January 16, 2015
Anyone surprised to read this?
A bestselling Christian book that claims to detail a boy's trip to heaven and his return to Earth is being pulled from stores after one of its co-authors admitted he made the whole thing up.
The 2010 memoir, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, was written by Alex…
January 15, 2015
Pope Francis engages in some yes-buttery with regard to the Charlie Hebdo murders:
Pope Francis said Thursday there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults or ridicules someone's faith.
Francis spoke about the Paris terror attacks while en route to the Philippines,…
January 13, 2015
I don't have much to add to what I have already said about the Charlie Hebdo killings. However, having had some time to think about things a little more, and to read what other people have said, I do feel inclined to change my mind about one aspect of this.
First, Charlie Hebdo put out a new issue…
January 12, 2015
Today was the first day of classes for the spring semester. I have a light teaching load this term, which is my reward for having an especially heavy teaching load last term. Just two classes, and they both meet in the afternoon, no less. For a night-owl like me that's a good deal.
One of my…
January 11, 2015
The last two installments of this series have seen some pretty heavy problems. So, this week I'd like to lighten the mood. The problem below calls for selfmate in two, and it was composed by me! It was published in the May 2014 issue of The Problemist.
Recall that white is always moving up…
January 10, 2015
The Pythagorean theorem made a big impression on me when I first saw it in middle school. It was probably the first genuinely non-trivial theorem that I learned. The theorem is simple to state and to understand, but it is not at all obvious. I have a clear memory of my sixth grade math teacher,…
January 9, 2015
I'm sure we all remember Pascal's Wager. Though it is often wrongly presented as an argument for God's existence, it was really intended as an argument for why we should act as though we believe in God. Roughly, the idea was that if you believe in God and you're wrong then, well, no big deal.…
January 8, 2015
Lots of responses to the terrorist attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Some of it reasonable, some of it not.
Matthew Yglesias said almost the same thing I did:
Viewed in a vacuum, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons (or the Danish ones that preceded it) are hardly worthy of a…
January 7, 2015
You've probably already heard about what happened in France today:
Masked gunmen attacked the Paris offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing 12 people before fleeing.
French security forces launched a major manhunt in the capital after the gunmen fled the scene of…
January 3, 2015
When I started this series, one of the first topics I highlighted was the idea of a logical problem. The idea is this: White has a main plan for achieving his objective. However, if he tries to play it immediately black has a defense that will defeat him. So white must first play a foreplan,…
January 3, 2015
Mario Cuomo, governor of New York from 1983-1994, died on New Year's day. He is a throwback to a time when Democrats weren't cowards, and were actually capable of articulating a compelling and humane vision of how society should be. Consider this speech, delivered at the University of Notre Dame…
December 28, 2014
Well, it's taken me longer to get back to this than I originally planned, but how about a second look at the Babson Task? The problem below was composed by Leonid Yarosh, in 1983. It's white to move and mate in four:
Remember that white is always moving up the board and black is always moving…
December 26, 2014
I was all set to do a big post about the police, but then Kevin Drum went and said exactly what I was thinking:
It shouldn't be too hard to hold two thoughts in our minds at once. Thought #1: Police officers have an intrinsically tough and violent job. Split-second decisions about the use of force…
December 21, 2014
Let's continue with the discussion I started in yesterday's post.
We are considering whether it is reasonable to persist in believing in the reality of Adam and Eve given the findings of modern science. The problem is that the Bible seems clear that at the time of their creation, Adam and Eve were…
December 20, 2014
A common theme at this blog is that I don't like blanket statements to the effect that science and religion are incompatible. The main problem I have is that “religion” means so many different things to different people that it is pointless to paint with such a broad brush. A secondary point is…
December 18, 2014
Actually, I wrote that last post partly because I wanted to comment on this one, from David Klinghoffer. He likens the plight of TNRs former staff to the situation of ID proponents:
I identify with TNR's ex-staff, too, in a more fundamental way. In the evolution controversy, it's supporters of…
December 17, 2014
While it's hardly the most important thing going on in the world right now, we should take a moment to note the effective demise of The New Republic. There was a time when TNR was one of the best liberal journals of opinion to be found. In the late seventies and eighties, when the magazine was…
December 17, 2014
Well, it seems the big discussion is still going strong, even after six weeks. Incredibly, the comments still seem to be substantive and interesting. So here's another post to continue the discussion. Plus with my own ongoing blog lethargy, it's nice that there's any activity going on around…
November 25, 2014
I'm currently working out of my New Jersey office, which is to say I am home for Thanksgiving. I just wanted to mention, though, that I have my settings adjusted so that comments are automatically cut off on any post that is more than three weeks old. Comment threads that remain open too long…
November 18, 2014
On Thursday I'll be heading up to Baltimore to give a talk at Johns Hopkins University. I'll be discussing an old favorite: The Monty Hall Problem! Actually, it's been about two years since I've given a talk on that particular subject, so it will be nice to have an excuse to revisit it.
From…
November 10, 2014
After taking last week off, Problem of the Week returns. This week's problem has several possible answers, so even after a solution gets posted you can feel free to look for others. In fact, I'd be curious to know the various approaches people took to solve the problem. Did anyone come up with…
November 9, 2014
Babson Task problems are hard work, so we shall resume our consideration of them next week. Instead I have a lovely lightweight problem for you this week, composed by Pal Benko in 1968. Actually, you can have an interesting philosophical discussion about whether this problem was composed or…
November 6, 2014
Here's an interesting article from Quanta. It's about efforts by physicists to test the idea of the multiverse:
If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldn’t be here. The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is a trillion trillion…
November 5, 2014
Chris Mooney has an astonishingly weak op-ed in a recent edition of The Washington Post. Desperate to make an argument that liberals deny science just as surely as conservatives do, he seizes on a recent study that shows a large percentage of sociologists are not open to the idea that certain…
November 5, 2014
Here in the math department at James Madison University, we are currently debating certain changes to the major. The problem is that we have distinct groups in pure mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics and math education. We also have students that major in mathematics for very different…
November 3, 2014
It is not just his controversial stance that the Church should dial back its dickishness towards homosexuals that has brought attention to Pope Francis. He has also weighed in on evolution:
Pope Francis on Monday (Oct. 27) waded into the controversial debate over the origins of human life, saying…
November 3, 2014
Brittany Maynard died this weekend. If you are not familiar with her story, she tells it here, in her own words.
On New Year's Day, after months of suffering from debilitating headaches, I learned that I had brain cancer.
I was 29 years old. I'd been married for just over a year. My husband and I…
November 2, 2014
I'm sure you remember my epic, two-part series, from 2008, about my love for locked-room mysteries: Part One, Part Two. Well then, I'm sure you can imagine my delight at learning of the publication of Otto Penlzer's new anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries.
Penzler has a…
November 2, 2014
Our diagram position today was composed by Joseph Babson in 1927. The stipulation is selfmate in three:
Recall that in a selfmate, white plays first and forces black to give checkmate. That's right! White is trying to get checkmated, while black is doing everything in his power to avoid…
October 29, 2014
Pope Francis has been continuing his campaign of liberalization within the Roman Catholic Church. At the recent synod on the family, reform-minded bishops within the Church, many installed by Francis, proposed language that, while not changing doctrine, would have liberalized the Church's stance…
