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jrosenhouse | October 25, 2015I have something a little different for you this week. Normally I show you composed positions in my Sunday Chess Problem posts. But this week I'd like to show you two shocking moves that occurred in actual games. The first comes from another of Aviv Friedman's videos. He did not mention the players in the following position, but he did mention that it is black to move:
Probably the first thing you notice is that black has sacrificed an exchange. He certainly has compensation in the form of more active pieces and white's exposed king, but there does not seem to be any immediate…
jdupuis | October 23, 2015As you can all imagine, I'm quite pleased to see the backside of the Harper government on their way out the door. Of course, the Liberals have promised a lot but only time will tell how serious they are about fixing the science-related stuff that they've promised to fix. I'll definitely be watching that and keeping track here on the blog somehow somewhere.
That being said, I was quite gratified that my various pro-science advocacy efforts in general and my war on science chronology post in particular were quite popular and widely used during the election campaign.
Obviously all the things…
jrosenhouse | October 22, 2015I'm heading off to Minnesota for the weekend. Bemidji, Minnesota, to be exact. I'm giving one of the invited talks at the big MAA Section Meeting they're having at Bemidji State University. Should be fun!
Looks like I'm picking the right weekend to get out of town. It's going to be a zoo around here!
drorzel | October 20, 2015When we were in DC back in July, SteelyKid purchased a toy Newton's cradle. And I already owned a 1000fps video camera, so it was inevitable that the one would end up in front of the other...
I spent a while this afternoon making high-speed video of the toy clicking back and forth, but didn't have time to write up the analysis. And I'm leaving wayyy too early this morning to fly to California for a few days (giving a couple of talks in Sacramento, then visiting my sister for a bit), so you'll have to settle for this teaser image for now:
SteelyKid's toy Newton's cradle in mid-swing.
Well,…
jrosenhouse | October 20, 2015After taking last week off, Problem of the Week makes a triumphant return. Problem Six has now been posted. Enjoy!
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2015I've gotten very cynical about political debates. They've become asinine reality TV shows, with preening moderators asking silly gotcha questions to people who just pivot to their talking points at every opportunity. But I did have a big pile of grading to get through last night and having the debate on in the background seemed like a reasonable idea. I'm glad I did. I found it riveting. Click here for the transcript.
There are two big contrasts between the Democrats and the Republicans.
The first thing that struck me is that all five Democratic candidates are extraordinarily competent…
gregladen | October 14, 2015Here, without comment, is a handful of screen grabs showing the results (at the time I grabbed them, Wed AM) of several on line polls asking who won last night's Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas.
Note: For most polls, I needed to vote first to see the results. I voted alternately for Sanders and Clinton in doing so.
jrosenhouse | October 11, 2015This week I have another short, one-liner for you. It is another one I found at the end of one of Aviv Friedman's videos. He did not mention the composer, but I got a real kick out of it. The solution is short, but there is a lot of strategy packed into it. It is also one of those problems where you can be one move from the end and still not see where it is going.
White is to play and draw:
It sure does look bad for white, doesn't it? His passed pawn is firmly under control, while black's passed pawn is unstoppable. Game over, right?
Not so fast! There is one glimmer of hope: black'…
jrosenhouse | October 11, 2015There is no longer any need for the phrase “gay marriage.” There is just “marriage.”
For a while we shall still have to put up with an occasional Kim Davis or right-wing judge who gets mopey about it, but most people have simply moved on. They either don't have a problem with marriage equality, or they don't care enough to do anything about it. It is the ones who do who are increasingly on the defensive.
And well they should be. One reason public opinion turned around so quickly was the complete inability of the anti's to make any reasonable argument at all. Once you get beyond, “It'…
kkrisberg | October 9, 2015Earlier this week, the White House hosted a Summit on Worker Voice, welcoming organizers from more traditional labor groups, such as unions, as well as voices from new worker movements, such as Fight for $15. At the summit, President Obama spoke about wages, the power of collective action and the growing “gig” economy.
Many of the summit remarks weren’t necessarily groundbreaking or even entirely surprising. But as the right to organize is increasingly under fire in Congress and in state legislatures — while at the same time, low-wage workers are finding new ways to band together and demand…
pharyngula | October 7, 2015This retracted article is proof that there is a diversity crisis in Silicon Valley.
Forbes has removed a contributor piece titled "There Is No Diversity Crisis in Silicon Valley" after being hit with a barrage of criticism from readers, including many leading the tech industry's movement to hire more women, Hispanics and African-Americans. The article, authored by journalist Brian S. Hall, argued that the healthy revenue streams and stock prices of companies like Apple, Google and Facebook were proof that the tech industry is doing well and has no reason to go out of its way to include more…
esiegel | October 6, 2015“My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we can’t understand what happened at the singularity we came out of, then we don’t seem to have any understanding of the laws of particle physics.” -Neil Turok
The birth of space and time is perhaps the most fundamental question in all of physics, and may be the ultimate key to understanding where "all of this" comes from, including matter, radiation, the laws of nature, the forces, and all of reality. Of course, it might not even have the answer we expect, as space and time themselves may turn out to be eternal, or dynamical, changing…
jrosenhouse | October 5, 2015The fifth Problem of the Week has now been posted. This one is probably my favorite of the term. I think it's fairly challenging. It will have to hold you for a while, though, since POTW will be taking next week off.
I've also posted a solution to POTW 4. Enjoy!
jdupuis | October 4, 2015Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler by Philip Ball and Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War by Brandon R. Brown are two of the best history of science books I've read in a very long time. And even though they're both about World War II, some seventy years in the past, they've both also very topical because they are both very much about the relationship between politics and science. In a sense, what comes first, the political chicken or the scientific egg. Are scientists responsible for how their work is put to use by their political "masters?" Do scientists…
jrosenhouse | October 4, 2015Many years ago, as a middle-schooler, I attended a one-week summer chess camp in New York state. There were many excellent instructors at the camp, but my favorite was Aviv Friedman, a FIDE master originally from Israel. He had a real knack for finding interesting and instructive positions to show us, and he always presented things with clarity and humor.
So I was delighted to discover recently that he has become a regular lecturer at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, and that many of those lectures are available on YouTube. I've been dutifully working my way through them…
jrosenhouse | October 2, 2015I saw the film Pawn Sacrifice the other day. It stars Tobey Maguire and Liev Schrieber as Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Serious chess movies don't come along very often, so I was excited to see it.
I liked it! What's not to like about a movie where the actors deliver lines like, “They're playing a line of the Nimzo,” or “Fischer's playing the Benoni, he's never done that before. The Russians think it's suicide.” “Is it suicide?” “Oh yes...” Chess jargon? Cool! It's mostly accurate too, though they certainly took a few liberties here and there. I do fault them for two things,…
jrosenhouse | October 1, 2015Sensible people understand that there is little connection between belief in God and moral conduct. As has wisely been noted, with or without religion good people will do good, and evil people will do evil.
On the other hand, we could survey the nations of the world and note a strong inverse correlation between the level of religiosity in a society and its level of morality and basic decency. The least religious nations in the world are among the most socially conscious and morally decent on earth. The most evil and despotic are also the most theocratic.
Nor is it hard to fathom a…
jrosenhouse | September 30, 2015Did you watch the big hearing in Congress the other day? Congressional Republicans, having failed completely with their plan of holding their breath until the Democrats and Obama agreed to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, had to settle for the consolation prize. They hauled up Cecile Richards, PP's president, so they could browbeat her for five hours. If you watch any five minute segment of it you will have seen the whole thing. The Republicans asked one stupid, mendacious question after another, and then cut Richards off the second she tried to answer. I'm sure the crazies loved…
jdupuis | September 30, 2015Though not explicitly tied to our current federal election campaign, the début this week of the Science Integrity Project and the publishing of their Statement of Principles for Sound Decision Making in Canada just as the campaign heats up is surely not coincidental.
In any case, election or not, this is a wonderful initiative and I support it wholeheartedly. There's lots of background on their website about the process for coming up with the principles, an FAQ and a few examples of how the principles work in practice.
From their website:
Welcome to the Science Integrity Project. Our project…
