See you in September
Both A and I will be away from computers over the weekend, so you won’t be hearing from us again until early next week. If you’re in the US, we hope you have a happy Labor Day, and if you’re not in the US, don’t you wish you got a day off from work in honor of people who work?
Since I know how devastating it will be to go a whole long weekend without anything new from us to read, here are some choice posts from back in the day (three months ago, when we started this blog) that you probably haven’t seen before:
- Hymenoplasty: a moral dilemma on a controversial surgery and its cultural implications, by A
- Gender gap in math (and reading) on data interpretation versus political correctness, by Z
- Right to bear arms? on what really belongs in the Constitution, by A
We’re going to turn comment moderation off until we’re back, so anything you post will go up right away even if you’re new here. Have fun, and try to shield your eyes from the spam.
Gambling on Palin
I’m not going to do a full post on the Obama speech because I largely agree with the conventional wisdom that everyone started spouting the minute it was done. It was a very good speech, and it was excellent political theater. I was particularly excited to see the counterattacks on McCain. I say counterattacks rather than “attacks” or “defense,” and I think the distinction is important. He defended himself against McCain, but he did so by attacking McCain for even making the attacks in the first place. (Perfect example: attacking McCain for suggesting that Obama didn’t put his country first.) Attacking the partisan attacks is a very good way to go on the offensive without totally ruining the bipartisan, new politics feel of the campaign.
Now, for the news of the day: McCain picks Sarah Palin for VP. This is, as far as I’m concerned, a huge gamble in more ways than one. There are some obvious upsides, though most of them are political/tactical rather than about good governance. She has very good anti-corruption credentials. That should definitely help get the McCain as reformer image back. She’s also young, which helps, though it also might highlight McCain’s age. Most importantly, of course, she’s female. This is obviously an attempt to win over Hillary voters, and it’s one that has a meaningful chance of working. It obviously won’t get nearly a majority (I mean, she’s vehemently pro-life, for starters) but getting a sizable minority would be plenty to do massive damage. She also has a nice, conservative-friendly biography.
The downsides, though, are blatantly obvious. The first one is her utter lack of any experience whatsoever. She has two years as governor of Alaska, a state with fewer people living in it than most major cities. She hasn’t touched a foreign policy decision in her life. This is particularly noteworthy because of McCain’s attacks on Obama. It’s not insane to claim Obama is short on experience. At the very least, he has far less than McCain, but you can’t claim Obama is too inexperienced and then claim Palin is ready to jump into the presidency at a moment’s notice. Being a prominent senator is clearly more experience than Palin has, even if it’s still your first term. Moreover, Obama has all sorts of other resume items — community activism, a distinguished academic career, time in the state legislature. Palin was mayor of a town of under 10,000 people. That puts her somewhere in between high school principals and university chancellors in level of responsibility. She definitely doesn’t have a distinguished early life either (second-place Miss Alaska followed by University of Idaho and no post-grad degree) or any other non-political credentials. She doesn’t have anything like Obama’s early Iraq speech to show that despite not being in office she was making good policy decisions. Choosing someone like Lieberman would have allowed McCain to continue the experience-based criticism. Picking someone like Jindal or Pawlenty would have made it hard to criticize Obama. You have to go pretty far into the land of the neophytes before Obama would feel comfortable going on the offensive on experience, but McCain has managed to do it.
Palin’s issue profile is also about as far the right as you could possibly fine. She’s very fiscally conservative, which is something that, while I disagree with it, I can respect — there’s a legitimate argument to be made for it. She is also, however, conservative in some ways that make no sense. Reason has a good post about this. There’s this great gem on global warming, for example:
Q. What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?
A. A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
You’d think that the governor of Alaska of all places would be clear on this one by now. My favorite, though, is this one, where she comes out in favor of teaching creationism in public schools. Now, as much as we like to point out that intelligent design and creationism are in fact the same thing, it’s a little comforting to me that most proponents of teaching creationism at least feel the need to pretend they’re not advocating teaching a religious belief in a public school, or at least have enough deference to the Supreme Court to try to work around it. Here, though, she goes against decades of established law and practice and actually calls what she’s supporting creationism. It’s nice that she’s honest, but I really thought that phase of the debate was over by now.
“Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information….Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject — creationism and evolution. It’s been a healthy foundation for me. But don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides.”
She’s also, of course, massively pro-oil. Anyone from Alaska has to be. Lots of states have their own self-interested idiotic policies. In Iowa it’s ethanol, and in Alaska it’s oil. I’m not particularly extreme on environmental issues. I can definitely see the argument for drilling offshore or in ANWR, though I still come down on the other side. What I can’t stand, though, is the implication that those decisions, which are pretty low-impact, could possibly take the place of strong efforts on alternative energy sources and other kids of research (electric cars, actually clean coal, etc.). Nevertheless, here she goes right off the deep end:
I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem…
The outcome of this choice is going to be a wonderful experiment in the intelligence of the average voter. If voters are rational, she should be loved by the Republican base, but hated by independents. She should win over very few Hillary voters. She’s massively opposite Clinton on the issues. If people though Obama was too inexperienced (the only rational reason I’ve seen for voting for Clinton but then choosing McCain over Obama), then Palin should seem much worse, and should hurt. The only reason left for the Clinton-to-McCain switch is to literally say you are such a feminist that you will vote for a female regardless of the issues. That’s a bizarre form of feminism, choosing the affirmative-action type voting motivation over things like abortion rights and equal pay. I would have respect for someone who was honest about that motivation, but I think it’s so obviously idiotic that no one consciously believes that it’s the reason for their vote. In general, Palin should hurt McCain’s appeal to anyone other than the far right wing.
If, however, voters are irrational (and they probably are), the outcome of this decision is unclear. The youth and vitality and reform will help the brand. She might make McCain look old, and the inexperience will definitely get some traction. She’ll get some female support, and in a way being female might make it harder to get the far-right policy stuff to really stick. It’ll be interesting. There’s definitely no way anyone can criticize McCain for making a boring choice, at least.
Tired of campaign ads
I wish the political discourse accessible to the majority of the population came in chunks longer than 30 seconds. You can’t make or refute an argument in that short a span of time, and the result is that no one wins. We’ve stopped expecting political dialogue to involve arguments and answers in the first place – it’s all about the quick sell. I could point you to a dozen videos of campaign ads as proof of this, but if you know how to search on YouTube or really even turn on a television, I trust you can find plenty of examples for yourself.
There are lots of times when politicians should naturally want to explain themselves. Many of the sound bites and other tidbits easily turned into attack ads started out as decently reasonable things but were taken out of context. Not all started out as genuinely good things, but they’re usually not as bad as they’re made out to sound. You can tell because the voiceovers in the ads sound like they’re in a trailer for some dystopian sci-fi movie. In a world where nothing is quite like it seems… If they really had a thoroughly compelling case to make, they wouldn’t need to explain it in an ominous voice with scary sound effects. Surely there’s another side to the story… why aren’t politicians eager to refute these weak attacks?
The biggest example of this lately is all the hubbub about who said what about whom before the US Presidential nominations were secured. The Clintons and Joe Biden said Obama didn’t have enough experience, particularly in foreign policy. Romney criticized McCain on a million different things. McCain’s using clips of Hillary Clinton and Biden in ads now. How could McCain even consider Romney, commentators are saying, since he said such nasty things about McCain during the campaign?
This baffles me, especially after having watched both the Clintons’ and Biden’s speeches at the Democratic National Convention, in which they gave full support to Obama and his ability to lead the country. There’s such an easy response! Why isn’t it being made explicitly? It would work equally well for Romney, should the need arise. It goes like this: “Last year I thought [fill in name] had [fill in shortcoming]. but over the past months, as I’ve watched him campaign and heard his opinions on [cite a few key issues or events], I’ve come to realize the depth of his [strength in area of supposed shortcoming] and I’m now entirely sure that he is a well-qualified candidate.” There, was that so hard? We can admit that we changed our minds because we had actual reason to do so.
I could imagine acceptable explanations of lots of other seeming grounds for attack. Voted before some legislation before you voted against it? Explain how bills are usually hundreds and hundreds of pages long, and get amended at different times in complicated ways, so it’s possible to have the “same” bill with very different policy outcomes at two different times. Told a bunch of evangelical Christians that deciding when life begins is “above your pay grade”? Point out that the nature of life is a complex philosophical, theological, and scientific question, and that while any group of people might think it has the answer, it’s not the place of the president to decree that there’s one right perspective when there’s so much debate still going on. Unable to remember how many houses you own? Explain that they’re in your wife’s name, and she buys and sells them without really involving you at all. And maybe confess to the fact that almost all nationally well-known politicians are very wealthy, and seriously, we all knew that, it’s not a crime.
The thing about McCain’s houses really interests me. I just searched on JohnMcCain.com for anything about that mini-scandal, and couldn’t find anything except for a bunch of old articles about the subprime mortgage crisis. I can understand not making a big shiny featured link on your front page to your refutation of Obama’s attacks, but I can’t understand not taking the time to clear them up at all.
On the other hand, Barack Obama has a section of his web site called Fight the Smears. That’s a good start, but it doesn’t cover the more nuanced stuff, and even for what it does cover a lot of people aren’t looking there or don’t even realize the site exists.
I’d like to see the mainstream media stop reporting on what misconceptions the public might hold about incendiary campaign ads, and start reporting on the truth behind the accusations. I’d like to see politicians unafraid to admit they’ve changed their mind and happy to explain the reasons why. When they just let oversimplified, out-of-context attacks go unresponded to, they’re tacitly admitting that the attacks have merit. We should be trying to raise public discourse to a higher level by expecting that politicians explain their actions, and demanding that they criticize each other only when they have more evidence than a sound bite.
DNC: Day 3
This was awesome. I really have literally no complaints. Bill Clinton was excellent. John Kerry was excellent. Joe Biden was excellent.
Clinton totally beat expectations (which were, admittedly, very low) and made it very clear that he was totally in support of Obama. He vouched for Obama’s readiness, and got in a good amount of clear policy attacks. John Kerry’s accusations of flip-flopping were exactly what I’ve talked about before as the way the Democrats needed to attack McCain, and because it’s John Kerry it’ll get noticed. And as good as they were, Biden outdid both of them. His speech was emotional, honest, and strident. It was perfect for the blue collar voters that Obama has been targeting. It was strong on implied mastery of foreign policy, and in a way that wasn’t about Biden’s mastery of the issue, but about Obama’s. It packaged a coherent view of Democratic positions in a way I haven’t seen many do recently. (I’m thinking about things like the psychological value of work, for example.) It was aggressive and went after McCain, but didn’t come off as a negative speech. He told Obama’s life story in an earnest way that no one else has (and Obama, because it would sound egotistical, can’t even attempt). It was, overall, an absolutely great night.
DNC: Day 2
Well, the convention got better last night. Schweitzer gave the kind of speech that I think should fill all the time in between the big headliners. It was interesting and engaging. It was exciting. It got your attention, and it used that attention to make a point. I really have trouble imagining that the Democratic Party, which includes half the professional politicians in the country, can’t find more people who can pull off that kind of speech.
Warner’s keynote speech was solid. Obama’s keynote last year was the best contemporary political speech I’ve heard, and no one could be expected to follow with anything that would really live up to it. Warner’s isn’t going to be historically noteworthy, but it was fine.
Of course, the big speech of the night was Hillary’s, and it was very good. I can definitely nitpick it, but it was strong, and it did what it needed to do. It’s particularly important because there has been some polling evidence recently that the movement of Hillary voters towards Obama was stalling short of completion. This is surprising, since revelations since the campaign ended really undermine the only rationale there ever really was for picking her over Obama. Anyone who hasn’t should definitely read Politico’s “Relentless” series. It explains how Hillary chose less competent, less experienced staff because she wanted people who were personally loyal to her, and how she allowed (or maybe requested) those who tried to alert her directly of the horrible mismanagement of her campaign to be punished, rather than rewarded. It’s exactly the loyalty-over-competence, dissent-squashing environment that led to intelligence failures and Katrina mismanagement in the Bush administration. So much for the wonders of experience. With these new revelations, there is little remaining ground for believing Hillary would have been a better president.
But that’s not really the point. Even if Hillary was better qualified than Obama and deserved to be president, and even if she was unfairly blocked by a sexist media, responding by elimating constitutional protection of abortion rights, lengthening the war, and giving up all hope of healthcare reform is illogical bordering on insane. This is obvious, but for some reason a large number of people haven’t seen it. I don’t know why. It might be feminist-oriented identity politics, or it might be racism, or it might just be that most people are dumb, but for some reason many people seem devoted to her in a way more fitting of a cult leader than a politician. Nonetheless, it’s good that Hillary herself pointed this out. We can only hope it worked.
Skeptical blogging
I struggle with the idea of blogging about being a skeptic, or writing posts full of skepticism on beliefs that are widely held by a gullible public. What’s the point?
I know there are bloggers out there going point by point through lists of reasons to believe in God, refuting every dumb thing written on Conservapedia, or answering every anti-vaccinationist nut that writes a blog comment — and I’m happy that they’re doing it. I’m happy that there are lots of web sites explaining why homeopathy and acupuncture aren’t real medicine. I just don’t understand having the necessary motivation, given that so many of those websites exist and have existed for a while now, to write new posts about old issues that have already been covered. I know I usually can’t muster it, for two main reasons.
Reason 1: Redundancy. There are scores of blog posts out there explaining why crazy thing X is not worth believing in. I’m not an expert in the truth about crazy thing X, and while I might be able to explain the arguments in a slightly more articulate fashion than a few other people out there, I couldn’t add any substantive material. All I would be doing is repeating what’s already been written.
Reason 2: Audience. True, we do get the occasional hit from someone searching “no pain spray” on Google. I’m glad that people are finding my criticism in addition to online advertisements for the product. By and large, though, the people reading skeptical blogs are skeptics. The people reading atheist blogs are atheists. It’s fun to read someone really eviscerating the writings of Ray Comfort or Dinesh D’Souza, but almost no one who believes either of them is going to be reading along with you. Anyone who is is just looking to post an angry refutation, and isn’t likely to change their mind.
I get a sort of self-congratulatory feeling from the millionth post I read about Bigfoot hoaxes or alien sightings or the argument from evil. We’re not really convincing people, we’re just trumpeting how great we are that we are capable of reason. Yeah, it’s a nice feeling, and yeah, we’re not going to be encouraged to be reasonable by anyone else, but aren’t we wasting our time? It seems like we can all get together and agree that homeopathy is full of crap, then move on to applying our critical thinking skills to new issues.
When a newspaper writes an article about how awesome pet psychics are, fine, blog about how this is stupid. When a new study comes out finally doing a thorough scientific debunking of some woo, okay, blog about that. I’m not really talking about those things. What I mean is: We know that Answers in Genesis doesn’t care about scientific facts, and we know that intelligent design is creationism. We know that the only valuable aspects of chiropractic medicine are the same as the valuable parts of back massage. We also know that so-called psychics don’t have any special powers and are just good at fishing for answers from you. Merely explaining that these people are wrong is not giving new information.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, in terms of my own blogger’s-block issues, but it came to the forefront for me as I was looking around Edger. Let me first say that this is an awesome, new site for the skeptical youth community, and I encourage you to check it out. It’s a student initiative of the Center For Inquiry. By its own description, “Edger presents hard-hitting and reasoned news, views, and event promotion on issues pertaining to secularism, atheism, science, humanism, and the cosmos, and actively promotes and celebrates international freethought activism.” That sounds great to me. However, they did something I don’t understand.
Here’s the Edger post on homeopathy. It does a good job of clearly explaining the principles of homeopathic medicine and why they make no sense whatsoever. I’m not knocking that. It’s just that we already had that, here, here, here, and here. Also here, here, and here. Don’t forget here. Or the other 405,000 hits you can get searching “homeopathy fraud” on Google. Or the 21,800 for “homeopathy debunked,” or the 202,000 for “homeopathy scam.”
I know some of those Google hits are for sites titled things like “Homeopathy: Fraud, or the Most Awesome Thing Ever?” I also know that there are 7.5 million hits for just “homeopathy,” and plenty of them are not skeptical at all. I see the value of trying to play with Google rankings. I just think this is a long, slow way to go about trying to win over people to the skeptic side. If we look at expected return per unit effort, I think it turns out to be better for skeptical bloggers to stop writing brand new posts saying, “Hey! I found someone saying something dumb!” and spend that time brainstorming new ways to educate the public effectively. (I plan to do some of that brainstorming in a future post.)
Am I wrong? Is there some reason I’ve missed? Where do you get your motivation for skeptical blogging? Please let me know in the comments.
DNC: Day 1
I’ve gotta say I was a little disappointed with the first day of the Democratic convention. Michelle Obama’s very good speech was clearly the highlight of the evening, though of course it wasn’t the outstanding caliber we’ve come to expect of her husband. It was worlds better than what most of the non-politicians on stage at these things can do. It was on a good theme, and I was happy with it.
The Ted Kennedy tribute, on the other hand, I think was a real mistake. My agreements with him are much greater than my disagreements, but he’s still not a hero to me. It’s a generational thing, and a partisanship thing, but I just don’t think his appeal is that broad. In many groups, he’s the epitome of the hated northeastern liberal. Did we really need to have a video about him and his yacht? This is not the kind of thing that could possibly attract swing voters. Now, if the goal is to get wavering older, female Democrats, then maybe it wasn’t so bad. I can see some benefit there. Honestly, though, quotes about how Obama and Kennedy will be working hand-in-hand once Obama is president are not going to help with independents. I know it’s hard. He’s a hero to most of the people in the convention center, and his health problems made his appearance inspiring to those who have been following his difficulties. Most Americans, though, haven’t been. Seeing him give a generally normal speech wasn’t that surprising to them. The Republicans are good at picking the stuff that will appeal to the audience at home rather than whatever those in the convention want to hear. That kind of message discipline is sorely lacking in the Democrats.
The rest of the night was… well, it wasn’t. Nothing got much attention. Of course, this is partly because I was watching on CNN, which chose its commentators over many of the other speeches, but that’s exactly the point. The Democrats need to put on a show compelling enough for CNN to feel like it makes better television than their repetitive talking heads. I don’t care if it’s a governor, a senator, a CEO, an Iraq veteran, or a high school teacher. They needed to find some people who know how to give a good speech and give them interesting things to say. A little bit of talk about issues, a little talk about Bush and his incompetence, a little talk about McCain and his flip-flops, etc. It doesn’t really matter exactly what it’s about as long as it’s not a brief bio of the person coming after you. (Well, it does, but anything is better than nothing.) What’s important is that it gets people’s attention. Tonight really did not succeed in that respect. Now, future nights I think will be better. A quick look down the schedule definitely shows tonight as the weak night. (Gore, Warner, and Hillary Clinton all speak tomorrow, for example.) Still, it’s one opportunity that was largely missed.
Who’s afraid of the LHC?
Gail Collins’ latest column had me literally laughing out loud. It’s called “Digging Ourselves a Black Hole,” and it’s about the hyped-up fears that the Large Hadron Collider will create a singularity that will devour our planet. The LHC is a new particle accelerator built in Switzerland and intended to go into full operation later this year. Collins simultaneously debunks and embraces the black hole speculations, lending a bit of perspective to more common concerns:
I am bringing this up now because it is always important to remember that things could be worse. You may be worried about a new cold war or a major bank failure, or afraid of losing your job or your house or your credit rating. You may be depressed by your first look at the fall TV schedule. …
Perspective is all. If you’re going to fret, I say, fret about that black hole. For one thing, it makes it much easier to schedule unpleasant tasks for the second half of September. Heads, the planet survives. Tails, the root canal never happens.
I had a very similar realization right around when I took my first quantum mechanics course. One notable thing about quantum physics, as distinguished from classical physics, is that particles are described as having some small probability of being in places which are classically forbidden. Without getting too technical, let me make an analogy. Imagine you had a ball rolling back and forth in a valley, but on the other side of each hill is another valley. Classically, unless you let go of the ball at one hill’s peak, there’s no chance of it rolling all the way over into the next valley. It’s limited by the amount of total energy it has — potential plus kinetic. On the other hand, if the ball was a tiny particle governed by quantum mechanics rather than by macroscopic rules, there would be a small chance of it tunneling through one of the hills and popping out on the other side. (When I say small, I mean extremely minuscule. But nonzero.)
When I first learned about quantum tunneling, I had a horrifying thought: This means there is some chance of me spontaneously falling through my chair and the floor below me and landing on some poor unsuspecting student in the classroom below us! But then I had a more horrifying thought: Because the probability of tunneling decays exponentially with distance in the classically forbidden region, it’s many orders of magnitude more likely that I fall partway through the floor and then get stuck. Ew.
Of course, my body is made up of so many atoms, and even my flimsy chair was so thick from a quantum-mechanical perspective, that the probabilities we’re talking about here are so tiny as to be effectively zero. (I would be more likely to win the lottery while being struck by lightning for the second time and being bitten by a shark.) Nevertheless, “effectively zero” is not the same as zero. It is still technically possible… yet somehow, we manage to go on. (We laugh in the face of danger every day, we physicists. That’s why we’re heroes.)
In a way similar to this quantum tunneling issue, the black hole fears about the LHC are not entirely unfounded, but they do give a great example of making mountains out of molehills. We don’t know everything about particle physics — that’s why the LHC was built, after all — so we have a couple different theoretical questions that we’re trying to answer. The old “Standard Model” theory says that the LHC will not yield energies high enough to create black holes. It is hypothesized that the Standard Model needs to include large extra dimensions in order to account for various unresolved questions, and in very large-scale experiments like LHC the energies needed for black hole production might possibly be accessible. In fact, one of the many purposes of such large-scale experiments is to test for evidence that would support this hypothesis. Even if we did see black holes, though, they would be so tiny that they are likely to evaporate almost immediately by Hawking radiation. We don’t have any direct evidence supporting the idea of Hawking radiation yet, because its levels would be very small and difficult to detect, but it has held up to thorough theoretical checks and the safety of LHC has been accepted by the vast majority of physicists.
Recap: The mainstream theory says black holes cannot occur at LHC. One alternative hypothesis posits a possibility of micro black holes at LHC, but the mainstream understanding of these black holes is that they would evaporate almost immediately and pose no danger whatsoever.
Recap of the recap: You need to go to the alternative alternative theorists to get someone who believes there might be a danger from black holes at LHC.
Don’t get me wrong, though. The LHC makes me very afraid — just not about black holes. I’m afraid for the future of pure science research in the US. The LHC was built in Switzerland, already the home of CERN. ITER is going to be built in France. No large-scale experimental physics facilities are planned for sites in the US. Back in the early 1990s, the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) was being built in Texas, but Congress decided to cut funding and the project had to be canceled.
It used to be the case that physics professors would come to American universities and research facilities to participate in international collaborations. If you were involved in a large-scale, groundbreaking project, chances were good you’d be spending part of the year in the US. Now that funding and facilities for new experiments are not available in the States, American professors and researchers are going to Europe and Asia for several months at a time to get their research done. I’m not saying this is objectively bad — science should be done everywhere, and people of every nationality are equally capable of doing it — but it’s definitely bad for the United States. When research is done here, researchers visit here and, for their careers, want to live here. A significant number of them start billion-dollar companies here, sometimes based on spinoff technology from their research and sometimes spontaneously spawned in the fertile intellectual environment of research-focused communities. Other already-existing companies also benefit from new discoveries. This creates jobs, contributes hugely to the economy in general, and raises the American standard of living. And Congress decided that this is not worth considering as a national priority? Now that’s terrifying.
Obama – Biden ‘08!
The Biden pick is excellent in many ways. In these situations, I always have two conflicting parts of my personality. One is the voter who wants whomever will be best for the job. The other is the strategist who, having already decided I prefer Obama to McCain, wants whomever will maximize Obama’s chances.
The voter side of me is thrilled. I’ve liked Biden for years because he’s clearly smart and knows his stuff. He’s known and respected in foreign capitals for a reason. In addition to having plenty of legislative experience, he was also a constitutional law professor like Obama, and is clearly willing to say what he thinks. Really, he’s the kind of guy who should have a lot more national name-recognition than he does. Americans are, in general, pitifully bad at identifying members of their own legislature, and Biden ought to be as easily identified as anyone. If name recognition really worked the way it should, Biden probably would have had a very good shot at getting the Democratic nomination himself.
The strategist side is also happy, but not totally without reservation. My concern is largely what I’ve said before — that I think picking someone whose credentials are largely in foreign policy does more to highlight and tacitly admit to a shortcoming on the issue than it does to address it. Nevertheless, it clearly does something to address it. There is also the strategic concern of his earlier comments about Obama not being ready, but I think this is, despite being a clear downside, not going to be horrible.
Biden does have a lot of other strategic considerations going for him. He has blue-collar appeal, though I don’t think he has so much blue collar support at this point. I’m sure within Delaware he does, and he has a lot of national potential, but I don’t think he has the name recognition to have much support already. (I think I caught on CNN that he’s the least wealthy senator?) Also, he’s clearly very good at the nonabrasive attack. He’s so straightforward with all his thoughts that his attacks seem like he’s just more candid about his thoughts than others are. I think he’s one of few that can add the aggressiveness the Obama campaign needs without undermining the positive image. His son is going to Iraq, which will be a mild background help. He has Pennsylvania roots, though I doubt that’s a huge thing (I think that Pennsylvania is actually not that big a concern — if Obama is losing there, he’s already lost). Overall, Biden’s a politically solid pick, and I’m not sure anyone else would clearly be better, but from this perspective he’s not as unambiguously good as my voter side would rate him.
This is a good choice and a strong ticket. Any Democrat should be happy. Now I get to go back to being conflicted about whether I want to see a good Republican VP who I wouldn’t mind in office versus seeing a stupid choice (i.e. Romney) that’d maximize Obama’s chances.
Carnival of Mathematics #39
We at It’s the Thought that Counts are happy to be hosting the 39th edition of the Carnival of Mathematics. The carnival is published biweekly and includes a wide variety of articles about math — everything from general-interest posts about math in society to advanced technical proofs. This edition has been plagued by some organizational difficulties — many weren’t aware that we were hosting this time, and the Blog Carnival submission form was down — so if you didn’t get your submission in in time, I’d be happy to hear from you and add things to the carnival. Just email me at a@thoughtcounts.net.
Although I study theoretical computer science and my coauthor Z studies physics, our posts here are more often about math and science policy considerations than about specific topics in our fields. I nevertheless couldn’t resist taking this opportunity to pose a clever math problem in honor of the number 39:
39 people are attending a large, formal dinner, which must of course occur at a single, circular table. The guests, after milling about for a while, sit down to eat. It is then pointed out to them that there are name cards labeling assigned seats, and not a single one has sat in the seat assigned to them. Prove that there is some way to rotate the table so that at least two people are in the correct seats. (update: answer in the comments)
While you’re mulling that problem over, if you’d like to see another with no solution yet posted, head over to Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere for one that Sam Shah wrote. It’s based on a problem he found from 1896, and it’s definitely a challenge.
Several of you took the opportunity this time around to teach some math. If you’re looking for advanced and technical math writing, the clear winner this week is Charles Siegel at Rigorous Trivialities with a post on algebraic geometry. He’s written about how to explicitly construct curves of arbitrary degree with specified nodes.
Catsynth offers us a taste of knot theory. Knot theory is one of those areas of math lucky enough to have associated with it lots of cool pictures, some of which you can see in this post. There’s also an introduction to some potentially interesting but unanswered questions about prime knots.
There are even more pretty pictures available at Jon Ingram’s blog, Lessons Taught; Lessons Learnt. In “The Joy of Hex,” Jon shows lots of tilings using rotations of a single hexagonal shape, and poses some interesting questions about relationships between the tilings. He also describes how tilings can be a useful educational tool to show students that not all math looks like algebra.
In other educational news, Larry Ferlazzo points out a new website which gives step-by-step instructions for a wide variety of high school math problem types. He also points out the extensive glossary, useful for students learning English along with math.
If you’re still not convinced that the internet provides many great opportunities for teaching and learning math, check out Maria Andersen’s post on “Teaching from the Online Calculus Trenches.” She showcases the 100 slides she made for a presentation on online teaching software and its promises and limitations.
Speaking of software, there’s a poll going on at Walking Randomly concerning what mathematical software you would use if you could pick whatever you wanted. These competing software packages generate some fierce and probably irrational loyalty among users, so I’m happy to see a growing collection of opinions. If you feel qualified you should definitely weigh in. Otherwise, check it out to see what might be worth learning.
We’ll close with two posts on math in the Olympics. John Cook at The Endeavor gives us a statistical model of Olympic performance by athletes of different genders. He points out that the difference in performance could be the result of a difference in variability across genders rather than a difference in average ability, and gives a quantitative illustration of this possibility.
Finally, while following the Olympic pole vaulting coverage, Xi at 360 notes a silly consequence of the official USATF system for converting between Imperial and metric units. Apparently, the convention is always to round down, which means that by converting back and forth it’s possible to get hilarious results.
That’s all for now. Don’t forget, we’ll continue to update this over the weekend to accommodate new submissions.