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jdupuis | April 28, 2016The math the planet relies on isn’t adding up right now
Reframing The Economics Debate Could Lead To More Action To Fight Climate Change
Abandon hype in climate models
The Future Role of Economics in the IPCC
Climate change will wipe $2.5tn off global financial assets: study
The Unsexy Climate Solution That's a Total No-Brainer
The solution to (nearly) everything: working less
Only One Canadian University Has Divested. Here's How Alumni Can Help Change That
Exxon Using Tobacco’s Failed Free Speech Defense for Decades of Deception on Climate Change
“There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution…
gregladen | April 28, 2016Voting is not party involvement.
We hear a lot of talk these days about "voters" being repressed in their attempt to be involved in the Democratic primary process. There may be something to that, and it might be nice to make it easier for people to wake up on some (usually) Tuesday morning and go and vote in a Democratic or Republican primary or visit a caucus. But there is a difference between a desire for a reform and the meaningful understanding of that reform -- why we want it, how to do it, and what it will get us -- that makes it important to do what we Anthropologists sometimes call…
pgleick | April 27, 2016Populations around the world face many severe water challenges, from scarcity to contamination, from political or violent conflict to economic disruption. As populations and economies grow, peak water pressures on existing renewable water resources also tend to grow up to the point that natural scarcity begins to constrain the options of water planners and managers. At this point, the effects of natural fluctuations in water availability in the form of extreme weather events become even more potentially disruptive than normal. In particular, droughts begin to bite deeply into human well-being…
gregladen | April 23, 2016His death is unexplained. He was 42. Foul play is not suspected. He was one of those interviewed by the Attorney General in the ongoing criminal investigation. This is probably nothing. Or maybe not.
See also this.
gregladen | April 20, 2016Mike Haubrich and I just taped an interview with space-robot expert and planetary geologist Emily Lakdawalla. Emily writes a blog at the Planetary Society, where she goes in depth on stuff that is happening in space, focusing on human-controlled robots on Mars, but covering a lot of other stuff too. The interview will be on Ikonokast in a day or two.
And we've arranged to interview Ethan Siegal of Starts with a Bang blog on Scienceblogs, and author of Beyond the Galaxy: How Humanity Looked Beyond Our Milky Way and Discovered the Entire Universe, in which I hope to ask him about this crazy…
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…
jdupuis | April 15, 2016Magma, the strangest rock band of all time, needs you to help finance a documentary film about their life and work.
So here goes. Up until a year or so ago I'd never heard of the French prog rock band Magma, or at least their music had never penetrated my consciousness. But last year while spending the month of May in Paris, I visited a bunch or record stores (and book stores and comic stores...) and noticed records and CDs by this band Magma prominently displayed, like I should know who they are or something. It took me a while to notice enough that I forced myself to dig a bit deeper and…
vlicata | April 14, 2016One of the cowboy science teams (or cowgirl science team – see photo) that I was able to spend some time with at McMurdo Station is the Weddell Seal Research Team under the direction of Dr. Jenn Burns of the University of Alaska. This multi-faceted science team spends virtually every single day during their field season tracking down tagged Weddell seals on the Ross Ice Shelf and performing a gigantic battery of physiological tests and measurements on them. Every day this group is either in helicopters (less frequently) or out on snow mobiles (more frequently) re-capturing animals that they…
esiegel | April 13, 2016"There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change." -Edward Witten
Quantum gravity is one of the holy grails of physics, and showing that gravitation is an inherently quantum force would be a tremendous step towards validating our present approaches to theoretical physics.
Image credit: Sabine Hossenfelder, derived from the NASA/WMAP data of the CMB.
While directly detecting gravitons might still be very far off, there are a number of weak-field tests involving the CMB and…
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.
carlyo | April 8, 2016
What if adversity weren’t the enemy? Join blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer on his quest to harness adversity, redefine expectations, and live a life without barriers. In this session, find out why you don’t need perfect sight to have a powerful vision.
https://youtu.be/RtnyXPFlyJk
Erik Weihenmayer is one of the most celebrated and accomplished athletes in the world. In 2001, he became the only blind person in history to climb Mount Everest. When he stood on the top of Carstensz Pyramid in 2008, he completed his quest to climb all of the Seven Summits-the tallest peak on each of the seven…
pharyngula | April 7, 2016Uh-oh. I've disappointed David Klinghoffer. I should probably put that on my CV.
You see, the other day he praised a fellow named Tom Gilson for a post in which he provided a succinct summary of Intelligent Design creationism, and I took that summary apart, point by point. You might think, perhaps Klinghoffer finds fault with my analysis? He doesn't provide any rebuttals. Did I get something wrong in using Gilson's definition of ID? Nope, he doesn't say…that would be hard to do anyway, since Klinghoffer praised it as exactly accurate!, exclamation point and all. Even in his title he declares…
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!
gregladen | April 4, 2016I just got my new Semogue 1305 Superior Boar Bristle Shaving Brush. It is the one on the left.
I like it. I prefer boar because I don't want to kill badgers and because the bristles are stiff and it basically works better.
I got the old one decades ago, and it was decades old when I got it. I should note that I wasn't actually using it (much) when there were so few bristles. That is what it looked like after I ran it through the dishwasher to see how clean it could get. I think a few bristles fell out.
Anyway, I shopped around, picked the Semogue 1305 Superior Boar Bristle Shaving Brush, and…
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…
jdupuis | April 1, 2016Reader Beware: Please note the date of publication of this post.
It's been really gratifying over the last year to see how my DSCaM scholarly communications empire has grown. From it's small beginnings, Dupuis Science Computing & Medicine has craved out a small but important niche in the discount APC publishing community.
And I really appreciate how the scholarly communications community has encouraged my career progression from publisher of a journal at Elsevier to Chief Advisor on Science Libraries for the Government of Canada to last year's huge launch of DSCaM.
And the DSCaM empire…
vlicata | March 31, 2016The Martian is a feel-good, science positive, uplifting film about the power of the human spirit, botany, and engineering. It looked, from the credits, like it had at least 8 scientific advisors from NASA (and possibly other places). Too bad that Ridley Scott only half listened to them. As one of the primary sci-fi filmmakers working today, it’s kind of amazing how a lot of the science in Ridley Scott’s films sort of leaves a chalky taste in the mouth. (Take a look at this link for a scathing review of the science in Prometheus).
It’s clear that The Martian is science-positive – the main…
jrosenhouse | March 29, 2016I'm leaving for Atlanta tomorrow, to participate in the biennial Gathering For Gardner conference. Martin Gardner's interests were math, magic, and fighting pseudoscience. My kind of guy!
While I'm away, you can discuss Sergey Karjakin's surprise win in the big chess candidate's tournament. His victory gets earns him a title match against World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Current plans are for the match to take place in November in New York. I'll believe it when it happens!
vlicata | March 28, 2016I just wanted to say how amazingly brave and admirable I believe Robert De Niro's recent decisions have been regarding the screening of the anti-vaccination film "Vaxxed" at his Tribeca Film Festival. As this was apparently one of his first revelations of having an autistic child, his actions are all that more brave and admirable in my opinion (for whatever little my opinion is worth on this matter). To be searching for answers to how? and why? a member of your own family has autism has got to be unbelievably frustrating. To have a member of your family who has autism has got to be a lifelong…