December 28, 2013
Here's Spider (the orange one) and Emily from yesterday, having just been loaded into the back of my car.
See how happy they look! They were both expressing their joy with loud, some would say shrieking, meows. That's OK folks, no need to thank me.
As it happens, I also have a very large…
December 26, 2013
Proponents of intelligent design make a large number of arguments regarding the inadequacies of evolution, and the shortcomings of current scientific practice. All of these arguments are wrong.
That, however, is not the end of the problems besetting ID. There is also the fact that there really is…
December 21, 2013
Our first two entries in this series featured complex play drawn out over a large number of moves. So, for a change of pace this week, let's try something lighter. This problem was composed by E. Pedersen in the early 1940s. White is to move and mate in three:
Remember that white is moving up…
December 19, 2013
Let's resume our discussion of this article, by William Lane Craig, in which he presents five arguments for belief in God. We found his first two arguments to be inadequate. Do his other three fare any better?
3. God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties. Even…
December 18, 2013
Writing at Salon, Richard Cooper expresses dismay with recent superhero movies. Here's a sample:
I was reminded of this by Jor-El’s speech in “Man of Steel”:
You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will…
December 17, 2013
Writing in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas famously presented his “five ways” to prove that God exists. He relied largely on extrapolations from observable phenomena in our daily experience to grand claims about the origins of it all. Thus, he argued from the presence of motion in the…
December 16, 2013
When I wrote my post last week about the existence of mathematical objects, I had not yet noticed that Massimo Pigliucci was writing about similar topics. More specifically, he is discussing cosmologist Max Tegmark's idea that ultimate reality just is mathematics. Here's Pigliuccia describing…
December 15, 2013
In the rather fanciful position below, white is to move and force checkmate in six moves:
This problem was composed by H. Lepuschutz in 1936. It is a representative of what problem composers refer to as a “logical problem.” In a logical problem, white has some sequence of moves that seems to…
December 14, 2013
Back in August, I welcomed Spider the cat into my home. So how did that all work out?
That's Spider lounging in his basement room, aka the chess room. To judge from the liberal coating of cat hair, I'd say he likes that futon quite a lot. Spider's not much of a jumper, so I have no fear that he…
December 12, 2013
Over at The Economist, we have this brief interview with Edward Frenkel, a mathematician at Berkeley. We met Frenkel in this post from last week. Frenkel has a new book out called Love and Math, one copy of which is currently residing on my Kindle.
One part of the interview caught my attention…
December 11, 2013
It's finals week around here. Over the last two days I have graded just over a thousand calculus problems (many of them, let's face it, not worked out properly). So let's unwind with lighter fare tonight.
There are plenty of books and websites explaining the basics of scientific thinking.…
December 10, 2013
After posting this essay about skeptical theism last week, Michael Egnor showed up in the comments to heckle me. Egnor, if you are unfamiliar with him, is a blogger for the Discovery Institute, which does not bode well for the merits of his comment. He opened his remarks sensibly enough by…
December 10, 2013
Philosophy is chock-full of fantastical thought experiments. Sometimes, though, the scenario we're asked to imagine is so fantastical that it undermines the point of the experiment. From my perspective, the “Mary's Room” experiment is one such.
This thought experiment was proposed by Frank…
December 9, 2013
Friday was the last day of classes for the fall semester. We have finals this week. Then, a big pile of grading. Yuck! But then, winter break. Yay!
This semester I taught three sections of calculus. More specifically, I taught our first semester calculus course intended for students with…
December 8, 2013
This is the first of what I hope to make a regular feature here at EvolutionBlog: A chess problem for Sunday. By “chess problem” I do not mean the sort of thing where I show you a position from an actual game and ask you to find the best line of play for one side or the other. Those are fun too,…
December 6, 2013
Over at HuffPo, Jeff Schweitzer serves up a cri de couer against religion. He writes:
Many factors have brought us to this sad state of affairs, but we can no longer ignore the 600 pound gorilla and trumpeting elephants in the room: religion is killing us. While our kids are being taught that god…
December 6, 2013
Around here it's the last day of classes for the fall semester. Yay! So how about we mark the occasion with some math humor.
Over at HuffPo, math teacher Ben Orlin contrasts actual headlines with what they would say if people were more mathematically savvy. Some examples:
Our World: Market…
December 5, 2013
Rereading my post from Monday, I see there was one aspect of Vincent Torley's post that I neglected to address. Recall that Torley was at pains to explain why God might be innocent of the charge of hypocrisy, for demanding that we behave in ways that He does not Himself practice. Torley made two…
December 4, 2013
In Tuesday's post I started discussing this essay (PDF format), by mathematician Doron Zeilberger. I wholeheartedly seconded the sentiments from the first part of the essay, in which he lamented the generally poor state of mathematical communication.
But I'm a little skeptical of this part:
The…
December 3, 2013
Back in 2009, Chris Mooney, together with Sheril Kirshenbaum, wrote a book called Unscientific America. It purported to explain the origins of America's current antipathy toward science, and to make suggestions for what we might do about it. It created something of a stir in the science…
December 3, 2013
In an opinion piece for the New York Daily News, published in July 2012, mathematician Edward Frenkel and school superintendent Robert Ross write:
This Fourth of July will forever be remembered in the history of science as the day when the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced. The last…
December 2, 2013
Over at Uncommon Descent, Vincent Torley serves up a long post about the problem of evil. He was responding to this post by John Loftus, but Torley's post can mostly be read independently of what Loftus wrote.
I devote a chapter of Among the Creationists to the problem of evil. I open the chapter…
December 1, 2013
Magnus Carlsen of Norway has won the big chess match against the defending champion Viswanathan Anand of India. This result was not surprising, though some were probably expecting Anand to put up more of a fight than he did. Only ten of the scheduled twelve games were played, with Carlsen winning…
November 14, 2013
But such exciting draws! Carlsen tried the Reti Opening again in Game Three, but this time got less than nothing. Anand was pressing for most of the game, though it seems that Carlsen always had enough counterplay to draw. The crucial moment is shown below:
White's queen is looking a bit sad,…
November 11, 2013
I guess it's been obvious for a while now that I've largely lost interest in blogging. It seems the last vestiges of my SIWOTI syndrome have abandoned me. I still read as much nonsense as ever, but whereas previously I would have rushed to the blog to vent, now I mostly just shrug.
Still, I'm not…
September 8, 2013
The second Problem of the Week has now been posted. More of a puzzle this week, rather than a conventional math problem. Enjoy! I've also posted a solution to last week's problem. Enjoy that too!
Gotta run now. Breaking Bad is on in just over two hours, and I have to begin my preparations.
September 4, 2013
I'm teaching a lot of calculus this term, and we just spent the last class period or two talking about straight lines. That makes sense. Calculus is especially concerned with measuring the slopes of functions, and straight lines are just about the simplest functions there are.
Now, the textbook…
September 2, 2013
Things move quickly in the math world. It was only the end of May that we heard of a stunning development regarding the long moribund twin primes conjecture. The problem is to prove that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by two, such as 3 and 5, or 17 and 19, or 101 and…
September 1, 2013
Our school year started last Monday. My teaching muscles atrophied a bit over the summer, so last week's classes were the pedagogical equivalent of stretching exercises. But starting tomorrow we're really going to hit the ground running. Do you know what that means?
That's right! It means that…
August 21, 2013
I think it's been obvious for a while now that my enthusiasm for blogging comes and goes. Lately, it's been in a “goes” phase for longer than usual. But, I do have one piece of personal news that I feel compelled to share with all of you. Have you guessed what it is? (The title might have given…
