Conversation with a "Cantor Crackpot"

As readers of this blog know, I'm fascinated by how people come to decisions about things and the various ways they can go wrong.

A few weekends ago, I got a chance to chat with a "Cantor crackpot". This is not pejorative; it is the term he used to describe himself. S, as I'll call him, is a pleasant and educated person, but he is convinced that Cantor's proof of the uncountability of the real numbers is wrong.

Here is what he recently wrote to me (paraphrased): Cantor's proof is wrong because the diagonal method that he used fails to produce a number not on the list. He illustrated this with the following example, in which S purports to give a 1-1 correspondence between the integers and the real numbers:

integer <-> real
23456 <-> 0.65432
23457 <-> 0.75432
23458 <-> 0.85432
23459 <-> 0.95432
23460 <-> 0.06432

This is a common misunderstanding among people when they first see Cantor's proof. I think this misunderstanding is essentially rooted in the following misconception: either that the only real numbers are those with terminating expansions, or that the set of integers contains objects with infinitely long base-10 representations. In this case, having talked with S, I know his misunderstanding is of the latter type.

In his example above of the purported bijection, we can ask, what integer corresponds to the real number 1/3? Its decimal expansion is 0.33333... where the 3's go on forever to the right. This must correspond to the integer ....3333333 where the 3's go on forever to the left. But this is not an integer!

So in this case the misunderstanding is really of a trivial nature. I would be interested in speaking to people who deny the correctness of Cantor's proof based on more elaborate misunderstandings.

Silly Barry

The ID creationist blog, Uncommon Descent, just gets more and more amusing now that lawyer and certified public accountant Barry Arrington has taken over.

For some comedy gold, read this post and enjoy the logical fallacies, straw man arguments, and misspellings. (Barry also doesn't seem to know what "antecedent" means.) It looks like it was written by an 8th grader, not a member of the bar.

Let's start with the first line: "Living things appear to be designed for a purpose. That statement is entirely non-controversial." Well, I dispute it. Living things don't really appear designed to me, much less designed for a purpose. Most of the designed things I know look like artifacts: the characteristic product of human activity. Mark Isaak even wrote a paper in which he tried to list commonalities among designed things. Living things don't fit very well.

As for "designed for a purpose", what purpose would that be? What is the purpose of the Ebola virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the tick, the cockroach, and Celine Dion? A commenter tried to ask this, but didn't get any sensible answer.

Barry's post is called "Denying the Obvious". Lots of things which people used to think were "obvious" turn out to be not so obvious. It was "obvious" for many years that the earth was flat. It was "obvious" for many years that the earth was stationary. It was "obvious" for many years that witches were real, that slavery was the natural order of man, and so forth.

Barry thinks the denial of design is dishonest: "Dawkins and his ilk deny design, however, not because the evidence compels them to deny it, but because their a priori metaphysical commitments compel them to do so." Actually, they don't, at least not for me. I think it would be really mind-blowing if we discovered that life on earth (in general) or people (in particular) were part of an extraterrestrial engineering experiment. But since there is currently no evidence for this, pardon me if I am skeptical.

Barry thinks "Materialists must deny the existence of libertarian free will". Well, not this materialist. I don't deny it because I don't think anybody --- and certainly not Barry --- has a coherent definition of "free will". I do think that the folk and religious understanding of free will is very, very likely to be wrong, or at least wildly simplistic, as we are finding out from neuroscience. I think ultimately we will come to a scientific understanding of the various phenomena we currently lump under "free will". Progress is unlikely to come from philosophers and even more unlikely to come from theologians or certified public accountants.

Barry thinks "A man’s body is designed to be complimentary [sic] with a woman’s body and vice versa. All of the confusion about whether same-sex relations are licit would be swept away in an instant if everyone acknowledged this obvious truth." Well, no, it's not "an obvious truth", even if one uses the correct word "complementary". And even if it were, what does that have to do with whether same-sex relations are "licit", by which I assume Barry means "lawful"? After all, hammers are designed for hammering, but does that mean if I use a hammer as a doorstop I am breaking the law?

Barry illustrates the truth of William James' observation, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

Another Moose Tragedy

This time, in Connecticut.

James Keegstra Dead

Most people, if they think of Red Deer, Alberta at all, think of famous native sons like actor Jacob Blair or hockey player Ron Anderson. For me, however, Red Deer is (in)famous as the home of James Keegstra, who died last month.

As a public school teacher in nearby Eckville, Keegstra spread his anti-Semitism to a captive audience in the Eckville public schools for years with hardly any complaints. When his lies were exposed, many in the community came to his defense. He was even Mayor for a time.

Keegstra was the classic fundamentalist Christian anti-Semite. He learned his anti-Semitism from crackpot Christian tracts like The Talmud Unmasked. Keegstra taught his students all sorts of nonsense, from the claim that John Wilkes Booth was Jewish, to Illuminati conspiracies, to the claim that Jews killed Franklin Roosevelt and that they were behind all kinds of world disasters, to Holocaust denial --- and his students duly repeated these claims in their essays. (One student essay contained the line "we must get rid of every living Jew so that we can live in peace and freedom.")

It was only when some courageous parents finally spoke out against Keegstra that the school board took action. It was actually his anti-Catholicism that got initially got him noticed; echoing today's crackpot claims of Rebecca Bynum and Jody Hice about Islam, Keegstra claimed that Catholicism was not a religion but a "humanly created ideology". In 1982 he was finally suspended from teaching. Later, he was prosecuted under Canada's hate speech laws. (Personally, I think the prosecutions were misguided; they only served to make Keegstra more of a martyr. He should not have been teaching his pernicious lies in the public schools, but neither should he have been convicted for believing them.)

If you would like to know more about Keegstra, a good source is Bercuson and Wertheimer's book A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair.

Believe it or not, there are people who praised Keegstra. For example, Joshua Blakeney, a former Alberta graduate student who was actually awarded a Queen Elizabeth II graduate scholarship for his bizarre "investigations", tweeted a recommendation of this Press TV article eulogizing Keegstra. (Warning: you're likely to want to wash your hands after clicking the link.) In case you didn't know, Press TV is a propaganda arm of the Iranian government. Blakeney is, by the way, also heavily into 9/11 conspiracies. Blakeney was a student of Lethbridge professor Anthony Hall, whose reasoning ability can be gauged from this article.

More praise from Keegstra comes from Arthur Topham who was (you guessed it) a recent guest on Blakeney's podcast.

Creationists Don't Understand Evolution

Creationists don't understand evolution. There may be a few rare exceptions to the rule, but this is largely true.

Here is an example, from the Princeton Alumni Weekly. The writer, one Mr. S., is hopelessly confused about what evolution is:

Evolution is the transition from one species to another...

No, that's not what evolution is. Evolution is the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

To support his mistaken belief, he quotes from a PBS website:

"The evolutionary process of speciation is how one population of a species changes over time to the point where that population is distinct and can no longer interbreed with the ‘parent’ population."

But that is evidently a definition of "speciation", not "evolution". How confused do you have to be to not understand that?

Mr. S. goes on to

• use the hoary old "finches remained finches" argument
• claim that microevolution is not evolution (which is about as silly as claiming that a microcomputer is not a computer, or micromotion is not motion)
• claim that "the change of one species to another — is assumed and has not been observed" (which can be easily refuted by consulting any textbook on evolution, or here or here).

An Ivy League education is wasted on some.

Yet Another Gullible Reporter Snookered

Used to be that reporters were skeptical, hard-nosed investigative journalists. Not any more. Is there anyone more gullible than an AP or Canadian Press stringer?

Here we have the spectacle of reporter Laura Kane being snookered by a woman who claims to be a "psychic medium". Kane says, "During the recent interview in Toronto, Baird delivered messages to a Canadian Press reporter from deceased family members that were at times eerily significant and, at other times, completely inexplicable. In all, about two-thirds of her suggestions hit the mark."

In one respect, I feel sorry for poor Laura Kane. She doesn't seem to know anything about cold reading, the technique used by phony psychics and fortune-tellers for ages to persuade the gullible. But why does Laura Kane's ignorance merit an article in my local paper?

Anyone with access to google can find lots of information about Laura Kane (try googling "Laura Kane Canadian Press"): where she went to school, what she studied, and so forth. With a little more work you could probably find out information about her parents and grandparents -- and then obituaries in local papers or on the web. That's another trick used by "psychics".

Neither does Laura Kane do what used to be obligatory: interview someone, anyone, who might take issue with the claims of this "psychic". No, Laura Kane would rather just take dictation from the subject of the article. That's not journalism.

"Beyond Belief" by Jenna Miscavige Hill

Just finished reading Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill.

I have already read other anti-Scientology books, like A Piece of Blue Sky by Atack and Bare-Faced Messiah by Miller. Hill's book is quite different: it offers a very intimate and personal account of what it was like to work, essentially as slave labor, in a large number of Scientology's different organizations starting from age 6. Hill recounts the abuses of the religion while recalling the details of being a young girl, growing up, and discovering love. Being David Miscavige's niece, she had access to the highest levels of the group.

Reading it brought home how similar Scientology is to other totalitarian belief systems, like the Communism of the Soviet bloc, and (to a lesser extent) Christian Science, Mormonism, and many forms of Christianity. Scientology uses all the classic mind control techniques, including indoctrination at an early age, a pervasive organization of spies and reporting, verbal and physical abuse, and so forth. It is very, very dangerous.

I also find it fascinating how Scientologists can rise to prominence in their organization without ever hearing the details of Scientology's completely insane theology. Of course, Christianity's theology is unbelievable, too, but there are different degrees of insanity. To use a mathematical analogy, Scientology is uncountably insane, while Christianity is only countably so.

I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in cults in general and Scientology in particular.

The Vastly Overrated C. S. Lewis: A Shallow and Sophomoric Thinker

C. S. Lewis, Christians tell us, is "the 20th century's most towering intellectual practitioner of the Christian faith". His thinking is "rich and deep". He is "amazingly influential" and his influence is "profound".

Well, bah to all that.

Lewis is vastly overrated. He was a shallow and sophomoric thinker. He knew virtually nothing about science. His children's books were twee crypto-Christian twaddle. (How old were you when you figured out that Aslan was Jesus? And how disappointed and misled did you feel?) His celebrated "trilemma" (not original with him) is so full of holes that a high-school student can spot the flaws. If this is the best that Christians can offer, the atheists win without even trying.

Recently I saw this passage of C. S. Lewis being extolled on a creationist web site:

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, `I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal !'

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion-all about feeling God in nature, and so on-is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

Let's ignore all the hidden assumptions here and accept Lewis's analogy: theology is like a map. Well, then it is a very poor map indeed. If you compare two contemporary maps of the same place, you usually find lots of commonalities between them. Not so with theology -- even if you restrict yourself to Christian theology. Christians can't even agree if faith alone, or good works plus faith, are required for salvation! Remember that itsy-bitsy schism called the Reformation? Why wasn't Lewis a follower of Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Ellen G. White? They had their own competing maps, after all.

Maps are supposed to render what is there, not what one imagines is there. It would be a poor map indeed if one went to visit the place mapped and found it did not exist. But this happens all the time with theology; even Mother Theresa strongly doubted her own theological map. But why? Wasn't it based on, as Lewis claims, "the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God"?

If theology really is a map, then it's more like a malfunctioning GPS. It's the kind of map that, if you follow it, takes you off the road and into the water. A really bad theology will fly your jet into buildings. Sometimes you'd be lucky just to survive.

Some Towns Get All the Luck

Like this one, for example. In case you're wondering, that's in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Luke Schaeffer Wins Governor General's Gold Medal

Yesterday, my former master's student Luke Schaeffer was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for outstanding work in a master's program. Luke is now a Ph.D. student at MIT.

Congratulations, Luke!

Are You from Ontario?

If you are from Ontario, you've already seen this terrific short film "Blackfly", by Christopher Hinton, which is a kind of music video for Wade Hemsworth's song. They also used to show it on Air Canada flights.

You'll also know what "Little Ab" means.

If you're not Canadian, you have no idea what I'm talking about.

20 Questions for Donald Knuth

Here is an interesting and good* interview with Donald Knuth, in which he is asked twenty questions and he responds. This is to celebrate the electronic version of The Art of Computer Programming.

* Here I am using the Alf van der Poorten definition of "good". A "good" interview is one in which I am mentioned.

Do Not Approach the Goose

It's springtime here in Canada. Do not approach the goose.

Death is Not Final?

That was the subject of a recent debate between Eben Alexander and Raymond Moody, on the one hand (arguing the affirmative), and Sean Carroll and Steven Novella on the other hand (arguing the negative).

The good guys -- Carroll and Novella -- won handily here. Alexander came off like a charlatan and Moody like a new age babbler. Carroll and Novella came off like the serious scientists they are.

Moody -- described as a philosopher! -- babbled about a "higher dimension" and "higher domain of existence". He believes there are "new ways of thinking" and "new logical principles" that will let us understand the afterlife -- but of course, he doesn't say what these new ways and principles are! And he apparently also believes in ghosts, not just an afterlife. Then again, Alexander believes in "telepathy, precognition, remote viewing, out-of-body experiences, past-life memories in children" as well as "lower spiritual realms".

Alexander egregiously misrepresented the views of Carl Sagan at 1:26:30. He claimed "a very renowned skeptic and scientist, Carl Sagan, admitted that, past-life memories in children, the evidence for that is overwhelming" and justified this with an appeal to The Demon-Haunted World, p. 302. Well, here is what Sagan wrote on that page:

As you can see, Sagan describes the evidence as "at least some, although still dubious, experimental support". That is a very far cry from "overwhelming".

I really have to wonder, however, about the organizers of this debate. Why are they giving Eben Alexander's goofy claims any attention at all, considering that very very serious questions have been raised in Esquire about the truthfulness of his account? It certainly undermines their credibility. And I wonder why neither Carroll nor Novella explicitly brought up the Esquire article at all. Perhaps it was a tactical decision on their part.

Doug Groothuis on Transvestism

I have a not-so-secret sinful pleasure, which is reading Doug Groothuis's blog. The stupidity and lack of self-awareness of this "Ph. D." rarely fail to amuse. Here's his latest piece, which is about his displeasure on seeing a transvestite on TV.

Groothuis is disgusted by it, and finds it a "sinful sickness" that is "a sure sign of cultural decay, bone rot, disintegration and dissipation". But nowhere in his little rant does he explain why it drives him nutty.

Transvestism occurred and occurs in many different cultures; the idea that it is a "sure sign of cultural decay" doesn't seem supported by the historical record. It doesn't appeal to me, but then again, neither do tattoos, or heavy metal, or Christian fundamentalism. All in all, it seems pretty harmless -- certainly more benign than the dangerous nonsense that Groothuis routinely espouses.

I think Groothuis should examine his own feelings more closely. Why, precisely, is he so disgusted by the sight of a drag queen?

The Pierce Expansion Problem

I just posted one of my oldest open math problems to Math Overflow. Let's see if anyone can come up with a new idea for attacking this problem, which I thought of back in 1978, and only a little progress has been made in 36 years.

Just What Russia Needs

The Templeton Foundation, not content with its corrupting influence on American science, is branching out to encourage more theology in Russia.

What wonderful news! If there's anything that Russia needs now, it's more theology. I wonder what we can look forward to. Perhaps a "natural law" justification for putting gays in prison, or for the takeover of Crimea.

Moose and Drones

Any story about moose and drones deserves our attention. From reader D. S. comes this story about Alaska's decision to outlaw moose hunting with drones. That is, the hunting of moose, not moose doing the hunting. Moose actually doing the hunting, with drones, is still legal.

Yet Another Insane Conference Solicitation

Needless to say, I don't work on "polymer and composite materials".

Dear Shallit, J.,
This is Ms. Yin pan from 2014 Global Conference on Polymer and Composite Materials (PCM 2014) which will be held in Ningbo, China on May 27~29.

Considering your research titled On NFAs where all states are final, initial, or both may be relevant to our conference, We cordially invite you to present your new research at our conference. Accepted papers will be published in IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) which is an open access journal indexed by CPCI (Conference Proceedings Citation Index), Scopus, Compendex and Inspec. Authors also have the option to publish papers in special issues organised by PCM2014 in SCI (Thomson Reuters ISI) indexed journals .

Keynote speech titles:
Mechanical and Tribological Aspects of Nanocomposite Coatings
Investigation of Controlled Migration of Anti-fog Additives in Thin Polyolefin Products
Injection of "Liquid Wood": Samples Microstructure and Properties
Some High Coordination Compounds of Lanthanides (III) Derived From Schiff Bases Derived From 4-aminoantipyrine and Their Application.
New Polymer Materials for the Potential of Optical, Electronic and Green Energy Applications.
Highly Efficient Polymer Solar Cells.

We are also calling for reviewers
Reviewer's papers can be published without publication fee in Open Access journals 'Progress in Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials' or 'Advances in Materials Science and Applications'.

Reviewer Benefits:
Free to visit the 2014 China (Ningbo) International Engineering Plastics and Modified Plastics Industry Exhibition
Free to tour around Ningbo after the conference
Enjoy a discount for your conference registration fee
Be a potential candidate of Technical Program Committee for the next PCM conference
If you want to join us as a reviewer, please send us your CV.

Best regards
Ms. Yin Pan
PCM 2014 Organizing Committee
Website: http://www.cpcmconf.org
Email: pcm2014@cpcmconf.org

Scott Vanstone (1947-2014)

Here is a good tribute to the life and career of my late colleague Scott Vanstone, written by my colleagues at the University of Waterloo.

Scott and I only wrote one paper together, on the analysis of a gcd algorithm, back in 1998.

A New Crazy Invitation from Bogus Conference

Dear Shallit, J.,

This is Ms. Linda from the 3rd International Conference on Civil Engineering and Urban Planning (CEUP 2014), which will be held in Wuhan, China, June 20-22.

Considering your research paper titled On Lazy Representations and Sturmian Graphs maybe relevant to our conference. We cordially hope you to share your new research on our conference. There will be a tour around Wuhan after the conference.

If you are interested to be a reviewer of our conference, please send us your CV. Reviwers can publish their papers without publication fee in one Open Access journal Journal of Civil Engineering and Science .

Papers submitted to our conference are more welcomed.

Best regards
Ms. Linda Li
Conference Assistant of CEUP 2014
Website: www.ceupconf.org
Email: ceup2014@ceupconf.org

Why the morons running this conference think that my paper is relevant to "Civil Engineering and Urban Planning" is beyond me.

Margaret Wente Thinks University Professors Should Teach More

It's pretty funny that Margaret Wente thinks that some university professors are overpaid lazy slobs with cushy jobs, and they need to teach more and stop wasting their time on all that useless original research.

Ms. Wente, who has a well-documented history of plagiarizing other people's work, is not exactly a voice of moral authority when it comes to laziness and originality. In a just world, Ms. Wente would no longer have a job as a columnist, let alone a job at Canada's most prestigious newspaper.

I wonder if the real reason behind Ms. Wente's dislike of university professors is that it was a courageous university professor, Carol Wainio, who was largely responsible for exposing Ms. Wente's shoddy journalism.

P.S. Margaret "It's Easier to Repeat Myself Than Come Up With Something New" Wente made the same points back in 2009.

Mathematics and Beer

MG: If you pour root beer in a square glass, does it turn into beer?

JOS: Not if it's your fourth root beer.

Creationist Delusions of Persecution

The creationist website, Uncommon Descent, looks more and more like a parody.

A nontrivial fraction of their postings are currently devoted to imagined persecution of their nutty beliefs. Take this one, for example, where faux journalist Denyse O'Leary discusses the recent discovery of a large virus.

Denyse, as usual, is a bit late to the party. The usual science outlets reported on this three days before Denyse, and other giant viruses have been around for at least ten years. Denyse doesn't do any actual journalism; she just riffs off the work of real journalists.

Denyse uses it as an opportunity to create an imaginary persecution scenario, suggesting that evolutionary biologists would say "None of these creationists should be allowed to hold a job in science". Nobody's said anything even remotely like this; the work was done by non-creationist biologists, was published in a prestigious place to great fanfare, and the discovery merited an article in Nature.

Neither does the giant virus discovery invalidate common descent as a useful theory. (In exactly the same way, relativity doesn't invalidate the usefulness of classical mechanics.) The real state of affairs with regard to common descent is now known, and has been known for a while, to be more complicated than initially thought, with complications arising from horizontal transfer, among other mechanisms. Any honest reporter realizes this.

It's creationists, not evolutionary biologists, who treat Darwin like some sort of demigod that had to be right about everything. The rest of us have known for a long time that Darwin was wrong about many things. When was the last time you heard someone speaking about gemmules as particles of inheritance?

Nobody in the evolutionary biology camp says "believe them and shut up"; Denyse seems to think that biologists are like the Catholic Church. This is just a bizarre creationist persecution fantasy. As for "tenured prof[s]", O'Leary's favorite target, just who exactly do you think discovered the giant virus? Hint: it wasn't Denyse, Steven Meyer, or any other of her non-tenured creationist friends.

You can't make up this kind of stupidity.

Bogus Editors for Bogus Journals?

I've been looking some more at the journals published by CS Canada, the inexplicably-named group that runs the "Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture" and the "Canadian Research and Development Centre of Sciences and Cultures".

I contacted a professor listed as a "deputy editor" of

• Studies in Sociology of Science
• Management Science and Engineering
• Canadian Social Science

and editor of Studies in Literature and Language. She told me that she has "no editorial responsibilities for any of those journals" and remarked, "How strange!".

It's not strange at all; this is typical behavior for bogus journals. I notice that the editor-in-chief of the journals listed above are "Prof. William Kent", "Shawn Barnes", and "Alvin Linden". No legit institutional affiliation is given for any of them and I have not been able to find anything about them online. Do they even exist? I doubt it very much.

Another Dubious Journal Solicitation

Reader J. B. passes on the following solicitation from the dubious Progress in Applied Mathematics:

Dear Dr. B., J.

I read your article of "[title redacted]". And I know that you are an expert in this area.

I am Anthea L. Stock, the editor of Progress in Applied Mathematics (PAM) which is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, published by Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures. It is a journal focuses on the fields of Mathematics, geometry, mathematical physics, statistics, mathematical biology, dynamical systems, financial mathematics, optimization, algorithms, numeric analysis, symbolic computation, mathematical model, statistical software, topology, computer, operational research, Riemannian geometry, differential manifold, math software.

Many respected abstracting/indexing services covered our journals like:

AMICUS of Canada; ProQuest; Gale; EBSCO Publishing; DOAJ; Ulrich’s; PKP Open Archives Harvester; Open Access; Open J-gate; Ulrich's Periodicals Directory; CNKI; Google Scholar

We are calling for submission of papers for the coming issue of January 2014. Please send the manuscript to: pam@cscanada.net. Or you could find the journal’s profile and submit manuscripts online at: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/pam/author/submit/1.

If you have any questions, please contact with us at: pam@cscanada.org; pam@cscanada.net

It is appreciated if you could share this information with your colleagues and associates. Thank you.

We are recruiting reviewers for the journal. Please find further details at: http://cscanada.net/index.php/pam

Best regards,

Anthea L. Stock| Editor
Progress in Applied Mathematics
ISSN 1925-251X [Print]; ISSN 1925-2528 [Online]
Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures
Address: 758, 77e AV, Laval, Quebec, H7V 4A8, Canada
Http://www.cscanada.org; Http://www.cscanada.net
E-mail: pam@cscanada.org; pam@cscanada.net; caooc@hotmail.com

All the warning signals for this journal are there: preposterously wide coverage; ungrammatical solicitation; sponsorship by the clunky-named "Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures" (which itself has a ungrammatical description and is apparently based in some apartment building), etc.

When Moose Attack

There's nothing better than an annoyed moose. Beware!

What to Do With a Photographer that Doesn't Understand Evolution? Why, Publish Him, of Course!

I'm always amused by the creationist site, Uncommon Descent. They employ all the usual creationist tactics, including the elevation of nonentities to the status of experts, and all the usual crackpot tactics, like attacking the most celebrated theories and scientists.

Here is a good example, where we are treated to the vapid analysis of one Laszlo Bencze. Bencze seems to think that evolution should be "laden with intimidating mathematical formulas and at least as difficult to master as Newton’s Mechanics or Einsteins [sic] Relativity", but it is not. And therefore it's wrong. Or something.

Who is Laszlo Bencze? As far as I can see, the guy's just some wedding photographer who lives in Sacramento. No evidence that I can see that he's ever studied science at an advanced level, let alone biology or evolution or mathematics.

Anyway, Bencze is wrong. If you learn more about evolution than you can find in creationist cartoon books, you know right away that the mathematics of evolution is well-studied and taught in biology classes at nearly every university. For example, there's Haldane's celebrated calculation of the probability of fixation of a new beneficial allele A in a large population; it's about 2s, where s is the selective advantage of A. How much do you want to bet that Bencze doesn't know this classic result from 1927 (!), let alone be able to derive it? Can he state and prove the Hardy-Weinberg theorem? It's not that hard! Does he know the basics of coalescent theory? Very, very doubtful.

Yup, Bencze's just another in a parade of ignorant anti-evolution blowhards. That's why it's so funny to see him promoted by the intelligent designoids as an expert with a point of view worth publishing.

Twin-Prime Problem and Goldbach Conjecture Solved?

I was tipped off about this by a reporter at our local newspaper: a local man, James P. Moore, is apparently claiming a solution to the twin-prime problem and the Goldbach conjecture. I haven't read his work. However, the manner in which the claim is being made raises real questions about its correctness.

Moore is apparently not a mathematician by training. Here it is stated that he has a systems design engineering degree from Waterloo.

According to MathSciNet, the database that attempts to review every mathematical publication of interest, Moore has not published any mathematical papers, at least under the names "James P. Moore" or "J. P. Moore". The chances that an amateur without previous mathematical publications could solve these important and famous problems are, for all practical purposes, zero. (Prior to his celebrated recent success on the twin-prime problem, Yitang Zhang, a professional mathematician, had two published papers in good journals.)

Instead of placing his claimed solution on the arxiv, or publishing it in a journal -- as would be customary in such a case -- Moore is selling his solutions online in three different books for $27.05 each. One book is entitled either "The Proof of the Primes" or "The Proof of Primes", a title that doesn't make much sense mathematically.

Moore apparently is working with a public-relations firm to get the news out about his work. You can listen to an interview with him here; it is one of the most painful interviews I have ever heard, largely because the interviewer seems to have no comprehension at all about what the solution might consist of -- she keeps referring inexplicably to DNA -- and seeks to fill the time by repeating the same information over and over.

Moore gave a talk yesterday at the University of Waterloo, but I didn't attend. It wasn't sponsored by the Pure Mathematics department, though. As far as I can see, his public-relations firm hired the room. Again, that's not a good sign.

Here his PR firm suggests that his solution consists of "developing a formula capable of generating every prime number progressively and perfectly". This would not be of much interest, since such formulas are already known. The page also claims that such a method would "create stronger security systems". This is a common misunderstanding; encryption systems such as RSA, while they use prime numbers, would essentially be unaffected by faster ways to generate them. RSA's security would be affected by faster ways to factor products of two or more primes, which is a very different and essentially unrelated problem.

If amateurs think they have solved a famous problem, probably the best route to fame and fortune is to post the paper to a preprint archive. If you can't get an endorser for the arxiv, there's always vixra. Believe me, if your solution is correct, or even close to correct, you'll be acclaimed rather quickly. Hiring public-relations firms and selling your solution in books pretty much guarantees you will be ignored.

Addendum: here Mr. Moore claims, about the primes, that "there is no equation to define them". This is certainly false. They can be defined by a number of different equations; for example, see the talk by my colleague Eric Rowland here.

Another addendum, February 23 2014: Someone showed me a copy of Moore's claimed "proof" of Goldbach's conjecture. Needless to say, it is not correct, and introduces no new ideas at all.

Poor Conrad Black

Poor Conrad Black!

Let us all weep for this disgraced Canadian hero, who has received "many good wishes" and claims "for the first time, at any stage of this long and relentless persecution, I have not received a single negative message."

(Should you wish to disabuse Mr. Black of the notion that everyone stands behind him, negative messages can be sent to cbletters@gmail.com.)

Mr. Black says that "Honours do not make a man, any more than the withdrawal of honours unmakes one." But being convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice certainly unmake a man. Then again, that same man has a history of dishonest behavior, starting with selling stolen exam papers when he was a student at Upper Canada College.

Mr. Black boasts of supporting letters written by Henry Kissinger. If one wants to rehabilitate one's reputation, I can think of no one better than Kissinger, whose sterling reputation has never been besmirched. Just like Mr. Black's.

I Get Email

Just the latest of many crackpot e-mail messages I get:

I came across your uwaterloo page and had read the write-up blatantly attacking creationist research.
 
What YOU fail to see, is that you promote the Smithsonian, a religious institution. You might want to check
the Jesuit IHS logo against that of the Smithsonian. And you might want to check the fact that natural science comes from religion.
The pure ignorance of your position is already noted as you cannot provide one shred of evidence for either evolution, big bang, dark matter or the heliocentric universe
and yet stand by science as the be-all and end-all. Where were you when the earth was created and man put upon it? Where is your research in understanding everything
you reference within the sciences is actually mathematical models, a knowledge fantasy and does not subscribe to even the definition of true science....yet more or less falls
within the realm of an oxymoron, science-fiction. I am not sure you even understand what science is. It's also quite funny that you subscribe to mysticism that has been created by priests, such as evolutionary science. Professing yourself to be wise, you have become a fool. 

This guy was not honest enough to sign his real name. Big surprise.

Another Inappropriate Name

What do you think when you hear the name "World of Science Canada"? Probably something to do with science, right?

Wrong. It's just another clunky evangelical site, featuring videos that have everything to do with evangelical Christianity and pretty much nothing to do with science. They feature my old pal David Humphreys, a former professor of chemistry at McMaster. If you have the stomach for it, watch a few of the videos. In one of them Prof. Humphreys claims that "justice delayed isn't justice denied", turning the old aphorism (usually ascribed to Gladstone) on its head.

But isn't that what fundamentalist religion does to everything good? Make it stupid and tawdry and change its meaning?

They Offer Nothing But Lies, 5

The falsehoods are coming fast and furious at the creationist site, Uncommon Descent. Somebody (other than me) should try to catalogue them all.

Here are just two that caught my eye recently:

- Rob Sheldon claims that "The problem, as physicists will only tell you behind a closed and locked door, is that life violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics." This is false in two different ways: first, there is simply no evidence that any biological process violates the 2nd law -- it is one of the hoariest and least believable of all creationist claims. Second, there is no reluctance to consider thermodynamics in biology, as Sheldon implies; there are many books and papers that discuss it in detail. I don't know a single reputable physicist who believes that the 2nd law contradicts evolution, but the "closed and locked door" nonsense feeds the usual "theist victimization" scenario. Sheldon cannot cite any papers in the peer-reviewed physics literature that make his case; creationists like Granville Sewell publish their nonsense in creationist vanity journals.

- V. J. Torley (who is not a scientist and who does not, as far as I can tell, have any advanced scientific training) makes the claim that "if a student of biology or psychology at a secular American college were to voice the same sentiments now (I’m thinking especially of the statements made by Dr. King on the inability of matter to account for the human mind), that student would probably be given a failing grade and not allowed to graduate." Torley has simply no idea what takes place in biology or psychology courses at American universities; that's what allows him to construct this bizarre persecution fantasy.

I guarantee you that if a student of biology or psychology were to claim "there is something in man that cannot be calculated in materialistic terms", no one would pay any attention at all. (Maybe a few might roll their eyes.) There are literally thousands of Christian students in biology and psychology at American universities who hold this and other far less supported beliefs (e.g., transubstantiation, virgin birth, etc.) and nobody gives a damn. The idea that such a "student would probably be given a failing grade and not allowed to graduate" is completely without merit, but fits well with the "theist victimization" scenario I already mentioned.

Creationists have nothing to offer but lies.

P. S. A prediction: creationists will dredge up a single example of a student, probably an extremely poor student and/or offensive proselytizer, who was suspended from some university for another reason, and claim it was because the student denied evolution. They then will use this as justification for Torley's claim.

Shoddy Journalism & Tinpot Moderators at NPR

I love NPR, and listen and donate to it frequently. But the last 24 hours have soured me a bit, at least on some NPR employees.

Take a look at this segment, which ran yesterday morning on NPR.

It's not very good, but I suppose it's a little better than yesterday, when it had the line "There's also miraculous healings and prophesying" [at the charismatic Catholic church being discussed].

I took issue with this claim by posting on their Codeswitch blog. It's one thing to state that "parishioners report miraculous hearings". It's quite another thing to state flatly -- even if ungrammatically -- that these "miraculous healings" actually took place. Did the reporters witness any "miraculous healings"? Were medical records verified? I'm willing to bet they did not and were not.

In response to my posting (which was rapidly voted up), NPR first (silently) fixed the grammar but kept the part about "miraculous healings". Then they deleted my comment, together with the comments of many other people. When I complained about this, my comment was briefly reinstated by Codeswitch employee Matt Thompson. He agreed it had been deleted unfairly. Once again, it was rapidly voted up; NPR listeners know bad journalism when they see it.

After some time (I don't know when) my comment was deleted again. This time Matt Thompson refused to answer my e-mail to explain why. I then took my case to Gene Demby, who apparently runs this NPR blog. He couldn't come up with any good reasons to delete my comment or the comments of dozens of others. He only claimed that "the story was about a specific faith tradition; the deleted comments argued about its illegitimacy". Bullshit. My deleted comments were about the shoddy journalism of NPR's reporters, who shouldn't be reporting "miraculous healing" as fact if they had no evidence. A simple rephrasing would have made that clear; it's Journalism 101.

And even if other people's comments argued about the "illegitimacy" of a "faith tradition", so what? Are "faith traditions" somehow above the reach of criticism?

Tinpot dictators and control freaks like Demby should not be moderating blogs for NPR. NPR stands for "National Public Radio", not "National Pablum Radio". NPR should be using the loosest possible standards to ensure robust discussion and debate.

Update: Gene Demby is so insecure he actually blocked me from following him on twitter. This guy shouldn't be employed at NPR!

Math Challenge #1

Here's the first of some math challenges, drawn from my notebooks. This is one from around 1977.

Observe that sin(333) + sin(355) = sin(22) is not an equality, but is true to about 9 significant digits. Explain. Find another similar almost-identity.

When Veritas Doesn't Mean Truth

Did you ever notice that many irrationalist groups choose descriptive names that are just the opposite of their actual goals? For example, the American Family Association is devoted to destroying those families that happen to have gay people at their heads; American Thinker should be entitled "right-wing crackpots rearranging their prejudices", and so forth.

Then there's the Veritas Forum. Veritas, of course, is the Roman goddess of "truth" --- but this group is just an evangelical organization seemingly devoted to the opposite. For example, they're currently pushing a book by Mary Poplin, an anti-intellectual and embarrassingly shallow thinker who spoke at Waterloo three years ago. In her talks she made some questionable claims and played the martyr card. I think any self-respecting organization that seriously cared about the truth wouldn't be shilling for her.

The local Veritas group is sponsoring three events this week. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to attend most of them due to other commitments. On Wednesday we get Joe Boot, a local Christian apologist who can you see perform here, in a debate against Dan Barker. Although I like Dan, he's not always the strongest debater, but here he absolutely destroys Boot; Boot seems to have little or no understanding of neuroscience, paleontology, or information theory, but is happy to pontificate about those subjects. He even repeats the longest-running falsehood in creationism! The tepid applause after his dismissal of evolution was pretty funny.

If anybody goes to these events, please post a description in the comments.

Moose in the Pool

From reader D. S. comes this picture of a moose in a swimming pool.

Happens every summer in Canada if you don't put out moose repellent.

Interview with Edward Caudill

Here's a great NPR interview with Edward Caudill, author of the new book, Intelligently Designed: How Creationists Built the Campaign Against Evolution. I haven't read the book yet, but based on the interview, Caudill knows his stuff.

The Intellectual Fraud of Intelligent Design

Back in 2001, Wesley Elsberry and I began working on a long paper in which we did what intelligent design advocates demanded: take their claims seriously and examine them. In particular, we looked at William Dembski's claims about "CSI" or "complex specified information" or "specified complexity".

Dembski claimed to have created a mathematical methodology that would accurately determine if something is designed or not. His method was rather complicated, involving (as we wrote then) "a choice of probability space, a probability estimate, a discussion of relevant background knowledge, an independence calculation, a rejection function, and a rejection region". In Dembski's view, each of these needed to be given in detail before design can be concluded.

Despite the fact that Dembski claimed that many things contained CSI, such as the 16-digit numbers on VISA cards, he hardly ever gave the calculations justifying these claims. In fact, as far as I can see, these calculations were only given for four things (as we discuss in our paper on p. 16), and even then, the descriptions were sometimes sketchy. And in one of Dembski's calculations, his numbers were off by 65 orders of magnitude. Years passed before Dembski conceded this.

In another article, Elsberry and I challenged intelligent design advocates to do the calculations that Dembski was unwilling or unable to do. It is now more than ten years later, and nobody has taken up the challenge.

So I always find it amusing when some intelligent design advocate starts babbling about "CSI" or "complex specified information" or "specified complexity" or "FSCO/I" without providing the six items Dembski said were necessary. The latest babbler is Casey Luskin, who proudly asserts that a sculpture in the Atacama desert "exhibits high levels of specified complexity" and is therefore designed. Needless to say, Luskin doesn't give any of the six things Dembski said were necessary.

Luskin's babbling can be reduced to "it looks designed, therefore it is". But one could assert exactly the same thing about the Giant's Causeway.

Anyway, Luskin is wrong. We conclude that the sculpture in the Atacama Desert is designed not because of "specified complexity", but because it is an artifact: a characteristic product of human activity. We know that humans sculpt things; we know that parts of the body are frequent choices for sculptors; we know that artists use iron and cement in their work. All this combines to suggest "artifact" as the most plausible hypothesis, not "created by erosion".

Intelligent design is a kind of intellectual fraud. It erects a complicated mathematical methodology to fool the rubes, but then it hardly ever uses this methodology to do any calculations. The goal is to wear the cloak of mathematical legitimacy without revealing the empty shell beneath. Smart people should see this scam for what it is.

P. S. Another one of our challenges was, using Dembski's methodology, to identify, as designed, some object on the earth whose status (designed/undesigned) is currently not known. This could be, for example, something found on an archeological dig. Needless to say, 10 years later, nobody's succeeded at that challenge, either. Looks like that methodology is real useful, right?

Ask The Editor: When Should I Include Page Numbers in a Reference?

Recently I got the following query from an author of a paper in a journal I edit:

When should I include page numbers when citing a specific theorem in a reference?

Here's my answer: page numbers, like much of mathematical writing, follow the "be nice to the reader" rule. This rule says, in effect, "Imagine you are a relatively naive reader of this paper. What information would you like the author to include to help you understand the paper and locate the references?"

Following this rule, if you're citing a result in a long book, you should certainly include the theorem or equation number, and probably also a page number. On the other hand, if you're citing a very short paper with one result, then it's probably not necessary.

As an example of what not to do, take a look at this paper, where the authors write (on page 17, just below equation (30)),

"by a result of Bourbaki [3], σ-parabolic subsets (respectively, σ-positive systems) of R are just parabolic subsets...

The reference [3] is to a 300-page book! (To be fair, this was an early version of the paper; in a later version they fixed this.)

David Gelernter, Hypocrite

The whiny and porcine David Gelernter is back again, with an astonishingly un-self-aware screed entitled "The Closing of the Scientific Mind". For Gelernter, who despises atheists and thinks they are "crusading" and "dangerous", a closed mind means one that disagrees with him, or, worse, laughs at his incoherent religious ideas about the brain.

Gelernter huffs that "Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do". But this responsibility evidently does not apply to Gelernter himself, who once made the false claim in the New York Times that "the Supreme Court outlawed prayer and Bible reading in the public schools" and refused to retract it.

The sin of scientists is apparently that "too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support". Umm, mankind has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. During most of that time, there wasn't any "scholarly" or "humanistic" work to support anything at all. As for the "religious ... work" that has formed "spiritual support", aren't we entitled to ask whether religious claims are true? Or are we just supposed to say, "That's somebody's spiritual support and hence off limits; I should just be quiet"? What a grotesque and tiny-minded view of the human enterprise Gerlernter has. But then, he's the guy who once told atheists they should just shut up.

Another nasty thing that those scientists have done, says Gelernter, is "to belittle human life and values and virtues and civilization and moral, spiritual, and religious discoveries, which is all we human beings possess or ever will". Umm, no, we possess a lot more than that. What happened to understanding the world? That's not a "moral, spiritual, [or] religious discovery". And when most of the religious "discoveries" of the myriad faiths are either trite or self-contradictory, why do are we obligated to respect them? David Gelernter, I suspect, finds eating a BLT an offense against his god, while devout Hindus do the same for cheeseburgers. Bully for them, I suppose, but why does this represent a "discovery" that conveys anything useful to anyone of a different religion?

Gelernter claims that "[y]our subjective, conscious experience is just as real as the tree outside your window". What does that even mean? "Just as real" in what sense, and how does Gelernter know this? How about the subjective experience of a chimpanzee? Is that "just as real" as the tree? How about the subjective experience of a cockroach? Again, just as real? If I take PCP and hallucinate spiders crawling on me, how is that "just as real" as the tree?

Gelernter is a big fan of Thomas Nagel, and he can't tolerate any criticism of Nagel. Those who criticized Nagel are dismissed as (and I'm not making this up) "punks, bullies, and hangers-on of the philosophical underworld" and a "lynch mob" and a "mass attack of killer hyenas". Of course, what actually happened is that there was (mostly fairly mild) criticism of Nagel's book and ideas. Critics pointed out that Nagel didn't offer much of anything new, and had fundamental misconceptions about biology and science. Nobody picketed his university, or called for Nagel to be fired, or threatened him at academic meetings, or called for a boycott of his books -- all things that happen routinely to university professors who upset the far Right. When climate scientists are threatened, I don't see Gelernter sticking up for them. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Gelernter claims that "machines do just what we tell them to". This would be forgivable for an ignorant layman, but it is really unforgivable for a computer science professor. It's wrong in two ways: even extremely simple programs can be capable of complex and difficult-to-predict behaviors that can surprise their programmers. And second, many modern computers have access to truly random numbers (for example, arising from radioactive decay) that can make their behaviors truly unpredictable and not "just what we tell them to" do.

Gelernter hates the idea that brain is essentially a computer (even though this is supported by everything we know about neuroscience). But he can muster no coherent argument against it. His "simple facts" that dispute this are laughably inapposite:

1. You can transfer a program easily from one computer to another, but you can’t transfer a mind, ever, from one brain to another.

How does Gelernter know that you can't do this? We can't do it now, but how does he know we can't "ever" do it? In fact, I'd argue that every kind of communication between people is transferring a piece of one person's mind to another.

2. You can run an endless series of different programs on any one computer, but only one “program” runs, or ever can run, on any one human brain.

Again, how does Gelernter know this? Furthermore, this claim is disputed by, for example, Marvin Minsky's vision of the mind as constructed out of many different kinds of simpler programs running in parallel; see his book Society of Mind.

This silly reason is equivalent to saying that airplanes and birds don't both fly, because airplanes can carry many different passengers, while a bird only carries one.

3. Software is transparent. I can read off the precise state of the entire program at any time. Minds are opaque—there is no way I can know what you are thinking unless you tell me.

That may have been true in the 1500's, when Gelernter's brain seems to have been formed, but we've learned a bit in 500 years. It is now, in fact, quite possible for us to be able to determine what other people are thinking in some simple domains, and our ability to do this is likely to increase.

4. Computers can be erased; minds cannot.

Again, how does Gelernter know this cannot be done, ever? Just this week, there is a paper in Nature that suggests the opposite. And, as I get older, I find that more and more of my brain is being erased automatically.

5. Computers can be made to operate precisely as we choose; minds cannot.

Oddly enough, it's religion that has proven to be one of the best kinds of mind control. And there are others. Again, how does Gelernter know for sure that minds cannot be made to operate as we choose? If we can do it for cockroaches, why couldn't we (in principle) do it for humans?

These reasons are all so bad that I'm surprised Gelernter didn't say "computers are plugged into the wall socket, but minds aren't".

Gelernter's rant goes on and on. He seems to think that "students have been taught since kindergarten that you are not permitted to question the doctrine of man-made global warming, or the line that men and women are interchangeable, or the multiculturalist idea that all cultures and nations are equally good". Funny, I never heard any of these claims; it seems to be some sort of bizarre conservative delusion. Of course you are "permitted" to question anthropogenic global warming; but if you do, you should know what the current scientific consensus is, a bit of the relevant science, and apprise yourself of the goals of and funding behind the relatively small number of voices in opposition. No one says men and women are "interchangeable"; but it does seem to be true that many cultural beliefs about what women can't do are based more on tradition than some inherent biological limitation. (Read, for example, what was claimed about women and marathons.) Nobody says "all cultures and nations are equally good", but that doesn't mean we are obligated to teach our children exclusively about Western history in school. Maybe Gelernter would be happier in this kind of America.

Finally, he closes with this admonition: "The best and deepest moral laws we know tell us to ... treat all creatures, our fellow humans and the world at large, humanely." This from the same guy that a few paragraphs earlier was likening critics of Nagel to "punks" and a "lynch mob" and a "mass attack of killer hyenas". Really, you can't make up this kind of hypocrisy.

Another Crazy Journal Solicitation

Dear Shallit, Jeffrey,

With great sincerity, we are writing to you today.

We happened to have the opportunity to read your paper titled "On NFAs where all states are final, initial, or both" recently and are impressed by your research work in this field. Given that you share the same research interest with our journal Progress in Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials (PNN), we are writing to sending you our earnest invitation for paper submission.

No, you morons, nanotechnology has basically nothing to do with nondeterministic finite automata.

Denial Has Many Forms

Recently I spent about a week in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I ate a lot of good food (I can recommend Parker's Barbecue in Greenville, NC) and met some genuinely nice people, including some distant cousins.

But some things I saw reminded me that the states of the former Confederacy are, in some ways, very, very different, even today, from the North. It's not just the statues of the confederate soldiers (here, from Windsor, NC):

(When I was in Colerain, NC in the summer, I met a guy with a Glock on the passenger seat of his pickup who told me to visit this statue in Windsor before "the niggers" got it taken down. He told me that the gun was to "put the fear of God" into anyone who would try to take it away from him.)

In Richmond I visited the Museum of the Confederacy. There were two men out in front, waving Confederate flags and handing out literature. The current museum location is scheduled to join forces with the American Civil War Center and move to a much larger venue elsewhere in Richmond. The protesters complained that the new sites are not "Confederate-friendly" and are "all about slavery".

I pointed out to one of the men protesting that slavery was obviously an important cause of the Civil War, but he denied this.

I find it a little surprising that 150 years later, there are still people fighting this war. In order to do so, they have to deny the words of the secessionists themselves. For example, here's what Mississippi wrote (in part):

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Here's what Texas wrote (in part):

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

And so forth.

I certainly concede that Lincoln didn't believe in the equality of races. I certainly concede that there were major issues other than slavery that contributed to secession. I certainly concede that the Civil War took a huge toll on both Confederate and Union lives, and had disastrous consequences for the South. I'll even concede that war might possibly have been avoided if Lincoln had attempted to simply buy the freedom of all slaves in the South. But to claim, as the men protesting outside the Museum of the Confederacy tried to do, that slavery was not an essential cause of the Civil War, is either dishonesty or lunacy. The seceding states themselves admitted it in detail.

When I came out of the museum, the protesters were gone. I saw a guy standing outside the museum, smoking a cigarette and walked over to him. It turned out to be S. Waite Rawls, CEO of the museum. In response to my question about the protesters, he rolled his eyes and said, "You can't reason with those folks." And I think he's right. The zeal of those protesters and their willingness to ignore the evidence reminds me of Holocaust deniers and evolution deniers. They have invested so much of their own identity in believing a falsehood that nothing could possibly convince them of the truth.

Virginia Heffernan Exemplifies What is Wrong With Journalism

Both my parents were journalists. In fact, in 1939, my mother was the first woman reporter at the Florence Evening Star in South Carolina -- a newspaper started by Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who helped capture Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger. My mother was a good writer who wrote about many topics, but she didn't write about science or mathematics. She never wrote about those topics because she didn't know anything about them. In fact, she never mastered long division. But she could write emotional and moving stories that would bring tears to your eyes. So I have great affection for journalism and its practitioners.

But my mother, and the editors who hired her, understood her limitations. They wouldn't have sent her to cover a science story because they all knew what her areas of competence were. Reporters were expected to know the basics of the area they covered.

That doesn't seem to be true for much of modern journalism. I hear over and over from scientists that whenever they read a popular article that touches on their area of competence, the writer gets everything wrong. And it's often true, in my experience, for articles discussing my own areas of mathematics and computer science.

This also seems to be the affliction of Virginia Heffernan, a writer who "came out" as a creationist earlier this year. According to Wikipedia, Heffernan has no advanced training in science or technology at all. Yet she happily wrote about technology and was described as an "Internet guru".

In her widely criticized Yahoo article, she claims to have read Darwin, but summarizes his argument incorrectly as "Whatever survives survives". (Has she been reading Michael Egnor?). She confuses evolutionary psychology with evolutionary biology; she doesn't understand the difference between "hypothesis" and "theory"; yet she feels competent to comment on evolution. Likewise, she characterizes the Big Bang theory as "something exploded". Maybe she confused the scientific theory with the TV show.

In her article, she cites Yann Martel for justification as follows: "1) Life is a story. 2) You can choose your story. 3) A story with God is the better story."

No, Virginia, science doesn't work like that. The universe isn't a story you can just "choose". The virtue of the scientific method is that it gives a way to distinguish between stories that make you feel good and the real state of affairs, using hypothesis testing, strong skepticism, and peer review. Despite her Harvard education, Heffernan doesn't show any sign of understanding this. You'd think that would make her question the value of her Harvard Ph. D., instead of questioning the science that allows her to post drivel on Yahoo.

Heffernan reminds me of another journalist: Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge didn't understand or care very much about science either; he once wrote, "It is true that in my lifetime more progress has been made in unravelling the composition and the mechanism of the material universe than previously in the whole of recorded history. This does not at all excite my mind, or even my curiosity." Muggeridge's lack of interest in science had consequences: he once confused a good photographic film with a miracle. That's the kind of nonsense that happens when you think the universe consists of stories whose truth you can just choose at your whim.

Heffernan willingly exposed the limits of her competence and discredited herself. (In another example, she recommended a denialist blog here; it didn't seem to raise many alarm bells at the New York Times.) In the future, no responsible editor should hire her to cover science and technology. The real issue now is whether editors get the message Heffernan conveys, and do a better job assigning reporters to cover stories in their competence.

More Philosophical Silliness

While reading this moral argument against Darwinism by Doug Groothuis, keep in mind that the author reminds us, whenever possible, that he holds a Ph. D. degree.

Arguments like these convince me that a lot of philosophy is a kind of cargo cult mathematics. Practitioners don't do actual reasoning; they construct assemblages of words that mimic mathematical arguments, but fall far short of what a mathematician would consider acceptable.

Let's look at some of the techniques Groothuis employs:

1. Reliance on vague terms that one cannot possibly measure, test, or verify, such as "essential nature", "intrinsically valuable", and "human dignity". (If you have no argument at all, then you can always decry some practice you don't like by claiming it offends "human dignity"; it's a favorite ploy of Robert George.)

2. Quotation fabrication: Darwin never spoke of "less favored races", as Groothuis claims, and the term "favored races" that appears as a subtitle in On the Origin of Species actually refers to what biologists now call "varieties". If you google the phrase "less favored races", you find that it appears largely in creationist websites and a Republican congressional candidate.

3. An incoherent argument that concludes "But (4) is false, because of (5)" and "Therefore (6) is false because of (5)" But the terms (5) and (6) refer to nothing at all!

4. Rewriting history to claim that "our moral intuitions and the history of Western law" provides support for believing that "every human being, irrespective of race" possesses "intrinsic human dignity". Really? Whatever happened to slavery in the history of the US? How about all the Christian Southerners who claimed that slavery was ordained by God? How were black people treated in the US Constitution? In what year were women allowed to vote? If the history of Western law shows us anything, it shows us that our "moral intuitions" are not precisely fixed and are subject to change.

5. Pretending rigor by explaining grade-7 concepts like "modus tollens" and "reduction ad absurdum". Bad arguments don't get better when you use Latin.

But the silliest thing of all is the attempt to defeat a scientific theory, the theory of evolution, using moral reasoning. This makes no sense at all; it's like trying to justify a claim about chemistry by appealing to political theory.

I feel sorry for Groothuis's students.

The Southern Confederacy Arithmetic

Here is an interesting piece of mathematical Americana: The Southern Confederacy Arithmetic by the Reverend Charles E. Leverett, published by J. T. Patterson & Co., Augusta, Georgia, 1864.

Probably not too many Northern mathematics texts had questions about bales of cotton (p. 140):

Example 1. — A factor sells 25 bales of cotton at $100 per bale : what is his commission at 2½ per cent. ?

Similarly, a Northern text would probably not have an example of an order from Jefferson Davis (p. 209), or helpful explanations such as "In some States there is no capitation tax, and the sum to be raised for the expenses of the Government is collected from each individual, in proportion to his property. In South Carolina, this is on land and negroes, and is called the general tax." (p. 142)

You can also find questions such as (p. 13)

(19.) From the creation of the world to the flood was 1656 years ; from that time to the building of Solomon's Temple, 1336 years; thence to the birth of our Saviour, 1003 years : in what year of the world was our Lord born ?

I suppose it's not as bad as it could be. There are no questions like "Nathan Bedford whipped 3 slaves every day of the week except the Lord's day. How many slaves did he whip in total?"

Value of Personal Knowledge - The Answer

Here's the answer to yesterday's quiz.

1910 was a different world.

Homeopathy Kills

I have a lot of sympathy for Tamara Lovett, whose child Ryan recently died, apparently because she tried to treat his serious illness with worthless homeopathic remedies.

I'm not sure she's the real culprit here. By all accounts so far, she was a good mother who cared about her child. But she was misled by homeopathic and naturopathic propaganda to believe that plain water constituted medical treatment. When homeopathic remedies are sold openly in Canada's drugstores and natural food stores, what is an uneducated person to think? To them, it certainly seems that this kind of nonsense is legit medicine. After all, the government doesn't prohibit it, and a place calling itself a "homeopathic medicine clinic" looks a lot like a real clinic.

Shutting down homeopathic clinics wouldn't necessarily prevent deaths like Ryan Lovett's. But it would go a long way.

The Value of Personal Knowledge

This is part of an advertisement from a magazine in 1910. Can you guess what the key to "achievement of the highest excellence is"? (Answer tomorrow).

Creepy Deal Creating Public Religious School Finally Ends

I only live 20 minutes away from this school, but I never knew about it. Believe it or not, there's a Canadian public school that

• has Bible reading
• recites the Lord's Prayer every day
• only allows Mennonite children to enroll
• has no sex education
• has no teaching of evolution.

Thankfully, the school --- which is about the best example of illegitimate Christian privilege I've ever seen --- is about to close. Just imagine if there were a public school that allowed only Buddhists, or Muslims, or atheists to enroll!

But why has it taken so long?

Why Are There so Few Famous Dutch Composers?

I know little about classical music, but I have no problem listing, off the top of my head, German composers (Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Brahms, Mozart,...), French composers (Berlioz, Ravel, Messiaen, ...), British composers (Britten, Dowland, Elgar, maybe Handel counts again, ...), Italian composers (Verdi, Puccini, Corelli, Vivaldi, ...), American composers (Copland, Gershwin, Glass,...) and so forth.

But I can't name a single Dutch composer.

Here's Wikipedia's list, and I'll be damned if there's a single name I recognize.

It's strange, because there are so many famous Dutch people in other walks of life: scientists (Leeuwenhoek, Huygens, de Waal,...), mathematicians (de Bruijn, Lenstra,...), artists (Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer,...), and so forth.

Where are all the great Dutch composers hiding? Or am I just that ignorant?

Got Moose?

From longtime reader D. S. comes this story about the UN encouraging the production of moose milk.

Moose cheese is already produced in small amounts in Sweden. It's my dream to try that someday.

Full of Hot Air

Stephen Woodworth, our local Conservative MP, is back with a new motion about the definition of "human being". He's also published this bizarre allegory that he thinks explains why.

It explains a lot. The engineer in his allegory doesn't like balloons. Stephen Woodworth doesn't like abortion.

The engineer in his allegory can't convince anyone to outlaw balloons. (Maybe that's because, at least in the allegory, not a single argument against balloons was offered.) So he tries an end-run around the issue by suggesting a bogus study of "aviation principles".

Then, despite his irrational hatred of balloons, the engineer is surprised that people see through his ploy and "accuse the aviation engineer of being a ballooning-hater whose only motive was to destroy the ballooning industry". Well, in the allegory, that was true, wasn't it? In the first paragraph, we learned that "He actively spoke and wrote against ballooning, penning letters to the editor and articles in professional journals to express this opposition to ballooning." So these accusations are perfectly justified, aren't they?

That allegory doesn't mean what Woodworth thinks it means. Somebody's full of hot hair.

50 Years Ago Today

When I was a child, I had this issue of My Weekly Reader on my bulletin board for many years.

Government Behaving Badly

There are so many stories of people in government behaving badly lately, it's hard to know what to pick out. Here are just a few:

• Health Canada torpedoes a cool magnetic pen for ridiculous reasons.
• Canada's Justice Minister Peter MacKay is all upset that Justin Trudeau talked about marijuana legalization in front of teenagers, because we have to keep the phony war on drugs no matter what, or something.
• US House Speaker John Boehner hosts extremist anti-gay group.
• Toronto mayor Rob Ford wants to sue former staffers who revealed his misconduct to investigators, despite no legal ground to stand on. Oh, and he also discusses his sexual practices in detail.
• Wisconsin Republicans restricted early voting because, you know, early voters tend to be Democrats.

Friday Not Quite A Moose Blogging

Here's a video of an elk on a trampoline. Not quite a moose, but close.

Hat tip: reader D. S.

Good Environmental News from Utah

Good news from Utah: a federal court has struck down the Bureau of Land Management's insane plan to designate over 4000 miles of Utah trails as suitable for off-road vehicle travel. Unrestricted ORV use tends to destroy streams and and soil and plants. The BLM's plan would have destroyed some beautiful wilderness areas. The decision will likely be a precedent for overturning similar plans elsewhere.

Hell Would Be Having to Listen to Francis Spufford

Some atheists are really boring, such as R. Joseph Hoffmann. But I've got to admit, I'd much rather have dinner with Dr. Hoffmann than Francis Spufford. Spufford, a Christian, an author, and a teacher of creative writing at Goldsmiths College, makes the history of NASCAR seem fascinating by comparison.

Take this Spufford piece, for example. It just rambles on and on, with paragraphs the size of the Himalayas, saying not very much at all, and doing so in the most supercilious and insufferable manner imaginable. This man actually teaches creative writing? Students of Spufford: run, don't walk, to the nearest exit, and learn writing from someone who can write, not someone who uses the phrase "bizarre category error" twice in the same essay. (Even using "category error" once by itself merits a big horselaugh -- R. Joseph Hoffmann is fond of it, too.)

Spufford starts with a healthy dollop of religious persecution complex; he thinks that being a Christian means there will be atheist "voices ... getting louder and louder" and "shouting right in ... [the] ear" of his daughter, telling her she's wrong. Funny, the only voices I hear shouting when I walk around my town are drunk people, insane people, and fundamentalist preachers. I'd really like to visit Spufford's town to see all these shouting atheists; it must make quite a show.

Spufford claims that "belief ... involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable." Really? You mean so uncompromising that you don't actually address the fundamental question of whether your beliefs are true or not? Spufford seems to think that his religious beliefs are justified because (a) they're normal (b) they're part of his imagination and (c) they make him feel good. Most of us have grown up enough to realize those aren't particularly compelling reasons.

He then spends a quarter of his essay attacking a London bus ad which said, "There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Spufford apparently thinks the ad means that "enjoyment" is the sole goal of life and that the ad will be poor consolation for people with lives stricken with poverty, disease, or personal tragedies. But that's not what it means and not whom the ad is directed to, as anyone with connected brain cells can figure out. Hey, why not attack "Coke - Life begins here" instead? How limited must a man's Weltanschauung be if it has to commence with a carbonated beverage!

Like many North American atheists, I used to be a Christian. I ceased to become a Christian because the fundamental claims of Christianity -- which involve a unique all-powerful god, who is actually three different gods, that raped a woman to conceive a son, which is one of those three gods, who then died (but did not really die) to remove sin from me which is only sin because he decided it would be so, and which is not my sin, but rather the sin of a nonexistent ancient ancestor, and I must believe this or be consigned to a fiery hell, and he knows the future and hence everything I will do (but I also have free will) and he also loves me and cares about me, but if I put my hoohah in someone else's doohickey, I'm toast -- are simply not believable to anyone who spends 5 minutes thinking about it. Only someone who was propagandized from birth that this load of puerile nonsense is plausible could fall for it. For me it makes no logical sense, but also no emotional sense. A grotesque fable of one person's sin "redeemed" (whatever that is supposed to mean) by the execution of another, probably mentally deranged, has no emotional resonance at all for me.

What I find more interesting are the reactions to Spufford's piece in Salon. Thirty years ago, the comments would have been largely supportive. Those pesky atheists, they're juvenile, and stupid, and they miss the big picture... how right you are! Now, though, there's a sea change. The vast majority of comments are negative, pointing out the deficiencies in Spufford's reasoning (if one can call it that) and writing style. Now that is progress.

I really think that "Spufford" should be a verb: "to bore with ponderous incoherence". We went to the lecture, but the guy was just spuffording, so we left early. Now, where's that history of NASCAR?