jrosenhouse | June 9, 2016Speaking of the intellectual collapse of ID, its other major blog, the Discovery Institute's “Evolution News and Views” also seems to have fallen on hard times. How else to explain the presence of this article, by Steve Laufmann?
Laufmann addresses the question, “Is Intelligent Design Science?” He divides his answer into five parts. We shall come to them in a moment.
Now, as I discuss at some length in Among the Creationists questions about what is, and is not, science generally leave me cold. Lately there's been some hand-wringing among certain physicists about whether string theory and…
jrosenhouse | June 8, 2016At various times over the last few years I have declared ID to be dead. One of my reasons for saying that is the complete intellectual collapse of Uncommon Descent (UD).
When William Dembski started the blog, it was intended as an outpost for serious commentary on intelligent design and related topics. Not for them the standard creationist pyrotechnics, which had made anti-evolutionism a laughingstock among educated people. No, UD was going to show the world that anti-evolutionism did not have to be the domain of crazed religious demagogues, but could instead be defended rationally by…
jrosenhouse | June 7, 2016The inevitable has now occurred. Barring something earth-shattering, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President. She is the first woman to become the nominee of a major political party. In fact, she is the first woman even to be a serious candidate for President.
In her speech tonight, Hillary took time out to make a gracious mention of Bernie Sanders and all that he has accomplished in his campaign. Her audience cheered. Bernie, for his part, made only a brief, classless mention of Hillary (making hey of the fact that it was she who called him). His audience booed…
jrosenhouse | June 1, 2016Time for the big finale. The Monday morning game. Since I had already requested a bye for the final round, this was my last chance to make a respectable result. Here's how it went down.
I was playing black. My opponent sported a rating of 1983. But he also had a formidable Russian name, and I figure that counts for another fifty points.
He opened with 1. Nf3. Cagey! You're not quite sure what you're going to get with this. Maybe an English. Maybe a Reti. Maybe a transposition into a standard d4 or e4 opening. I decided to steer the game toward my normal Orthodox Queen's Gambit, and…
jrosenhouse | May 31, 2016After my win in round two I was excited for round three. My opponent sported a 1952 rating, and he had white. He opened with 1. e4.
Now, over the years I've tried most of the major defenses to e4. I was an aficionado of the Dragon Sicilian for a while, until I noticed I kept getting mated on h7 against stronger opponents. Then it was the Scandinavian for many years. I had many good games with it, but eventually I lost confidence. If white knows what he's doing he can make things pretty unpleasant for black.
So I've recently turned to the open games. This is not a move (ha!) to be taken…
jrosenhouse | May 30, 2016No Sunday Chess Problem this week, but I do have a good excuse. It's because I just spent the past few days participating in the Cherry Blossom Classic chess tournament. Enough with made-up chess positions! Sometimes it's good to experience the real thing.
For about ten years now I've been mostly retired from serious chess competition. I've never given it up--I read chess magazines and follow the big events--but I haven't been studying or trying to improve my rating or anything like that. Sure, I would play in the big amateur team event every year, but that's really a social event where…
jrosenhouse | May 24, 2016I think in the end Hillary will win in November, but I become less confident about that by the day.
Donald Trump's latest is to bring up Vince Foster. Those of us who remember the nineties will recall this as one of the many fake scandals the right-wing noise machine just invented from whole cloth. But for those millennials whose political memory starts with Obama, this is all new. And since Bernie Sanders has spent months telling them how untrustworthy she is, they are already primed to believe it.
When this election started, I had some admiration for Sanders. I liked a lot of what he…
jrosenhouse | May 23, 2016I may not blog as much as I used to, but I do still sometimes put myself out there. I just did a podcast with Jim Stein, posted over at the New Books Network. Jim is professor of mathematics at California State University at Long Beach.
The conversation was about the book I coedited with Jennifer Beineke, The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects. The book is essentially the conference proceedings of the first MOVES conference on recreational math, organized by the Museum of Mathematics.
We chatted for close to an hour about the joys of recreational mathematics, as well as the…
jrosenhouse | May 23, 2016Yes, I know it's Monday. But it's still Sunday Chess Problem. Deal with it.
One more from the files of Milan Vukcevich for you. This problem was published in 1994 and calls for selfmate in five:
Recall that in a selfmate, white plays first and tries to force black to give mate in no more than the stipulated number of moves. For his part, black does everything in his power to avoid giving mate. It's a complete inversion of normal chess logic!
Now, what's going on here? The first thing to notice is that black is pretty well tied up in knots just now. On the other hand, if either the b6…
jrosenhouse | May 18, 2016I was going to write a real barn burner of a post about the big election, but then I came across this:
Folks, sometimes you just have to focus on the good things in life.
jrosenhouse | May 15, 2016Sunday Chess Problem is taking this week off. We do have a topic for conversation, however.
Richard Weikart is an historian at California State University, Stanislaus. He has made something of a cottage industry of blaming Darwin and evolution for the ills of the world, most famously in his book From Darwin to Hitler. His argument, apparently, is that poor Adolf Hitler was trying to understand the cause of Germany's decline, then he read Darwin and realized it was the Jews. The book was, understandably, savaged by more serious historians.
If Weikart's intent was simply to elucidate the…
jrosenhouse | May 13, 2016A copy of the Japanese edition of Taking Sudoku Seriously showed up in the mail today:
Cool! The little bit of English on the cover is the only part I can understand, but it looks like they did a real good job. The diagrams all look good, at any rate.
And while I'm at it, The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects just picked up a nice review in the Newsletter of the London Mathematical Society.
Not a bad way to end the week. Alas, my summer course starts on Monday, so next week's likely to be less fun.
jrosenhouse | May 8, 2016This week I have one more problem from Milan Vukcevich for you. This one was published in Chess Life magazine in 1986. It later won first prize in the tourney. It caught my eye when the award was published, and it was one of the problems that got me interested in composing in the first place. The diagram calls for mate in eight:
Loyal readers of this series might remember the term “Nowotny.” It is one of the main interference themes employed by problem composers. A Nowtony occurs when one side plays a move that simultaneously interferes with two line pieces, usually the rook and bishop…
jrosenhouse | May 7, 2016Here's a a charming story:
On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.
Or so dozens of unsuspecting passengers thought.
The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he'd brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater--a look he would later…
jrosenhouse | May 2, 2016Did you hear the one about how Charles Darwin wasn't the creator of natural selection? Did you know that other people had had the idea before him?
Oh, you did know that? Because anyone who has ever spent five minutes learning about the history of evolutionary thought knows that? Well, tell that to Daniel Engber over at five thirty-eight. Apparently a big-time crackpot named Mike Sutton has made the astonishing discovery that Patrick Matthew, a Scottish farmer, anticipated Darwin in an appendix to an obscure book called Naval Timber and Arboriculture, published in 1831. Of course, the…
jrosenhouse | May 1, 2016It's been a busy few weeks. I hosted a Passover seder. (What? Atheists can't have seders?) Actually, I run a pretty laid back seder, all the more so this year considering there were goyim in attendance. It's mostly just a big dinner with some Hebrew and matzoh and charoset thrown in for fun. But if I go a year without doing the four questions then I go through withdrawal, so a seder it is. My parents drove down from New Jersey for the big event, and since I can't let them see the squalor I actually live in this meant a fair amount of cleaning. It's good that they visit from time to…
jrosenhouse | April 17, 2016This week I have another problem from Milan Vukcevich for you. It was published in 1998. The position below calls for white to move and mate in five.
White has two main ideas in this position. One is to move his bishop to f4, with the plan of giving mate on d6. The other is to move his knight to f4, with the plan of giving mate on d5.
For his part, black has two main responses to these ideas. By moving his bishop to f7, black prevents the knight mate on d5. And by moving his knight to f7, black prevents the bishop mate on d6.
But here's the thing. Black's defenses obstruct each…
jrosenhouse | April 11, 2016My trip to New York was a lot of fun. Some friends from Kentucky were visiting me this weekend, and that was fun too. But in all the chaos Sunday Chess Problem ended up taking the week off. Sorry about that! It will return next week.
POTW, on the other hand, is not taking the week off. Alas, this is the last one for the semester. No more POTW until the fall. It is a great sadness, but try to muddle through.
jrosenhouse | April 4, 2016I have just posted the penultimate POTW for the term, along with the “official” solution to last week's problem. Only one more problem after this, then it's nothing until the fall. Enjoy them while they last!
jrosenhouse | April 3, 2016Folks, I'm back from Atlanta. This trip was the meat in a travel sandwich that started with my brief visit to Indiana two weeks ago, and ends with my trip to New York on Wednesday. (I'm speaking at The Museum of Mathematics!) Busy, busy, busy. But not too bus to serve up a Sunday Chess Problem.
This week we have another selfmate for you from Milan Vukcevich. This was composed in 1990 and calls for selfmate in three:
Recall that in a selfmate white plays first and tries to force black to give mate in no more than the stipulated number of moves. Black, for his part, does everything in…