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jrosenhouse | September 27, 2016Better late than never! A small technical SNAFU yesterday interfered with the well-oiled machine that is Problem of the Week. But now we're back on track! The fourth problem has now been posted. The official solution to last week's problem will be up by tomorrow.
gregladen | September 25, 2016One of the differences among the current four candidates for POTUS is the recognition, by only one of them, of the great importance of basic research. By that, I mean, give the scientists funding to pursue the questions that interest them. A sort of free market of ideas driven not by profits of the Bayers, Koch Borthers, and Cargils of the world, but rather, by how cool stuff is and how much untethered knowledge is advanced each time something else cool happens.
Tsetse fly
Trypanosomiasis is a terrible disease. I know only one person who had it, he was treated, survived, but his brain did…
jrosenhouse | September 22, 2016Do you remember those commercials, from a few years back, for Excedrin headache medicine? There was a whole series of them. In each, some very normal-looking and totally relatable person would talk straight to the camera, explaining that he or she suffered from terrible headaches and had tried every other remedy. The climax of each commercial was when the person said something like, “How do I know Excedrin works? Well, they have their “scientific research” to prove it. But you know what? I did my own kind of research. I tried it.” I use the scare quotes to indicate their tone of…
gregladen | September 22, 2016So, many years ago, Amanda and I got a new car. The first thing we did was to switch get rid of my old Rodeo, and I took her old Subaru sedan, and she drove the new Forrester. So, thereafter I drove her old car, and she drove our new car.
One day I was on my way back home, and I noticed that the gas gauge needle was on E, but the Empty Tank Warning Light was not on. So I figured I'd get gas at the place near home, rather than stopping sooner.
Driving down the highway, the car sputtered and stopped working. I got it over to the side of the highway. Knowing that it was not out of gas, because…
esiegel | September 20, 2016
"Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history." -John Polkinghorne
What is the Universe? What are those points of light in the night sky? Are there other Suns like our own? Do they have worlds around them? What of the larger structures; what are the spirals and ellipticals out there? How far away are they? And how old is the Universe? And finally, how did it all come to be the way it is today, and how do we know?
A…
gregladen | September 20, 2016Wouldn't that be great?
Many high end newspapers charge something like $10 a month to subscribe, just to the digital edition. But most people who use digital editions of newspapers scan several, pick and chose what to read, and end up reading them all for free because they don't reach the limit of number of articles provided to a certain web browser per month.
But sometimes, one runs into that limit and suddenly can't access articles for the last several days of the month. This hurts readers. (In some cases it hurts the papers. There are a half dozen items in the Washington Post right now…
jrosenhouse | September 19, 2016Kevin Drum has a short post noting that Trump has taught other Republican politicians how to lie more brazenly. Politicians have never been noted for their honesty, but we are seeing something new this time around. It is very aggravating that Trump simply makes it up as he goes along, while Clinton is the one endlessly on the defensive about her honesty.
Relax, this is not going to be another election post. Instead I want to direct your attention to this article, from Slate. Compared to the daily calumnies emanating from our freak-show election, it is extremely small potatoes. And yet…
jrosenhouse | September 19, 2016Just want to poke my head up to mention that I have posted a new POTW for you. You get three for the price of one this week. The official problem is pretty straightforward, I think, so I gave you two bonus problems just for fun. Enjoy!
gregladen | September 16, 2016Watch this video on The Scene.
Here's the text.
Keith Olbermann is back.
jrosenhouse | September 12, 2016The second Problem of the Week has now been posted. It's a harder version of last week's problem, but perhaps it is good for a bit of amusement. By its nature, it might be a bit hard to describe the solution in a comment, but have a look anyway.
gregladen | September 11, 2016Ever year about 23,000 people die of infections from antibiotic resistant bacterial.
Here is a film of bacteria evolving from regular old bacteria into killer superbugs. On a coffee table size Petri dish.
You can get the story at NPR, where you will learn that
"Getting more people to understand how quickly bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance might help people understand why they shouldn't be prescribed antibiotics. The drug resistance is not some abstract threat. It's real."
gregladen | September 10, 2016Why is America the Greatest Country in the World?
Diversity and opportunity. And freedom. Lots of freedom, freedom is great. I can tell you, I know freedom and I know we have lots of it, more than any other country. And diversity, we've almost got that under control too.
But seriously ...
If you are like me, the tirade eventually given by the protagonist in the following clip was already formulating in your head for the first two minutes of this scene, and when it spilled out (in a form better than you or I would have managed), you were like "Yeah. Go baby!" (Or words to that effect.)
It is…
jrosenhouse | September 8, 2016On Morning Joe today, Mike Barnicle asked Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson what he would do about Aleppo. Johnson's reply was, “What is Aleppo?”
We're done here. Johnson should withdraw from the race, go home, and never show his face in public again.
When did running for President become a big joke? When did it become something you do on a whim, just because? The Libertarian Party is receiving more attention than usual this year since they have a superficially serious ticket, and since the two main candidates are unpopular. Turns out, though, that Johnson has managed to…
aardvarchaeology | September 7, 2016 Dress pin heads from Viidumäe on Saaremaa.
Fornvännen 2015:4 is now on-line on Open Access.
Therese Ekholm compares radiocarbon dates on bone versus charcoal from ostensibly closed contexts on Stone Age sites in northern Sweden.
Tony Björk & Ylva Wickberg on continued investigations of the Degeberga linear monument in Scania.
Indrek Jets & Marika Mägi on a Viking Period sacrificial site at Viidumäe on Saaremaa that's been robbed by nighthawk detectorists.
Pål Ulseth et al. on technical waste from the Medieval mint in Trondheim.
Tom H. Borse Haraldsen challenges Arne Espelund's 2013…
esiegel | September 7, 2016"Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infrared, How I hate the night." -Douglas Adams
The Hubble Space Telescope is an amazing piece of equipment, and has seen more distant stars and galaxies than any telescope before or since. Earlier this year, it broke its own cosmic distance record by discovering a galaxy at a redshift of 11, back when the Universe was just 400 million years old. Yet the first stars should go back even farther, and Hubble will never see them.
The reionization and star-formation history of our Universe. Image credit: NASA / S.G.…
jrosenhouse | September 5, 2016I realize that I never finished the story of how I achieved the exalted rank of expert at chess. Suffice it to say that I played two more games beyond the ones I have already reported on. Both were against 1900 rated players and both were rather dissatisfying draws. In the first I had the black side of a Queen's Gambit Declined, got the worst of it out of the opening, but then found a nice maneuver to get out of trouble when my opponent dithered a bit in the middlegame. In the second I had the white side of a Sicilian Kan, which quickly ended up in a standard Hedgehog formation. We…
jrosenhouse | September 5, 2016In a technical, legalistic sense, the semester started last week. But as far as I'm concerned, the semester doesn't really begin until Problem of the Week returns!
Our theme for this semester: Clock Problems.
That's not code for modular arithmetic or anything. I mean it literally. Every problem this term will feature clocks in some way. Some are fairly easy, some are a bit harder, though I wouldn't say any of them are killer. Keep in mind that I deliberately keep the problems a little on the basic side, since I want students in the lower level math classes to be able to participate. So…
gregladen | September 5, 2016Laborers generally do their jobs, because if they don't they get fired. But there are entire professions where people are not doing their jobs and the rest of us suffer.
Jacob Wetterling was abducted and murdered two and a half decades ago. The guy who did it was known to the cops then, and he had done things like this before, and those thinks were known about. There are all kinds of reasons they should have busted him even before Jacob was murdered, but they weren't doing their job. Turns out that when you look across the country and across decades, you can find FAR more examples of cops…
gregladen | August 30, 2016Our latest Ikonokast Podcast is up; an interview with agriculture and ecology expert Emily Cassidy!
Organic vs. industrial, GMO vs GnMO, Food vs. Fuel, how to regulate (or not) farming. All of it.
The Podcast is HERE.
jrosenhouse | August 26, 2016Classes start on Monday. I knew that intellectually, of course, but I had it brought home to me a few days ago when I innocently drove onto the campus, only to find a traffic jam and crossing guards directing the cars. Students were moving into the dorms, you see.
Higher education is beset with problems nowadays, and I can recite the litany as well as any faculty member. But for all the legitimate complaints, the bottom line is that I still think I have the best job in the world. I get out of bed in the morning excited to go to work, and the upsides of my job vastly outweigh the downsides…