the reach of natural forces. The classic example is Paley's version of the argument for design. Paley argued that just as the complex, functional interweaving of parts in a watch immediately implies a watchmaker, so too does the complex functionality of living organisms demand a creator. This was a compelling argument for its time, and there is a reason it was accepted by almost everyone. But…
jrosenhouse | February 1, 2015This week we continue our look at helpmates. This week's problem has very different feel from the two helpmates we have seen thus far. It was composed by Joao Santiago and Nenad Petrovic, back in 1951. The stipulation calls for helpmate in four:
Let me remind you that in a helpmate, white and black cooperate to contrive a position in which black is checkmated. We assume that black moves first. Even though white and black are cooperating, normal chess rules apply. In particular, if either side is placed in check during the solution, then that person must get out of check on his next…