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gregladen | July 21, 2014Last month, listening to NPR, I learned that Sacramento, California is struggling with the installation of water meters on homes. There were two things I learned, both ungood: 1) Sacramento was installing water meters on homes, meaning, that they hadn't been there all along. I found that astounding because water meters are the first line of defense in controlling water use. Charge people for the water and they'll pay attention to the drippy faucet, they'll be more likely to remember to turn off the sprinkler, maybe they'll think about investing in more efficient water-using appliances. Or…
jrosenhouse | July 20, 2014My renewed interest in chess has not just extended to tournament play. I am composing chess problems again as well. Here's one I came up with recently, and which will eventually be published in The Problemist magazine. In the position below, white is looking for selfmate in thirteen moves:
Recall 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 numbered a--8 from bottom to top. So, in the diagram, the white king is on e3 and the black king is on e5.
Also recall that in a selfmate,…
gregladen | July 19, 2014We are celebrating an anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon. Here, I simply post a memo from William Safire, speech writer, to H. R. Halderman, felon, providing text to be read by Richard Nixon, World's Worst President (of the 20th century), related to that Moon Landing:
gregladen | July 18, 2014Governor Mark Dayton has called for the elimination of coal as a source of energy in Minnesota. Doing so is, clearly, essential. Having a governor call for it is a new thing; we are only seeing this sort of policy being developed recently.
From MPR News, Dayton said to a group of energy policy ad business leaders:
"Tell us what a timeline would look like, what has to happen for that timeline to be met and what kind of incentives or inducements do we need to provide to make that happen," ...
Dayton's comments came during the state's first-ever Clean Energy Economy Summit. He said…
jrosenhouse | July 17, 2014The anti-evolutionists just never get tired of the second law thermodynamics! The latest bit of silliness comes from Barry Arrington, writing at Uncommon Descent. Here's the whole post:
I hope our materialist friends will help us with this one.
As I understand their argument, entropy is not an obstacle to blind watchmaker evolution, because entropy applies absolutely only in a “closed system,” and the earth is not a closed system because it receives electromagnetic radiation from space.
Fair enough. But it seems to me that under that definition of “closed system” only the universe as a…
gregladen | July 17, 2014On Friday there will be some upgrading of the site so commenting will be off for a while, and possibly, comments will be stuck in moderation. That is all thank you very much.
The work on the upgrade is over. Apparently it did not go as planned so there will be a third attempt at upgrade at some time in the future.
This blog has dozens of individual blogs with thousands of posts on each. What a monster it must be to process that database.
I'll keep you posted.
gregladen | July 17, 2014I used to secretly like Johnny Winter and his brother. Secretly because they (and Rick Derringer IIRC) were all idolize by my friends and I tended to avoid going along with what everybody else did or thought. But I did manage to get to all the concerts invovolving any of the above.
Anyway, Johnny Winter has died, apparently.
gregladen | July 17, 2014Roger Pielke Jr, who is some form or another of climate change contrarian ... his main schtick is that global warming has no negative effects and he uses questionable analyses to "prove" this ... was brought on to the well respected FiveThirtyEight run by Nate Silver, blog site a while back. Soon after joining the team he seems to have stuck his foot deeply into his mouth a few times and got called on it. One could say that FiveThirtyEight's fame and respect has been earned by being straight forward and methodologically rigorous and professional in its handling of predictions about such…
gregladen | July 17, 2014Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed today on MorningJoe about the just released report to the UN Secretary-General on climate change and energy. The report addresses the goal of reaching a low-Carbon economy by mid century in the countries that release the most fossil carbon today.
One interesting thing about this report is that Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe himself, seems to be pretty much on board with the reality of climate change science. Since Joe occupies a centrist to right position in Mainstream Media, this is important. Good for you Joe.
Here is the show:
gregladen | July 17, 2014There is a major typhoon (hurricane) in the Western Pacific, Rammusan, which has already caused flooding and damage in the Phillipenes, where it killed 12 people, heading for southern China, and expected to affect northern Vietnam later on. From Accuweather:
Warm ocean waters combined with light wind shear will allow the storm to remain well organized through Friday as it approaches Hainan Island. Rammasun will likely bring widespread winds of 100 mph to northern Hainan Island on Friday afternoon and Friday night with higher gusts. Widespread wind damage is expected across northern Hainan,…
jrosenhouse | July 16, 2014I've been a fan of Weird Al Yankovic ever since “Eat It”
He just keeps getting better and better. His new video, “Tacky”, a spoof of Pharrell Williams' “Happy,” has just been released:
Great stuff! Be sure to pay attention to the lyrics. They're hilarious!
I also like his palindrome song:
jrosenhouse | July 15, 2014Over at The New York Times, Gary Gutting has an interview with philosopher Michael Ruse. It is part of a series on philosophy and religion. There are several interesting nuggets in the interview, but I just want to discuss this one:
G.G.: Do you think that evolution lends support to the atheistic argument from evil: that it makes no sense to think that an all-good, all-powerful God would have used so wasteful and brutal a process as evolution to create living things?
M.R.: Although in some philosophy of religion circles it is now thought that we can counter the argument from evil, I don't…
gregladen | July 15, 2014Music video by "Weird Al" Yankovic performing Word Crimes. (C) 2014 RCA Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment
jrosenhouse | July 14, 2014Apropos of our discussion of the proper interpretation of Genesis, Kelly James Clark, writing at Huffington Post, summarizes the state of play at some Christian Colleges:
Shortly after the 2004 publication of his book, Random Designer, biologist Richard Colling was prohibited from teaching introductory biology courses at Olivet Nazarene College in Illinois and his book was banned from the campus. Peter Enns, who earned his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, claimed that the first chapters of Genesis are firmly grounded in ancient myth, which he defines…
egrossman | July 14, 2014What do these places have in common: Camp Lejeune in North Carolina; Mountain View, California, where Google headquarters are located; Endicott, NY – the birthplace of IBM; and 389 Superfund sites in at least 48 states plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? All are contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), a volatile organic compound classified as a carcinogen that’s been widely used as a solvent and degreaser in large-scale industrial processes, small commercial shops and in some products used by individual consumers. On June 25th, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its…
jrosenhouse | July 13, 2014Ever wonder what it looks like to have 300 games of chess going on in one room?
There was a second ballroom, almost as large, which was also filled with players.
Well, we have arrived at round eight. In the prior seven rounds I had scored three wins, two losses, one draw, and one win by forfeit. I was riding high after winning my two previous games. Alas, we have reached the final day of the tournament, when the games are a bit earlier than normal. I don't like doing anything early in the morning, much less play a hard game of chess.
Across the board from me was a kid who was eye-…
jrosenhouse | July 11, 2014As it happens, the previous post was mostly a digression from what I really wanted to discuss. The set-up here is that back in 2007, philosopher Mary Midgley published a pamphlet discussing creationism, intelligent design, education, and various related topics. Philosopher Nicholas Everitt has just published a critical review (subscription required) of Midgley's pamphlet. Glenn Branch has now done three posts mostly criticizing Everitt: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.
That's the set-up. There is just one aspect of all of this I want to address. You see, in addition to her claims that the…
gregladen | July 10, 2014Islamic distain for Islamic extremism
Muslim people in the Middle East are getting fed up with Islamic extremism. This is indicated by a new poll from the Pew Research Center. Nigerians, regardless of religion, dislike Boko Haram. Ninety-two percent of Lebanese are concerned about extremism in their country (that's the highest number in the poll) up from 81 percent last year.
Majorities in most of the nations polled are concerned about extremism. And in most Middle Eastern countries, concern about extremism has increased in the past year.
In Lebanon, which shares a long border with…
jrosenhouse | July 9, 2014I will conclude my series on the World Open in the next day or two, but I would not want readers to think that I have converted this into a chess blog. So let's go back to our more traditional fare by pondering this pamphlet, by philosopher Mary Midgley. It is called, “Intelligent Design Theory and Other Ideological Problems,” and was published in 2007.
I will not attempt a full review of the pamphlet (which at forty-three, large print, pages can be read pretty quickly). It is a strange mixture of good points and bad points. Midgley is quite good when she is addressing the substance of…