Mary Ellen Marsh of Sydney River said she thought someone was at her door and then realized it was a moose. She said the moose was in the neighbourhood for about an hour, going from yard to yard and down the street.
The animal visited Sydney River Elementary, where she made an impression on students.
Mikki Armishaw, the principal, said, “The children just went out of their minds.”
Boolean matrices have a natural interpretation in terms of directed graphs: given a graph G on n vertices, we put a 1 in row i and column j of M if there is a directed edge in G from vertex i to vertex j, and 0 otherwise. Then the boolean matrix power Me has a 1 in row i and column j if and only if there is a directed path from vertex i to vertex j of length e.
Given an n × n boolean matrix M, a natural question is, what is the largest size s(n) of the semigroup generated by M under boolean matrix multiplication? In other words, how many distinct powers can M have, in the worst case? Believe it or not, this natural quantity has received very little attention in the literature. There is a paper by Markowsky in 1977, and another by Denes, Roush, and Kim in 1983, but that's about it. For small n, it is known that s(n) = n2 - 2n + 2, while for larger n, it is known that s(n) is approximately g(n), Landau's function, which counts the maximal order of an element in the symmetric group of order n. It is known that Landau's function is approximately esqrt(n log n), so this tells us how s(n) behaves for large n. But to my knowledge nobody knows the exact value, or even small values past n = 20. This might be a nice computational challenge for an undergraduate.
But here in Canada, we're trying harder. We have a police chief in Winnipeg who thinks the solution to crime in his city is to pray a lot.
The embarrassing thing is not that there are people who hold such beliefs. The embarrassing thing is that we vote for such people, or appoint them to positions of power.
"In any sexual union, it is God who decides whether or not there will be conception of a child.
"From that moment of conception, there is a new human life. God wants that human being or the child would not have been conceived."
"What right has the woman to snuff out the life of that human being?"
When someone has such a medieval view of the world, unencumbered by our modern understanding of biology and reproduction, is it even possible to reason with them? I don't think so. The gulf is just too wide.
Lord used a quote, said to be by George Wald in Scientific American in 1957, to support his creationist views. Only problem? Wald never said what Lord claimed; it is a well-known fabrication.
I wrote to Lord to point this out. But, despite the fact that he has a weekly column in the Bulletin, he never admitted his misrepresentation in print. Nor did he admit that he gave the bogus quote without citing his source.
Now, out of the blue, Lord writes me again to say that he is praying for me and boasting how about he has grown in his faith since his lies and plagiarism appeared in print.
Lord hasn't grown at all: he's refused to publicly admit his misconduct. He's the typical liar for Jesus: willing to defame a good scientist like Wald by publishing a bogus quotation, but unwilling to retract it publicly.
The organizer, Masoud Alam, is quoted as saying, "This is not freedom of expression, there is a limit for that. This insult of the Prophet will not be allowed... Until it is banned we will keep protesting."
Yes, it will be allowed. In a free society, just because you label some belief as "religious" doesn't mean I can't criticize it. And you are free to lie and say things like, "Prophet Muhammad is the founder of freedom of speech", and I can criticize that, too.
Islam is badly in need of a reform movement.
Maybe they should change the name of their government to "Vichy". Now that's a language change that would represent truth in advertising.
Then there's Canada's denial of entry to Terry Jones. Sure, Jones is a first-class creep who has nothing to contribute, but they let creeps into the country every day. They let David Irving in, after all.
By refusing entry to Terry Jones, Canada sends the message that there are some ideas that are just too scary for Canadians to hear. That's a bad message, and a bad precedent.
Now we have the appalling prospect of Shelagh Rogers interviewing the repulsive Michael Coren, who is allowed to blather on and on about how poor Christianity is maligned and Christians aren't taken seriously, all without her asking a single hard question. Coren even gets labeled an "intellectual"!
Pathetic.
Next, in my local paper, columnist Luisa D'Amato calls it "intolerance", "ill will", "oppressive", and "authoritarian" because Federal Minister Rona Ambrose was criticized for supporting the evident scam behind Stephen Woodworth's private member's bill. She thinks this represents a lack of commitment to "free speech" on the part of women's groups.
She's got it exactly backwards. The right to free expression is a restriction on the power of government, not a shackle on the rights of citizens to disagree with the actions of elected leaders.
Whatever happened to good journalism?
On the other hand, there are N(N-1)/2 clinks to accomplish, so you will need some parallelism to do it all in linear time.
Here's how to do it. Let's say that the number of guests N is a power of 2, say 2n. The solution is easily modified for the general case.
Number the guests from 1 to 2n. In round 1, all the guests numbered 1 to 2n - 1 get up, and walk clockwise around the table in synch with each other, clinking with each seated guest (numbered 2n - 1 + 1 through 2n) as they pass them. Having completed a circuit of the table, they now sit down. This round costs N time.
It remains for all the guests numbered 1 to 2n - 1 to clink with each other, and all guests numbered 2n - 1 + 1 to 2n to clink with each other. This is done in the same way as before within each group, except now the guests don't make a full cycle of the table; they just go to the last guest in their group they need to clink with, and then in synch with the others, return back the way the came. The second round costs 2N/2 = N time.
In each subsequent round, the same thing is done, halving the sizes of the groups, so the distance each group has to travel halves as well. Thus further rounds cost N/2, then N/4, etc. So the total time elapsed is bounded by N + (N + N/2 + N/4 + ··· + 1) = 3N - 1.
Here's an example. Suppose there are 16 guests. In round 1, guests 1 through 8 get up, cycle around clinking with guests 9 through 16, who are seated. They make a full cycle of the table and sit down. Next, guests 1 through 4 get up and clink with seated 5 through 8; simultaneously 9 through 12 are up and clink with seated 13 through 16; they then return back they way the came. In round 3, guests 1 and 2 get up and clink with 3 and 4 and return; simultaneously 5 and 6 are clinking with 7 and 8; 9 and 10 are clinking with 11 and 12; 13 and 14 are clinking with 15 and 16. Finally, in the last round, each odd-numbered guest clinks with the person to the right. Here the total number of clinks is 8 · 8 + 2 · 4 · 4 + 4 · 2 · 2 + 8 · 1 · 1 = 120, which is (16 · 15)/2, as it should be.
I know that everybody's busy. I know that for many professors, class sizes are getting bigger and take more time. But I've had three papers out for refereeing now where two have no decisions after 10 months and 12 months, respectively, and the other -- a paper of only 6 pages -- got reports only after 6 months.
Editors should be more diligent about pursuing reports. In the journal I edit, if we don't get a report after 2 months, we send a reminder, and if we don't get any response after 3 months, we start looking for another referee. The result is that it is extremely rare that a paper takes longer than 6 months to get a decision. A year is unheard of.
Speaking of that 6-page paper, we had submitted it earlier to another journal -- I'll call it "Journal A". After 4 ½ months, we got two reports, one of which I excerpt below:
"This trivial observation is claimed to be the main result of the submitted paper..."
"Although the simple argument provided in the paper is wrong... it could be easily corrected."
"However, the "proof" given there does not even contain any correct idea, which could be used to prove this claim..."
"In conclusion, the paper does not contain any original results..."
This report went on to claim that one of our results was a simple consequence of a known theorem, and then proceeded to outline a wildly incorrect argument supporting this.
Needless to say, on this basis of this report, the paper was rejected, even though all the assertions about the proofs being incorrect or that the last result easily followed from known results, were wrong.
In fact, I think this is a good model of how not to write a report. If you, as a referee, claim that an argument is wrong, it is definitely your responsibility to be specific about what is wrong, not make vague assertions like those above. And you also need to be a little more modest! If something appears wrong in a paper, maybe it is wrong. Or maybe, just maybe, you have simply misunderstood it.
We then resubmitted our paper to "Journal B". After 6 months we got two reports, one of which I excerpt below:
"These results are very interesting and the proofs are correct..."
"I think the construction of the Thm 6 is really brilliant..."
The experts disagree, I guess.
Craig has claimed that "science" supports his view. Not so, according to a new video.
Who is surprised? Craig has misrepresented what other scholars say before. Craig is not really interested in the answer to the question; he just wants to accumulate evidence, no matter how tenuous, to support his religion.
This has got to be the strangest book I have ever read about the periodic table. Each chemical element is interpreted as a cartoon figure. (I think they're all male, but I'm not absolutely sure. Are there really no female elements?) The noble gases, for example, all have giant hairdos that the author calls an "Afro", but look closer to a shtreimel; the halogens, by contrast, are all "bald and bulbous like a halogen lamp". The elements of antiquity have long beards, and the man-made elements look like robots. A fold-out periodic table summarizes all 118 known elements with their cartoon interpretations.
The book begins with a discussion of elements found in everyday things and how this has changed through time. The next chapter explains the author's coding for the various properties of the elements (interpreted as hairstyle, clothing, obesity, etc.) The bulk of the book goes through each element and discusses their properties and applications.
Most of the facts presented are correct, but not always. For example, about neon lights in glass tubes it is claimed that "The first time this was done was in 1912 in Montmartre, Paris", but this is not quite correct. The property of emitting red light by electrical discharge was noted by the discoverers of neon, Travers and Ramsay in 1898, and commercialization started in the early 1900's. The lanthanides are described as "extremely rare", but this is not really the case. Cerium, for example, is more abundant in the earth's crust than copper, lithium, cobalt, and lead.
The author is also not always careful to distinguish between the pure element and its compounds. Hopefully no child will swallow aluminum foil upon reading that "It has protective properties when applied to stomach membranes".
This little (15 × 18 cm) book might possibly interest youngsters (ages 8-12), especially if they already have an interest in Japanese anime. But for older kids and adults, I think they'd be better served by Emsley's Nature's Building Blocks or Stwertka's A Guide to the Elements.
Rating: two stars out of four.
As for me, I am currently working on Napoleon Coste, Waltz, Opus 51, No. 8 from the Royal Conservatory book 6.
Of course, the whole thing is a scam -- one that our local journalists couldn't or didn't see through.
Deep down, I don't believe Woodworth isn't interested at all in this question. I think that what he really wants to do is ban abortion (in consonance with his Catholic duty), and he's using this bill to try to achieve his goal through semantic games.
Suppose you're building a house. You dig the foundation. Is it a house yet? You pour the concrete. Is it a house yet? You start framing the house. Is it a house yet? You put in the window frames. Is it a house yet?
When does it become a house?
Some people might say it is a house as soon as you start building it. Others might say it is a house when it is ready to move in. There's no correct answer here, because the word "house" covers a lot of ground -- think of "abandoned house", "ruined house", "half-built house", "reconstructed house", and so forth.
Any line that you draw is arbitrary.
Of course, for legal reasons, sometimes we have to draw these arbitrary lines. Why should a 19-year-old be able to drink in Ontario, but not someone who is aged 18 years 364 days? This distinction makes no sense at all; it's purely an artificial legal construct that represents a guess about responsibility and maturity.
Arguments about DNA miss the point, too. It's not about whether the fetus has human DNA, because it clearly does. The argument is all about at what stage the fetus becomes a "person" (another ill-defined word!) that has the rights we expect people to have in a free society. And it's about how long those rights can be subservient to the rights of the woman in whose body the fetus is growing.
Viewed in this way, deciding whether a child is "a human being before the moment of complete birth" is just a political game. I don't expect much different from politicians, but I did expect more from Woodworth -- I had much more respect for him before this.
If he were sincere, he would answer my question, "What penalty would be appropriate for a woman who has an abortion?" He refuses to answer, and our local journalists are too cowardly to ask.
I'm happy to see that the bill went down to defeat, 203 to 91. But the main thing is to elect someone else to Parliament next time around.
For anyone with a brain, Wainio's carefully-documented examples of what appears to be Wente's serial plagiarism would have required, at the very least, a serious investigation at the Globe and Mail. Instead, Wainio was ignored or insulted.
Not any more.
When the Globe's public editor issued a whitewash of Wente's behavior, they were inundated with complaints.
The CBC -- displaying the journalistic integrity apparently lacking at the Globe and Mail -- has dropped Wente from their media panel.
Will there be further repercussions for Wente? Personally, I think the examples Wainio has assembled amount to a good case for firing Wente. She wouldn't be missed.
Meanwhile, Wainio is shunning the publicity. She deserves an honorary degree, at the very least, for having the courage to persevere in face of the shameless silence of most Canadian media. Or maybe even the Order of Canada.
Jerry Coyne reports that Maarten Boudry, philosopher at Ghent University in Belgium, succeeded in getting a fake theological/philosophical abstract accepted at two theology conferences. Both accepted it, and Reformational Philosophy put it in the proceedings (look under the pseudonym "Robert A. Maundy").
For those of us who have suspected for quite a while that there is something seriously wrong with some parts of modern academic philosophy (where, for example, Alvin Plantinga is "respected" and his EAAN gets serious treatment instead of laughter), this is some small vindication, although perhaps not proof.
Good reports should
Here is an example of a really bad report:
This paper is of absolutely no interest. I showed it to my colleague, Professor X, and she agrees. I recommend rejection.
A good referee report should be useful to the author. This report doesn't tell the author anything that he/she can use to improve the paper. Is it bad because the problem addressed is too trivial? Or because the results are already known? What is an author expected to do after receiving a report like this? Commit suicide?
Here's another example of a bad report:
Tiling problems have been studied for many years. They are of great interest in combinatorics and logic. This paper is a good contribution to the subject, and I recommend acceptance.
A good referee report should be useful to the editor, too. This report doesn't tell the editor anything useful! Are the results really deep and novel? Or is it just another in a series of similar small results? Not only that, a report like this suggests strongly that the referee didn't really read the paper with care, and just skimmed the paper in a few minutes. Are there really no papers that the author missed citing? Are all the equations really correct in all respects? Is there nothing that could be improved?
Any bright high school student can see the flaws in a few minutes. In this way, it functions as a sort of intelligence test for the philosophically inclined. The fact that some philosophers actually took the argument seriously and a few collaborated on a volume entitled Naturalism Defeated? illustrates the sad state of modern philosophy. It's the philosophical equivalent of taking a bogus proof that 2 = 1 and writing an entire book explaining why it is wrong. Yes, you can do it, but why bother?
So guess who accepts it and thinks it is "obviously valid"? Why, that paragon of ignorance and arrogance, Michael Egnor.
It's not surprising, since commenters at his site have tried over and over again to explain to Egnor what the theory of evolution says, but he just can't get it.
