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jdupuis | August 18, 2014To continue the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science theme, I present the text of a recent open letter I signed to the AAAS concerning their new journal Science Advances.
Thanks to Jonathan Tennant for spearheading this effort. You can read more about the rationale behind writing the letter and the process involved at Jon's blog here. As well, he's listing the other places where the letter is being disseminated.
Dear AAAS,
This is an open letter concerning the recent launch of the new open access journal, Science Advances. In addition to the welcome diversification in…
jdupuis | August 8, 2014Only rarely in my life as a reviewer do I get books that seem to be absolutely perfectly suited for me. This is certainly the case with Charles L. Adler's Wizards, Aliens, and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction, a book that combines my love for science and my love for science fiction.
The premise is an ingenious one, one that's probably not anywhere near exploited enough in the popular science literature: use science fiction and fantasy stories as a way of elucidating science. Sure, it's been done to death in all those "The Science of X" books where X is some movie or…
jrosenhouse | August 6, 2014The blog will be quiet for a bit longer, since I'll be hitting the road tomorrow. I'll be working out of my NJ office for a few days, which is to say I will be visiting the 'rents. See ya when I return!
gregladen | August 6, 2014I don't like the messaging Holdren almost always seems to start with: "While we can't attribute a single bla bla bla to climate change" (it is not the right way to phrase what is happening, this is a good video just out:
gregladen | August 6, 2014It is probably safe to say that Nigeria now has an outbreak, as a handful of cases contracted in country seem to have been reported, though it is too early to be sure this will stick. Hopefully it won't.
There is also one suspected case, a death, in Saudi Arabia, of someone who would have caught it in Liberia.
The number of new cases per unit time seems to have increased, or at least, stayed high as it has been for the last several days. The following chart based on WHO data shows the cumulative number of cases and deaths, including probable, suspected, and confirmed, as per WHO reports…
jrosenhouse | August 3, 2014Last week I introduced the Dombrovskis theme: Black has a certain move which, in one phase of the problem prevents a mate and in a different phase provokes the same mate. Last week's problem came from the master himself, and coupled two such variations with an astonishing key move, which granted two flights. This week we have another presentation of the theme, from a 1985 problem by composer Dimitris Kapralos. White is to play and mate in two:
Remember that white is always moving up the board and black is always moving down. Vertical files are labeled a--h from left to right, while…
jrosenhouse | August 2, 2014Assisted suicide is not the happiest topic in the world, so I think it's time to lighten the mood around here. And what better way to do that than with some cute animal pictures?
Let's start with Emily keeping me company while I am at the computer:
I was making revisions to my paper about knight/knave puzzles for non-classical logics, which will be appearing shortly in The College Mathematics Journal. You subscribe, surely?
Also, yes, those are golden retriever puppies on my mouse pad. You got a problem with that?
Here's Spider in a contemplative mood:
Spider is a long-haired cat,…
jrosenhouse | July 31, 2014I hadn't intended to turn this into assisted dying week, but that's how it's turning out.
After his recent debate with Christian apologist William Lane Craig, Sean Carroll expressed frustration that the debate followed a certain pattern. Craig would make an argument, then Carroll would rebut it, then Craig would simply repeat the same argument as though nothing had happened.
That's how I felt reading David Klinghoffer's latest contribution to our discussion about assisted suicide. He merely repeats the same nonsense from his previous posts, this time tricked out with an impressive amount…
jrosenhouse | July 29, 2014Wesley Smith and David Klinghoffer have now replied to yesterday's post, here and here respectively.
Smith's reply simply ignores all of the main points that I made. He's mostly sore that I did not discuss two specific cases from his original essay, of people who faced great physical suffering but overcame it to live long and meaningful lives. I did not discuss those cases because they were entirely irrelevant to the points I was making.
I had two main points. One was that everyone has the right to personal autonomy and dignity. The other was that it is possible to reach a state of such…
jrosenhouse | July 28, 2014Consider this profile of NPR reporter Diane Rehm, in which she relates the harrowing story of her husband's final days:
His Parkinson's disease had become unbearable. “He just kept getting weaker,” the NPR host told NBC News. “We called in the doctor and John said to him: `I am ready today.' He said `I can no longer use my legs, I can no longer use my arms, I can no longer feed myself.' And knowing with Parkinson's it is going to get worse rather than better, he said `I wanted to die.'” He asked the doctor for help.
The answer they got surprised and disappointed both of them. “The doctor…
gregladen | July 28, 2014But they did not call it that then.
This isn't actually the anniversary of the war, but it is the wedding anniversary plus one month of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, and the day the two of them were assassinated by Mlada Bosna. Today, one month later one hundred years ago, the first of several declarations of war was made, by Austria-Hungary against Serbia. After that, it gets very complicated.
By the end, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the German Empire did not exist any more. The German colonies around the world were lost to Germany…
jrosenhouse | July 27, 2014Today I have a charming little bagatelle for your consideration. It was composed by Alfreds Dombrovskis in 1958. In the diagram position, white is to play mate in two.
Keep in mind that white is always moving up the board and black is always moving down. Vertical files are labeled a--h from left to right, while horizontal ranks are labeled 1--8 from bottom to top. So, in the diagram, the white king is on e5 and the black king is on d3.
This is an example of a multiphase problem, meaning that grasping the composer's intent requires more than simply looking at the solution. We must also…
gregladen | July 27, 2014LATEST UPDATE HERE
UPDATE: The latest numbers do not indicate a weakening of the outbreak. (See list of new cases below. Several graphs have been updated as well)
UPDATE: More detailed discussion of transmission of Ebola
UPDATE: I note with sadness the death of my neighbor (though I did not know him) of Patrick Sawyer, of the Liberian Ministry of Finance, who died in Nigeria of Ebola contracted in Liberia. He was on his way home to Minnesota at the time.
There is an Ebola Outbreak currently underway in several West African countries, mainly Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. This is the…
jrosenhouse | July 25, 2014 From the current issue of The New York Times Magazine:
One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald's Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W's burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.
Only when the company held customer…
jrosenhouse | July 23, 2014That title is somewhat facetious, of course, but I do think the multiverse is far more than an idle speculation. I think it is an idea that is sufficiently well-supported that it is those who deny it who should be on the defensive.
I would make an elaborate argument in defense of that claim, but Coel Hellier, a physics professor at Keele University in the UK, has saved me the trouble. He recently posted a two-part article on the subject over at Scientia Salon: Part One, Part Two. Hellier writes:
The multiverse concept is often derided as “unscientific” and an example of physicists…
gregladen | July 22, 2014[Updated: Letter to the Editor, Worthington Daily Globe.]
This is a followup on my earlier post (see "How do you say “Surprise” in Norwegian? The word is “Entenza.” I am not making that up" also reposted here) on Matt Entenza’s bid for the DFL (Democratic Party) Primary candidacy for Minnesota State Auditor.
Entenza claims he is from Greater Minnesota, and thus, would do a better job representing the interests of Greater Minnesotans. This implies that highly acclaimed sitting State Auditor and candidate for re-election Rebecca Otto is not doing well in this area. In fact, she is doing very…
gregladen | July 22, 2014One of the things climate change science deniers say, to throw you off, is that Antarctic sea ice is expanding. They even claim that the amount of expansion of Antarctic sea ice offsets the dramatic retreat of Arctic sea ice (see this for the latest on the Arctic). I've even seen it argued, in that famous peer-reviewed publication Twitter, that there is an inter-polar teleconnection that guarnatees that when the ice on one end of the earth expands the ice on the other end of the earth contracts, and visa versa, so everything is fine.
That Antarctic Sea ice is expanding has become standard…
gregladen | July 22, 2014As it does every summer, the Arctic Sea ice is melting off. Over the last several years, the amount of sea ice that melts by the time it hits minimum in September has generally been increasing. So, how's it doing now?
The graph above shows the 1981-2010 average plus or minus two standard deviations. Before going into more detail than that, you should look at the following graphic.
The top chart shows the march of Arctic Sea ice melt for first ten years of the baseline data set only, and the bottom chart shows the last ten years of the same data set. This tells us that the two Standard…
jrosenhouse | July 21, 2014There's plenty of science and religion stuff out there, but I think talking about anything else right now would be to ignore the elephant in the room.
There's a basic moral principle that I subscribe to that goes like this: When your neighbor is relentlessly firing rockets at you in an attempt to kill as many civilians as possible, or barring that to make life unlivable for civilian populations, then you have carte blanche to do whatever is necessary to make it stop.
I have no patience for bloggers who sit in perfect safety on the other side of the world, and, with steepled fingers and…
gregladen | July 21, 2014JW, protagonist, is a flawed hero. He is not exactly an anti-hero because he is not a bad guy, though one does become annoyed at where he places his values. As his character unfolds in the first several chapters of Shawn Otto's novel, Sins of Our Fathers, we like him, we are worried about him, we wonder what he is thinking, we sit on the edge of our proverbial seats as he takes risk after risk and we are sitting thusly because we learn that he does not have a rational concept of risk. We learn that his inner confusion about life arises from two main sources: the dramatic difference between…