November 8, 2015
My new issue of Chess Life showed up in the mail, and it included coverage of the Sinquefield Cup from this summer. (Chess Life has a long lead time). Anyway, in the game between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, Nakamura played the Queen's Gambit Declined as black. He was very lucky to draw…
November 2, 2015
The eight Problem Of the Week has now been posted, along with a solution to last week's problem. Enjoy!
November 2, 2015
Yes, granted, it's actually Monday. But it was only a technical glitch that kept me from posting this yesterday, so it still counts as Sunday Chess Problem!
We're going to stick with endgame studies for this week. This one was composed by a fellow named Seletsky in 1933. It's white to play and…
October 30, 2015
Since I didn't have any grading this time, and since Republicans are harder to listen to than Democrats (and remember, I used to spend hours at a time listening to Creationists), I couldn't bring myself to watch the entirety of the recent Republican debate. I kept flipping back and forth between…
October 28, 2015
If you spend any time talking to ID folks, you know that they are very touchy about being called creationists. As they see it, the creationists have been so incompetent in making their case, and so extreme in their religious views, that they discredit the cause of anti-evolutionism every time they…
October 26, 2015
The latest Problem of the Week has now been posted. This one (and next week's as well) involve calculus. Fun!
October 25, 2015
I 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…
October 22, 2015
I'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…
October 20, 2015
After taking last week off, Problem of the Week makes a triumphant return. Problem Six has now been posted. Enjoy!
October 14, 2015
I'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…
October 11, 2015
This 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…
October 11, 2015
There 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…
October 5, 2015
The 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!
October 4, 2015
Many 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…
October 2, 2015
I 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…
October 1, 2015
Sensible 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…
September 30, 2015
Did 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…
September 21, 2015
The third Problem of the Week has now been posted. Enjoy!
September 20, 2015
I only have time for a quickie this week. Here's another Troitzky study, simple by his standards but charming nonetheless. It's white to play and win. This is actually a one-liner in which black's moves are all essentially forced, so you might want to have a go at solving it before reading on…
September 19, 2015
Granville Sewell has a new post up at Uncommon Descent. It's short, but if you don't want to read it, then rest assured it's just the same post he always writes. Could the four fundamental forces of physics assemble iPhones or nuclear power plants? Absurd! The post is framed in the context of…
September 18, 2015
I've made occasional references to the book that I have been editing forever. Well, it has finally entered the home stretch:
The book is a companion volume to the 2013 MOVES Conference in recreational mathematics, organized by the Museum of Mathematics in New York. The publisher is Princeton…
September 13, 2015
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones magazine is one of my favorite political bloggers. In this post he provides a perfect summary of conservative rhetoric:
These guys wreck the economy, and then complain that Obama hasn't fixed it fast enough. They blow a hole in the deficit, and then complain that Obama…
September 13, 2015
Last week's study went over well, so how about another study from Alexis Troitzky? It's white to play and win in this position:
There is an astonishing amount of strategy wrapped up in this simple position!
Let's start with some general considerations. White must try to promote his pawn as…
September 7, 2015
Classes started last week, but that's not the real start of the semester. No, the real start of the semester is when Problem of the Week returns. Which means the semester starts today!
The theme for the term is “False Proofs.” By this I mean proofs that seem superficially convincing, but lead to…
September 6, 2015
I have been terribly remiss in my Sunday Chess Problem responsibilities. So how about a charming little amuse bouche from the greatest of all endgame composers: Alexey Troitzky. The position below was composed in 1898 and calls for white to play and win.
A natural first reaction would be to…
September 2, 2015
Classes started on Monday. I'm actually pretty happy about that. This summer was rather hectic and stressful in many ways. Also productive, but still. It was basically a good counterexample to the clueless types who insist that teachers only work nine months out of the year. For me, the summer…
August 20, 2015
I'm in the mood for something light-hearted today, so here's a YouTube clip for you:
It's from the Firing Line debate in 1997 about evolution and creationism. Representing darkness and obscurantism were William F. Buckley, Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and David Berlinski. Sunshine and…
August 19, 2015
I see that Barry Arrington is blogging up a storm lately over at Uncommon Descent. It's all his usual silliness--bad arguments coupled with denunciations of anyone who dares disagree with him--but this post was eyebrow-raising even for him.
The set-up is this: Arrington is in the habit of making…
August 18, 2015
Planned Parenthood heroically provides medical services to a great many women who otherwise would receive little or no health care at all. This can be thankless and even dangerous work, because there are fanatics out there who do not like what they do. They perform abortions, you see, though this…
August 13, 2015
It used to be a major American art form for white actors to cover themselves in make-up and pretend to be black. This persisted for roughly a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. What a golden age for comedy that must have been!
As recently as the 1970s we had…
