For the promotion of rigour and rationality

The trouble with Michael Ruse

2012-01-19T22:34:00.002+01:00

Michael Ruse, a philosopher from Florida State University, is known for his efforts in trying to compromise christianity and evolutionary theory. He describes himself both as an atheist and agnostic. But he likes to keep the other side happy. Many people claim that his knowledge is insufficient and his arguments confused. Here is an example (Ruse defends adaptationism), and here is another (Ruse on the nature of morality).

But one does not need to go to great philosophical depths to realize that Ruse's views are flawed. For very simple reasons. Let me explain one. Look at this 6.5 minute video where Ruse describes what he thinks is the trouble with Richard Dawkins. He says that Dawkins is too simplistic and that he spends no time in trying to understand how christians think. "Come on", says Ruse, "no Christian really believes in the old testament literally. The god of the old testament may very well be an ethnic cleanser, as Dawkins points out, but learned christians (St Thomas) would never consider this seriously. If you find a christian who wants to sacrifice his child because god told him so then you would take him to a psychiatrist".

Now, all that is true. I think (and hope) that only a very small minority of christians (and jews and muslims) would take all aspects of the Bible literally. But, in this case, I'd like to ask Michael Ruse, why has the Bible (or the offending parts of it) not been banned yet by the religious folk, the church, the Rabbis, etc? At which point of time has any religious leader stood up to say that parts of these texts contain gruesome, unethical, disturbing stories and, implicitly or explicitly, suggestions? If nobody believes in them or if they are not taken seriously, then they should be removed.

But last time I went into a church (a Presbyterian church to be precise), I looked in the Bible, turned to my favourite Deuteronomy and saw that the gruesome parts were still there.

Yes, nowdays, christians do not behave in the same way they did 400 hundred years ago. I can say and teach Newton's mechanics and their consequences for the motion of celestial rocks (planets, ...), without fearing that I will be burned. There have been changes, thank god [sic]. But these changes were not changes that were initiated by the church. Rather, they were natural consequences of the way people live nowadays. Church had to accept the changes, but it was not its choice.

So, this is the trouble with Michael Ruse. He doesn't see that the reconciliation he is defending is one-sided.When he describes the trouble of Dawkins, he doesn't see that there is a big trouble in what he is saying.

Most visited postings of this blog

2012-01-13T16:50:00.004+01:00

According to the Stats page of blogger.com, the following postings have been the most frequented ones (listed in decreasing frequency):

I'm happy to see that my (very few) postings on music have been considered as interesting. I do find the Serenata Española and the Chinsagu No Hana very beautiful.

I'm rather surprised to see that my posting on Stalin is by far the most visited one. The cult of personality is as strong as religion. A few years ago (ca. 2004), at the University of Patras, Greece, a group of students had a Stalin day, promoting his "ideas", "work", etc., by propagandist leaflets, posters, etc. I made the mistake of trying to understand. It was, of course, futile. These people were, simply, believing in Stalin, in the same way an Iranian person I know believes in Ahura Mazda. (Actually, believing in Stalin is worse than believing in Ahura Mazda. The latter did not hurt anyone [hint: consider his existence issue].)

As for my miracles/beliefs postings (#6, #7, #10), I do hope that those who have visited them find them as funny as I do. The problem is that for many people this is serious business.

Last but not least, thanks to those downloading and sharing my Newtonmas cards.

The religion of "kopimism"

2012-01-10T19:56:00.001+01:00

A new religion has been recognized. This is the religion of "kopimism". They claim that copying and pasting is a religious act. I'm not joking. Sweden's Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet) has recognized the above thing as a religion. Here is an article from The Local.

Now, rationally speaking, the definition of a religion is rather weak. Islam is a religion only because it has been around for some 1400 years and has many followers. However, rationally speaking again, I would expect the state to get rid of religions rather than recognizing them.

I still haven't figured out Swedes' attitude to religion. On one hand, Sweden is supposed to be one of the least religious places on the planet. On the other hand, however, I think that a lot of Swedes behave as if they were religious. I have encountered more resistance towards inquiry in this country than in many others. In my experience, people tend to accept things as are, rather than critically thinking of why or why not things are the way they are. Another piece of evidence which could justify my statement about the Swedes' "religiosity" is their conservatism and resistance to change. At a more pedestrian level, many social gatherings in Sweden resemble a Church supper but without the religious aspect.

As for veritable religions around, I have commented in the past about the pentecostal loonies who, apparently, have one of the largest churches around. (Disclaimer: "Loonie" is someone who does this.)

end this note, I still don't understand the reason behind the church of kopimism. But is there any reason for any religion?

Greek orthodox high priest against Islam

2012-01-10T00:51:00.004+01:00

This is funny. The high priest of the city of Pireaus, Greece, Mr C. Mentzelopoulos (a.k.a. Serafeim), likes to sue anyone who is against his religion. Recently, he sued the greek state because it intends to build a (the first) mosque in the city of Athens. He claims that this is against the constitution and that it will offend the morals of the people.

The establishment of a mosque in the center of Athens will not only affect public order and morality of Greek society but will also trigger a series of events which, with mathematical precision [sic], will lead to degradation of the cohesion of the Greek Nation as Christian Orthodox People.

Some background: Greece is a theocratic state. A state where one religion is official and funded by the state: priests are civil servants, paid by tax money. Although, in theory, there is religious freedom, in practice, there is intolerance and any this is why there has never (in modern times, that is) been a mosque in Athens, a city which has a considerable number of muslims, many of them recent immigrants.

It goes without saying that the only rational behaviour of a modern democratic state is to abandon its support for any religion and let religious organizations seek support from their followers. Why should anyone be obliged, by law, to pay clerics' salaries? This is the case in Saudi Arabia. It is also the case in Greece.

Mr Mentzelopoulos fails to see that he acts exactly in the same manner that Saudis behave towards his religion. He is simply annoyed that some of the state money will go to another religion (for the first time). He wants everything for his own lot.

He is a disgusting individual, one who doesn't like anyone except those who agree with him. He is in agreement with Greek fascistoids. He doesn't like Jews either. His conspiracy theory is that Hitler was funded by Jews.

Happy New Year 2012 (the end of the world is nigh!)

2012-01-10T00:23:00.001+01:00

I wanted to collect some of the stupidities around regarding the common perception amongst many that 21 December 2012 will be the (new) end of the world. But I can't. It is too ambitious of a project. There is no end to stupidity. According to some count, there are 600 thousand web pages devoted to the 2012 phenomenon. If you have nothing else to do (and why should you, if you believe that the world will end soon), you can start reading.

Recall, however, that the end of the world has been set and reset many times. It was 2000. Then it was 2001. Then it was 2011. Now it is 2012. For a larger list of the end of the world dates, see here. For example, according to the Talmud, the world will end in 2240.

There are all kinds of versions of 2012-phenomenon idiots. Many are the conspiracy theorists: the government doesn't want you to know that the world will end. Others are geometrically-oriented: we are entering the 4th dimension. Then there are the alarmists: they don't tell you that things are going to take place for sure, but they want to make you feel fear. The amount of excrement is endless.

As for books, there are plenty. Enough to fill a bookstore. Sample titles: The Everything Guide to 2012; The Mystery of 2012; How to Survive 2012; The Mayan Prophesies for 2012; Fractal Time [sic]; 2013: Envisioning the World after the Events of 2012; ... There is even the Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012. (As if the "Complete Idiot" adjective was needed...)

Nah, I give up. I can't waste time on s**it.

Happy New Year!

Orthodox jews' spit

2011-12-28T21:31:00.001+01:00

Meanwhile, the other kind of orthodox religious folk (Orthodox Jews this time), decided that an 8-year old girl going to religious school in the town of Beit Shemesh, Israel, was immodestly dressed and spat on her.

They also want women to walk at different sides of the road than men.

Oh, I love religion, especialy the *orthodox* kind (jews, christians, etc.)

Orthodox christians' fight (deja vu)

2011-12-28T21:14:00.001+01:00

It's now a custom that Orthodox Christian priests, Greek and Armenian, will pick up a fight between one another, in Bethlehem's Church of Nativity.

The clashes took place, again, today. They were stopped by Palestinian police force. It seems that such clashes take place almost yearly. The reasons are financial.

North Korean "god" dies

2011-12-19T13:05:00.001+01:00

Kim Jong-il, died today. He was a vile dictator. His country is a hell-hole. People are starving. Gulags, concentration camps. Torture. Total lack of freedom. You name it. And yet, the cult of personality enjoyed by Kim Jong-il is amazing. North Koreans are grieving. They lost their god. Look at this:

And a similar video at BBC news.

This is religion. The same kind of unreasonable attachment to the irrational which makes people revere gods and obey, like sheep, is the one which makes the young woman in the first video declare:

I will change sorrow into strength and courage and remain faithful to respected comrade Kim Jong-un [Kim Jong-il's son, who is expected to be his successor; she has already chosen her next god.]

On bullshit

2011-12-17T18:12:00.003+01:00

By now, Harry Frankfurter's little treatise On Bullshit, is a modern classic, I dare say. Published in 2005 by Princeton University Press, it studies one of the most common anathemas of our society, i.e., bullshit. The word is almost a neologism, which, according to wikipedia, was coined by T.S. Elliot's poem, The Triumph of Bullshit, some 100 years ago. I had bought the book back in 2005 and read it with interest and amusement. Some time later, my friend Joe Higgins, not knowing that I possessed a copy, sent it to me as a gift. I kept it because I had lost (or lent to someone) my original copy.

The word is not easily translatable in other languages. But we do have, of course, the almost equivalent "malakies" (μαλακίες) in Greek [caveat: in plural, not in singular!], and google translate knows that, but google translate does not know a word better than "mierda" in Spanish; whereas in German it says "Bullshit" [capital B, of course] and in French it gives "connerie", bien sur.

Etymology aside, bullshit is a well-recognized, daily-used. word. Bullshitters exist everywhere. You can find them among politicians, academics, lawyers, managers, business people, journalists, scientists, uneducated folk, etc. Frankfurter argues that a bullshitter is not a liar. A liar knows he is lying and, in a sense, is more honest (to himself) than a bullshitter. A bullshitter is a different sort of guy, one for whom lies or truth is irrelevant. He explains that in this 10-minute interview.

We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production, but why is bullshit so much tolerated? There are no laws against bullshit, whereas there certainly are for lies. Is a bullshitter less harmful than a liar? Is it because it is harder to tell what constitutes bullshit? Why do we tolerate bullshit? No good answer exists (yet).

What has bothered me, throughout my academic career, is Academic Bullshit (ABS). This is a special kind of bullshit, one that academics specialize in, ranging from philosophers (c.f. the Sokal affair) to scientists, engineers and mathematicians. It is the last two categories that concern me mostly, because I have worked in such academic environments. A special case of ABS is Academic Bullshit in Teaching and Education (ABST). Frequently using as an excuse the criterion of customer [read student] satisfaction, a large number of academics have transformed teaching into boring, jejune, stupid, false act. I wrote about this at the beginning of the year. I have based my observations on ABST on my personal experience during the past 5 years in the UK, previously in Greece and before that in the US. I have encountered many, a large number indeed, of people practising ABST and have collected a number of glaring examples. The presence of ABST in the University is what brings a university to its knees. In the meantime, universities collect students' fees, deliver ABST to them, but it is not easy to distinguish ABST from true teaching. This is precisely the success of ABST. But it also shows why ABST, and more general forms of Bullshit, should be punishable by our legal system. It is as bad as lying, if not worse than it.

Untheism, Antitheism and Atheism

2011-12-16T23:58:00.000+01:00

I was recently made aware of a post by Eliezer Yudkowsky on two concepts, related to atheism, which he calls untheism and antitheism. This was a response to my comment (taken from a pseudo-scientist's (John Lennox) site) that "I am neither atheist nor theist nor deist". With this I meant that it is my wish that we lived in a society where religious dogmas and all that were as irrelevant as Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot. Yudkowsky argues that an untheist

would be someone who grew up in a society where the concept of God had simply never been invented - where writing was invented before agriculture, say, and the first plants and animals were domesticated by early scientists. In this world, superstition never got past the hunter-gatherer stage - a world seemingly haunted by mostly amoral spirits - before coming into conflict with Science and getting slapped down.

He imagines an untheist society progressing to the point where they develop science, but without passing through the stage where they were slapped by religion. They have had no need for gods in their society. Suppose then that, at some point, they get in touch with a person from our society who tells them

"The universe was created by God -"
"By what?"
"By a, ah, um, God is the Creator - the Mind that chose to make the universe -"
"So the universe was created by an intelligent agent. Well, that's the standard Simulation Hypothesis, but do you have actual evidence confirming this? You sounded very certain -"
"No, not like the Matrix! God isn't in another universe simulating this one, God just... is. He's indescribable. He's the First Cause, the Creator of everything -"
"Okay, that sounds like you just postulated an ontologically basic mental entity. And you offered a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. Besides, where are you getting all this stuff? Could you maybe start by telling us about your evidence - the new observation you're trying to interpret?"
"I don't need any evidence! I have faith!"
"You have what?"

The untheist cannot understand the argument of the theist. It is alien to them, irrelevant. If the encounter persists, the untheist will develop arguments against the irrational beliefs of the guy from our civilization, at which point, says Yudkowsky, the untheist becomes antitheist. And then, he argues, this is atheism. The argument is nice.

And as for the claim that religion is compatible with Reason - well, is there a single religious claim that a well-developed, sophisticated Untheist culture would not reject? When they have no reason to suspend judgment, and no anti-epistemology of separate magisteria, and no established religions in their society to avoid upsetting?

He concludes thus:

Yet in the long run, the goal is an Untheistic society, not an Atheistic one - one in which the question "What's left, when God is gone?" is greeted by a puzzled look and "What exactly is missing?"

And this is my point too.

He also mentions the following very logical concept: that in a pre-agricultural society, one of hunters gatherers, the concept of good god is absent:

Before you have chiefdoms where the priests are a branch of government, the gods aren't good, they don't enforce the chiefdom's rules, and there's no penalty for questioning them.

Again, this is a very precise observation. Religion was invented to keep people subordinate to a chieftain, a lord, a king, an emperor. It's a cheap substitute of opium for the masses, distributed freely by the rulers.

Happy Newtonmas cards (reposting)

2011-12-15T10:41:00.001+01:00

A reporter of www.religionnews.com recently asked me if she could interview me about my Newtonmas cards. "Sure", I said. And she did. I'm still waiting to see my interview online. Meanwhile, here are the cards again. Enjoy.

New Zealand church "challenge"

2011-12-15T10:27:00.000+01:00

I just read that St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland erected a billboard with the following image:

People found it offensive and defaced it. The church explained that they want to challenge people and think what Christmas is all about, about the virgin birth or about love. A spokesman for the Catholic Church replied:

"Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph. Such a poster is inappropriate and disrespectful."

Here we go again. Tradition, no matter how obscure it may be, is put above reason. Whereas I applaud the first church's act to challenge an irrational tradition, I think that, if taken to its eventual logical conclusion, the first church would have to eventually challenge every aspect of its religious dogmas. But then why have a church at all? This is what the critics fear.

A politically motivated conservative organization called Family First, replied:

"To confront children and families with the concept as a street billboard is completely irresponsible and unnecessary,"

This is nonsense. As a child, I loved to be confronted with a reasonable explanation of the traditionally irrational. It made me feel happier and better able to confront the world. Why should children be treated as stupid? Who said that imposing upon them the beliefs and superstitions of a 2000 year old tradition is good for them? The eventual harm done to children by indoctrinating them with irrational absurdities is much higher than a moment's truth.

Those silly pseudo-scientists, II

2011-12-07T02:13:00.001+01:00

I just checked Lennox's site, and saw a posting of mine there, a response to other postings, going like this:

The reason that it is ridiculous to bring god/religion into society is precisely because I care a lot about the well-being of all human beings and all life on Earth. Infanticide had been practiced in the name of gods in the past.
The second reason that it is irrational to talk about gods and religions is that there are many gods and many religions. Which one should I choose? By convention, typically, one chooses the gods/religion he/she is brought up with (like Lennox). But why is this a right choice?
The third reason it makes no sense to have religion in our society it is because it makes people lazy: for instance, you think it is a cosmic accident that we are here. You need to spend lots of years and effort in order to understand scientific facts which are not possible to grasp by trivial observations. If someone says “the Bible says so”, most likely this person is lazy.
Finally, let me correct you and others in three of your inferences:
1) Someone mentions the word “random” in their message. I very much doubt that they know what it means.
2) You say I am a leftist. I am not. You also think that being leftist is related to being atheist.
3) Perhaps you are implying that I am atheist. I am not. I am neither atheist nor theist nor deist.
4) Lennox is an ex-mathematician, just as Collins is an ex-atheist. The thing they have both in common is that they use their credentials in order to impress people who don’t have them.
5) Somebody else talks about god (i) as if there is one god and (ii) as if god is male (he uses the male pronoun). Hindus claim there are many gods. Why should I accept one and not two or five and a half gods?

One person replied to me and, among other things, he said this:

One must first investigate the claims of religions, and which one produces the best explanation. Christianity, of course, provides the best explanation and best evidence over any other religion. Saying “there are many religions” does not entail “all religions are false,” which seems to be the kind of logic you are implying here.

Can you see what kind of mistakes he makes? (Hint: they are underlined.)

Those silly pseudo-scientists

2011-12-05T22:56:00.000+01:00

Listen to this guy, John Lennox, explaining why science cannot explain everything. His argument is this:

Someone makes a cake (it is his aunt, Matilda). The chemists can tell what elements the cake consists of. The physicists can tell the particles comprising the atoms in the cake. The mathematicians can describe the equations of motion of these particles. But can we assert that the cake was completely explained? Suppose we ask the experts why the cake was made. They can't tell! But, aunt Matilda can! Of course she can, because she made the cake herself.

I've heard this fellow use this idiotic argument several times in the past. Live. With this argument, he wants to "prove" that science has its limits. And, therefore, he implies that (his) god exists. Go figure.... The sad thing is not that John Lennox is (was) a mathematician (he is now a priest) at Oxford. It is that he has followers...

There is no limit to human idiocy: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." (Einstein)

Flip-flopping

2011-11-30T11:59:00.000+01:00

November is almost gone, and I have posted almost nothing. Too much work, I guess. Here's what caught my attention recently. The term "flip-flopping" of politicians, with proof. There we go (source):
1) Barack Obama.
2) Mitt Romney.

Funeral office windows, in Sweden

2011-11-15T16:43:00.002+01:00

Windows of shops in Uppsala are not quite the most attractive sights of the town. If you have a visitor, don't take her (or him) for window shopping, (unless they happen to have fallen in coma in a remote Soviet village in the eighties, and just recovered from it). Many a times, they consist of nondescript arrangements of random objects, loosely resembling the products of the shop, e.g. a few scattered hairbrushes (often with hair) in a beauty salon, or dull collections of dusty clothes in a neighbourhood fashion shop, and so on--you get the idea. I will have to expand on this in a future email, because looking at shop windows in Sweden is like a time warp. It's like going back to the seventies.

But the most interesting kind of windows are of funeral offices. Typically, we don't see much of decoration in a funeral office window. In most places I've been to they are plain, simple or have religious messages, depending on the type. But in Uppsala (and I think, more generally, in Sweden) some (or all?) funeral offices have very interesting windows. Here is one from Uppsala:

It advertises its products: coffins. A closer look shows the "interesting" and "thoughtful" decoration: scattered stones underneath the coffin, a little (plastic of course) green bush, one side of the coffin standing on a (presumably empty) used can of sardines, a careful arrangement of (yes, you guessed it, plastic) flowers on top, next to a violin (not a Stradivarius, I'm sure). The coffin is locked (who knows why?).

"Interesting", I thought, when I first saw it. And I had to stop my car and take a picture.

Turkish influenced Greek music by Japanese group

2011-10-31T19:38:00.005+01:00

They're from Japan.
They're a bit crazy.
They're called PyramiDos.
They're pretty good.

I managed to navigate within the above Japanese webpage and found several of their music videos:
Here, here, and here.

Here is my favourite one:

This should be compared to the original, heavy duty (βαρύ κι ασήκωτο), version by Stelios Kazantzidis:

P.S. Yavrum [γιαβρούμ] (turkish) = darling.
Çiftetelli [τσιφτετέλι] = Turkish folk music incorporated into oriental dancing by Greeks.

Swedish tabloid on mathematicians and gods

2011-10-29T12:10:00.007+02:00

Earlier this year, some guy called Marcus Birro wrote a silly article in a Swedish tabloid called Expressen, where, among other things, he tells us that he couldn't undestand why use symbols instead of numbers in school, that he doesn't like mathematicians because they sit down all day doing nothing, that they have no feelings, and that, therefore (!!!), god exists.

I sent him the following email:

From: Takis Konstantopoulos
Date: Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 7:00 PM
Subject: matematik och gudar
To: marcus.birro@expressen.se

Mr Birro,

I "read" your article in Expressen, as far as I could understand it via google-translate. You are, actually, so very wrong about your impression of what a mathematician is. Mathematics is much more than what you learned in high school. Most likely, your teachers were pretty bad, uninspiring, boring,... just as many mathematics schoolteachers world-wide. They gave you the impression that doing mathematics with numbers is not the same as doing mathematics with letters. You do not understand that 1, 2, 3, and so on, are mere symbols, just as a, b, c. You do not understand that mathematics is not about numbers. You also do not understand what a proof means. I do not blame you. I also do not understand how DNA works, because I lack knowledge of biology and chemistry. However, I do understand that molecular biologists are not spending their time merely memorizing the sequence of atoms comprising a DNA molecule. Just as I understand that a journalist doesn't, simply, take a piece of gossip he or she has heard from his or her buddies and write an article about it. I'm afraid you have not done your homework and are simply expressing an opinion which is the equivalent of shouting slogans in a football match.

I will not try to comment on your opinion of god or gods. (Who knows how many there are?) Your proof of existence of gods is that mathematicians are useless. How absurd! Think a little bit, if you can, and see how unsubstantiated your claims are. I can tell you that no mathematical formula can measure what is happening in my heart when reading a poem of Cavafy, just as no formula can measure what is happening in your heart when you read a poem by Dan Andersson (in your words). But this is neither an argument against mathematics, nor an argument for the existence of gods, my friend. What is happening in our hearts, the love you feel for your children, is what is happening in other primates' hearts too. Being the product of a complicated evolution, which is beyond your understanding (and mine, for that matter), love and hate, and the ability to write silly articles like the one you did, emotions and feelings keep us alive and can be explained via chemistry and physics and biology and neuroscience. But you have to be patient for science to evolve too. And also try very very very hard to understand (some) science and learn (some) mathematics.

The easy solution is to say "gods exist and therefore this explains the love I feel". And you think you're done. This is the lazy approach. Just as the fact that I need an incredible amount of training in order to play a little piano piece well, so you too (and everybody who is outside a field) need a lot of training in science and mathematics in order to be able to understand why letters and numbers can express human thought and lead to a proof. However, even though I do not have the time (or ability) to learn piano like, say, Andrei Gavrilov, I can and do appreciate not only his playing, but also his effort and thinking. Why? because I can compare judiciously. Likewise, even though you may have no time (or ability) to learn any mathematics, you can, with a bit of effort and comparison and extrapolation, appreciate something which lies beyond your sphere of understanding.

Just try it. You can.

And then you can correct your article.

Sincerely,
Takis Konstantopoulos

He hasn't replied to me. I wonder why.

Greek debt and German concern

2011-10-27T10:29:00.008+02:00

No doubt, the Greek financial crisis is due to, among others,
(i) politicians' greed (they did put a lot of money in their pockets, and still possess them),
(ii) the politicians' slackness in collecting taxes (they didn't want to, they themselves and their friends would have to pay taxes and that was not in their plan),
(iii) Europe's turning a blind eye to Greek financial reports (everybody and their mother knew that Greeks were faking their papers, come on!) .

However, here is an alternative piece of information which should make Germans, now pointing fingers towards Greece, reflect upon their recent history.

According to Albrecht Ritchl, professor of Economic History at LSE, the largest debtor of all times is Germany. In the June 2011 issue of Der Spiegel, Ritchl gave an interview (original German version here) pointing out that

during the 20th century, Germany was responsible for what were the biggest national bankruptcies in recent history. It is only thanks to the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of money after both World War I and World War II, that Germany is financially stable today and holds the status of Europe's headmaster. That fact, unfortunately, often seems to be forgotten.

This happened twice. First, during the Weimar Republic, and then after WWII. The US helped Germany on both occasions tremendously, but it was also agreed that

there wouldn't be a repeat of high reparations demands made on Germany.

That is, that Germany would not have to pay its war victims. This was the actual financial basis of the German Wirtschaftswunder. In fact,

[w]ith only a few exceptions, all such demands were put on the backburner until Germany's future reunification.

As we know, reunification took place, but Germany did not pay reparation. I don't think it's only Germany's fault. It's likely that Greek politicians didn't ask for it loud enough for they didn't want to. They had money pouring in their pockets via Europe, why should they want to make their benefactors unhappy, reminding them that Greece lost 10% of its population due to WWII casualties (one of the largest losses in the world, after Poland and Soviet Union)? As Ritchl says,

[c]ompared to [the Weimar Republic] default, today's Greek payment problems are actually insignificant

and that

[i]f the mood in [Greece] turns, old claims for reparations could be raised, from other European nations as well. And if Germany ever had to honor them, we would all be taken the cleaners. Compared with that, we can be grateful that Greece is being indulgently reorganized at our expense. If we follow public opinion here with its cheap propaganda and not wanting to pay, then eventually the old bills will be presented again.

This is something to keep in mind. The Greek elite consists, of course, of unreliable politicians and their buddies who have faked papers, stolen money, avoided taxation, asked Greeks to borrow more, made them believe they live and can live in luxury without working, numbing their brains with false hopes... But, on the other hand, who is shouting to whom? Read some history and see that the whole of Europe has been a mess.

I don't know what "the solution" could be. I'm afraid that one of the most difficult things to acquire is not money, but the right mentality (what does work mean?). And this is lacking in Greece. But, at the same time, lack of the right mentality of different sorts lacks in other countries as well. By shouting and finger-pointing you cannot eliminate history. Unless you can make people forget it, and this is something that frequently happens. In history.

What's happening to the creationist "Dr" Sungenis?

2011-10-23T12:04:00.002+02:00

I'm wondering what's going on these days with those creationists who believe that the universe turns around them. They are called geocentrists and it seems that one of their chieftains is "Dr" Robert Sungenis. I have no idea what his motives are (other than sheer idiocy) to claim that the Earth is still. I became aware of this species last year, when I said "damn! I missed the conference" and then posted about them here, here and here.I was fortunate enough to attract the attention of "Dr" Sungenis who kindly wrote to me:

Takis, Robert Sungenis here. Here's a good way to prove your point: since you are a "professor of science," give us just one proof of heliocentrism, and we'll go away. Promise. Make sure the proof is one that can hold up under scrutiny, because we are going to run it through scientific rigor to make sure you're right and then post it on your blog. By the way, the earth is round. Perhaps you can start your proof from there. Looking forward to hearing from you.

When I pointed out to him that his label "Dr", well, is not quite what it says,

I took a look at your credentials here and here. You tried to study in accredited institutions but you were rejected. You then found a non-accredited institution, Calamus Extension College, which offers degrees (by correspondence) on such crackpottery subjects as Holistic Studies, Homeopathy, Contemporary Spirituality, Regression and Reincarnation Studies (!!!), Parapsychology, Metaphysics, Hypnotherapy, Healing Studies, Transpersonal Psychology (including reincarnation, psychosynthesis and spirit release), Esoteric Studies, and Consciousness Studies, among others. Every possible bogus subject is mentioned. I have never seen a place offering so much junk altogether. You got your PhD from this institution in 2006 on geocentrism. Your credentials are not just zero, but negative: anyone who comes in contact with subjects such as the ones mentioned above is probably brain-damaged. Despite the very likely fact that you do not know elementary algebra, you have the guts to speak about Relativity in relation to your theological claims. How can anyone understand, not relativity, but even elementary Euclidean geometry, with a degree from Calamus Extension College? Impossible!

he stopped talking to him. Imagine, a degree from Calamus Extension College who is used as evidence of one's ability to support elementary Newtonian mechanics concepts. As I said, impossible. Show me one person from Calamus Extenstion College who can solve a first order linear differential equation in one dimension, and I'd be really surprised.

Yesterday, I watched a little video from youtube, where Sungenis and another religious guy attack one another because they are both Christian, but each claims that the other person is not the right kind of Christian. At some point, the other guy tells Sungenis "you believe whatever the Catholic church tells you". "Yeah", replies Sungenis, "because that is the authority". From the whole dialog, it appears that Sungenis just bows to whatever the Catholic church tells him, because, in his words, it is an established authority for 2000 years. He says that he"has the "right pedigree" [sic] (by being a member of an authority organization), whereas the other Christian does not (because he only reads the bible).

Finally, I'd like to point out the interesting review of a talk that Sungenis gave. The review is by Flora, but I first saw on Gem Newman's Winnipeg Skeptics page,

Official driving licence photo

2011-09-20T08:45:00.000+02:00

(Thanks Lisa for pointing this out. Please feel free to comment.)

A European driving licence photograph is subject to strict regulations. One of them states that headgear is only allowed for confessional reasons, i.e. if it is part of the driver's religion.

Mr Niko Alm applied for licence three years ago demanding that he wear a pasta strainer on his head. He claimed it was part of his religion, pastafarianism, or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And he managed to obtain his licence with the photo he needed:

This is a very good practical application of rationality. Indeed, there is absolutely no commonly agreed definition of what a religion is. Informally, something is classified as religion if it has been around for a while, if it has lots of devotees, if it does not go against the political status quo, etc. But none of these things is well-defined, nor has it ever been legalized. So, it is perfectly logical for someone to start a religion.

By acting as Mr Alm, eventually, will force society to properly define "religion". Or try to. And then there will be chaos, for there is no definition that fits all, neither one that will encompass religions to be.

We need examples, and counterexamples, in order to test a theory. Despite the efforts of Tony Blair to unify religions, this cannot happen. For sure, there will be one or more religions left out.

Let us start thinking, then, what on Earth constitutes a religion? Why is religion A better than B?--oops, I'm not allowed to say so! So why are all religions equal?--oops, but then I may have to include loonies like these, who get together and "speak in tongues".

So, congratulations to Mr Alm, for posing the right question. In his words,

"I am ridiculing the authorities," he said. "If anybody is offended there is nothing I can do, but I am offended too, if logic and reason is offended."

Mathematics screening test for university students

2011-09-17T17:17:00.001+02:00

I am writing this in response to my friend Joe who tends to believe that things in US education are bad. In fact, for anyone who thinks that things are bad in the particular place he or she happens to work.

This is a screening test I gave to second year university students (school of mathematical sciences of a UK university I worked at earlier). The rationale behind a screening test is to alert the students that they should not take a further course without having basic skills acquired in earlier courses and that, if they have not learnt earlier material, they should repeat the courses before proceeding further.

The front page of the linked document contains statistics of students' responses. The remaining pages contain the questions I asked, together with sample responses. I would say that out of 60 students who took the test, there was probably one who could, perhaps, qualify as a university student. The remaining ones had no clue.

Although the document is self-explanatory, here are some of the questions, along with the most funny answers:

Q: Given two polynomials $p(x) = \sum_{k=0}^n a_k x^k$ and $q(x) = \sum_{k=0}^m b_k x^k$, express the coefficient of the term $x^k$ of the product $r(x) = p(x)q(x)$ in terms of the coefficients $(a_k)$ and $(b_k)$.
A: $a_{k^{1/2}} b_{k^{1/2}}$.

Q: Define the concept of the derivative of a function $f : R \rightarrow R$ at a point $x$.
A: This is the distance of the point $x$ from the origin on a plain [sic].

Q: Explain what we mean by the integral $\int_0^1 f(x) dx$ of a function $f : [0; 1] \rightarrow R$. (The answer "area under the curve" is not acceptable.)
A: By integrating this function, we are being asked to calculate an area, and by providing definate [sic] integrals, the question asks us to provide a specific area.

Q: In how many ways can you put 5 indistinguishable balls in 7 distinctly numbered boxes and why?
A: 21/5.

Q: Expand $(a + b)^5$, where $a, b$ are real numbers.
A: $(a + b)^5 = \binom{a}{0} + \binom{a}{1} a^4 b + \binom{a}{2} \frac{a^3 b^2}{2!} + \binom{a}{3} \frac{a^2 b^3}{3!} + \binom{a}{4} \frac{ab^4}{4!} + \binom{a}{5} \frac{b^5}{5!}$.

Q: Compute the (indefinite) integral $\int dx/\sqrt{x}$.
A: $-2u+C$.

The huge problem in education, around the world, is that the meaning of the verb "to learn" is frequently disassociated from the verb "to understand". This is convenient for students. It is also convenient for many teachers who do not want to bother to understand and explain. It is convenient for politicians. It is convenient for administrators. In short, it is convenient for everyone. Except that the result is the production of generations of students who get a degree in, say, mathematics, but know very little mathematics. What is worse, is that they think they know. It is more dangerous to have people who believe they know rather than people who know they do not know (and, therefore, may try to learn whenever necessary). Someone who is convinced of his/her skills will do nothing to improve them.

An example of bad mathematics textbooks for schoolchildren

2011-09-17T01:33:00.003+02:00

A friend of mine sent me the following entry from a mathematics textbook for schoolchildren in the US around the age of 12. Here is a question asked, together with the suggested solution:

Question: Tell whether the following events are dependent or independent. If they are independent, find the probability that both events occur.
Event C: Choosing the letter F from a bag containing the alphabet.
Event D: Choosing the letter V from a bag containing the alphabet after already choosing F and not replacing the letter.
Solution: Events C and D are dependent events. Once a letter has been picked from the bag and not replaced, it changes the probability of picking another letter from the bag.

Here is the problem with the way the question is formulated. In defining event D, the writer of this has inserted the description of the sample space. Instead of clearly defining the experiment first and then the events, he/she mixed the two things together in defining the event D. The result is confusion. The correct way of stating the problem is:

We have a bag containing the 26 letters of the alphabet. We pick a letter at random, put it away, and then pick another letter at random and put it away. Define the following events:
Event C: The first letter we pick is F.
Event D: The second letter we pick is V.
Question: Determine whether the two events are independent or not.

The suggested solution is even more confusing. It says that events C and D are dependent (correct, provided you have understood what event D is, i.e., what the author wanted to say but did not say), but the explanation given is not very good: "Once a letter has been picked from the bag and not replaced, it changes the probability of picking another letter from the bag." It changes the probability of what? What does the changing of a probability have to do with the definition of dependence?

Let's see first what the correct solution is:

P(C) clearly equals 1/26.
P(D) also equals 1/26.
The reason is: From the definition of event D, as an event which has nothing to do with whatever we picked at the first pick, and because of symmetry, we can see that P(D)=1/26 as well. What I mean by this is the following: if, say, the letters were arranged in a random order on a line and defined event C to be the leftmost letter, while D the right most one, then it would have been even clearer that P(C)=P(D). This is why the two probabilities are the same.
As for the probability P(C & D) of their intersection we have
P(C & D) = P(C) P(D | C) = (1/25) x (1/26).

The reason is this: P(D | C) can be computed on the new sample space containing 25 letters because we are conditioning on having picked the letter F first. Since there are 25 letters remaining, we have P(D | C) = 1/25.
Since P(D & C) ≠ P(D) P(C), it follows that C and D are dependent events.

A clearly stated problem, and a logical solution is the only way that the kids in the school can learn something which they can subsequently find useful. The kids will remember, even subconsciously, these kind of things and if they have been taught incorrectly, they will have to unlearn everything when they go to the university (provided--this is an assumption--that their university teachers know how to teach or bother to do so).

No wonder why when people ask me what I do for living and I say mathematics they invariable give the same response: "Oh, I was so bad in mathematics at school." "I understand", I reply. "but, most likely, so was your teacher".

P.S. My friend also told me the following idiotic question the kids get in their mathematics class:

Question: What do you call the shape whose area is given by the formula L⋅H?

There is no end to idiocy in this world.

Swedish sunset

2011-09-16T19:25:00.001+02:00

Nordic darkness will be here soon. Meanwhile, we're getting some nice sunsets. The photo below was taken yesterday in front of Ångströmlaboratoriet.

Three Swedish fetishes

2011-09-15T01:11:00.009+02:00

Moving from one country to another makes it easy to observe the differences and things which are unique to a particular place. It is much easier for a newcomer to spot them than for people who've lived in the country all their lives. I've noticed at least three things which seem to be uniquely Swedish, in the sense that they exist in abundance and are really loved by people in Sweden. I decided to call them Swedish fetishes because these things are useless, probably addictive, and serve no real purpose.

Fetish no. 1: Candy

If you've ever been to one of the American-style cinemas you cannot fail but notice rows upon rows of stinky, sticky, sickly candy. If your olfactory system works well, then, probably, you'll want to go past them quickly so that you don't have to vomit.
It's really a huge surprise to see that this kind of junk food exists in abundance in Sweden, not only in cinemas, but, really, everywhere: in petrol stations, in supermarkets, in convenience stores, at the university, in the hospital cantine, on the streets (whenever vendors go out), at train stations...

There is no end to the amount of candy that is available in Sweden, everywhere and at all points of time. Sweden is a country where everything closes early. However, candy you can find at almost all times. It is even served during official meetings. You may be out at night searching for milk, which may be hard to find. But candy, you will find, with little difficulty:

Police scooping candy in huge quantities, around 11 pm, on 10 September 2011:

It is rather suprising, but Swedes consume more candy than Americans per person. In fact, it seems that Sweden is the world leader in candy consumption per capita (excluding chocolate). To prove my point further (that Swedes have some kind of peculiar relationship with sweets), here is a recent TV advertisement. In it, we see children with three mouths (!?), evolved this way so that they can consume more candy. Yes, it is quite disturbing image. Enjoy:

Fetish no 2: Tatoo magazines.

"Why are there so many tatoo magazines in Sweden?", I asked a colleague a few months ago. He didn't know. In fact, he hadn't observed it. As I mentioned above, it is easier for a newcomer to spot the differences. To prove my point, I went to the local Pressbyrån and took a picture:

You can perhaps count 27 tatoo magazines in the middle shelf. This number should be compared with the boats magazines (12), the number of newsmagazines (11), etc. Not only is there an amazing large number of tatoo magazines in the shop, but that number is the largest of magazines of all kinds.

Truly peculiar.

Sometime later, I went to another shop in Gothenburg. Same story:

Here you can count about 24 tatoo magazines.
The question, then, is why? Why are there so many customers attracted to tatoo magazines? The obvious answer that people are attracted to the women on the covers and inside is not satisfying. There is something else, and this is something that has to do with Sweden. I don't know what it is.
There are definitely more tatoo magazines in a Swedish magazine shop than in an American shop. Even rednecks don't have the need to consult so many magazines for their body modification.

Fetish no. 3: Old (mostly junk) American cars.

Uppsala is a city with not so wide streets, and a huge number of bicyclists. Once in a while, however, the city is transformed by the peculiar site of platoons of old, mostly ugly, junk, American cars, occupied by a large number of passengers, all of which sit packed together on the front seat, drunk and loud and proudly driving their pile of metal, obviously feeling a sense of achievement, demonstrating their possession to pedestrians who do not have the chance of having a vehicle of this sort in their backyard.

The drivers want to be seen, to be noticed. The other day there was even an American car show in Uppsala. A huge number of cars, probably in the hundreds, had come to Uppsala, parked in a central area. Their owners were dressed like American rednecks and many of them had beer bellies as well! Why would anyone in the world try to behave like a redneck is totally incomprehensible. I hope, however, that the Swedish redneck-wannabes do not have the essential tool of the redneck trade: a gun-rack full of guns. But who knows?

One is inclined to conjecture that Sweden has the largest number of redneck-wannabed than any other country besides redneckland. But I lack statistics, so I will refrain from formulating this kind of conjecture.

University of Texas shootings, II

2011-08-20T14:20:00.003+02:00

About a year ago, someone went in the University of Texas campus and started shooting at random. Finally he shot himself to death. Fortunately, nobody (else) was killed.

I commented on this in a previous posting. I mentioned, inter alia, a personal experience, and also linked a news video

showing a policeman apparently stating that students should be mentally prepared that, now and then, a gunman may show up on campus and advises them to be alert.

I concluded my posting by the following observation:

I wouldn't be surprised if further advice was given that people should carry guns in order to protect themselves. This is not uncommon in the US. Instead of trying to put a restriction on guns when fatalities happen, it is peculiar that they want exactly the opposite: they are convinced that gun fatalities can only be prevented by more guns.

For it is often the case that Americans respond to gun fatalities by acquiring more guns.

And here is a response I received, recently, by an angry commenter who doesn't dare reveal his identity:

Absurd, huh? Except for the fact that whenever guns are taken away, crime goes up. Criminals don't worry about getting guns, they get them, they always get them. It's the law abiding people that turn them in. Get your data straight. Idiot. You typical bleeding heart liberal.

There is a link between gun supporters and religious freaks. In my opinion, it is self-righteousness. They think that they are better than others (because, say, their god(s) speak(s) directly to them) and impose their will by "rolling up their sleeves and beat the others up". Just as Lao Tze described in Tao Te Ching, Ch. 38. Obama was right when, in 2008, remarked:

"They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Of course, back then, this was seen as a blunder. Obama (who I don't believe is really religious) had to play his cards right and be seen to go to church; otherwise, he would have decreased his chances of being elected.

Back to my point then: The angry commenter above really expresses the average gun owner in the US: Guns save life. Yes, in a society where guns are so much accepted, several people grow up by wanting more of them. One can't get rid of deeply rooted evils. It's just like religion: in a society where religion is the norm, you are an outcast if you don't go to church. I really feel sorry for friends in Midwest where they have to struggle to keep up with their neighbours' rejection just because they don't care to go to (any) church. They have no guns either.

Oh, incidentally, the typical bleeding heart liberal comment about me above makes me crack up.

Malagueña facil (and the last few seconds of it)

2011-08-20T03:34:00.002+02:00

Malagueña facil is a piece of music for classical guitar, composed by Francisco Tárrega. The composer, Tárrega, bearing the name of the small town in Cataluña, was a classical guitarist

of the romantic period who laid the foundations of classical guitar, as we know it now. He was the teacher of Emilio Pujol and Miguel Llobet. The malagueñas is one of the traditional styles of flamenco music from Andaluzía. In composing it, Tárrega was probably inspired by the gypsies: as a teenager, he ran away from home to join the gypsies in Valencia.This particular piece was titled "malagueña facil", i.e. "easy malagueña", but it is nothing but (too) easy. Indeed, playing it in its proper tempo requires the kind of dexterity that a folk guitarist (a gypsy, say) has when playing flamenco. There are many poor performances (including mine) on the internet and elsewhere, but the following one I find superb:

The last 15 seconds of the piece (from 1:05 until the end in the video above) are the most challenging ones, most difficult to get right. (To wit, click on other performances on youtube.) This performer gets them just right. And these 15 seconds make all the difference in the world.

Sect or religion?

2011-08-05T02:22:00.002+02:00

I really don't understand what the difference is between a sect and a religion. It appears that the only difference is political. For some Christians, Jehova's witnesses is a sect. For some Muslims, Sufism is a sect. Etc. It is totally arbitrary. Indeed, since religion (as well as all its off-spins, creationism, intelligent design, etc.), by definition, is based on hot air. What constitutes a sect can change with time and location.

Maybe you read today about a certain Warren Jeffs who was convicted of sexual assault. The linked BBC article refers to his religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as "fundamentalist" and as a "sect". Why, I wonder. Why is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints more of a sect than, say, the religion headed by Patriarch Kirill I? It is a matter of convention.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is known for advocating polygamy. In fact, it seems that this is precisely what made it popular in the first place. Brigham Young, the 19th c. leader of this religion, had 55 wives. He used religion and god in order to justify this, and, apparently, had many followers. Today, there is a university which goes bears his name. Rather embarrassing, isn't it?

Chimp feeds tiger

2011-08-01T19:12:00.000+02:00

Here is another example of how primates can be trained to follow a human-like behaviour. I just watched a BBC video showing a young chimpanzee, Dodo, feed a tiger cub from a bottle of milk. He has been doing so for a year. I always find animal behaviour fascinating (not least because it can make us aware of ourselves).

Texas solves problems by ... prayer!

2011-07-24T22:50:00.000+02:00

Look at this man:

He is Rick Perry, the governor of Texas. He recently announced that America is going through hard times, facing political and financial problems. He decided that the solution is to establish the 6th of August as "Day of Prayer and Fasting for Our Nation". Read more and watch his proclamation video here. He claims:

We believe that America is in a state of crisis. Not just politically, financially or morally, but because we are a nation that has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles.

The response, he continues, will be a gathering in Reliant Stadium (which will be air-conditioned) in Houston on 6 August where Texans (and others) will be praying in order to solve America's problems:

I sincerely hope you’ll join me in Houston on August 6th and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our state and nation. There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.

Such pretentious events are happening all the time in Texas. Religion and state are intricately intertwined. I lived several years in Texas and witnessed many such idiocies. One can really feel sick if one has to live in such a state. I couldn't stand it watching people declare that guns are necessarary to protect themselves from the devil. The more religious someone is in Texas the more likely is that he/she has all sorts of guns. They love religion and guns. The more they love one, the more they have of the other.

George W. Bush proclaimed 10 June 2000 to be Jesus day. Rick Perry, his successor, decided that 6 August will be a prayer and fasting day. On this page, you can sign up for participating in the Houston event, and you can decide how many days in advance you are going to start the prayer and fasting. All that, sponsored not by a freaky religious organization but by a political unit: the State of Texas.

Applied religion?

2011-07-22T14:25:00.001+02:00

I wonder if there is any relation between, say, the desire of many to admire objects, or have idols, with the need of many to have a faith, a religion. I am, in this particular case, talking about the following piece of news:

Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress on display

My reaction is: Who cares? But, apparently, many do. Why? What is the need that drives them to do so? Could it be related to the (their) need for faith?

Women's rights in Saudi Arabia

2011-07-15T23:36:00.002+02:00

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. Quran 4:34

The passage above from the Qu'ran is, supposedly, what makes women be (much) inferior to men in Saudi Arabia and other theocratic regimes. This article from wikipedia describes the situation well. Saudi Arabia is one of the worst countries in the world regarding gender equality. What a striking difference from Sweden! Women are, literally, owned by men, just because a text written some 1500 years ago says so. There is child marriage too. Just like Mohammed married Aisha when she was 9 or 10 years old... The head veil which covers most of the head is not the worst thing that can happen to women there. Some women do want their heads to be covered (some don't, but they have no choice).

Stoning is still being practiced in Saudi Arabia. A woman found to have any relationship outside her marriage may be subject to the brutal punishment of death by stoning. By contrast, a man will not be punished in the same way. The suspicion alone of a woman’s wrong-doing can be enough for her to be subject to violence in the name of honor. In 2007, a young woman was murdered by her father for chatting with a man on facebook. Women lack in education, and, many times, education means memorization of large parts of the Qu'ran.

To be continued.

How to make the masses obey

2011-07-15T13:51:00.000+02:00

Suppose you are a leader of a big country. Say the Roman empire. Or Russia. What do you do to make people follow you? One way is to identify their religious tendencies and amplify them. You adopt, as state religion, the one which the majority of the people like. You then do a bit of marketing, preferably indirectly, and convince people that you, as a state leader, are chosen by the god(s) of the promoted religion. Then you are on a good path.

This is an almost sure recipe for success. Despite the fact that it has been employed hundreds of times in the human history, it still works! Why? Simply because people cannot reason independently of an authority.

Take, for instance, Constantine I, a.k.a. "Constantine the Great" or "Saint Constantine" (none of which adjectives has anything to do with his true nature). He sensed that his subjects were falling victims of a religion known as Christianity and so he declared he had a vision in which he was told to adopt the religion as official one for his empire. So he did. The devastating consequences are well-known.

Or take Vladimir Putin. A former KGB agent of the, supposedly atheist, Soviet Union, current prime minister of Russia, has been, for a few years now, officially endorsing Orthodox Christianity as official religion of Russia. Vladislav Surkov, Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, a staunch Putin supporter and one of Russia’s most powerful men, declared:

“I honestly believe that Putin is a person who was sent to Russia by fate and by the Lord at a difficult time for Russia.” “(Putin was) preordained by fate to preserve our peoples.”

You can find the full story in Reuters, but I first saw it here. Reuters also reports that:

Two months ago, a nun-like sect appeared in central Russia claiming that Putin was a saint and a saviour. A spokesman said Putin "does not approve of that kind of admiration".

Indeed, Putin is modest. He does not approved that kind of admiration. Not yet, that is. However, recall that he wants to be buried next to Stalin, and that Stalin is often viewed as a "saint" by many Russians. See my earlier posting titled "Saint Joseph Stalin" for more information.

In order to justify their behavior, they turn their theories into dogmas, their bylaws into First Principles, their political bosses into Gods and all those who disagree with them into incarnate devils. This idolatrous transformation of the relative into the Absolute and the all too human into the Divine, makes it possible for them to indulge their ugliest passions with a clear conscience and in the certainty that they are working for the Highest Good. And when the current beliefs come, in their turn, to look silly, a new set will be invented, so that the immemorial madness may continue to wear its customary mask of legality, idealism, and true religion. --Aldous Huxley

Canción de la Hilandera

2011-07-11T00:49:00.004+02:00

Canción de la Hilandera (song of the spinning wheel) is a piece of music written by Agustín Barrios Mangoré in 1933. It uses the tremolo technique and evokes the rythmic sound of a spinning wheel. Barrios was a genius. One of the most prolific guitar composers, his work was late-Romantic in character, music belonging to the past, even for his era. He spoke Guaraní and liked to dress like the native people of his country, Paraguay. The following performance of the canción de la Hilandera is very good:

Sweden's 'gender-neutral' pre-school

2011-07-10T23:27:00.002+02:00

This is very funny. Below are some excerpts, without comments. The rest can be read at the recent BBC article.

Egalia: new *public* pre-school in Stockholm. An experiment in making little children behave the way they want without paying attention to their gender; in fact, the teachers will discourage them from referring to one another by using personal pronouns like "he" and "she". In Swedish, "he" is "han" and "she" is "hon". They will switch to "hen"--a nonexistent word in Swedish.

The books have been carefully selected to avoid traditional presentations of gender and parenting roles. So, out with the likes of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, and in with, for example, a book about two giraffes who find an abandoned baby crocodile and adopt it.

As for toys, if the boys want to play with dolls, or if the girls want to play with tractors, that is fine. At Egalia boys are free to dress up and to play with dolls, if that is what they want to do.

They want to change society and make childre forget their gender, from early on. Gender researchers have convinced politicians that the solution to all problems is a gender perspective.

But what is *very funny* is that The Egalia school - which is state-funded - is proving popular though, and boasts a long waiting list.

I moved to Sweden last year and some people told me that the government spends a lot of money into gender issues. I didn't know what they meant. But I heard funny things like, for instance, someone in the university claiming that when she first read that the mitochondrial DNA passes to children only through the mother, she thought "oh, yes, this is so feministic" [sic].

A creationist professor from Warwick University

2011-06-29T20:57:00.003+02:00

I discovered this video, by Prof. Steve Fuller, Sociology, Warwick University. The video is full of nonsense. E.g.,

1:50: "Very few practicing biologists claim to believe in intelligent design"

Why would a practicing biologist, or any scientist for that matter, believe in something, especially if this something is silly, like creationism? Actually, I can add to the above profound statement: Very few practicing biologists believe in unicorns.

But the worst point of the video, starts at 2:00 and has to do with Fuller trying to justify why creationism (intelligent design) should be taught at schools: He claims that it has to do with motivating students who nowadays won't try to learn something unless it has a practical or technical value. He implies that creationism (intelligent design) provides a motivation and this is why it should be embedded in biology classes (and not only--I suppose).

Can you find other stoopid things in this video?

P.S. Steve Fuller is American. Therefore he may have different reasons for promoting creationism. He was also educated by the Jesuits. (Religion, once under your skin, is hard to get rid of.)

(Some of the) funny aspects of the Academy of Athens, II

2011-06-26T20:52:00.006+02:00

I continue with another hilarious example about a member of the Academy of Athens. One of its members is a theoretical physicist who is known, in Greece, by a large number of common people, people who have nothing to do with physics or science. I've heard his name being mentioned by taxi drivers, manicurists and air hostesses, among others. He is, according to these people, the greatest scientist of all times.

His name is Dimitri Nanopoulos. But how come everyone knows him? On what basis do these people know this academician? Why is he so popular? Is he a popularizer of science? Some time ago I searched to find what's going on. I was very surpised when a mainstream Greek newspaper had a full-page dedicated to the advertisment of a car (Lexus) together with a picture of the aforementioned academician. Fair enough, I thought, he's trying to make some (more) money. But then I read the following phrase below his photo:

Professor Nanopoulos has achieved international reputation. Doing research mainly in Cosmology and High Energy Physics, he is considered today one of the four greatest theoretical physicists of all times.

Just as the distinguished theoretical physicist methodically "besieges" the next scientific revolution, so does Lexus constantly seeks perfection.

So, let's see: Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, and Nanopoulos. What about Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, Lev Landau, Henri Poincare, ... , ... ? Well, according to the Lexus advertisement, there is no doubt. The set must contain 4 people. One of them is Nanopoulos.

But where does this claim come from, and what does it mean? I looked further. According to wikipedia,

He is one of the most regularly cited researchers in the world, cited more than 35,800 times over across a number of separate branches of science.

So, perhaps, the phrase "greatest number of citations" has been changed to "greatest scientist". Is that so? Does number of citations necessarily mean greateness? Yes, says Nanopoulos.

Shortly after the advertisement appeared in several Greek newspapers, in a public letter, 12 emminent Greek physicists write:

[Nanopoulos] knows well that such comments are at the border of being ridiculous, provocatively insulting one's intelligence, and denigrate the Greek scientific community.

Moreover, the 12 scientists ask the president of Greece to be careful when appointing such a self-bragging person to positions of responsibility, such as the president of the Council of Research and Technology (and others).

Nanopoulos replied by characterizing the authors of the letter as "scientists" [i.e. scientists in quotes], and mentioned that people like Al Gore also advertize various products [yes, but Gore is not a scientist]. He also said:

Regarding my achievements in the domain of science, I attach my CV as well as a comparative table of my works and citations, without comment.

In the attached table, he lists the total number of citations to the 12 other scientists (26862) and compares it to the number of citations to his own papers (31412). Therefore [he implies], I am better than the sum of all these other "scientists".

There is another comparison he makes, and this is ridiculous. It concerns the so-called h-index:

A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] N_p papers have at least h citations each, and the other (N_p − h) papers have at most h citations each.

This silly measure of success was devised several years ago and is taken seriously by lazy administrators, but not by scientists. It is well known (i) that citations alone do not measure one's greateness and (ii) that it is not too hard to boost up one's citations by forming alliances. Moreover, not all citations are necessarily positive (I can cite a paper for its wrong results). However, not only has the h-index (and a variety of other indices) has been glorified, but a "science" has also been formed, the so-called Bibliometrics or Scientometrics. For instance, it is not hard to find papers looking at statistics of indices and "mathematics" of indices. The drive to summarize one's achievements by a single number has thus provided jobs to many other people who can now write papers on citation indices, thereby increasing their own citations!

A good critique of the lunacy around the h-index and other bibliometrical concepts is the paper "Citation Statistics", by Robert Adler, John Ewing and Peter Taylor, a report from the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS):

The drive towards more transparency and accountability in the academic world has created a "culture of numbers" in which institutions and individuals believe that fair decisions can be reached by algorithmic evaluation of some statistical data; unable to measure quality (the ultimate goal), decision makers replace quality by numbers that they can measure. This trend calls for comment from those who professionally “deal with numbers”— mathematicians and statisticians.

To summarize:

A Greek academician, D. Nanopoulos, uses the h-index as a measure of his achievements. This can be witnessed in numerous web cites, in his talks, in his wikipedia entry, in his letter to the President of Greece, etc.
His having one of the greatest number of citations (and a big h-index) has been [presumably] translated and equated to his being one of the four greatest physicists of all times.
The car company Lexus has used this, presumably in cooperation with Nanopoulos, to advertize their car.

Something is fundamentally wrong with all that. Perhaps it is because Nanopoulos is a professor in a horrible place, Texas A&M, where the heat, the conservatism, the guns around you, the pressure towards being the biggest (it's Texas) can drive you crazy. Nanopoulos is also being advertized as "a constant claimant of a Nobel prize"... As I said, funny things happen at the Academy of Athens....

(Some of the) funny aspects of the Academy of Athens, I

2011-06-22T21:08:00.005+02:00

A recent article by D. Gousetis criticized the Greek Academicians:

There is an institution whose members are supposed to be the leading intellectuals [of the country]. This is the Academy of Athens [i.e. the Greek Academy of Sciences]. According to its founding principles, the Academy of Athens aims, inter alia, at the scientific research and study of the national economy and the preparation of guidelines and suggestions for the benefit of state institutions and authorities. This is precisely what the country needs today. Instead, however, [the Academy of Athens] remains blissfully silent. The worst of all is that its members receive a salary as high as that of a member of the parliament, in [sharp] contrast to the academicians of rich countries, like USA or France, whose title is honorary, without salary. Their silence was not disturbed even when it was revealed that their former chairman [of the Academy] was a plagiarist: [the Academy] continues to sell the product of plagiarism [his book] in its bookstore.

Indeed, it is very true that the high-profile mathematician Nikolaos Artemiadis wrote a book on the history of mathematics in 2000 which was, in 2004, translated and published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) under the title "History of Mathematics: From a Mathematician's Vantage Point". It was soon proven that the book is an ineptly plagiarized version of Morris Kline’s Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. See the letter of Seth Braver, Univ. of Montana, to the AMS for explanation (page 718). On page 719, there is a reply by John Ewing, Executive Director of the AMS, stating that the AMS discontinues the publication of Artemiadis' book forever:

The American Mathematical Society views plagiarism with the utmost seriousness. When Braver brought this matter to our attention, we immediately ceased all sales of the book, reviewed the evidence he had presented, and gathered further evidence of our own. Based on that review, we decided to discontinue publication of the book permanently.

However, the Academy of Athens still continues to sell Artemiadis' book, not caring about the fact that it is plagiarized. As I wrote earlier, the German minister, Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, resigned when it was revealed that parts of his PhD thesis had been copied from the Internet (without citations). But in Greece, at least one academician (I am being told he's not the only one) remains in his highly paid position, without any repercussions for stealing from another book.

Meanwhile, Greeks keep protesting about the financial crisis and some of them expect solutions... From whom?

Informative signposts

2011-06-10T17:15:00.001+02:00

I found this picture on the Internet.The signposts for Alexandoupoli/Feres/Soufli do the opposite of providing too little information.
The first post warns the driver to take the exit in 1000 m.
There is a second post 100 m further down.
Just in case the driver is absent-minded, there is a reminder that the exit is in 600 m.
And then there is another one 400 m before the exit.
Probably there is a final one at the exit, but the picture gets out of focus and I can't tell.
(Who said that Greek signposts are non-informative?)
Enjoy:

What's so wrong with Kentucky?

2011-06-04T15:09:00.001+02:00

The Creation Museum: In 2007, a museum promoting pseudo-science was established. It cost them 27 million USD. It promotes fake concepts, such as that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, that humans co-existed with dinosaurs, that the christian bible contains scientific information, that creationism/intelligent design is a science, among others. The museum has 250 thousand visitors a year. The motto of the museum is: Welcome and Prepare to Believe. What else could be more at odds with the scientific method? There is no science which instructs you, dogmatically, to believe. Rather, science asks you to question everything. But this is hard, very hard to do. And this is why (one of the reasons that) there are still many people who "read" science in the bible or visit the creation museum: they have no ability to do science. It's much easier to pay a few dollars for a ticket to the museum, enjoy a diet coke with marshmallows, spend a couple of hours listening to the priests walking around in the museum (yes, the museum also employs professional christians) and then go home having convinced yourself that you are equipped with more scientific knowledge than those "losers" who go to university and study hard and work day and night trying to question, explore, and discover.
The Ark Encounter: Since the bible mentions that once upon a time, there was a man called Noah who made a boat and saved many animals from a flood, this is taken a historical fact by the folk above who, having had great success with the Creation Museum, are now building an even more costly gadget, a recreation of Noah's Arc (150 million USD).

The organization behind both projects is called Answers in Genesis.They promote creationism and intelligent design and try hard to instill false information to people's minds. It is a complete fraud. Yet, since it makes many morons feel happy, it receives a lot of support and many people are prepared to give their money to them.

Long live the idiocy in this world.

Revised date for the end of the world

2011-05-29T13:58:00.001+02:00

My third posting on this idiocy, but I can't help it. It IS funny:
Mr Harold Camping who predicted that the end of the world would take place on 21 May 2011, has now revised his opinion. He claims that the world DID end on 21 May 2011 (did you notice?) but that was a "spiritual" end:

“I was truly wondering what is going on. In my mind, I went back through all of the promises God has made, all of the proofs, all of the signs and everything was fitting perfectly, so what in the world happened? I really was praying and praying and praying, oh Lord, what happened?”

He continued by saying that the real end will be on 21 October 2011.

If he was the only idiot in the world claiming all that crap, nobody would raise an eybrow. The problem is that he has many followers. These morons, not only go around shouting, demonstrrating, and looking for attention, but also support Camping financially. (In 2009, he reported $18.3 million in donations and assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks.) He was asked whether he would return the money to his followers. He replied thus:

"We’re not at the end. Why would we return it?"

Indeed, indeed. The guy plans to return the money AFTER the end.

Why are there so many idiots? Why is there such a great stupidity in the world? Can it be explained scientifically? What makes one want to be a sheer moron? Camping could very well be smart: after all, he makes millions from his followers. But why are there followers in the first place? There are so many people in the world who cannot think independently but want a father-figure, someone to obey. This figure could be a businessman (like Camping), or a politician, or a king, or a god, etc.

I think that the major success of all totalitarian regimes lies not so much in the power of the dictators but in the sheer obedience of a large fraction of people. And when I say "totalitarian regime", I also speak metaphorically. I refer not only to a dictatorship, but also to religion, to an organization, to an institution, etc.

There must be some kind of explanation for the need of people to submit themselves to mental or physical slavery and behave moronically. Some day we'll understand. And, perhaps, we can find a cure (for those who wish to be cured of their stupidity.)

The world hasn't ended

2011-05-24T17:56:00.001+02:00

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it appears that 21 May 2011 was not the end of the world. The man who predicted the end now claims this:

I am very bewildered. I have no answers. I don't want to talk to any reporters today.

Reportedly, many people quit their jobs, left their families, and some gave away their money to the cause: Namely, getting out the word through caravans, billboards, and pamphlets that judgment was upon us.

Today, 21 May 2011, is the end of the world

2011-05-21T18:50:00.002+02:00

I mentioned this again last year. Brief review: Mr Harold Camping "proved", using "mathematics", that the world is scheduled to end today. Indeed (Camping claims), Jesus was crucified on 1 April 33, and, since then, there have passed 722500 days. But 722500=(5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17). And, according to Camping and the Bible, 5=Atonement, 10=Completeness and 17=Heaven. This argument allowed him to draw the conclusion that the world ends today.

So, hurry up and do your shopping before it's too late. I have to finish a presentation on Lévy processes, but I'm not too motivated.

As for the last picture, my readers will probably recall that Stephen Hawking is not always right. I had pointed out that Pierre Brémaud's scientific predictions differ from those of Hawking when it comes to serious matters, like aliens contacting humans.

Think before you condemn

2011-05-16T18:02:00.001+02:00

I found this brilliant article on "a Nadder!" about Afghanistan, based on a Foreign Policy photo essay. Most of us tend to think of Afghanistan as a county of bearded mullahs, religious fanatics. terrorists, uneducated people, etc. We also adopt a point of view that the present is always better than the past and so, if Afghanistan is the way it is now, imagine what it was 50 or 100 years ago. Probably people living in caves. But we are wrong. The following photo is from a biology class in a university in Afghanistan:

And this is from the Radio Kabul transmitter. The radio could be heard as far as South Africa.

Is this the image we have about this country? Certainly not. Look at the sources above for more details and more pictures. And, most of all, think and look around before you form an opinion based on what the media tell you or what the person down the road thinks. And think, also, how fragile the current system you live in may be. This is an advice for me too.

The Pope is more influential than any scientist

2011-05-14T18:32:00.000+02:00

"Like it or not, the Pope is more influential than any scientist", says the New Scientist (December 2010).

In an article about the Pope's tacit approval of condom use to prevent the spread of HIV, it is also mentioned that prominent scientists have urged the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences to endorse genetically modified (GM) crops.

The Catholic Church has yet to officially back GM. But if it does, it would be a welcome shift away from a gimlet-eyed obsession with sexual morality into areas that could genuinely improve the lives of billions. Like it or not, the Pope is more influential than any scientist. Supporters of GM should hope he sees the light.

A quick search in New Scientist's archives shows how often scientists try to get the Pope's endorsement:

Three prominent US scientists have asked Pope Benedict XVI to clarify the Roman Catholic church's view on Darwinism.
Could it be that the Vatican is about to enter the age of enlightenment?
Will the papacy ever come to terms with progress in reproductive science, or will the new pope follow in his predecessors footsteps?
The Catholic church's demonising of the technologies that facilitate test-tube babies is making it look out of touch and irrelevant.

The Pope's opinion matters for millions of people in the world. They would rather listen to him, a scientifically-illiterate individual, about all kinds of important things, rather than listen to scientists. Religion is interfering with so many important things in this world and this is a really sad state of affairs.

Intelligent designers: move to Texas!

2011-04-03T23:56:00.001+02:00

Texas on the news again: They are considering a bill to protect creationists from discrimination. I heard about it last Friday from a postdoctoral student of our department and checked it out. There is an article about it in Mother Jones. Using the language and rationale of political correctness, the author of the bill, Republican state representative Bill Zedler proposes:

HB 2454, Section A51.979.A:
A PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RESEARCH RELATED TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

Texas is the state where the major proponent of creationism/intelligent design, William Dembski, teaches: He is professor at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, he conducts research in theology by means of creationism/intelligent design, and desperately tries to use pseudo-mathematics in support of his theological claims. Dembski did a PhD in mathematics but he immediately switched to theology. He is not alone in Texas. There are many creationist pseudoscientists there who can find lots of money by religious fundamentalists; the latter will happily fund the former in order that they use pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics to "prove" theological claims, ranging from denial of evolution to belief that the Earth is a few thousand years old.

Now the state of Texas is trying to pass the aforementioned bill. In my opinion, this will have at least two effects:

If a faculty member in a Texas university cannot do serious mathematics or science then he or she can turn to creationism and publish papers in pseudo-scientific creationistic journals. He or she then will ask to be tenured and, based on the above law, he or she should not be discriminated against.
Funding for creationism will have to be considered as academic funding. The law justifies creationism as an academic field of study.
Academics with creationistic tendencies will seek jobs in Texas universities.

I have served in Texas as a faculty member and know the mentality. Although there are many academics who will be angry at such a bill, there are several others, academics or not, religious fundamentalists, who will espouse this bill and use it for theological purposes.

A new very short proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra

2011-04-03T15:12:00.001+02:00

I've always been intrigued by the fundamental theorem of algebra (every nonconstant polynomial with complex coefficients has a root), not least because I don't know any proof which uses algebra only. Earlier, I posted an easy proof in this blog, one that uses Cauchy's theorem.There is a recent proof (Oswaldo Rio Branco de Oliveira, Mathem. Intellig., March 2011), which is almost trivial. It goes as follows (and this is a chance for me to see if the embedded LaTeX script works...):

Let $P(z)$ be a polynomial of degree $n$. Since $|P(z)|$ is a nonnegative continuous function, tending to $\infty$ as $|z|$ tends to $\infty$, it has a minimum at some point $z_0$:

$|P(z)| \ge |P(z_0)|$, for all $z$.

By division of $P(z)-P(z_0)$ by $z-z_0$, write

$P(z) = P(z_0) + (z-z_0)^k Q(z-z_0),$

where $Q(0) \not = 0$. Since $P(z)$ is nonconstant, the integer $k$ is $\ge 1$.
Therefore

$|P(z_0) + (z-z_0)^k Q(z-z_0)|^2 \ge |P(z_0)|^2$, for all $z$,

and, expanding the square,

$|z-z_0|^{2k} |Q(z-z_0)|^2 + 2 \Re \{ (z-z_0)^k Q(z-z_0) \overline{P(z_0)}\} \ge 0$, for all $z$.

Let $z=z_0 + r e^{i \theta}$, divide by $r^k$, and let $r$ tend to $0$. We obtain

$\Re \{ e^{i k \theta} Q(0) \overline{P(z_0)}\} \ge 0$, for all real $\theta$.

It is an easy exercise in algebra that, if $\alpha$ is a complex number such that $\Re \{ e^{i k \theta} \alpha\} \ge 0$ for all $\theta$, then $\alpha=0$. Hence $Q(0) \overline{P(z_0)}=0$. Since $Q(0) \neq 0$, we obtain $P(z_0)=0$.

Why are people afraid to ask

2011-03-26T23:52:00.002+01:00

It has always puzzled me why people, even so-to-speak rational people, are afraid to ask or even think some things. It's something I keep finding in front of me all the time. I'm not talking about uneducated people, I'm not talking about religious fundamentalists. I'm talking about so-to-speak scientists, engineers, doctors.

It occurred to me, again, today, to consider the question. I was attending a conference and, during a break, there was a discussion about class hours. It was mentioned that in some university in the US they used to schedule all classes for 80-minute long periods and that this posed problems with scheduling and keeping regular time tables. Be it as it may, the conversation was turned into how to divide the 60 minutes of an hour into smaller intervals. I mentioned that, unfortunately, we are still stuck with the system created by the Babylonians who introduced the sexagesimal system in artithmetic. (That is, they counted using base 60, instead of 10. So, for instance, they had to learn multiplication tables which were of size 60*61/2=1830, instead of 10*11/2=55. They had good reasons for doing so, for 60 has a large number of divisors: 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30.)

The interlocutors were puzzled: "what are you talking about"?

I explained that we are stuck with a non-decimal system of counting time and angles precisely because of this historical accident. It would be nice, I maintained, if at some point we changed it.

Their reaction was that this is impossible. To them, who probably never thought of even considering the question, it was impossible because it has always been so.

I explained that there was nothing fundamental with it and so it could be changed, if there was some kind of agreement. After all, it's a unit of measurement, just like miles and kilometers. It was interesting to observe, again, that they were willing to accept that, albeit difficult to change, it is not impossible. I asked them to consider the difference between a convention (such as the choice of a unit) and a fact, such as Newton's law-at low speeds, the rotation of the Earth around itself and the Sun (I mentioned that there are some stupid people who think that the Earth is still) or the principles of General Relativity. One of the conference participants claimed that the latter makes absolutely no difference in practice. At which point I reminded them that the Global Positioning System (GPS) does take into account relativistic corrections.

The conversation proceeded to talking about the difference between a convention and a fact. And I realized, once again, that the two concepts are confusing for many people.

Therefore, it is not surprising that, when fundamentalists with rhetoric abilities appear, they can attract lots of followers and create cults. Or that politicians can do whatever they want for their own benefit.

People impose boundaries to themselves by not allowing themselves think freely, by imposing limitations on their thinking process, by enslaving themselves.
For many humans, the Enlightenment did not exist. It's irrelevant. Alas, despite Kant's message, Sapere Aude (have courage to use your own reason) there still are many who, not only cannot think freely, but won't even consider the possibility that their thinking is accompanied by heavy chains.

Greek signs

2011-03-26T01:25:00.002+01:00

Time for a break: here is a small collection of funny signs from Greece. I have collected them from the Internet.

More signs here.

The god/no god buses

2011-03-23T09:53:00.003+01:00

A couple of years ago, 800 buses appeared in the UK carrying the message. It was the result of a campaign by atheist groups.

At that time, you may remember that a Christian bus driver refused to drive the bus. In one of my blog entries, I asked:

Why should a Christian complain when other people believe there is no god and NEVER complain when they believe in a god who is different from theirs? Since there are plenty of religions on Earth, it follows that there are plenty of gods to choose from. Why should the claim that a god does not exist be more offensive than a claim supporting a different god or gods?

Well, religious folk "retaliated" and created this message:

Do you see the irrationality in the second bus? This is what religion is about: irrational. It claims it has an answer but knows not why. And those who ask for explanation are simply being told: "shut up, it is so, because we say so".

Do you also see the irrationality in the second line of this message?

This is why religion (or any totalitarian system for that matter) is incompatible--cannot be compatible--with science which is supposed to be rational (albeit often practiced by irrational individuals.)

Silence from creationists

2011-03-06T14:42:00.002+01:00

In this older post, and its followup, I received several insteresting responses from creationists like Robert Sungenis and his supporters. The particular brand of creationists told me that they do not believe that the Earth is flat, but they believe it doesn't move and that it is the center of the Universe. They are called geocentrists.

I mentioned here that their beliefs are based on biblical passages.
For a complete (?) list of biblical passages upon which these fellows base their beiefs see here.

Talk origins has posted a very comprehensive list of all creationistic claims. It is huge, but it is interesting to take a look to see what kind of absurd things people will come up with if they can't think independently. Here are some notable claims. See the above link for more:

Bible says the sun goes around the earth.
Relativity shows geocentrism is true.
The universe is 6,000-10,000 years old.
The earth is 6,000-10,000 years old.
Noah's ark has been found.
Intelligent design theory is scientific.
Mankind has existed essentially unchanged for billions of years.
Design requires a designer.
Complex organs couldn't have evolved.
Evolution does not explain language ability.
Humans have stopped evolving.
The second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution.

More on titles

2011-03-03T22:51:00.000+01:00

I knew it. When I questioned the ridiculous habit of many to attach lots and lots of titles in their names, when I wondered why on Earth a man, with an already sizeable and doubly aristocratic name, Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, wanted to change it to Dr. Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, I suspected there is something more to the story.

Indeed, we read today, in a BBC Berlin report:

German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned after admitting copying large parts of his doctoral thesis. But why was he so keen to be a doctor in the first place?

Why, indeed!.

You would think that Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg had enough titles.

He did. He had a VON, he had a ZU, and he was a BARON.

In Germany, the "von" and "zu" denote aristocracy and he has both. And the word "Freiherr" means "Baron".

Don't forget that he won't lose his aristocracy titles. These were given to him at birth. Regardless of whether he deserved them or not. Neither will he lose his money. He's already rich. Too rich.

But if you want real clout in politics, being a doctor is desirable and that was his downfall. The title in front of even such a grand name is desirable, but not if it is the product of the work of others.

He will only lose one title, the DR, the only one that he tried to earn with his own work. Unfortunately, he didn't think that stealing a bit left and right was all that bad.

Indeed, he finally admitted that his zeal to add the extra two letters, Dr, in front of his name made him plagiarise his thesis by copying parts of it from the Internet.

Too bad, Mr. Baron Von and Zu. If you kept the title, it's not so much that anything bad would happen, but it's unfair for others who do have titles and have them for work they've done. Oh, by the way, many of those people were not fortunate enough to have a zu and a von. Some of them don't even have a single von or a single zu.

Titles should--in principle--represent something. I used to work for a university where it was possible to get promoted from senior lecturer to professor simply for administrative work, e.g. for serving as a chairman. In Academia itself, there are many instances were titles are abused. But it would be nice (wishful thinking) to have a reality check from time to time.

I used to daydream and ask: Would it not be nice, and fair, to give, from time to time, a Maths exam to all Maths professors and see if their performance is up to date? Or a Physics exam to Physics professors? This would be a reality check. And it should be fair.

A title, no matter how big it is, should not be big enough so that it hides inadequacies of its owner.

The Earth is still, and other creationistic crackpottery

2011-03-01T20:00:00.001+01:00

Creationism comes in many forms. These people take a book, called תּוֹרָה, written long time ago by various tribes in the Middle East, containing collections of random stories, and want to use it as proof (or at least as evidence) of scientific facts. For instance, in one of the chapters of that book, we read [Psalm 19:5-7]:

⁵ It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
   like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
⁶ It rises at one end of the heavens
   and makes its circuit to the other;
   nothing is deprived of its warmth.

⁷ The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.

This thing was written some 3 thousand years ago and is supposed to provide evidence of geocentrism, i.e. that the Earth is the center of the universe and that it doesn't move or rotate.

An organization, called Catholic Apologetics International, consists of people who believe in these things and claim that good Catholics should understand that the Earth is still. (Bad Catholics can ignore this.)

Via Pharyngula, I was made aware of the Fixed Earth page. They go a little bit further claiming that not only the Earth does not rotate, but that it is only a few thousand years old, and that homo sapiens appeared right from the start, without any biological evolution. Oh, by the way, (their particular version of) god (but not the gods of other religious folk) exists.

As I said, creationism comes in many flavours, ranging from sheer nonsense as the above to more sophisticated-looking versions of it, such as intelligent design. The latter kind of creationists are using pseudo-mathematics to prove that god exists.

Galileo was wrong. Vive la Bible! [Part II]

2011-02-27T11:59:00.002+01:00

Several months ago, I posted something cynical about a conference organised by geocentrist creationists. It is unbelievable that such idiots can exist. Religion and irrational thought produces all kinds of vegetables. Unfortunately.

The particular movement is headed by a certain Robert Sungenis, who believes that

physics and the Bible prove that the sun and all the planets orbit the Earth and that the Earth does not rotate. In support of his beliefs, Sungenis published the book Galileo Was Wrong in the hope that people will "give Scripture its due place and show that science is not all it's cracked up to be."

This guy lives in the US where he can find lots of similarly-minded deluded morons who "believe" that the earth is still and the centre of the Universe. There are other idiots who believe that the earth is a few thousand years old. Others, believe that the earth is flat. Others believe that the people who wrote the Quran were engaged in embryology. The amount of stupidity in this world is unbounded.

I was reminded of this nonsense this morning, thanks to James B. Phillips who posted the following in my blog:

James said...

Childish name calling is the typical caliber of those who offer their non-substantive denigrations of geocentrism. Often they mock religion in general and Christianity in particular -- the very same people who make a god of and place their materialistic blind faith in science which has a history of making countless errors.

Most moderns who reject geocentrism do so out of an ignornance of the true science involved and or because they are philosophically pre-disposed to refuse to accept the possibility of a God who not only has placed our earth at the center of the universe, but who actually has the entire matererial universe go around that heavaenly body which Jesus Christ lived on in the flesh some 2000 years ago.

See www.galileowaswrong.com and galileowaswrong.blogspot.com.

James B. Phillips

The reason that the world is full of problems is because there are uneducated, deluded, irrational individuals like the aforementioned individuals. They pose a threat to civilisation itself because they can easily attract supporters who are ready to believe anything irrational as a substitute for possible real problems. People use irrational behaviour as a drug. And these people are as dangerous as drug dealers. Perhaps more so.

Gaddafi

2011-02-21T23:20:00.001+01:00

Riots in Libya too.
Which reminded me of Gaddafi's signature.
There is an ancient proverb saying that "your signature is your mirror".

What's in a title

2011-02-19T15:16:00.004+01:00

Some people find that my family name is too long. Not infrequently, US supermarket cashiers used to ask whether I had difficulty learning how to write my name when I was little (!)

But the length of my name (20 letters) in comparison to "Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg" (89 letters, not counting spaces) is small.

If you've never heard of this fellow, besides your obvious guess that he is noble, he is also Christian (Catholic, to be exact), he is a member of a political party with a religious name, the "Christian Social Union of Bavaria", the current minister of defence in Germany, married to an equally noble person, Countess Stephanie of Bismarck-Schönhausen, great-great-granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck.

Besides his fame, he has very recently become infamous too as he was accused of incorporating numerous excerpts from previously published literature in his doctoral thesis, without crediting the sources. See here and here.

Of course, he refuses this. And he is backed up by Angela Merkel. Of course.

According to BBC, ZDF television website dubbed him "Zu Copyberg", Financial Times Deutschland named him "Baron Cut-and-Paste", and Berlin daily Tageszeitung nicknamed him "Zu Googleberg".

The plagiarism allegation arose when a law professor from Bremen University began writing a review of Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg's thesis, using the Internet. Most likely, the wonderful Internet helped Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg finish his PhD (and do something more important, politics) and also the Bremen prof. who easily discovered plagiarism by googling Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg's thesis.

Are we surprised?
No. (i) There is a strong correlation between someone being a politician and being dishonest. A colleague from the US once told me "I don't understand why people are so surprised every time a scandal about a politician is revealed; I'd be surprised if the opposite happened." (ii) I personally wouldn't trust anyone who belongs to a party with a religious name. (iii) The titles! You can have as long name as you wish, but it is so much more comfortable to have a long name, especially one that uses both VON and ZU (I've actually never heard of that before), so much so that, if you're the holder of such a name, you probably feel more important than others and, hence, less vulnerable, and can justify to yourself to plagiarize (a wee bit) in order to achieve a noble purpose.

Back to the titles, however. Although I have no proof about the following claim (just empirical evidence) I feel that people who are von's and zu's and people who attach lots of name titles after their surname (Prof. Dr. Qxqz Xpliwar, BSc, MSc, PhD, FFS, FRBS) do so because they feel that their titles equip them with a certain shield. Even though they will refute any claim of importance to titles, the mere fact that they carry them on their web sites, business cards and at their doors, feels (to me) like an attempt to impress and, therefore, make their lives easier. Imagine, for example, a professor in a university with lots of titles (of nobility or academic ones). Suppose, for instance, that this professor, at some point, got tired of learning anything new in his/her field, or doing anything new, and started teaching/researching the same old stuff forever. In such a case, titles help. They help because it is more difficult to accuse someone with lots of titles, rather than someone with none. As a matter of fact, certain combinations of titles make it obvious (to me) that they are used precisely for this purpose. For what is the purpose of, say, preceding "PhD" with "MSc" and "BSc"? If you see a name, followed by "PhD" only, would you think that this person got a PhD without first getting a lower degree? (If so, then this person is brilliant.) But the bottomline of using lots of titles excessively is (in my opinion again) insecurity.

Having said that, of course, I do not want to trivialize important awards given to people for real work, awards which lead to a distinction with a name title. Life-time achievements are, and rightly so, rewarded. What I am saying is that acquired titles and the use of excessive name titles are nothing but a sign of insecurity and incompetence (in my opinion).

So, no, I'm not surprised that Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg is accused of plagiarism.

The moral landscape

2011-02-02T10:42:00.000+01:00

New book by Sam Harris, dealing with the question whether science can determine morality, human values. The last bastion of theists, namely that without belief in the supernatural there is no way for people to behave ethically, is challenged by Harris who defends his position apparently well. I just bought the book and am reading it, so I am not yet in a position to offer my personal views. A review by Michael Schermer which just appeared in the Scientific American is positive. Another review by Massimo Pigliucci which just appeared in the latest edition of the Skeptic is more negative.

What is important for me is mostly that the question can be asked and the dogmatic view be challenged. Almost certainly, morality has nothing to do with these people, or these ones, or these ones, or these ones, or these ones. And, certainly, the hypocrisy of Blair is not an answer but means for providing further divide between those who believe and those who don't, whatever the verb may mean.

Oh, by the way, for those who asked me recently, I don't only read books or articles I only agree with.

Greece, 2011 CE

2011-02-01T10:04:00.006+01:00

Trafficking of human organs, firearms, drugs and babies are easier to take place in countries without borders (and this has nothing to do with having a large sea-coast or thousands of islands).

Yesterday, in Kavala, some Afghans were on their way, in their learjets, to Italy to sell their own kidneys. Today, Bulgarians and their Greek brothers were selling babies (everybody knows the tariff). How many lawyers, supposedly, can have now view? Black economy flourishes and unlawfulness renders our small European country an Eldorado of fraud.

Our land has always been a passage. This was a cause for the birth of philosophy and civilization. A passage where hypocrisy, piracy, smuggling and fraud bloomed. At some point, this land acquired boundaries, but this has not resulted in any significant change. Lawlessness remains a way of life. The Prime Minister's decision to touch directly upon the issue of illegal billboards appeared to be a strange act. But he started doing something. Could he, perhaps, realize the illegality of the recent occupation of the Athens Law School and do something about it? As he once declared, the PM has been an immigrant himself and so he could possibly understand a bit more.

Among the five continents, there is a small country which receives 300 souls [immigrants] every day. A country that everyone is entitled to curse and degrade. But we are not all illegal. Immigrants, yes, we may be. But we do deserve some dignity even if hypocrisy is a national virtue.

Somewhat free translation of the Greek original from Law Blog.

Quality vs popularity in teaching

2011-01-29T14:28:00.014+01:00

A few months ago a Boston Globe article (4 July 2010), titled "What happened to studying?", commented on research done by two Economics professors, Philip Babcock (University of California Santa Barbara) and Mindy Marks (University of California Riverside), about the significant drop of number hours that university students spend studying:

The average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours.

In fact,

[t]he National Survey of Student Engagement found in 2009 that 62 percent of college students studied 15 hours a week or less — even as they took home primarily As and Bs on their report cards.

So Babcock and Marks asked why. Obvious culprits,

the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses

didn't seem to be the main reason for this dramatic change. Perhaps then,

students [are so] much more efficient [nowadays, as compared to 40 years ago] that more than 60 percent of [them] study less than 15 hours a week and still earn As and Bs.

But some people, like the Stanford University provost John Bravman, try offer some cheap explanations such as

[s]tudents live very different lives
[t]hey [have] jobs while attending classes.
[they] are [not] lazy, but [simply are] too busy — busier than previous generations

In the words of John Bravman, vice provost for undergraduate education at Stanford University,

“Much busier,” describing the “on-demand” world that students work in today. “I was a student here from ’75 to ’79. I was reasonably engaged in things. But I had so much free time compared to students today. They do so many things — it’s amazing.”

Could it be the use of computers? No, because

the greatest decline in student studying took place before computers swept through colleges: Between 1961 and 1981, study times fell from 24.4 to 16.8 hours per week (and then, ultimately, to 14).

And, just to be sure, hours spent in studying are not the goal of education. Nobody says that a student studying twice as much as another is twice smarter, twice better or that he/she will achieve better grades or have better education. Generalizations like that are silly. But something is happening.

Even the students themselves, when asked to comment on difficulties in their education, agree on that

they simply [do] not know how to sit down and study.

A possible answer to the cause offered by the two researchers is the following (and to me it is not suprising at all):

[There] is a breakdown in the professor-student relationship. Instead of a dynamic where a professor sets standards and students try to meet them, the more common scenario these days, they suggest, is one in which both sides hope to do as little as possible.
No one really has an incentive to make a demanding class, To make a tough assignment, you have to write it, grade it. Kids come into office hours and want help on it. If you make it too hard, they complain. Other than the sheer love for knowledge and the desire to pass it on to the next generation, there is no incentive in the system to encourage effort.

What has happened is something that everyone who takes education seriously sees, very clearly, but most people have no incentive (in fact they may be punished by the university) to talk about. It is, in other words, a common secret.

Murray Sperber, a visiting professor in the graduate school of education at the University of California Berkeley was a graduate student at Berkeley in the sixties, and was part of an upstart movement pushing for students to rate their professors.

The idea, Sperber said, was to give students a chance to express their opinions about their classes — a noble thought, but one that has backfired, according to many professors. Course evaluations have created a sort of “nonaggression pact,” Sperber said, where professors — especially ones seeking tenure — go easy on the homework and students, in turn, give glowing course evaluations.

And, yes, this is a very likely cause of the problem. It is common knowledge that a teacher's job may rely on students' evaluations. If the lecturer teaches a demanding course then he/she knows that the evaluations will be bad and then the lecturer will suffer the consequences from the administration: "You are not a good teacher!" So, most lecturers either give up or are, simply, forced over the years to adopt a perverse system. The lecturer is forced to make the course easy, to make it popular, to, simply, work towards achieving a good evaluation from the students. Regardless of the content, if the lecturer gets good evaluations, he/she will be awarded by the administration by, say, receiving a teaching award, a pay rise, and congratulations by both the university and student parents alike. The system works because it makes most parties happy. It obeys the rules of Economy: If I try to sell a good product at the proper price, whereas everybody else is selling a similar-looking, but bad product, at half the price, then I lose, especially when customers just want the brand and not the quality. It can also be explained by the very simple fact, one we are never allowed to speak about, that some teachers, lecturers, professors, etc., find it much easier to teach the same old stuff they once learned, rather than try to educate themselves with new developments in their subject. Teaching, good teaching, is a dynamic process, one that is inseparable from research. And it requires effort. Many teachers find this a daunting task. And if they work in a place where they can, simply, be awarded for doing less, by making both their bosses and their clients happy alike, then that's what they do. The students walk away from the classroom happy, happy that they spent one hour looking at pretty pictures (and sound, and multimedia, and what have you) and happy that they don't have to study at home, but, simply, go partying for the rest of the day. So, everybody is happy.

There are universities where students' perception of how exciting the lectures are is their only goal. To wit, I once worked in a university where one of the head administrators told us:

We are in the age of www.ratemyprofessors.com

going on to explain that the university is serious about student satisfaction and student metrics. In fact, they had prepared course evaluation forms giving students the possibility to comment on things which were absolutely hilarious. One of the questions, designed by the university administrators, was this:

Even if you never sought assistance from the lecturer, the lecturer was: (a) Very helpful, (b) Helpful, (c) Rather unhelpful, (d) Very unhelpful.

I used to change this question to:

If you sought assistance from the lecturer, the lecturer was...

Simply because the question was irrational: Why should a student who had never asked a question, or gone to the lecturer's office, be in a position to comment on the helpfulness of the lecturer? Absurd!

Another time, one of my colleagues who had a really high students' rating was one who had mental problems. So much so that he would never teach anything the students could understand but who was known to tell them what would be in the exam and even walk out of the classroom during exam and leave students alone for three hours to write their exam. When asked why he did that, he said that he had "bladder problems" and had to be in the toilet to pee. I had commented on this guy some time ago, only in passing. But he's in jail now, so students won't have to complete evaluations about him.

Now, going back to the research of Babcock and Marks, I would like to explain that I don't happen to think, as I commented above, that a lot of studying is necessarily an index of success. However, there is evidence (besides common sense) that those who are not willing to sweat over a subject won't go too far. Genius, someone said, relies on 90% hard work and 10% brilliance, or something like that.

The universities, in all parts of the world, should think about their product seriously. Clearly, the product is education and research or research and education. But if the product becomes faulty, then, however great the economic success and customer satisfaction is in the short term (the last 40 years, say), the long-run consequences will be really grave. Everybody will be crying when they will have to learn mandarin to send their kids for education in China. For the time being, Chinese still come to Europe and America. Because, "education is better". But for how much longer?

Have we also imagined that when we educate someone (ourselves, for instance) towards a certain goal then we really want to achieve that goal? For example, if I want to be a car mechanic, I'd better try to fix a car or two before getting a real job rather than pay to get a car mechanic certificate from an online college, or if I want to work towards finding a theory unifying gravity and the other 3 forces of nature (electromagnetic, weak, and strong), then I had better understand physics and mathematics well, rather than, simply, have a perfect grade on my diploma, a grade which I may possibly have achieved by filling in evaluation forms and by taking courses which are popular, taught by lecturers who use flashy multimedia

Food for thought, for teachers, students, administrators and politicians alike.

Local music

2011-01-17T12:15:00.000+01:00

Promoting the local rebetiko music group Trikala (Tony Klein - bouzouki, mandola, baglamas, oud, tzouras, guitar; Matti Pohjola - guitar, mandolin; Georgios Dimitroglou-Rizell - vocals, accordion, baglamas, guitar) from Uppsala that I listened to on Saturday night:

Scientific Peer Review

2011-01-10T18:22:00.003+01:00

Ah, the reviewers!

An unavoidable evil.

xkcd xmas

2010-12-17T08:34:00.000+01:00

Another image which can be used as a card.
No comments needed.

Source: xkcd

Happy Newtonmas cards (reposting)

2010-12-17T08:30:00.001+01:00

Due to popular demand, I am reposting this:

I designed some cards for the season. Please feel free to copy, print on hard paper, and send them around. There is a front side and a back side which should be glued together. Depending on taste, you may pick any of the front side versions.

Thanksgiving sales

2010-12-16T13:25:00.000+01:00

Thanksgiving in the US is always on a Thursday. The day after (known as black Friday) is apparently the biggest shopping day of the year and marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping period. I was in Bellevue, Washington and noticed a lot of advertizing on the streets: people holding signs for sales, waving them up and down, as cars drove buy, to attract consumers' attention. The one below is particularly interesting: a young girl, dressed in military outfit, advertizing guns and ammo (ammunition).

Vietnamese restaurant

2010-12-16T13:12:00.000+01:00

Last week, in Bellevue (Washington State, USA), I saw a Vietnamese Restaurant with a pretty original name: What the Pho'. I was driving but I had to stop to take a photo:

People say it's quite successful and the food is good. I wonder how much the name helps. It certainly helped this store.

A list of 100 books: how many have you read?

2010-12-10T09:19:00.001+01:00

Have you read more than 6 of the following books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed below (via A Nadder).

Here's what to do: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or those from which you've read an excerpt.

Here's how I scored.
How about you?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Stoning in Iran

2010-12-05T02:54:00.000+01:00

I wrote about stoning before. In particular, we noticed that stoning, although present in the Deuteronomy, has been eliminated in Judaism, but not in Islam. I'm sure there are Muslims (the majority I hope?) who are appaled by what some of them are doing, but the crux of the matter is that stoners, e.g. in Iran, are doing so in the name of their god and their law: they justify killing a person in this most brutal manner by convincing themselves that it is their god who told them so, or it is the god who told their lawmakers, and the stoners are acting as agents.

I saw the link and the pictures below in this blog. I repost it, albeit brutal, because I think we should all be aware of what kind of barbarism humans are capable of, in the absence of rationality, and with the help and support of their religious and political (which are identical in the case of Iran) leaders.

Actual source of graphic images: National Post. See also article on Iran's stone age justice system.

A snow bear (or is it dog?)

2010-12-02T20:01:00.000+01:00

There is snow, a lot of it, in many place in N. Europe. The following snow sculpture, from Edinburgh, is worth looking at:

Creationist mathematics

2010-11-28T07:20:00.001+01:00

I wrote a couple of days ago about creationists and the like. Today I want to give an example of their scientific stupidity by pointing out one of their latest articles on infinity. I first read it in Recursivity.

Creationists have a presence on the Internet via the site "Uncommon Descent". People like Dembski often write stupid articles trying to prove that gods (they call them intelligent designers) exist. In this article, Robert Sheldon writes:

For example, take the number line from 1 to ∞. It’s infinite of course. But now divide every number by the largest number on the line, and we have mapped the entire number line into the fractions between 0 and 1.

What the hell does he mean by "divide by the largest number"? He may have heard that the transformation x → 1/x maps (0,1] onto [1, ∞) but he hasn't quite understood this high school concept.

So the rational numbers contain the entire integer number line between 0 and 1, and the rational numbers go up to infinity too.

Excuse me? The rational numbers contain what? The... integer (?) line? And how does this follow from the above?

Then the rational numbers are at least ∞² bigger. (Yup, I’m being sloppy, because Cantor also showed how to map x²–>x, so instead of calling it ∞², he called it ℵ₀ cardinality where integers and rational numbers have the same size infinity.)

Here he is, again, completely off. So much so that it smells from quite far.

[The cardinality of the irrrationals] really is bigger [than the cardinality of the rationals], and Cantor called it ℵ₁ cardinality.

Mr Sheldon, go do your homework before you write anything on infinities.

Now if you are like Cantor's left wing critics, then arbitrary things must be random. It is a peculiar property of atheists that they all worship the god of Chance. It would seem possible that they might worship Lady Luck instead, but no, Xaos, Random Chance, must remain the king of the modernist pantheon. So this contingency drives them bonkers.

This is so funny! Left wing critics of Cantor? Atheists worshipping the god of Chance? What about communists? Homosexuals? Liberals? Punks? People with tattoos? (I think the latter folk don't like Cantor either.)

This is the kind of "mathematics" typically used by creationists. The religious folk will, at the same time, applaud them because, in their eyes, they are oh so sophisticated!

For another example of creationist maths look here.

Creationists and similarly-minded religious imbeciles should leave mathematics for mathematicians and scientists. Instead, they should just go to their church to light a candle or whatever their particular religion tells them to do.

A blog's purpose OR creationism: a recurring theme

2010-11-26T19:51:00.000+01:00

I couldn't decide which of the two titles I wanted to have on this posting today. I wanted to express my belief that a blog can help see another point of view and, indeed, show that some things that would never see the light of Earth can surface and be discussed. I am talking about an idiotic movement, mainly in the US, but with branches in the UK and elsewhere, called creationism. It is also called intelligent design. It is nothing new. People, from ages ago, wanted to have their holy texts the only ones that they would read (out of laziness, for instance). They said that you don't need science, just the bible is enough. Some are more radical than others claiming that the Earth is flat or that the Earth is the center of the Universe, some get pimples when they hear the word (Darwinian) evolution, and some do accept science, but get irritated when someone tells them that gods are not a necessary ingredient in any mathematical or physical theory. The latter type of creationists have call themselves intelligent designers and try to "prove" that some intelligence (a.k.a. god) is needed.

Mention these things to an average person in Sweden, a country I live in, and we'll have a laugh and then a beer (if we can afford it--it's too expensive here). But mention these things to an average US-person and you're in for a big surprise. More to the point, it is almost impossibe for a European who has not lived in the US to understand why those people over there are so fanatic about religion and creationism. Vice versa, your average US creationist or religious person has hard time understanding a secular, plain rational, point of view. (Be careful: I said "average", in the common sense of the term. There are people on the other side of the Atlantic who are much more sophisticated than those one meets on this side of the Ocean on a daily basis.)

Some blogs' purposes is to speak openly about these things. The average creationist can (although I doubt it it will happen any tie soon) realize that his/her beliefs are idiotic and that all this intelligent design hoopla has purposes and roots that have nothing to do with science.

It is interesting to take a look at Jeff Shallit's blog. He often writes about creationism. And he gives very good answers to many intelligent design desperate attempts to (ab)use science/mathematics in their arguments. A very good example of the abuse of mathematics in creationism is William Dembski, the leading member (founder?) of a certain theological institute called Discovery Institute whose purpose is to prove that a certain god (called intelligent design) is necessary in Physics. Dembski was a PhD student of Patrick Billingsley with a PhD in Probability Theory. But he didn't do much with mathematics. Having failed in his field he turned to theology.

In Shallit's blog you will also find a recurring theme, called Miranda. This person, apparently a creationist, tries to attack each and every posting of Jeff's that has to do with intelligent design. As an example, read the posting on Harun Yahya (a creationist of Muslim type--yes, they are not necessarily Christian) and read Miranda's replies here. Shallit wrote

Yahya isn't much different from the theocrats at the Discovery Institute, who want to link Darwin to both fascism and communism.

Miranda, in her replies, wrote that

Richard Evans, historian at Cambridge University, has explained, "The real core of Nazi beliefs lay in the faith Hitler proclaimed in his speech of September 1938 in science--a Nazi view of science--as the basis for action. Science demanded the furtherance of the interests not of God but of the human race, and above all the German race and its future in a world ruled by ineluctable laws of Darwinian competition between races and between individuals."

I asked to explain what she meant. She replied:

My conclusion is that Jeff's charge: "the theocrats at the Discovery Institute, who want to link Darwin to both fascism and communism" is shared by reputable historians.

Miranda attempts here to obfuscate the dialog:

Jeff mentions that the Discovery Institute theocrats link Darwin to fascism.
Mirand replies that, in her understanding, Hitler also linked Darwin to his ideology.

So what? Even if the latter is true, what does this tell us about the Discovery Institute and its attempts to show that gods are needed in science?

Miranda, I'll tell you this: it's so nice to live in a country (Sweden) where almost nobody--as far as my limited experience has been--cares about creationism/intelligent_design/religious crap. It's so refreshing not to have the crowds around you who want to explain science through the bible and holy texts. I feel happy I can look at these idiocies from a distance and have a laugh at them. But I do care about people who live on the other side of the Atlantic and have to constantly put up with all this nonsense, sometimes on a daily basis.

Perhaps, with the help of blogs or otherwise, Miranda can see that her fellow creationists are a largely American phenomenon. A phenomenon which, in other civilized countries of this world, fortunately does not exists (in such a scale). If creationists could broaden their horizons, perhaps they could embrace a more rational standpoint. Instead, they shelter themselves from everybody else, they build fairy taile-like theme parks (creationist museums), and live with false beliefs. The apotheosis of all is the so-called Holy Land Experience, a Disney-like theme park in Orlando Florida (next to DisneyWorld), where, instead of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, the pious creationists, intelligent designers, religious folk, can experience the reenactment of Jesus' crucifixion, on a daily basis:

Now some creationists/inteligent designers may complain that Jesus has nothing to do with their efforts. True, for instance, Yahya's version of creationism is different. Nevertheless, they're all the same in spirit: in that they abuse science and mathematics and make claims that are completely irrational

Galileo was wrong. Vive la Bible!

2010-11-24T19:43:00.000+01:00

Damn! I missed the conference. It took place on 6 November 2010. Just a couple of weeks before my visit to the U.S. Otherwise I would have gone to learn the truth: the Earth is at the center of the Universe, as proven by scientific experiments (e.g., reading the Bible carefully in ancient Hebrew).

http://galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/

According to Dr. Robert Sungenis,

Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.

The consequences are amazing. One of them is, surely, that aliens will reach us soon, since we are the center of the Universe and they surely are looking for it too.

The monetary value of a professor

2010-11-23T18:17:00.000+01:00

According to this Wall Street Journal article, Texas wants to assign a monetary value to each of its university faculty members. For example, Carol Johnson (Biology) is worth minus $279,617, a colleague of hers, Charles Criscione is worth minus $45,305, history professors are worth minus a lot more, and so on.

Students are customers, and as such, they have every right to receive royal treatmement that goes all the way to assigning a value to each of their lecturers.

The logic is simple: If a professor is worth plus something, then keep them. If a professor is worth minus something, then fire them. And the savings can be used for increasing the other professors' salary.

So what's gonna happen? There will be a university with no languages, no history, no biology, no mathematcs, none of these subjects which generate negative profit. The university will comprise of Business, Marketing, Media--whatever it generates immediate profit.

Performance metrics they say, and they mean it in Texas. Texas wants it BIG. No small potatoes, but big bucks.

The article above mentions, in particular, Chester Dunning, a history professor, has won several teaching awards. According to a report by the chancellor, he also loses money for the university, though his department is in the black overall.

What is the solution? I propose one, Texas-style: Get in his office and shoot him!

The fear of OMEGA

2010-11-05T11:25:00.003+01:00

A few weeks ago I finished teaching (yet another time) a sort-of upper division undergraduate probability course. What I want to talk about is the beauty and fear of Ω.

As everybody knows, many undergraduate texts in probability start (pompously so) by putting the subject in its proper basis: A probability space is a triplet (Ω, F, P), where Ω is a set, F is a sigma-algebra of subsets of Ω and P is a countably additive function from F to the nonnegative real numbers such that P(Ω)=1.

And then they go on by giving the reader (only) some trite (silly) examples of probability spaces (such as the set {1,2,3,4,5,6}). After going throuh this rite, the quickly forget Ω.

Poor Ω, you seem to be condemned to death right away, from the start. We talk about you, we make you appear stupid, and then we tell the students: We shall not use this from now on.

What makes things worse is that when we speak of random variables, we immediately tell our students that we shall never write X(ω), but, simply, X. There are, of course, very good reasons for doing so, and, indeed, many times, we need not think of random variables as functions, but, simply, be able to handle probabilities associated with them.

In doing so, we immediately destroy the power of Ω, and tell the student that it's not really there. We condemn it to death. We make students fear of them. Some students graduate, they go to get a Master's, maybe a PhD later, and they reach the professorial levels, all the way having the fear of Ω. So much so, that they often miss a huge part of Probability because they are unwilling to delve into Ω and see that it is there and exists!

I am starting a campaign: Re-introduce Ω and keep it up to the surface, by giving, right from the beginning, meaningful examples where the construction (rather than the axiomatization) of Ω is used.

It took people long time to talk about Probability correctly and now what? Should we pretend we don't know what it is? And keep going on teaching the subject as if it were not understood?

No, I am NOT claiming we should teach it a la Bourbaki. No. I am just saying that, while we do speak of Probability in terms of dice, coins, coincidences, noise, etc., let us not forget that it lives on some Ω which can be used, whenever convenient.

Language fashions

2010-11-01T11:17:00.001+01:00

I called a friend in Greece yesterday but the connection was not possible due to technical problems. A recorded message announced:

Η τηλεφωνική σύνδεση που καλέσατε δεν είναι εφικτή για τεχνικούς λόγους.
(The telephone connection that you called is not possible due to technical reasons.)

I've been hearing this message for a few years: it has been the standard recorded message of the Greek telecommunication company during the last, say, 6-7 years. What's wrong with this? Well, we do not call a telephone connection. We either call a telephone (number) or we establish a telephone connection. To call a telephone connection is, simply, an absurd expression.

So I will make a prediction: because this message has been on for many years, and because nobody has bothered to change it, this will become a de facto expression in the Greek language: "to call a telephone connection". I don't complain when a language changes (like nite instead of night or gonna instead of going to), but, nevertheless, it seems peculiar when a language changes due to a stupidity. The example above is a change witnessed in action.

Here is another example, a phonological change this time: The double consonant 'γγ' in Greek is sometimes pronounced as 'ng' (i.e. nasalised hard g), as in αγγελος (a'ŋgelos), and sometimes as 'ŋγ' (i.e. nasalised soft g) as in the word

συγγραφέας (writer) : siŋγraféas

The reason is simple: the latter word is formed by joining a prefix (συν) with a word derived from the verb γραφω (to write):

συν + γραφέας = συγγραφέας

The nasal consonant ν becomes γ in front of the (soft) consonant γ. While the writing changes, the pronunciation remains unaltered. Nevertheless, many younger Greeks pronounce the word as

siGraféas

i.e. (i) they drop the nasal sound completely and (ii) the harden the γ. So the 'υγγ' in 'συγγραφέας' sounds like the 'ig' in 'dig'. The result sounds both funny and ridiculous.

How did this come about? It appears that several years ago some illiterate TV news broadcaster, or some other popular TV personality, started pronouncing the word as 'siGraféas'. Probably, this became the cool thing to do. And, lo and behold, we have a generation of Greeks pronouncing the word in a funny way. (Please don't ask me for references; this is, simply, my guess...)

Again, it is silly to complain about changes in language (it changes all the time), but it does sound a bit funny when the changes are due to errors that can be witnessed in action.

My final example, again of phonological nature, is the triplet of months

Οκτώβριος, Νοέμβριος, Δεκέμβριος (October, November, December).

They derive from the latin words octo, novem, decem, meaning eight, nine, ten, respectively. Notice that the nasal consonant 'm' appears at the end of only two of these numerals. Therefore 'October' is not pronounced 'octoMber'. However, modern (i.e. the last 5 years or so) Greeks, and learned ones, supposedly (such as politicians and lawyers), say

Okto'mvrios

Why? Well, I don't know. Apparently, Since Νοέμβριος and Δεκέμβριος are pronounced as NoéMvrios and DekéMvrios, some not-so-cautious Greeks started inserting a nasal consonant in Οκτώβριος as well, making it, effectively, Οκτώμβριος. And since people like to behave as the ones whom they consider superior to them, the latter pronunciation of our second autumn month has been accepted.

Well, October (or should I say Octomber to be cool too) ended up yesterday. We're already in November and I need to do get some work done....

(Besides, my problem, now, is pronouncing Swedish, which is tougher than Finnish, and, oh boy, how much I have to learn (but can't face it yet).)

Christine O'Donnell

2010-10-19T21:21:00.000+02:00

Today I saw, on the front page of the German newspaper, "Die Welt" the picture of a woman, called Christine O'Donnell, together with an article titled "a quite normal American". Not having followed the latest developments of American politics, I was ignorant about her existence. The article starts as follows:

Christine O'Donnell is Republican and the number two in the ultra-conservative Tea Party. She hates communism and Selbstbefriedigung. She knows witches well and once had a date on a satanic Altar. But let us not forget: She is a candidtae in the the midterm elections for Congress. She has become a nightmare for the Democrats. Mrs. O'Donnell said simply of herself: I'm a normal American. The people on the street are enthusiastic.

Who? What? I don't know her. I don't understand German that well. Did I understood incorrectly? Ok, she hates communism, she is super-conservative, she sounds like Sara Palin, but what? She knows witches? She dated a satan? Is she an idiot?

So, let me go ask a German colleague. (I'm in Oberwolfach, for a mathematical workshop.) "What's Selbstbefriedigung?", I ask. The German colleague smiles, hesitates to answer, and I tell him that I saw it in front of Die Welt. He then explains: "Selbstbefriedigung means to satisfy yourself... sexually..."

Oh, is that so? So I translate again:

Christine O'Donnell hates communism and masturbation.

What is this? Is she a complete idiot? Why does Die Welt feel that this statement is so important that it appears on its front page? Is this woman even worse than Palin? Can that be?

So I checked. Indeed, my suspicions are true. She hates communism. She condemns masturbation as sinful. She does not accept the theory of Evolution. She hasdated or been a friend of people who practiced witchcraft. She is against abortion. And the list goes on...I won't give links because the Internet is littered with her portraits; and they're neither pretty nor funny.

She is a normal American. She expects to be elected by people who have the same values. There are, apparently, many--too many--of them.

Here is the transcript from a very recent debate between Christine O'Donnell (republican candidate), Chris Coons (democratic candidate) and two moderators. I learned it through Evolutionblog. That she is an idiot can be witnessed from the following excerpt:

BLITZER: Let's give you a chance to respond to some of the things she said because in a television appearance back in 1998 on Bill Maher's show you said evolution is a myth. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O'DONNELL: I believe that the local -- I was talking about what a local school taught and that should be taught -- that should be decided on the local community. But please let me respond to what he just said.
BLITZER: We'll let you respond but answer the question. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O'DONNELL: Local schools should make that decision. I made that remark based on --
BLITZER: What do you believe?
O'DONNELL: What I believe is irrelevant.
BLITZER: Why is it irrelevant?
O'DONNELL: Because what I would support ...
BLITZER: Voters want to know.
O'DONNELL: What I will support in Washington, D.C. is the ability for the local school system to decide what is taught in their classrooms and what I was talking about on that show was a classroom that was not allowed to teach creationism as an equal theory as evolution. That is against their constitutional rights and that is an overreaching arm of the government. But, please allow me at least the full minute to respond to what he said because he said these statements that we made should be taken into consideration when casting your vote. So then I would be remiss not to bring up the fact that my opponent has recently said that it was studying under a Marxist professor that made him become a Democrat. So when you look at his position on things like raising taxes, which is one of the tenets of Marxism; not supporting eliminating death tax, which is a tenet of Marxism -- I would argue that there are more people who support my Catholic faith than his Marxist beliefs, and I'm using his own words.

"From the soul"

2010-10-15T15:08:00.000+02:00

I don't think that the following video needs too much introduction. It's best experienced by devoting 6 minutes in watching it.

Lars Vilks' talk: all was OK

2010-10-07T19:05:00.001+02:00

I didn't go to Vilks' talk, but I heard and read that nothing special happened. Vilks gave a 2-hour talk and it went smoothly. As it should. But 130 police were brought to the university, and it cost more than 700 thousand Swedish krona (more than 100 thousand US dollars). Here is the article from the local newspaper.

Respecting freedom of speech

2010-10-05T13:57:00.001+02:00

Back in May 2010, the artist Lars Vilks gave a talk in my university (Uppsala) about free speech. He is a well-known artist who provokes religious sentiment by depicting, though drawings and video, certain aspects of christianity and islam in a non-conventional way. During his talk he was assaulted by muslim activists:

The lecture was interrupted and Vilks had to leave. A few days later, his house was attacked by arsonists. Lars Vilks keeps receiving death threats.

A few months after the unfinished lecture, the Philosophy department of Uppsala university decided to invite Lars Vilks to finish his lecture. The whole rationale about the invitation can be found here. Notice that the university does allow for protests, as long as the protests respect the law of the country. There will be a question-answer period and everyone who wishes to object Lars Vilks' work can do so. Demonstrations are also possible and legal.

What is not acceptable is physical violence and interruption of the talk. From what I have seen, I don't like Vilks' work, because I find it against my artistic taste. But I don't care what he does as long as he doesn't force me to watch his art or pay for it. And he doesn't. Nobody should take issue with Vilks' talk and let the guy say what he wants to say.

Based on the emails we receive however, I'm afraid there is going to be a lot of tumult tomorrow. Since the auditorium is next to the restaurant, we will be searched by police if we go for lunch. The state is paying money to protect its citizens from a small minority who, because they feel offended, want to cause trouble.

The philosophy department of Uppsala university states:

It is a serious matter indeed for a university lecture to be stopped by violence, regardless of the content of the opinions that provoked these reactions. It is incompatible with the fundamental values that democracy rests on. In order to assert these values, we are inviting him back.

So let him speak and, simply, don't go to his talk. Or, if you go and happen to disagree, do say so, do write about him, do draw cartoons depicting him like a dog--if you so wish, do organize a demonstration. But do not physically assault him

Fractions

2010-10-02T13:23:00.003+02:00

In his posting "a rant about fractions", Jason Rosenhouse makes some good points about the way fractions are taught in elementary and middle high school math classes. For example, he says that kids get taken points off if, when adding two fractions, they find a non-reduced result, like 10/24. Instead, teachers tell them they should have found 5/12 immediately. Read the posting for more information on silly things going on in the teaching of elementary mathematics. No wonder, says Jason, that most people end up being afraid or hating mathematics.

Here is something else, from my recent university experience. I taught for a while in a department of Statistics & Actuarial Mathematics (where some very funny things are happening in eduation, both for students and teachers alike) in the UK. In Spring 2009 I was asked to solve some exercises for an elementary probability class, for first or second year students. The students had taken calculus before. We had to compute a certain integral (related to a density function) and I asked the students to do this by themselves. I asked a student to tell me her answer and she, correctly, responded b-2b/3.

"So," I continued, "this is equal to what?"
"I don't know", replies the student (who had done the integra correctly), "I'm not good with fractions."
"What about the rest of the class?", I asked the handful of students who were present.

Apparently nobody knew how to subtract two thirds from 1.

So, remembering my elementrary school days, I turned back to the blackboard, and drew a pie:

(Actual picture from the lecture)

"So, if I cut a pie into three pieces and take out two, how many pieces remain?, I ask.
"One", replies the student.
"Very good", I enourage.
"Oh, that was easy", says another, "even my daughter could have done this".

When Jason, correctly, expressed his frustration with the teaching of fractions, he referred to elementary and middle school education. I repeat that the example above is taken, from personal experience, from university education.

There seemed to be something very, very, wrong in this system. This is why I left.

University of Texas shootings

2010-09-30T18:31:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago, someone in the University of Texas at Austin started shooting with an AK-47 assault rifle. He finally shot himself to death. The story is here and here.

As you can see in the pretty image above, the campus was searched by police. Nobody was hurt except the gunman who happened to be an actuarial maths student.

It's not the first, nor the last, time that things like that happen in US campuses. I have first-hand experience, having worked at UT Austin for many years. Back in the 90's, I had a colleague, the infamous Gary Wise,

who used to threaten me and others ("I'll shoot you with my gun"). Wise was a probabilist of sorts, a peculiar guy whose goal in life was to destroy other people's work. He even wrote a book, a bad book, which was published by Oxford University Press.

The university of Texas didn't care about Wise's threats and didn't take our reports seriously. For many years, despite our complaints that Wise used to harass students and faculty alike, Wise was allowed to teach and harass. He was mentally disturbed. I had complained to the university that this person may actually have guns and that he was able to come and start shooting. But police had told me that he had no guns registered in his name. This lasted until the day when he insulted the Dean of Engineering. They then made sure to fire him. Later, he was caught shooting the dean's car.

He was sent to jail. In his apartment, police found numerous assault weapons, undeclared, of course. it is relatively trivial, in Texas, to buy a gun, even without a license. All you have to do is go to the so-called "gun and knife shows". I remember those being advertised outside the university campus.

Recently, he has been charged for murder plots: he was planning to hire a gang member to use an AK-47 to kill the dean.

Gary Wise used to conduct Bible Studies and was therefore liked by the university. And he was favorite among students because he would give an exam and leave students alone to copy from one another.

I remember that once a university administrator (I think he was a vice-provost) told me that if I was afraid that my neighbor has a gun, then I should get a gun too. (Never mind that guns are not allowed on campus or, for that matter, that I never wanted to have a gun!)

Look at this video clip appearing on the ABC newsarticle about the gunman of 2 days ago:

Around the 1'50'', a police officer appears saying that students should be mentally prepared that, now and then, a gunman may show up on campus and advises them to be alert.

I wouldn't be surprised if further advice was given that people should carry guns in order to protect themselves. This is not uncommon in the US. Instead of trying to put a restriction on guns when fatalities happen, it is peculiar that they want exactly the opposite: they are convinced that gun fatalities can only be prevented by more guns.

Absurd. Very absurd.

Uppsala

2010-09-10T21:24:00.000+02:00

Sitting in a coffee shop in Uppsala.
Things are a bit on the rough side at the moment, due to my recent move here.
Lots of things to take care of, hurdles to overcome and so there is little time for any research or fun.
Hopefully, this will change soon.
But here are some photographs from my new home town.
I wish I could speak Swedish. Contrary to popular belief, not everybody speaks English here,
and amongst those who do, many only speak the tourist version of it.
C'est la vie.

Gammal?

2010-08-26T15:28:00.000+02:00

I am puzzled by the origin of the Swedish word "gammal", meaning "old". I was in Gamla Stan (the old city [of Stokholm]) the other day and also live not too far from Gamla Uppsala. Why should "gammal" mean "old"?

A possibility offered by several etymological dictionaries: it relates to the Proto-Indo-European word *ǵʰéi-mn̥- (χιών in Greek) for winter.

But I was just informed that this may not be correct.

The mystery remains.

http://www.jeanfrancoisdelcamp.com/

2010-08-25T10:26:00.008+02:00

Delcamp's guitar site rocks! It has become even better than before. I am thrilled with all the music scores made available there and also
here
and here
and here
and here
and here.

Joaquin Malats: Serenata Española

2010-08-18T17:55:00.001+02:00

I am reposting a piece of music which I had originally posted some time ago. Thanks to a comment, I remembered how brilliant this piece of music is, both as a composition and as a performance.

Joaquin Malats (1872-1912) was a Catalan composer and pianist from Barcelona. One of his most melodic pieces is the Serenata Española. It was written for piano but it is its guitar transcription by the great composer and guitarist Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) that is well-known. Often transcriptions surpass the original composition and this one (click here for the score) is so well-made that it really makes the instrument sing. Of course, it was not done by an arbitrary person but by Tárrega, one of the greatest guitarists. He knew the instrument well.

In the video below we can see Julian Bream perform the piece. Notice the nuances, the expressions, the slurs, the colour of its performance. Truly outstanding!

Incidentally, the score linked above is provided by the site of Jean-François Delcamp, a site devoted to classical guitar, containing both music scores and audio files.

Aristotle, the church, and vegetables

2010-08-13T01:39:00.000+02:00

I never quite understood why Aristotle, out of all ancient philosophers, was Christianity's favorite child. It is said that Aristotle was widely read and taught by Christian theologians and that his works greatly influenced Orthodoxy and Catholicism alike.

I think that the theologians who studied Aristotle never bothered to study his works too carefully; or that they skipped the parts they didn't like.

I am referring, in particular, to several paragraphs in Aristotle's Metaphysics (Book 4) where an argument is made about those who cannot understand that we cannot claim that something and the negation of it are simultaneously true.

Aristotle writes:

εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἵ, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, αὐτοί τε ἐνδέχεσθαί φασι τὸ αὐτὸ εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, καὶ ὑπολαμβάνειν οὕτως. (There are some who, as we said, assert that it is possible for the same thing to be and not to be, and they accept this.)

And concludes:

ὅμοιος γὰρ φυτῷ ὁ τοιοῦτος ᾗ τοιοῦτος ἤδη. (Any such person is therefore no better than a vegetable.)

When you tell religious people that there are contradictions in their arguments, in their statements, in the way they behave, in the things they believe, in their sacred texts..., they reach a point when deus ex machina comes to save them: this is due to “faith”, to “mystery”, to something that I cannot understand because I don't believe what they believe. (How could I? Even if I was willing to believe blindly, whose belief should I espouse? Well, it is a mystery...)

Daniel Dennet uses this Aristotelian quote to make a point:

All parties to a reasonable conversation have to agree at the outset to set aside any trump cards their religion commends. So what if the Bible, or the Quran, says something? Since not everybody accepts that these texts are infallible, citing them as if they were is just rude.

Those who believe that their holy texts are infallible have a tough task ahead of them: convincing the rest of us, point by point, that they are right, starting from common ground.

Indeed, they have to. Otherwise, I can, using their argument, claim that a scribbling done by Kanzi (the famous bonobo ape) is, according to my belief, sacred, and proves whatever I want to prove.

Dennet concludes:

People whose religion does not permit them to engage in such open-minded discourse are in an important sense disabled: They may be the nicest people in the world, but they are incompetent participants in an open forum, and must be excused. Perhaps somebody else can be found to take on the task of representing their point of view while abiding by the basic rules of inquiry.

I agree. They are nice guys and gals, I've met many of them and share many common interests, values and passions. But they better get someone else to argue for them. (And good luck in finding this person...)

P is not equal to NP ?

2010-08-10T13:11:00.002+02:00

A few days ago, Vinay Deolalikar of HP Research Labs, Palo Alto made public a paper claiming that P ≠ NP. The proof in this 100-page document remains to be checked and scrutinized.

If correct, it will be a staggering achievement.

It is quite interesting that the approach of the paper is based on Probability. If correct, it will be a triumph for the author, a triumph for humanity, and a triumph for Probability. We strongly feel that Probability plays a very important role in mainstream Mathematics and, if correct, this result will be yet another affirmation of this feeling.

Let us not forget that the P vs NP Problem is one of the Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium problems.

TV vs. Wikipedia

2010-08-07T13:53:00.000+02:00

I just learned that the total time spent for watching TV is 2000 more times bigger than the total time spent on Wikipedia development:

The question is: Would you want the average TV watcher be responsible for encyclopedia articles? Hm... Let them watch their TV...

UK libel laws are unjust

2010-08-05T22:32:00.002+02:00

UK libel laws are unjust, against the public interest and internationally criticised - there is urgent need for reform. [Source]

Freedom to criticise and question, in strong terms and without malice, is the cornerstone of argument and debate, whether in scholarly journals, on websites, in newspapers or elsewhere. UK current libel laws inhibit debate and stifle free expression. They discourage writers from tackling important subjects and thereby deny us the right to read about them.

The law is so biased towards claimants and so hostile to writers that London has become known as the libel capital of the world. The rich and powerful bring cases to London on the flimsiest grounds (libel tourism), because they know that 90% of cases are won by claimants. Libel laws intended to protect individual reputation are being exploited to suppress fair comment and criticism.

The cost of a libel trial is often in excess of £1 million and 140 times more expensive than libel cases in mainland Europe; publishers (and individual journalists, authors, academics, performers and blog-writers) cannot risk such extortionate costs, which means that they are forced to back down, withdraw and apologise for material they believe is true, fair and important to the public.

The English PEN/Index on Censorship report has shown that there is an urgent need to amend the law to provide a stronger, wider and more accessible public interest defence. Sense About Science has shown that the threat of libel action leads to self-censorship in scientific and medical writing.

Several people, in the UK and beyond, have taken the initiative to urge politicians to support a bill for major reforms of the English libel laws now, in the interests of fairness, the public interest and free speech.

TO SIGN THE PETITION FOR REFORM IN LIBEL LAWS, CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW:

UK libel laws are so bad that attract the so-called “libel tourists”, i.e. people who want to sue someone for "libel" but, because of freedom of speech regulations, cannot do so in their own country. They therefore go to the UK, where libel laws are terrible, sue, and have a high chance of winning. The reputation of the UK for lack of freedom of expression is very bad. On the positive side, The US senate passed, on 20/7/2010, legislation to protect US journalists, writers and publishers from libel tourists— litigants who sue Americans in foreign jurisdictions which place a lower emphasis on free speech. [Source]

The legislation was specifically designed to negate the threat of English laws, amid claims that the UK has became an international libel tribunal. One case in particular incensed US politicians, that of New York based academic Rachel Ehrenfeld who was sued in London despite only 23 copies of her book, on the financing of terrorism, being sold in the UK. The bill, co-sponsored by Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republican Jeff Sessions has broad cross-party support. If passed, the proposal will prevent US courts from recognising foreign libel rulings that are inconsistent with the First Amendment. During the debate Leahy argued that foreign courts were chilling open debate and “undermining” freedom of speech in the US. In a statement he said:”While we cannot legislate changes to foreign law that are chilling protected speech in our country, we can ensure that our courts do not become a tool to uphold foreign libel judgments that undermine American First Amendment or due process rights.” The SPEECH (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage) Act will now go before the House of Representatives.

It is a complete shame to have laws passed in other countries (and rightly so) to protect their citizens from being sued in UK courts. What needs to happen is a complete change of UK libel laws. Apparently, one reason for their existence is because they bring a sizeable income to the UK from litigants who can afford to pay a million pounds in order to get rid of people who freely express their opinion.

Promoters of Science and Mathematics need to understand Science and Mathematics

2010-08-04T00:29:00.000+02:00

In my previous posting I talked about a case of someone who feels the need to introduce religion into science.
Changing gears now, I would like to talk a bit about those people who do like science and mathematics but are not qualified to promote them.

Take, for instance, the case of someone writing an article about the need to use Probability Theory, say, in estimating the risk for the purposes of insurance. For example, how much should a chemical factory pay to insure against the possibility of explosion? To answer this, one needs to know both the details of the factory operation (and enough chemical engineering) as well as enough mathematics and probability. Also, one needs to have some data.

Suppose now that a science lover writes an article in an applied mathematics/statistics journal promoting the need to use mathematical models for problems as the one I described above. But let's say that his main argument is this:

"We need to use mathematics when we take decisions (such as deciding the level of insurance payment), and not leave matters to politicians. For if we don't use mathematics and science we may make horrible mistakes. For example, there is a well-known case in the State of Indiana where, in 1897, they almost passed a law saying that π = 9.2376. My main concern is to show that mathematics needs to be done before laws and regulations are passed so that we avoid mistakes such as the equivalent of having to use π = 9.2376 in our calculations."

My question is this: Would you publish an article whose purpose was to promote the need of use of mathematics for the purpose of not overestimating π? What would you say to the author of such an article? Is this not a poor, very poor, reason for doing mathematics? Would you not tell the author to try harder to come up with a better reason? Or tell him or her that enthusiasm for mathematics is not, by itself, sufficient enough to warrant publication?

More generally: While it is easy to dismiss people (such as the one in my previous posting) claiming that religion and science should be taught and done together, we should not encourage promoters of science without proper understanding of the subject. Just as Shallit wrote, science writers need to know science, so should promoters of science understand what they are promoting. Otherwise, weak arguments like the above can leave the door of science open to anyone from clueless politicians to religious fundamentalists.

What is your opinion on the matter?

Say again, science and religion have a joint role?

2010-08-03T19:52:00.001+02:00

Via Shallit's blog, I just learned about a profound (for its naïveté) article published in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. I repost it below [the emphasis is mine].

Science, religion have a joint role
In recent months we’ve read some interesting articles in The Record regarding the important research currently underway at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo. Some of the world’s leading scientists are wrestling with a number of very big, profound questions, namely: Why is there anything? Why should there be anything? How and when did living cells first appear on our planet? What is the essential nature of life? What is the nature of — and relationship between — space and time? Did anything exist prior to the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago? Fascinating questions indeed.
Experts in the fields of mathematics, physics and related sciences are addressing these issues. I would like to suggest that the above questions are essentially metaphysical in nature, and that the research team should include a spiritual component. There is mystery here. I rather doubt that even Stephen Hawking can imagine, or describe, a perfectly straight line that continues forever; with no beginning and no ending. To do so would be to understand infinity, which is beyond the scope of our finite minds.
Ideally it would be great if science and good religion could work together, as partners, on these questions.
Paul Zacharias
Kitchener

Huh, Mr Paul, have you ever opened a textbook in Relativity? Even worse, have you ever opened a schoolbook on mathematics that children learn in elementary school? Do you understand that in order to describe infinity or a straight line you don't need to have an infinite mind?

No, surely you haven't opened a textbook and surely you haven't understood what infinity means, otherwise you wouldn't be writing such stupidities. Or, perhaps, you have opened some books but failed to go past page 0 (which is often intentionally left blank), otherwise you wouldn't be saying such nonsense, not even if you were drunk.

I'm afraid that Mr Paul won't be hired by the Perimeter Institute as a consultant.

Russian Creationism Sounds Frighteningly Familiar

2010-08-01T20:01:00.000+02:00

Another reposting from http://www.huffingtonpost.com, regarding promoting of creationism in Russia by religious fundamentalists there, using the same tactics as their American counterparts.

According to a news story released by Reuters, Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev of the Russian Orthodox Church recently called for Russian schools to begin teaching "religious explanations of creation ... alongside evolution." The Archbishop wants to end what he called "the monopoly of Darwinism."
Archbishop Hilarion went even further, noting that "Darwin's theory remains a theory. This means it should be taught to children as one of several theories, but children should know of other theories too."

Why would Russians, apparently coming out of a godless state (apparently, I repeat), would embrace creationist nonsense, is also discussed in a recent New Scientist article. No answers are given, but the following is mentioned:

Orthodox Christianity is, however, Russia's dominant religion, and services are attended by the country's leaders, prime minister Vladimir Putin and president Dmitry Medvedev.
With pressure from evangelicals for the US to abandon the division between church and state insisted upon by Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers, and the growing influence of the Orthodox church within Russia, we could see an unlikely alliance forged between former enemies. Jefferson and Lenin would be spinning in their tombs.

Why, indeed why, would a former KGB agent become a pious follower of the Orthodox Patriarch? (Hint: were they not both doing the same job?) Is there much difference between Orthodox indoctrination and Soviet-style communism? (Yes, there is, but are there not similarities too?) How far is creationism from the dominant religion in Russia?

We don't know. But we can only observe that Orthodoxy can rapidly replace "Communism" in the minds and practices of many Russians (and they feel no contradiction at all!). And the step to Creationism is just a small one after that.

Friday Links

2010-08-01T19:43:00.000+02:00

Not much time for blogging these days--I'm preparing for my move to Sweden--but I feel like reposting the Friday Links from http://anadder.com/:

“The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians’ web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause ‘premature unnecessary debate’.” Not the Onion but a real story, and no comment necessary.
Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? A: Why do men go to zoos? [Source]
Great comic on the moon hoax by the same guy who did the comic on vaccine misinformation.
Check out an ant drinking from a water droplet, a world where surface tension reigns supreme.
Two great classics combined: Jane Austen’s Fight Club
Girl/World – the most overused songwriting rhyme
Bill O’Reilly is now to the left of President Obama on DADT. Again, not the Onion.
Chewbacca fights Nazis while riding a squirrel

Harmonic series (further test in LaTeX)

2010-07-23T19:54:00.009+02:00

I learned yesterday, through Evolutionblog, that I can write LaTeX as long as I put a little script at the bottom of the posting, which can be found here. This is my attempt to make it work.

Well, since the actual posting on Evolution blog was on harmonic series, let me write Pietro Mengoli's proof of its divergence. Recall that the harmonic series is
\[
S = 1 + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \cdots.
\]
Let us prove that $S=\infty$. Mengoli did the following. He grouped all terms, except the first one, in triples:
\[
S = 1 + \left(\frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{4} \right)
+ \left(\frac{1}{5} + \frac{1}{6} + \frac{1}{7} \right)
+ \left(\frac{1}{8} + \frac{1}{9} + \frac{1}{10} \right) + \cdots
\]
Then he observed that each triple is larger than three times the middle term:
\[
\frac{1}{n-1} + \frac{1}{n} + \frac{1}{n+1} > \frac{3}{n}.
\]
And so he wrote
\[
S > 1 + \frac{3}{3} + \frac{3}{6} + \frac{3}{9} + \cdots = 1 + 3S.
\]
Since no finite positive number can be larger than 3 times itself plus 1, he concluded that $S=\infty$.

To see that the inequality above is true write it as
\[
\frac{1}{n-1} + \frac{1}{n+1} > \frac{2}{n},
\]
which is equivalent to
\[
\frac{2n}{n^2-1} > \frac{2}{n}
\]
which is obviously true.

Another way to see the inequality (and more) is to observe that if $X$ is a positive random variable, which is not a constant, then $E(1/X) > 1/E(X)$. To see this, let $Y$ have the same distribution as $X$ but be independent of it. Since $X^2+Y^2 > 2 XY$ we have $2 < \frac{X}{Y} + \frac{Y}{X}$, and, by taking expectations, $2 < E(X) E(1/Y) + E(Y) E(1/X) = 2 E(X) E(1/X)$, as claimed. Then apply this to a random variable $X$ which takes values $n-1$ or $n$ or $n+1$, each with probability $1/3$. This gives Mengoli's inequality. Mengoli also showed that the alternating harmonic series converges to the natural logarithm of 2:
\[
1 - \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} - \frac{1}{4} + \frac{1}{5} - \cdots = \log 2.
\]
Mengoli was born in 1626 in Bologna and died in 1686 in the same town. He also computed the sums
\[
\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{n(n+k)},
\]
for $k=1,2,3,\ldots$ and showed that the result is always a rational number. He naturally wondered what the sum equals to when $k=0$. This was the famous Basel problem, which he posed in 1644. It was shown by Leonhard Euler in 1735 that the sum, for $k=0$, equals $\pi^2/6$. It is not surprising that Mengoli could not find this.

I'm still not happy with this way of writing LaTeX. I can't figure out how to number equations. If only html and LaTeX were fully compatible...

Successful blogging

2010-07-22T18:48:00.001+02:00

I guess this is why my blog is not too successful.

this is a test

2010-07-22T00:00:00.013+02:00

$\int_{M} d \omega = \int_{\partial M} \omega$

New date for the end of the world: 21 May 2011

2010-07-20T18:42:00.001+02:00

A certain simpleton, called Harold Camping, has "proved", using "mathematics", that the world will not end in 2012, as the Mayans, allegedly, predicted, and as the recent Hollywood movie proclaimed, but in 21 May 2011.

Here is how he did it:

Jesus was crucified on 1 April 33.
2011-33 = 1978 years.
1978 x 365.2422 days (the number of days in each solar year) = 722,449.0716 days. That is, approximately, 722,500 days.
But 722,500 = (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17).
And the Bible says (so says the above simpleton):
5 = Atonement
10 = Completeness
17 = Heaven

And then he said:

"I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that: 5 times 10 times 17 is telling you a story, it's the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you're completely saved."

Why, he is absolutely right! Perfect line of reasoning. No flaws, no nothing. Just the truth, a heavenly one, that is.

We know that this time, Camping is right. Indeed, we can forgive his earlier mistake:

On Sept. 6, 1994, dozens of Camping's believers gathered inside Alameda's Veterans Memorial Building to await the return of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years. Followers dressed children in their Sunday best and held Bibles open-faced toward heaven. But the world did not end. Camping allowed that he may have made a mathematical error. He spent the next decade running new calculations, as well as overseeing a media company that has grown significantly in size and reach.^[source]

And his efforts were redeemed: not only did Camping learn more mathematics (indeed, how could he ever come up with the complicated formulas above), not only did he read the Bible line by line, but he also asked for forgiveness for his previous error and is now, I suppose, preparing for the doomsday. Apparently he has more followers now.

Rick LaCasse, who attended the September 1994 service in Alameda, said that 15 years later, his faith in Camping has only strengthened.
"Evidently, he was wrong," LaCasse allowed, "but this time it is going to happen. There was some doubt last time, but we didn't have any proofs. This time we do."

Yeah! PROOFS! They have proofs. And so we must accept them. They are fullproof foolsproofs proofs.

"a Nadder!"'s Friday Links

2010-07-19T19:44:00.003+02:00

Inception

2010-07-19T19:32:00.000+02:00

Last night I made the mistake of going to watch Inception, a new film by Christopher Nolan. The verdict:

Complete, utter trash.

It starts as a boring story. It gets more boring by trying to be complicated, it develops into a boring scenario, when it becomes so boring that you have to walk out.

So I did: After an hour or so, I couldn't take it any more and walked out feeling that I had (i) wasted money, (ii) wasted time, and (iii) become irritated by my stupid choice to go see an idiotic film.

But I should have known better. I should have read the New Yorker's review of the film:

Christopher Nolan, the British-born director of “Memento” and of the two most recent Batman movies, appears to believe that if he can do certain things in cinema—especially very complicated things—then he has to do them. But why? To what end? His new movie, “Inception,” is an astonishment, an engineering feat, and, finally, a folly.

He has spent 10 years contemplating the movie and finally came up with total trash.

He has been contemplating the movie for ten years, and as movie technology changed he must have realized that he could do more and more complex things. He wound up overcooking the idea.

If only I had spent 5 minutes looking at the review I would have realized the unfathomable stupidity of the film whose main idea is that we are watching people dreaming about dreaming:

Nolan gives us dreams within dreams (people dream that they’re dreaming); he also stages action within different levels of dreaming—deep, deeper, and deepest, with matching physical movements played out at each level—all of it cut together with trombone-heavy music by Hans Zimmer, which pounds us into near-deafness, if not quite submission.

I would have known that Nolan makes films at the level of Big Brother, for audiences who love watching films in order to kill 2 hours of their time:

Dreams, of course, are a fertile subject for moviemakers. Buñuel created dream sequences in the teasing masterpieces “Belle de Jour” (1967) and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972), but he was not making a hundred-and-sixty-million-dollar thriller. He hardly needed to bother with car chases and gun battles; he was free to give his work the peculiar malign intensity of actual dreams. Buñuel was a surrealist— Nolan is a literal-minded man.

If only I had realized that Nolan was the one who took a wonderful Norwegian film, Insomnia, a 1997 film by Erik Skjoldbjærg, and made it into a Holywood blockbuster in 2002, a very poor immitation of the 1997 original, I would have known that Nolan's films are to be avoided at all costs. But I hadn't relized that Nolan is the same joke of a director who spoiled the Norwegian film.

David Denby, in his review for the New Yorker, concludes thus:

In any case, I would like to plant in Christopher Nolan’s head the thought that he might consider working more simply next time. His way of dodging powerful emotion is beginning to look like a grand-scale version of a puzzle-maker’s obsession with mazes and tropes.

I absolutely agree. However, I'm afraid that as long as there are Big Brother watchers, Nolan's films will keep generating money for him and his sponsors.

Mao feng tea

2010-07-17T02:12:00.001+02:00

I am, at the moment, enjoying a cup of mao feng tea (黄山毛峰), one of the top varieties of Chinese green teas,

grown in Mount Huang (Huangshan) in the Anhui province of China.

I discovered the mao feng tea thanks to my ex-colleague Yuanhua Feng (who managed to escape from Heriot-Watt university some time ago, and is now professor in the University of Paderborn, Germany) who had given me a box of it a couple of years ago.

The shape of the processed leaves resembles the peak of a mountain. An ancient Chinese legend about the tea goes as follows:

It is said that young scholar and a beautiful woman who worked in a tea plantation were madly in love. One day a local landowner saw the woman and wanting her for his own, seized her and forced her to become her concubine. The woman escaped only to find that the landowner had killed the young scholar. When she found this out, she immediately went to his grave which was located high on a mountainside. She wept uncontrollably until she became the rain, and the young scholar became a tea tree. It is said this is why the area where Huangshan Mao Feng Tea grows is cloudy and humid all year.

As for the meaning of the name "mao feng", and the qualities of the tea, we note that

"Mao" means fluffy, and "Feng" means mountain peaks. Although it is not a scented tea, it has many properties similar to scented tea. The tea liquor has an apricot flavor, and a fragrance like magnolias. No apricot trees or magnolias grow in the area, so it is unknown how Huangshan Mao Feng gets its unique flavors. There is however wild peach trees that grow in close proximity to the tea plants, and that may be the cause. Huangshan Mao Feng Tea drinkers say that the first brewing is fragrant, the second brewing is sweet, and the third brewing is strong. The tea tastes clean and refreshing, and lasts a long time on the tongue.

I agree with the last two sentences.

The Edinburgh Creationist Group, part II

2010-06-29T10:44:00.000+02:00

For part I, see here.

The Edinburgh Creation Group is a group of "pseudo-scientists": see, e.g., the naive, silly, uninformed, statements by Prof. Andy C. McIntosh and Dr. Marc Surtees on Thermodynamics and Feedback Control, respectively.

They seek to inject religious fundamentalist ideas to people. But they do so by abusing science!

At the surface, they may appear to be associated with "charities", such as the Edinburgh City Mission. I was informed that these charities have nothing to do with helping people in need.

Creationism appears with other names also, such as "intelligent design". Whatever their name may be, two things certain:

(1) they have nothing to do with science.

(2) they have nothing to do with humanitarianism or benevolence.