jrosenhouse | January 27, 2016For about a year in graduate school, I was a serious Go player. I read a few books and even played in a tournament. It's a beautiful game, no question about it, but after wasting so much time just to become a mediocre chess player, I eventually decided not to repeat the process with Go.
One thing I noticed, though, was that Go players were constantly comparing their game to chess. In particular, they were really keen on the idea that Go was more complex than chess. They liked to point out that computers were competitive with the top human chess players (and are now superior to them), but…
jrosenhouse | January 26, 2016Snow? Bah! Problem Of the Week doesn't care about snow.
That's right, it's time for another semester of teasers, enigmas, and conundrums. Our theme this term is:
NUMBER THEORY, WITH MATH JOKES
As always, we start with a fairly easy problem. Overall, though, I think the problems this term are a little more challenging than my usual fare, so don't get cocky!
Feel free to post solutions in the comments. Though this is nominally a competition, I'm not worried that my students are going to read this blog, desperately looking for the solution to the problem. This is entirely voluntary for…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2016Well, the final snow tally in my neck of the woods was a little over two feet. Impressive! On the other hand, there doesn't seem to have been much damage. There were no strong winds, we never lost power, and all of my trees seem to be intact. And it means I get another snow day tomorrow! Cleaning up after two feet of snow takes some time. I think my students might forget who I am.
In other news, it seems that the Grand Mufti in Saudi Arabia is not fond of chess.
A video clip of Saudi Arabia's top cleric saying that the game of chess is “forbidden” in Islam because it wastes time and…
jrosenhouse | January 22, 2016Here in my little neck of the woods we didn't get the apocalyptic, world-ending snow you've heard about on the news. But it was more than enough to close school for the day, and that's good enough for me!
Meanwhile, here's Emily the cat staring at the snow while I was working on the computer:
jrosenhouse | January 21, 2016The United Methodist Church has denied an application from the Discovery Institute to set up a table at their upcoming general conference. As you can imagine, the ID folks and their fellow travelers are having a collective freak out about this. Click here for a representative post about the sheer injustice of it all.
The basis for the rejection is that the Discovery Institute violates the UMC position on Evolution and Creationism:
WHEREAS, The United Methodist Church has for many years supported the separation of church and State;
Therefore, be it resolved, that the General Conference of…
jrosenhouse | January 20, 2016In a post from 2012, I wrote the following as part of a discussion about reconciling science and religion:
Too often the defender of reconciliation acts as though his job is done as soon as he has tossed off a logically possible scenario that includes both God and evolution.
This was specifically in response to an interview with philosopher Elliott Sober, in which he breathlessly reported his finding that science could not absolutely rule out the possibility that God was guiding the mutations in the course of evolution. Adorably, he seemed to think this represented a genuine contribution…
jrosenhouse | January 17, 2016Folks, I entertained tonight. Had actual people over at my house and served them dinner.
And quite a dinner it was, if I do say so myself! I prepared filet mignon, with a homemade pan sauce made from balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and chopped onion. For side dishes I roasted some red potatoes and steamed some broccoli. With the potatoes I went old school and prepared them just with salt, pepper, and olive oil, garnished with a bit of chopped parsley. For the broccoli I used chicken stock instead of water as the steaming liquid, and used lots of fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, and thyme,…
jrosenhouse | January 14, 2016Have you been following the goings-on at Wheaton College?
Last week, Wheaton Provost Stanton Jones took the first step toward firing Larycia Hawkins, a political science professor at the college for more than eight years, who posted on Facebook last month her intentions to show support for Muslims feeling besieged after the Paris terrorist attacks.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she posted on her Facebook page. “And as Pope Francis stated ... we worship the same God.”
According to the private evangelical college, not…
jrosenhouse | January 12, 2016Philosophers Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle believe that it has. They make their case in this essay, posted at The New York Times.
The history of Western philosophy can be presented in a number of ways. It can be told in terms of periods — ancient, medieval and modern. We can divide it into rival traditions (empiricism versus rationalism, analytic versus Continental), or into various core areas (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics). It can also, of course, be viewed through the critical lens of gender or racial exclusion, as a discipline almost entirely fashioned for and by white European…
jrosenhouse | January 11, 2016In a post from four years ago, I wrote this:
[A]s a society we do everything in our power to make teaching as unappealing a profession as possible. In most districts the pay and benefits are laughable compared to other professions. Even worse, there is a deep lack of respect for the work that teachers do. People who haven't set foot in a classroom since their own, typically undistinguished, academic careers, and who wouldn't last five minutes if they ever did enter a classroom, seem perfectly happy to give lectures on how easy teachers have it, what with their nine-month school year and…
jrosenhouse | January 10, 2016I picked a charming helpmate for you this week, composed by Edgar Holladay in 1978. He was especially well known for lightweight problems where the pieces formed a recognizable shape on the board. This one looks roughly like an arrow. The stipulation calls for helpmate in eight:
Remember that in a helpmate black and white work together to construct a position in which black is checkmated. Also, black moves first. So you are looking for a sequence eight moves long, staring with black's first move and ending with white's eighth move, that ends with black being mated. Also, the move order…
jrosenhouse | January 9, 2016Having neglected my Sunday Chess Problem duties recently, I'll give you a bonus chess post this week. I won't be making a habit of this, however, since I don't usually play games like this.
Here's a blitz game I recently played on the Internet Chess Club. I was white. My opponent was black and was rated in the high 1900s. We pick up the action with white about to make his fifteenth move. This came out of a Vienna Game.
I have this terrible fear that in a slow game, with too much time to think, I would have played the wimpy 15. Ne4. But in a blitz game, you might as well go for it.…
jrosenhouse | January 7, 2016As it happens, I've been thinking about mathematical anti-evolutionism a lot lately.
Sometime over the summer, though I can't find the exact post, I mentioned that I had been working on an article about mathematical arguments against evolution. I finished it in the fall, and it has recently been accepted for publication in the journal Science and Education. The article is currently in production, but I don't how long the process will take.
The main point of the article is that while anti-evolutionists deploy mathematics in a large variety of ways, ultimately all of their arguments are just…
jrosenhouse | January 6, 2016There's a famous short story by Woody Allen called “The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers” that I like to reread from time to time. (It's very short, so follow the link if you've never read it before.) The story is told through the correspondence of Gossage and Vardebedian, as they argue about a game of postal chess in which they are engaged. There's one excerpt that keeps coming back to me, since it applies so perfectly in so many contexts:
Received your latest letter today, and while it was just shy of coherence, I think I can see where your bewilderment lies. From your enclosed diagram, it…
jrosenhouse | January 5, 2016One of my New Year's resolutions is to pay more attention to my blog, so let's kick off the year by considering what showed up in my mailbox today.
Though I have recently been less active on the creationism beat than I have been in the past, I am still on a handful of creationist mailing lists. As a result, I periodically receive the newsletter of Creation Ministries International, a young-Earth group. Each issue invariably contains a testimonial or two, and this one contained a real corker. Two people identified simply as “Bernhard and Louise K.” wrote it to say this:
We want to thank…
jrosenhouse | December 20, 2015I'm a bit pressed for time today, so I've chosen a simple, but very charming, problem for you this week. This was composed by Fritz Giegold and Herbert Engel in 1973. White is to play and mate in five:
Things certainly look bad for black, since he's boxed in and hard up for moves. But considerable ingenuity is needed to deliver checkmate in just five moves. We'll get right to the action. The key move is 1. Bg1!
Like all good keys, it's a seemingly pointless move. Black only has two legal moves in reply. The first leads white to sacrifice his knight on h6: 1. ... cxb4 2. Bxb6 b3 3.…
jrosenhouse | December 12, 2015This week I have a classic direct-mate problem for you. It comes from the great Soviet composer Lev Loshinsky and was published in 1947. Loshinsky's last appearance in Sunday Chess Problem was almost two years ago, so it is well past time to see another of his works. White is to move and mate in three:
Perhaps you would like to have a go at solving this yourself. As a hint, the problem's theme is nowadays referred to as the Loshinsky magnet.
OK, here goes. The key move is 1. Qb1!.
This moves provides a masked guard of e4, which is to say that when the white rook on d3 moves away, e4…
jrosenhouse | December 12, 2015This might be too inside baseball for a lot of people, but those who have been reading political bogs for a long time might find it interesting. BuzzFeed has a lengthy profile of Mickey Kaus.
When I first started taking politics seriously in the mid-nineties, Kaus was a writer for The New Republic, and a very good one at that. He was someone I paid a lot of attention to. He was very much in the mold of Michael Kinsley, who at that time was basically the go-to guy for sensible liberal commentary. He was also one of the first serious political bloggers, largely responsible for defining the…
jrosenhouse | December 10, 2015You can accuse Sam Harris of a lot of things, but being a bad writer is not one of them. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I basically agree but think his manner of expression makes life too easy for his critics, and sometimes I disagree. But I always feel like I understand perfectly what he believes and why he believes it. I have also read enough of his writing and have seen enough of his public appearances to feel confident that he is in no way motivated by bigotry or Islamophobia. (Spare me the relentless out-of-context quotations that are meant to prove otherwise and the indignant…
jrosenhouse | December 8, 2015Prior to Donald Trump's latest expectoration, which has proven to be a bit much even for hard-core conservatives, the Republicans were worked up over a pressing question of semantics. In their telling, if you describe the threat we face as coming from “Jihadism,” then you are a politically correct pussy who just doesn't get it. The proper term, they are quick to tell us, is “Radical Islam.”
I was planning on writing a post about how silly this was, but then Kevin Drum went and said everything I was thinking. And since he said it better than I would have, I recommend just following the…