April 1, 2013
Looks like I've just added Ian McEwan's new novel to my reading list:
During one of their Brighton rendezvouses, after a round of oysters and a second bottle of champagne, Tom Haley asks Serena Frome the question every mathematician longs for her lover to utter:
I want you to tell me something...…
March 29, 2013
Let me wrap up the week's blogging by directing you to two essays related to things we've been discussing this week.
The first is Mohan Matthen's review of Thomas Nagel's book in The Philosopher's Magazine. I refer you to it partly because it's an interesting essay in its own right, but also…
March 28, 2013
Over at Lapham's Quarterly, John Jeremiah Sullivan has
an excellent article on the subject of animal consciousness. Here's the opening:
These are stimulating times for anyone interested in questions of animal consciousness. On what seems like a monthly basis, scientific teams announce the results…
March 27, 2013
It has not been a good week for those who oppose same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court heard two relevant cases this week, and to judge from the questioning they seem likely to render a decision far more favorable to same sex marriage advocates. Of course, the questioning is not always a reliable…
March 26, 2013
I only have time for a quick post tonight, so let me direct you to one of my favorite math videos. It's of Arthur Benjamin, a mathematician at Harvey Mudd College in California. Art is also a professional magician, and is especially well known for his skill as a lightning calculator. The video…
March 25, 2013
Occasionally I rant about the general awfulness of mathematics textbooks. If I were to express my major objection in the most charitable possible way, it is that most textbooks are written like reference books. They are usually very good at recording the basic facts of a subject and proving them…
March 25, 2013
Edward Feser has replied to my earlier post about some of the responses to Thomas Nagel's new book. Feser took exception to my remarks. Let's have a look.
EvolutionBlog’s Jason Rosenhouse tells us in a recent post that he hasn’t read philosopher Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. And it seems…
March 22, 2013
Sadly, the big basketball game went the way everyone expected. Which is to say that we lost. Badly. Indiana 83 -- JMU 62. Ouch!
As it happens, my former academic home, Kansas State University, also lost. This one was a big upset, since, despite being the 4th seed, they lost to 13th seed La…
March 20, 2013
Check it out!
Of course, now we have to play Indiana. Considering that it was a minor miracle that JMU made it to the tournament at all, while Indiana is among the favorites to win the whole thing, I'm not optimistic about our chances. History is against us, since no 16th seed has ever beaten a…
March 19, 2013
The math department here at JMU has a Problem of the Week competition, and it just so happens that, this semester, I am running it. Every week I choose a problem for the consideration of all who choose to participate. (Well, I actually bribe my students to participate by offering them a bonus…
March 19, 2013
Philosopher Thomas Nagel recently published a book called Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. The general consensus was that the book delivered considerably less than it promised. H. Allen Orr's negative review from The New York…
March 15, 2013
I've recently had it called to my attention that Among the Creationists has been reviewed in Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith. That's the journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, an organization of Christian scientists. They are generally sympathetic to evolution and mostly…
March 14, 2013
Slate has an interesting article, by Tara Haelle, discussing a math problem that recently received some attention on Facebook. The problem is to evaluate this expression:
$latex 6 \div 2(1+2)$
Obviously, the challenge here is not the arithmetic itself. It is to figure out the order in which to…
March 13, 2013
By now I'm sure you've heard that we have a new Pope. He is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, form Argentina, but from now on he will be known as Pope Francis. It appears he is a doctrinaire right-winger on issues related to homosexuality, abortion and conctraception, which is no surprise. Andrew Sullivan…
March 12, 2013
Writing at The New Republic, Paul Berman has an interesting, if rather lengthy, article about Les Miserables, the book. I like his opening:
The most famous and revealing scenes in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables get underway fairly late in the novel—on page 1,280 in the Pléiade edition—at the moment…
March 11, 2013
Writing in The Week, Damon Linker has a strange essay arguing that atheists who are honest about the consequences of their beliefs ought to be sad and mopey. The subtitle of his essay is, “That godlessness might be both true and terrible is something that the new atheists refuse to entertain.”…
March 10, 2013
I have now returned form my travels in Baltimore and Washington DC. The big Hopkins talk went well, I think. Then I moseyed on down to Washington DC to hang out. This past week was spring break around here, though you would never have known it from the weather.
While I was in DC, I took…
March 3, 2013
I finally created a Twitter account, mostly so that I could find out who keeps tweeting about my posts. The little Twitter counter under the title consistently has some pleasingly non-zero number in it, so I thought I should find out what people are saying. Alas, whenever I click on the little…
March 3, 2013
Tomorrow I'll be leaving for sunny Baltimore, Maryland. Tuesday evening I will be speaking at Johns Hopkins about the mathematics of Sudoku. To judge from the advertisement, it looks like it will be quite the party!
Since its spring break around here, on Wednesday I will leave Baltimore to head…
March 2, 2013
I had two big deadlines this Friday for various projects, and I am happy to report that I made both of them. That means I finally have time to take a breath, and write the post you have all been waiting for. What happened at the U. S. Amateur Team East chess tournament!?
That's right! Over…
February 20, 2013
I spent the last weekend in scenic Parsippany, NJ, participating in the annual chess extravaganza known as the U. S. Amateur Team East. As big a chess fan as I am, I am mostly retired from tournament play. It's too hard and stressful! For the first time in a long while, however, I managed to…
February 14, 2013
I am slowly working my way through the anthology Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative, edited by Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur. The book includes an excellent essay by mathematician Timothy Gowers titled, “Vividness in Mathematics and Narrative.” It makes a point…
February 10, 2013
Philosophers William Lane Craig and Alexander Rosenberg recently debated everyone's favorite question: the existence of God. You can find the video here. The entire event is close to three hours long, and so I have not yet watched the whole thing. I watched the twenty-minute opening statements,…
February 7, 2013
Sorry for another post that's all about me, but I received a pleasant surprise today. The Association of American Publishers just gave out their annual PROSE awards. The awards recognize excellence in scholarly publishing in some forty categories. One of those categories is “Popular Science and…
February 5, 2013
Writing in the academic journal Metascience, philosopher Stefan Blancke has reviewed Among the Creationists. Blancke is a postdoc in the Department of Philosophy at Ghent University in Belgium. Together with fellow philosophers Maarten Boudry and Johan Braeckman, is the author of an important…
February 1, 2013
Here's a charming story for your Friday afternoon:
Be careful what you post on Reddit. It may just get you canned.
Earlier this week, an Applebee’s waitress posted a photo on Reddit of a receipt from an alleged pastor who, instead of leaving the suggested 18 percent tip, wrote “I give God 10%,…
January 23, 2013
Writing in the online statistics magazine Significance, Angie Wade, of University College London, has posted a review of Taking Sudoku Seriously. That's the book about the mathematics of Sudoku puzzles that I cowrote with my JMU colleague Laura Taalman, published by Oxford University Press, for…
January 22, 2013
Remember that scene in A Fish Called Wanda, where Kevin Kline, talking to a British woman who has cornered him in rhetorical combat, says, with maximal sarcasm, “Oh, you British are soooooo superior.”
That's pretty much how I feel when I read essays written by agnostics. By all means make whatever…
January 21, 2013
One thing I noticed during the years I spent attending YEC conferences was the extent to which pseudointellectualism was an integral part of their culture. The leaders of the movement frequently behaved in ways reminiscent of how non-scientists imagine that scientists behave.
This is definitely…
January 20, 2013
I finally got around to seeing Lincoln yesterday. Great movie! Daniel Day-Lewis is as good as you've heard. James Spader probably deserved a supporting actor nomination for playing the leader of a group of three people dispatched by Lincoln to encourage, cajole, and openly bribe wavering…
