Category Archives: uncategorized

Transcript looks good except for one unfortunate adjective. It’s a pity that the president of a nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state cannot name the state of Israel without identifying its established religion.

Ophelia Benson takes offense at the claim by David Marliere that Charlie Hebdo’s exercise of free speech may have been counterproductive (presumably to whatever goals he thought they were seeking to achieve).She responds to Marliere’s “Of course people should be … Continue reading →

When I see a report like this that some Iranian foundation ups price on Rushdie's head I wish that I had deep enough pockets to offer to pay double any such bounty to the killer of whoever offers it – … Continue reading →

A recent column in Nature by Daniel Sarewitz, which could have been a welcome meditation on the power of religion to stimulate art which “speaks to the soul”, is marred by overstatement and an inflammatory headline. Nature’s on-line editor Ananayo … Continue reading →

The events in Bangalore reveal new evidence that, in the parlance of social capital theory, electronic networking is more effective at producing “bonding” capital within groups than “bridging” capital between them. n+1: Broad-Gauge.

Well if that hashtag isn’t already trending I’ll be very surprised! Watching the RNC on Wednesday night Connie and I were impressed by Paul Ryan’s speech. He certainly sounded like a smart fellow with lots of “leadership” potential. And he … Continue reading →

There is something both appealing and repellent in the idea that our “modern” attitudes are prefigured in the work of ancient philosophers. It is exciting to find a voice from the past that feels like “one of us” but at … Continue reading →

This, and especially this, reminds me of something I did long ago which, it turned out, had already been done by Hepp expanding on von Neumann’s treatment of the measurement problem. The idea was to explain “collapse” of the superposition … Continue reading →

This article by Melanie Fahlman Reid came out while my brother Tony and I were up in Haida Gwaii and by coincidence the guesthouse where we were staying had a book about the various kinds of (mis)representation by photographers “documenting” … Continue reading →

Among the many fond recollections that followed the recent death of William Thurston, I came across a reference to this article on proof and progress in mathematics. Thurston, a geometer of great insight and also I think a great contributor … Continue reading →

This recent discussion on LinkedIn asks for applications of complex numbers which can be explained to High-School students. The case of AC electric circuits is one familiar application which was mentioned by several respondents and one of them pointed to … Continue reading →

This is just a prompt for me to consider the issue. It’s very far from “right” for me but does contain some points I agree with.

Stephen Downes has commented on a discussion of free speech issues at the University of California but I think his focus on intended harm as the only excuse for restricting freedom of speech is too limited.

Algebra, as remembered by many,  seems to be  nothing more than a set of meaningless formal tasks, and if that memory is accurate, then indeed it has no right to be included as a requirement of everyone’s basic education. [ … Continue reading →

Michael Geist’s analysis of recent  Supreme Court decisions is encouraging and provides a nice counterpoint to the nasty business our Harper gov’t did to us on the digital lock rules.

William M. Briggs  misses the main point when he claims that the recent sequence of high temperature months is no cause for alarm (on the grounds that a sequence of thirteen high months is no less improbable than any other particular sequence). … Continue reading →

Apparently he no longer believes that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” But who with more than … Continue reading →

Murray Bourne at ‘squareCircleZ’ has a great post on modeling fish stocks as an interesting applied example for a math class. In addition to helping students find interest in understanding the mathematics, this can also help people to really see … Continue reading →

I have been trying to read some of John Baez’s[1] series on “Information Geometry” (here at Part 11), part of which has now also been summarized by Sean Carroll.[2]