jrosenhouse | February 6, 2007Having just spent three hours explaining the value of trigonometric substitutions and partial fraction expansions to not very enthusiastic calculus students, I'm not really in the mood for a lengthy post today. So how about yet another variation on the Monty Hall problem.
In this version the contestant is shown 10 identical doors. One contains a valuable prize, the other nine contain goats. The contestant chooses one door. The host then opens a door he knows to be empty and gives the contestant the choice of switching to one of the remaining eight unopened doors. After the contestant…
jrosenhouse | February 5, 2007Theologian Alister McGrath offers these thoughts about Richard Dawkins. Let's have a look.
Actually, the fun begins with essay's headline: “Do Stop Behaving as if You Are God, Professor Dawkins.” McGrath is about to devote roughly a thousand words to explaining all the ways in which Dawkins has been behaving badly. If Dawkins' behavior is nonetheless reminiscent of God, then God is hardly someone to be admired.
We pick up the action in the fifth paragraph. McGrath writes:
Of course, back in the Sixties, everyone who mattered was telling us that religion was dead. I was an atheist then…
jrosenhouse | February 1, 2007Remember Kearney, NJ? That was where history teacher David Paszkiewicz routinely lectured his students on the fine points of getting into heaven and about which trendy scientific theories were not scientific. I described the basic facts of the case in this post.
The case was remarkable not just because a teacher grossly overstepped his classroom authority, but because the community largely supported him against the student who recorded his classes. Rather remarkable behavior, especially from the blue states. The story was a useful reminder that all those folks who state so casually that…
jrosenhouse | January 31, 2007It's been a while since I've replied to anything over at Uncommon Descent. But this entry from Salvador Cordova really caught my eye.
It is based on this paper, by mathematician Gregory Chaitin, The paper's title: “The Halting Probability Omega: Irreducible Complexity in Pure Mathematics.”
Goodness! There's irreducible complexity again. Let's check in with Salvador first:
On the surface Chaitin's notion of Irreducible Complexity (IC) in math may seem totally irrelevant to Irreducible Complexity (IC) in ID literature. But let me argue that notion of IC in math relates to IC in physics…
jrosenhouse | January 31, 2007Keith Olbermann routinely declares Bill O'Reilly to be The Worst Person in the World, but I thought yesterday's edition was especially amusing:
And our winner? Oh, it's a two-for, Bill-O offering you this splendid deal, buy a copy of his book, “I'm Squinting While Wearing a Wind Breaker” -- no, I'm sorry, it's called “Culture Wart”--I will get it somewhere. You buy a copy of the book from him, and he will send a free copy to a U.S. soldier somewhere. So you've got copies to give away to the soldiers, but you only do that if I give you at least 26 bucks first? That's generosity. You…
jrosenhouse | January 31, 2007From the blog of Oxford University Press comes this essay from philosopher Phillip Kitcher. The subject: evolution and religion. Let's look at some highlights:
The answer, very often, is that particular pieces of scientific knowledge are viewed as threatening. Acknowledging the truth about global warming would unsettle those who believe in the unfettered rights of oil companies to drill and of auto-makers to produce gas-guzzling behemoths. Acknowledging the truth about Darwin would raise worrying questions about religious belief (or so many people think). So the pressure for “alternative…
jrosenhouse | January 30, 2007Speaking of chess, we really ought to take a moment to acknowledge the fact that the first major grandmaster chess tournament of the year has now ended. I refer of course to the annual event at Wijk aan Zee, in the Netherlands. This year's event ended in a three-way tie between Veselin Topalov, Teimour Radjabov and Levon Aronian.
The last time we saw Topalov was during his big World Championship match with Vladimir Kramnik last fall. You might recall that Topalov lost the match, and pretty much humiliated himself by manufacturing a scandal about Kramnik's frequent bathroom use. He seems…
jrosenhouse | January 30, 2007Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake Young reports on a major study into the reasons for the dearth of women among competitive chessplayers. His conclusion:
I am going to make an analogy to make this data make more sense. Why does it seem like the US has substantially fewer good soccer players than the rest of the world? We clearly have good athletes. We play other sports well. We train athletes just as well. Why do other countries do so much better?
The answer is that when you are a good athlete in the US, you do not play soccer. You end up playing something else like football or basketball. The…
jrosenhouse | January 30, 2007Via ThinkProgress comes this irritating story about a recent Congressional hearing on the political manipulation of climate change science. Tennessee Democratic representative Jim Cooper told the following story, about a dinner party he attended:
REP. JIM COOPER (D-TN): Second, let me mention a dinner party I attended about two months ago here in Washington. The honoree was John Negroponte. He was then the director of national intelligence. He was there to receive an environmental award.
It was very interesting because in anticipation of his remarks, word slipped through the crowd he was…
jrosenhouse | January 29, 2007The stereotype about acedmics living in ivory towers does have a germ of truth to it. For the latest example, have a look at biologist J. Scott Turner's take on the ID situation. He was writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
He begins:
I'd never had a heckler before. Usually, when I'm asked to give a talk, I discuss my research on termites and the remarkable structures they build. Usually, I'm glad just to have an audience. x But what I'd learned from termites had got me thinking about broader issues, among them the question of design in biology: Why are living things built so well…
jrosenhouse | January 25, 2007The current issue of Nature features this interesting essay by Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese. The essay's point is that recent discoveries about genomic interactions among microbes, particularly the phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), is forcing us to reevaluate certain basic concepts in biology. They write:
One of the most fundamental patterns of scientific discovery is the revolution in thought that accompanies a new body of data. Satellite-based astronomy has, during the past decade, overthrown our most cherished ideas of cosmology, especially those relating to the size,…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2007As I mentioned, Sam Harris has already replied to Sullivan's essay. Let's consider some highlights:
Contrary to your allegation, I do not “disdain” religious moderates. I do, however, disdain bad ideas and bad arguments--which, I'm afraid, you have begun to manufacture in earnest. I'd like to point out that you have not rebutted any of the substantial challenges I made in my last post. Rather, you have gone on to make other points, most of which I find unsurprising and irrelevant to the case I have made against religious faith. For instance, you claim that many fundamentalists are tolerant…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2007Following up on my previous post about the blogalogue between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris, here have now been a few more entries. Picking up where the previous post left off, let's look at Sullivan's reply. Since Harris has replied in turn, I will content myself with a few brief points.
Sullivan writes:
I also disagree that religious moderates simply have less faith. You write:
Religious moderation is the result of not taking scripture all that seriously.
Blogger, please. In many ways, the source of much of today's religious moderation is taking scripture more seriously than the…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2007There was only one small part of Bush's State of the Unon address that really jumped out at me. Here it is:
This war is more than a clash of arms -- it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom -- societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to…
jrosenhouse | January 23, 2007I was really impressed by this post from Polymathematics. He discusses a proof of Morley's Theorem, which is a result from Euclidean geometry. Start with any triangle. Trisect each of the three angles. Then the points of intersection of pairs of adjacent trisectors from the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Take one look at the pictures Polymathematics provides and you'll see what I mean. The details of the proof are ingenious, and not too hard to follow. Highly recommended.
jrosenhouse | January 23, 2007Be sure to go say hi to the newest member of the all-encompassing Science Blogs combine. ScienceToLife is written by Karen Ventii, a graduate student in biochemistry at Emory University. Looks like she's especially interested in health related stories. Good stuff!
jrosenhouse | January 23, 2007On the subject of basic concepts, here's an essay I orginally posted back in June. In it I try to explain what infinity is all about. It seems appropriate for this series, so I thought I would bring it back. Enjoy!
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Think for a minute about basic arithmetic. Addition is something that is done to two numbers. You take two real numbers and add them together to produce another real number. But suppose you had three numbers, x, y, and z? What does it mean to add three numbers together?
Very simple. You would begin by adding x to y. Then, you would take the…
jrosenhouse | January 23, 2007Many of my SciBlings have been doing posts in which they define basic concepts in various scientific fields. For example, physicist Chad Orzel has done posts on Force and Fields, biologist P. Z. Myers has covered Genes, computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll offers up wise words on Margin of Error and Standard Deviation, and philosopher John Wilkins discusses fitness.
And, in the few minutes it took me to put together that list, I notice that Wilkins has just put up this post, gathering all of the basic concepts posts together.
I figured it was high time I weighed in with some basic concept in…
jrosenhouse | January 20, 2007Via Andrew Sullivan's blog I came across this account of a recent talk given by former FEMA director Michael Brown:
Political storm clouds gathered again over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina as former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said party politics influenced decisions on whether to take federal control of Louisiana and other areas affected by the hurricane.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the partisanship Brown described was “disgusting,” while a White House spokeswoman said Brown was making “false statements.”
Brown told a group of…
jrosenhouse | January 20, 2007Kent Hovind, one of the slimiest of the young-Earth ignorance peddlers, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for tax fraud:
Pensacola evangelist Kent Hovind was sentenced Friday afternoon to 10 years in prison on charges of tax fraud.
After a lengthy sentencing hearing that last 5 1/2 hours, U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also:
-- Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
-- Pay the prosecution's court costs of $7,078.
-- Serve three years parole once he is released from prison.
Hovind's wife, Jo Hovind, also was scheduled to be sentenced. Rodgers…