Recursivity

Aboard the Toronto Airport Ferry

2009-11-24T14:09:00.004-05:00

I never flew into the Toronto Island airport before, but I did so for the first time on Sunday. After you land, a ferry takes you across 120 meters of water in 60 seconds. This is what the view looks like from the ferry. Not bad, eh?

Another Anti-Choicer Refuses to State What the Penalty Should be for Abortion

2009-11-24T09:08:00.002-05:00

I commented about this earlier.

Here's the bishop of Providence, RI, who wants to outlaw abortion but refuses to say what the penalty should be for a woman who has an abortion.

Coma Video Shows Use of Bogus "Facilitated Communication" Technique

2009-11-24T08:08:00.003-05:00

By now you've probably heard the story of a man, thought to be in a coma for 23 years, who was recently "discovered" to be conscious the whole time.

Maybe so. But maybe not.

As James Randi points out, a video clearly shows that the man himself is not typing. Instead, a woman is shown using a technique called "facilitated communication", where she moves his hand to type on a keyboard. He is not moving his hand independently.

Facilitated communication is a bogus technique that has been exposed as fraudulent.

This makes me very suspicious of the entire report.

Not surprisingly, at Uncommon Descent, Denyse ("The World's Crappiest Reporter") O'Leary completely buys the story.

Three Felonies a Day

2009-11-24T07:01:00.003-05:00

That's the title of a new book by Harvey Silverglate. The subtitle is "How the Feds Target the Innocent".

There's no question that overzealous and politically-motivated prosecution has destroyed the lives of many innocent people. One prominent example discussed by Silverglate is former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, whose conviction on corruption charges was almost certainly engineered by Karl Rove and the Bush White House.

Despite this, I was disappointed by the book. For one thing, the title - based on a claim that the average "busy professional" "likely commit[s] several federal crimes" each day, is simply not substantiated. The crimes discussed in this book are mostly things like overprescription of painkillers, flawed medical device manufacture, accounting fraud, etc., which are probably not the domain of the average "busy professional". For another, the focus on federal crimes leaves out some of the most egregious prosecutions, like those for copyright violation and teenagers recording their own sex acts.

But the main flaw is that I was not actually convinced by several of the cases discussed that the people charged were actually innocent or that the prosecutions were illegitimate. Some of the cases turn on strained readings of existing law, where the people involved should have known their actions were dubious. In two cases - the prosecution of Boston pols Kevin White and Thomas Finneran - Silverglate seems to suggest that influence peddling is just a normal part of city politics, and nothing to get worked up over. I don't agree. I want all politicians to keep their decisions squeaky clean and completely removed from their financial interests. They need to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest.

So, while I agree with Silverglate's main thesis, I think some of the cases he chose were not the best examples of overzealous prosecution. Too bad - because this is an important topic that deserves a comprehensive treatment.

Rowing and the Thue-Morse Sequence

2009-11-21T07:47:00.005-05:00

Here's an interesting preprint by John Barrow about the optimal configuration of rowers to minimize "wiggle". The story was picked up by Technology Review, which you should go read first.

Ultimately, the problem comes down to assigning exactly half of the numbers from 1 through N a sign of +1, and the other half -1, so that the sum of the numbers is 0. For N = 4 there is one solution


1   2   3   4
+1 -1  -1   +1

and its "reflection" that is obtained by multiplying everything by -1.

It's easy to prove that a solution exists if and only if N is a multiple of 4. For N = 8, Barrow proposes some new solutions.

There is a connection here to the Thue-Morse sequence t(i), which assigns to i either +1 or -1, according to the parity of the number of 1's in the binary expansion of i. An old theorem of D. H. Lehmer implies that

Σ_{0 ≤ i < 2^k} t(i) p(i) = 0

for any polynomial of degree < k. So in particular, the Thue-Morse sequence gives an infinite family of solutions to the wiggle-free rowing problem, whenever N is a power of 2. In particular, for N = 8, Barrow's solution (d) is given by the Thue-Morse sequence.

As an aside, Barrow implies something about the complexity of the problem in his abstract. He says, "We show that the problem of ﬁnding the zero-moment rigs is equivalent to a version of the NP-complete Subset Sum problem." No, not really. He showed that his problem is a special case of the subset-sum problem, which says nothing at all about its complexity. After all, his problem is also a special case of the halting problem! And in any event, since it is easy to show that solutions exist if and only if N is a multiple of 4, the decision problem's complexity is trivial.

This is yet another example of the rule that says "Whenever scientists or mathematicians with no formal training in computer science talk about complexity theory, with high probability they are quickly going to say something stupid." For another example, see here. Of course, if I were to write about physics, no doubt I would say something equally stupid.

Authoritarian Creep of the Month

2009-11-20T05:54:00.004-05:00

Kurt Greenbaum is the "director of social media" at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Last Friday, he posted a topic for discussion, What's the Craziest Thing You've Ever Eaten?

One not-particularly-clever commenter wrote in the answer, "pussy", and Greenbaum's authoritarian streak took over. How dare anyone refer to oral sex in his space! How shocking! How vulgar!

Greenbaum then did what every good little fascist-in-training would do: he tattletaled on the commenter to his employer:

A few minutes later, the same guy posted the same single-word comment again. I deleted it, but noticed in the WordPress e-mail that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included.

About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.

Not surprisingly, the reaction to Greenbaum's misconduct was negative. What to do? Why, shut off the comments, of course!

Comments are still open on here, in case you want to pile on.

Update: the Post-Dispatch deleted my comment, although it contained no profanity - just criticism. Big surprise.

Sarah Palin: Pathological Liar

2009-11-20T04:41:00.003-05:00

Huffington Post demonstrates that Sarah Palin's pathological liar tendencies continue in her new book.

Wow, what a surprise.

I guess now she'll have to threaten them with a lawsuit, too.

Meanwhile, you can watch this video from two clueless Palin supporters.

Paper Rebutting Dembski Finally Out

2009-11-18T12:52:00.003-05:00

Back on my previous sabbatical, in 2001-2, I spent a couple of months reading WIlliam Dembski's book, No Free Lunch, which he was kind enough to send me. I chose to do that for a number of reasons: first, I was interested to see if his claims about a mathematical refutation of Darwinism were true; second, a sabbatical is the time to tackle some unusual project you don't usually have time for; and third, I have an interest in pseudoscience and pseudomathematics. Reading it led to some fun discussions with Wesley Elsberry and we eventually produced a long, 54-page refutation of many of Dembski's claims.

But then, what to do with it? I had heard Dembski and Ruse were co-editing a voume, so I briefly entertained the idea of submitting it for inclusion there. But I was worried Dembski would refuse because the paper was sharply critical of his work, and after talking to Ruse I had second thoughts and decided to look for another venue. We chose a journal whose subject matter included biology and philosophy, but the paper was eventually rejected -- not because of the quality of the paper, but because the referees felt that spending 54 pages to debunk what they perceived as anti-evolution crackpottery was not a good use of their journal's space.

Finally, we were invited to submit the paper to a special issue of the journal Synthese, and we did so. The paper went through multiple rounds of refereeing, with the referees suggesting that more and more be cut. Now that it has finally appeared, it is down to a measly 34 pages. Luckily the long version is still available online.

If you can't read the Synthese version because you don't have a subscription, just write me and I'll be happy to send you a copy.

This is the longest interval I've ever had between finishing a paper (2002) and the time it appeared (2009). And it's likely to be my only paper in a philosophy journal. I predict that the intelligent design community will continue to ignore all the criticisms (which have been available to them for years) and continue to pretend that CSI is actually a coherently-defined entity, and that the "law of conservation of information" holds. I predict lots of breast-beating, and excuses for not addressing our criticisms, but no response that deals forthrightly with all the errors we found in Dembski's work.

Creationists Handing Out Origin of Species at MIT

2009-11-18T12:04:00.005-05:00

As you probably know, creationist moron Ray Comfort has created a new version of Darwin's Origin of Species with his own introduction, and his minions are now handing them out at college campuses in the US. Above is a picture taken 15 minutes ago at MIT, showing a creationist happily distributing this bizarre book.

While these morons are distributing Ray Comfort's sleaze, MIT researchers are getting ready for a symposium on the evolution of the eye on November 20.

Ironic, isn't it?

New Blue Pigment Discovered

2009-11-18T09:13:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting article about an apparently new blue pigment discovered serendipitously by chemists at Oregon State. The color is reported to arise from Mn³⁺ "introduced into the trigonal bipyramidal sites of metal oxides". The new pigment is said to be better than alternatives such as cobalt blue, ultramarine, Prussian blue, and azurite, because it is stable and non-toxic.

I'm a little skeptical that it's commercially viable, since the examples the chemists have produced so far are based on compounds using the rare metals yttrium, indium, lutetium, and gallium.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but there is exactly one known mineral that crystallizes in the trigonal bipyramidal form, and it is also known for its blue color: benitoite (BaTiSi₃O₉).

Stupid Creationist Letter Award for November

2009-11-16T17:01:00.002-05:00

A creationist has responded to this post about the dirty rhetorical tricks of creationists, as follows:

There is really no scientific evidence that proves evolution happened. No animal has developed extra chromosomes that we have recorded and none of the findings of supposedly ancestors have any DNA evidence. Evidence does not hold up in court.

Darwin had a theory, based on observation. Fine.

Creationists have a theory based on the Bible.

Intelligent design mongers are clueless and belive in Star Trek.

No one knows where we come from, but the fact that Darwinism was used as en excuse to justify fascists regimes is a fact. They refer to Darwin as their substitute for God all the time in their literature, comparing fascism to "Survival of the Fittest. Why? He is dead, he can't defend himself.

Let me explain where they are wrong. Nature doesn't work by "survival of the fittest". "Survival of the species" trumps that. Observe bees, bacteria, herds of animals, even predators like lions depend on socialization for survival. Where is the "survival of the fittest?". The economists, in their greedy ways twist science to justify a consumerist society in which a few have wealth and the rest suffer.

It really is remarkable for its stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance, all rolled up into one. Isn't it?

Boston's Monument to Foolishness

2009-11-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

This prominent building, in Boston's downtown, is probably the city's largest monument to foolishness. Although its supporters make extravagant health claims, these are not supported by evidence. Nevertheless, the group's political power has helped pass laws in dozens of states to allow it to avoid prosecution.

What building is it?

Phony Calls for "Civility"

2009-11-15T05:11:00.003-05:00

You know a call for "more civility" is completely phony when the person who issues it only cites examples from one side of the debate.

That's the case with this recent opinion piece by Casey Luskin, spokesman for the Discovery Institute.

Luskin lists three examples of incivility, and all of them are from the pro-science, anti-creationist side. He fails to cite a single example of incivility from a creationist, even though there are many examples to choose from. As Wesley Elsberry has documented, Luskin's friends routinely compare evolutionary biologists to Nazis, communists, the Taliban, and Satan. Luskin himself has labeled materialists an "ominous force" that will "consume" people. William Dembski proudly sponsored an animation that used fart noises to make fun of Judge Jones, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.

No one is going to be fooled by this dishonest posturing.

Authoritarian High School Principal of the Month

2009-11-15T04:47:00.005-05:00

Our nomination for authoritarian high school principal of the month goes to Thomas Murray, principal of Danvers High School in Danvers, Massachusetts, who has chosen to ban the word "meep" from the campus.

Students reportedly had been using the nonsense word to disrupt classes. But isn't disrupting class already an offense at the school? Why would a word need to be banned, too?

Instead of using this opportunity to talk about free speech and preserving a good learning environment, the principal chose a heavy-handed and authoritarian approach to the problem. Shame on him.

NPR Examines Consciousness

2009-11-15T03:00:00.004-05:00

An NPR series called "The Really Big Questions" has recently examined the question, "What Can the Animal Mind Tell Us About Human Consciousness?"

The people they interviewed included neuroscientist Christof Koch, ethologist Colin Allen, primatologist Frans de Waal, and philosopher Colin McGinn. Now, who do you suppose had the most moronic things to say? Take a guess.

No surprise, it was the philosopher. Whenever scientific subjects are discussed, you can count on some philosopher to chime in with something really stupid. McGinn made all sorts of dubious unsupported claims, like "There are very strong reasons to think that reductionism is not true". He said, "I think there are problems of principle. In the very project you're trying to understand how the phenomenological might arise from the organic, because we're trying to bring together two different conceptual schemes, two different types of knowledge we have of the world, knowledge which we derive from first person awareness of our own consciousness and then the knowledge we have of the physical world, and these two types of knowledge simply don't fit together." Luckily Christof Koch was there to answer some of this kind of fuzzy thinking.

Unfortunately, the interviewer, Lynn Neary, didn't help things out. Although it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for even a few minutes that what we call "consciousness" is multifaceted, involving things like memory, planning, anticipation, modelling of the environment, and self-awareness, it took nearly half an hour before these ideas were brought out explicitly, and even after that, Neary persisted in conflating them. She seemed to want to have some very simple definition of what consciousness is before discussing it. Is it too much to ask that interviewers do a little homework before beginning their job?

If there's any consolation, at least they didn't interview Mario Beauregard.

Dover Trial Reunion

2009-11-12T10:34:00.011-05:00

I attended the reunion for the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the weekend, which was held at Lauri Lebo's house in York Haven, PA. Lauri was a reporter for the York Daily Record at that time, and wrote the most intimate account of the trial in her book, The Devil in Dover. It is a terrific book, funny and sad at the same time, and definitely worth reading.

(As you may know, I played an extremely small role in this historic event - I had been asked to testify as a rebuttal witness against William Dembski. But Dembski withdrew from the trial, so my testimony was never needed.)

Lauri Lebo lives with the folk-rock-country musician Jefferson Pepper in two houses in rural Pennsylvania. I stayed in the famous beer can house, which houses the world's largest collection of beer cans. (I stayed in the German room, in case you want to know.)

I got to meet some of the important figures of the trial for the first time, including Vic Walczak of the ACLU, Richard Katskee of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and some of the plaintiffs, including Bryan Rehm, Cynthia Sneath, and Steven Stough. (There were others, but I'm bad with names.) And I got to see old friends, including the NCSE's Genie Scott, superstar biologist Ken Miller, and Behe-destroying lawyer Eric Rothschild.

Above: me with Genie Scott and some beer cans.

Above: Ken Miller.

In the evening there was a concert at the very cool Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA. (If you are ever in the area, this is definitely a place to visit. I picked up three books about snakes for my youngest son, who is a snake enthusiast, and two books about intelligent design for my anti-evolution & pseudoscience collection -- all at very reasonable prices.)

Above: ironic sign in the bookstore.

The concert featured a brief reading by Genie Scott, some terrific music by Jefferson Pepper and the Varmints of Heaven, a lecture by Kenneth Miller, and evolutionary rap by Baba Brinkman.

Above: Baba Brinkman and Eric Rothschild.

Above: rockin' out with Jefferson Pepper and the band. At right, on rhythm guitar, is York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento, who wrote some of the funniest newspaper columns about the Dover trial; he also has a blog.

Above: Baba Brinkman.

All-in-all, it was a fun weekend. Thanks to Lauri, Jeff, and the others who made it possible.

Journal Editor in Libel Suit

2009-11-06T08:48:00.004-05:00

According to this article in the Press-Gazette, Mohamed El Naschie, former editor of the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals is suing Nature because of a November 2008 article. That article, written by Quirin Schiermeier, raised the issue of the very large number of papers authored by El Naschie and published in that journal, and the quality of those papers.

I don't think El Naschie has a case, but who knows in Britain, where libel laws are insane?

Misunderstood Mathematics

2009-11-02T05:37:00.004-05:00

One of my long-term book projects is about mathematical theorems that give people fits. A good example is Cantor's theorem that the real numbers are uncountable. The proof is simple enough that you can explain it to a 10-year-old, but some adults simply don't get it, no matter how many times it is explained.

For example, see this thread over at Mark Chu-Carroll's blog. It just goes on and on, with one poster ("Vorlath") babbling away, but making no progress at all in comprehending this very simple proof.

I'd be interested in understanding the psychological mechanisms behind this kind of misunderstanding. It reminds me of the difficulty that some religious people appear to have in understanding evolution - you just go 'round and 'round with them, but they make no progress. Is it willful? That is, do they secretly know they are talking nonsense, but can't accept it because of their preconceptions? Or are they truly baffled?

Very Funny Story By Malcolm Gladwell

2009-10-24T10:18:00.002-04:00

Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker writer and author of Blink and The Tipping Point recounts a very funny story about a wedding song gone completely wrong in an episode of "The Moth Radio Hour".

To listen, go here, and click on the arrow that appears immediately under "The Moth Radio Hour 4". The story starts at 35:10 -- but the other two stories are worth listening to, also.

A more direct link is here, but I don't guarantee it will work.

Liveblogging President Obama at MIT

2009-10-23T12:13:00.017-04:00

12:13 PM. Woman is singing the national anthem.

12:14 PM I'm in a room in the Stata Center with about 50 others. We didn't get tickets to the event, held in MIT's Kresge Hall, but it is being broadcast here. People are talking about all the Secret Service agents around the campus, some people on roofs. Kids outside Kresge Hall, shouting "Obama!" over and over. Airspace near Logan was closed, with Air Force authorized to use deadly force against aircraft that didn't obey the temporary flight rules.

12:17 PM Stage is empty.

12:31 PM Presidential seal is affixed to podium.

12:42 PM Finally, some action. Susan Hockfield, President of MIT, is introducing Obama, talking about the MIT energy initiative.

12:44 PM Ernest Moniz, head of the MIT Energy Initiative, is speaking. "The President has expanded our energy vision..."

12:46 PM Obama on the stage. Large amount of applause. "Thank you, MIT!" "It's always been a dream of mine to visit the most prestigous school in Cambridge, Massachusetts..." "Students put my motorcade on top of Building 10." "Everybody hands out periodic tables - what's up with that?"

12:48 PM He thanks Eric Lander and Eric Moniz. Also acknowledges Governor Deval Patrick, Lt. Governor Tim Murray, Attorney General Martha Coakley, etc.

12:50 PM He's talking about some of the energy innovations of MITEI: windows that funnel sunlight to solar cells, etc.
"You just get excited being and seeing these young people here at MIT" "It's the legacy of a nation who supported those intrepid few willing to take risks that might fail".

12:54 PM "There will be a debate of how to move from fossil fuels to renewable fuels ... but no question that we must do it."
"Rising energy use imperils the planet." "Nations everywhere are racing to find new ways to produce and distribute energy."
"I want America to be that nation" [to win the race]. Bill we passed in January "makes the largest investment in renewable energy in history".

12:56 PM Initiative by Deval Patrick will allow researchers to test very large wind turbine blades, the size of a football field, as part of the Recovery Act.

12:58 PM Recovery Act, the Stimulus Bill, is responsible for the largest increase in funding of science in history.

12:59 PM Renewable energy will be the profitable kind of energy in America. A bi-partisan issue. We'll have an energy system that is more efficient, cleaner, and independent. Safe nuclear power, sustainable biofuels, wind & solar power. Consensus is growing. Pentagon has declared energy-dependence a security threat.

1:02 PM Climate denier's only purpose is to "defeat or delay the change that is necessary". Pessimism is also a problem.
We can do it. "This is the nation that pushed westward and looked skyward." "This is the nation that has led the world for 2 centuries in the pursuit of discovery."

1:05 PM Speech is over, Obama is shaking hands.

Roger Penrose is Much Smarter than I Am. But...

2009-10-22T06:17:00.003-04:00

Roger Penrose is much smarter than I am. But I think he is completely wrong when he says

In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t yet have. This is being a bit big-headed, but I think it’s a little bit like William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. He worked out that it had to circulate, but the veins and arteries just peter out, so how could the blood get through from one to the other? And he said, “Well, it must be tiny little tubes there, and we can’t see them, but they must be there.” Nobody believed it for some time. So I’m still hoping to find something like that—some structure that preserves coherence, because I believe it ought to be there.

We don't have any evidence at all that brains don't follow physical theories.

Looking for Graduate Students

2009-10-20T09:03:00.003-04:00

My sabbatical will end on July 1 2010, and I'm looking for good graduate students -at either the master's or the PhD level - in computer science who are interested in working on problems in automata theory, formal languages, combinatorics on words, complexity theory, number theory algorithms, or algebraic algorithms, beginning September 2010.

You can see the kinds of things I've been working on lately here.

The University of Waterloo offers excellent financial support for graduate students. You can get information about our School of Computer Science and about the application process for admission to graduate school by clicking on the links.

If you're interested, send me e-mail (which you can find by going to my home page, and tell me what you've done and what you're interested in doing.

Why Do Web Page Creators Make It So Hard to Contact Them?

2009-10-18T09:30:00.002-04:00

One of my pet peeves is that if you see an error on a web page, and you want to notify someone in charge, it is usually difficult or impossible to do so. As a challenge, try to find the web page where you can report an error in Google Maps. It's not easy.

Here's another example. I recently bought a Canon scanner, and was curious about the technology. So I turned to their web pages, and found this page, which discusses it.

In the middle of the discussion, however, you find this bizarre sentence:

Yes, but I'll change it.

Obviously this was left in from the editing process. But how can you report it? Canon's web page doesn't have a "report error on this page" link, and their on-line form demands you pull down menus to pick a particular product (which isn't really apppropriate). Then, after I went through the whole process of filling out their form, and clicked "send", it reported that there was an error with their server.

I guess Canon is simply not interested in people pointing out silly errors on their pages.

I've Never Liked Bill Maher

2009-10-18T06:14:00.003-04:00

I've never liked Bill Maher, and I've felt that way ever since I saw a video he did mocking Dan Quayle. Now to me, Dan Quayle exemplifies everything that is wrong about American politics: his frat-boy ignorance, his contempt for learning, his loony religious cult wife, etc., etc. So I was certainly prepared to like the video and laugh at Quayle. Instead, the treatment was so sneering, and so insulting, that I was left with a bad taste in my mouth and I was sorry I had wasted my time.

Sure, Maher is funny sometimes. But a lot of the time he is just ignorant. And now Orac has been showing us in detail that Maher is a raving lunatic when it comes to medical issues. How he was ever given the Richard Dawkins Award is beyond me.

Big Surprise

2009-10-15T04:55:00.001-04:00

Michele Bachmann, intelligent design advocate, is a pathological liar. Who would have guessed?