Thesis writing...

... has pulled me away from blogging the past couple of months. BUT, I'll hopefully be done and back to a regular posting schedule later this spring!

Figure 1: Mascot for my recent rate of new blog posts.

In the meantime, you should check out R-bloggers.com and "like" their facebook page to get regular updates on your news feed.

U.S. Math & Science Students Need Our Help

The U.S. ranks very low in math and science compared to other nations -- 35th in Math and 29th in Science. That's embarrassingly low, a threat to the future of our nation's economy, and most importantly it's a problem we can solve. So why are we so far behind?

While digging through TIMMS results can be thought provoking, you must, must, must watch this video which provides a sobering comparison between US student attitudes towards math and science with those of their counterparts from some of the top ranked countries. So click here if you can spare 3 minutes -- it's worth it! The video was produced as part of the Connect A Million Minds (CAMM) campaign, "Time Warner Cable’s philanthropic commitment to connect youth to ideas, people and opportunities that will inspire them to become the problem solvers of tomorrow."

You can see more CAMM videos here.  For more information, look here, here, here and here.

[Hat tip to DNLee]

Talk on The Math, Physics of Drag Racing

Thursday (4 Nov) there is a public lecture at COSI in Columbus you don't want to miss.  The talk will be given by Dr. Richard A. Tapia -- a big name in applied mathematics, an entertaining speaker, and long-time "champion of under-represented minorities in the sciences."

Tapia has received numerous professional and community service honors and awards including the annual Blackwell-Tapia Conference being named in his honor (his reason for visiting Columbus) and being inducted into the Texas Science Hall of Fame (yes, such a thing really does exist!).

Here are the details of his talk from the event flier (PDF):

Math at Top Speed: Exploring and Breaking Myths in the Drag Racing Folklore

November 4, 2010; 7:00pm @ COSI (doors open @ 6:00pm) Admission is free

For most of his life, Richard Tapia has been involved in some aspect of drag racing. He has witnessed the birth and growth of many myths concerning dragster speed and acceleration. Some of these myths will be explained and validated in this talk, while others will be destroyed. For example, Dr. Tapia will explain why dragster acceleration can be greater than the acceleration due to gravity, an age-old inconsistency, and he will present his Fundamental Theorem of Drag Racing. Part of this talk will be a historical account of the development of drag racing and several lively videos will accompany this discussion.

Speaker: Richard Tapia
University Professor Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering, Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics (CAAM), Rice University

More about Dr. Tapia can be found here, here, and here.  More on the Blackwell-Tapia Conference can be found by clicking the "Blackwell-Tapia" link on this website.

How hard is it to forward a few emails?

Apparently, kinda hard. I just learned that for at least the past 2+ weeks, certain emails haven't been making it to my academic email address. Not all of them, no, just the ones from (are you sitting down?) everyone at my own University.

Figure 1. Author's rendition of how email works (black), and doesn't work (red).

Our departmental email system recently throat-punched itself to death got an upgrade and it was decided that all emails should hence forth get forwarded to our main university email account. It makes sense, and doesn't sound all that hard to implement - right?

For reasons I won't go into here, I like to keep the two separate so (as was the case prior to the throat-punching upgrade) I had my departmental email forwarded to a gmail account. Somehow, this resulted in all external emails and any emails sent from within the department getting through to that gmail account, but not any emails from others at my MRU - you know, like any administrative folks, professors, researchers, or other grad students I might need to be in contact with. To make matters worse, they don't bounce back or otherwise fail - they just disappear. That means anyone sending me an email doesn't get a warning that I won't ever see that email they just sent.

Fortunately, the tech team is on top of it as I type this and no doubt they'll have the problem resolved in short order. Just needed to rant about it a bit so I could get back to working on that thesis thing I'm trying to wrap up. ;)

Update:

So it turns out I was wrong (kind of...). My emails weren't being forwarded to the proper place, so no emails were lost - just misplaced. Thankfully, the technician in charge of our system finally has all my emails going to the right inbox. Problems solved :)

More music you¹ can do math to...

Apparently, Pandora insists I get at least one kick-ass song a day in which G. W. Bush is quote mined about war.  So far, so good.

¹ I should probably just say "music I can do math to" but that's hardly an interesting title for a blog post, right? Right.

Math & The Oh-So-Musical Ministry

While working on a proof just now, this little beauty came pouring through my headphones. Great beat for doing math to, hilarious quote mining... what's not to love!?

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Halted... AGAIN

If you haven't heard, there's plenty in the news here, here and here.  I recommend reading judge Royce C. Lamberth's 15 page ruling for yourself, as it clarifies much of what the media are glossing over at the moment.

Below are my thoughts on the ruling.  I take issue with some of the judges arguments, and not because I have zero legal expertise - I think it's because he's gotten some things wrong.  I also think the judge didn't live up to his own standards, which I'll discuss in part two of this post which you can find here.

Part I: Does "Embryonic Stem Cell Research = Killing Embryos"?

The crucial legal language in this case is known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment (also, see here). It's notable for (1) limiting how federal dollars are spent on embryonic stem cell (ESC) research, and (2) it includes an attempt at defining "human embryo." The definition seems overly broad in my opinion (e.g. if I culture some of my skin cells, they seem to fit this definition), but take a look and decide for yourself.

The language can be seen in H.R. 3010 (see pg 48 in this PDF) section 509(a)(2) which reads...

The Internet = iDistraction™

That's all.  I should get back to work now.

Ah, grad school...

[Thanks to Judy for the link]

Secular Student Alliance 2010 Annual Conference

A few thoughts from the 2010 Secular Student Alliance (SSA) annual conference that took place this weekend in Columbus, OH.  All in all, a great conference from a top notch organization - one you should definitely have on your radar!

I first found out about the SSA last summer, when my wife and I joined 300+ attendees of the 2009 annual conference (including PZ Myers) on a tour of the Creation "Museum" in Kentucky (photos and commentary from that trip are in this series of posts).  Though I couldn't make the actual conference last year,  I was impressed with the organization and the work they do to meet the needs of Freethought, Rational Inquiry, Atheist, and Humanist student groups nationwide. This year, I decided to give up a few hours of thesis work and head to the conference -- here's a quick overview.

First, they had a great line up of speakers including well known bloggers like keynote speaker Greta Christina and the Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta.  Also on the program were various student leaders from across the U.S. sharing lessons learned from successfully starting and growing their organizations.  You can learn more about the speakers from the conference website (plus a few minutes chasing down names on the web). You can read more about the SSA, what they do, and check out their resources for students and for educators through the SSA website. Also, check out the SSA's  Facebook Page, and look for videos of the talks and other conference events on the SSA's YouTube channel.

What is the Secular Student Alliance (SSA)?

According to the "About" page on their website the purpose of the SSA is

Royal Society's Infectious Disease Articles: Free for February

The Royal Society is allowing free online access to some of their infectious disease articles through the end of the week. It's a bit of advertising on their part, but still an opportunity to skim the selection and maybe read an article or three.

All Royal Society infectious disease content is currently free to access.

The Royal Society's journals regularly publish content covering scientific research into infectious diseases and you can access all articles FREE until the end of February at:

http://newsletters.royalsociety.org/c/16pKIvwPJq6l5p5X

Highlighted content includes:

'Livestock diseases and zoonoses', edited by FM Tomley and MW Shirley

'Airborne transmission of disease in hospitals', edited by I Eames, JW Tang,
Y Li and P Wilson

'The end of Kuru: 50 years of research into an extraordinary disease', edited
by J Collinge and MP Alpers

'Cross scale influences on epidemiological dynamics', edited by L Matthews
and D Haydon

Access all the above content - and more - FREE until the end of the week at:

http://newsletters.royalsociety.org/c/16pKVr5DQuUbrj6m

We are particularly interested in receiving Theme proposals in this area of science. Find out more about how you can become one of our Guest Editors by contacting claire.rawlinson@royalsociety.org or visiting her at booth 14at the International Congress on Infectious Diseases in Miami on 9-12 March.

Free Harvard course anyone? (or "Justice" on YouTube)

Ever since taking our only class on the topic in high school, philosophy has always been my most neglected of interests. During my teenage years, the internet was a relatively new and rapidly growing wealth of information. Even then it seemed to provide access to more ideas and data and history than one could digest in a single lifetime. I read a few random essays here and there, and recall finding  some of John Stuart Mill's works quite agreeable.  Of them all, I remember having relished reading through his essays on Liberty and Utilitarianism.

Busy with science and math classes as an undergraduate, I managed to squeezed in a class or two. Sadly, however I still lack much experience soaking my brain in the major philosophical works of the past and present, including those most applicable to my more scientific interests.

Once again, the internet provides an opportunity just too good to refuse! 

Over on Jerry Coyne's blog, he posted a link to the Harvard course Justice.   A fantastic opportunity to hear a top notch lecturer and learn about some really practical and interesting topics all for just one hour of your time each week. 

The lectures for each week are available free online via Harvard's YouTube page and I fully intend on devoting an hour each week for the next few months to watch them all.

If you'd like to follow along as well, you can get caught up with what's below (just two episodes as of September 27, 2009):

Episode 01

Episode 02

So what's the course about?? Lecturer Michael Sandel explains in the first video above, but here's the gist of it. In the course, the students will be reading the classic works by folks you've likely heard of (Lock, Kant, Mill, etc..).  The video we'll see looks like it will be a lot of debate and reflection back to the big ideas coming out of that reading.  In addition to those classics, they'll also

...take up contemporary political and legal controversies that raise philosophical questions. [The class] will debate equality and inequality, affirmative action, free speech versus hate speech, same sex marriage, military conscription - a range of practical questions. Why? Not just to enliven these abstract and distant books, but to make clear - to bring out - what's at stake in our every day lives including our political lives, for philosophy.

The first lecture begins with a couple hypotheticals - the first of which I had heard before and I clearly remember being quite frustrated with as I found myself caught justifying my hypothetical "moral actions" with logic and moral presuppositions that just didn't seem work as well as I had thought.

The examples basically work as follows [spoiler alert!].  You're faced with a life or death decision: your holding a steering wheel of an unstoppable trolly car facing one of two options: whether to take the tracks to the left and kill 5 people or take a right and kill 1 person.  The decision is easy - right. Right? Right... or is it. After all, we should clearly aim to prevent as much death as possible! Right?

Next, consider a similar but slightly different scenario.  There's a single rail with 5 people down the track (say, in a tunnel) each facing certain death by an approaching runaway, unmanned trolley car. You and one rather large stranger are on a bridge above the tracks when you notice the gravity of the situation.  You know for certain that (don't worry about how, just assume you do) that pushing the bulky stranger towards the edge, down onto the tracks ahead of the car, will derail it saving the lives of the 5 people that would otherwise certainly perish.  So now - fighting that urge to make excuses here - what do you do?  Still just as simple as 1 life versus 5 lives?? Do you push, or let the 5 workers die?  Seems like the same question, right, so why isn't the decision so easy this time?

In the first episode Sandel presents these and a couple other hypotheticals to highlight and compare two of many kinds of moral reasoning - that is, ways of basing our decisions on some moral foundation, some basis for establishing what is right or wrong, good or bad, etc. - that we each use to make decisions on a daily basis.  In this case, these are

1. Consequentialist moral reasoning, which "Locates morality in the consequences of an act."
2. Categorical moral reasoning which "Locates morality in certain duties and rights."

The classic question of whether we look to the "ends" or the "means" (or both? or something else?) in establishing the moral value of our potential decisions.

While I'm looking forward to the rest of the lectures (and hope some of you are too), I should mention Michael Sandel's warning to students about the risks of taking his course:

To read these books, in this way, as an exercise in self knowledge. To read them in this way can carry certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of political philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us - and unsettles us - by confronting us with what we already know.

There's an irony - the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know it. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange. That's how those examples worked. Those hypotheticals with which we began, with their mix of playfulness and sobriety. It's also how these philosophical books work. Philosophy estranges us from the familiar - not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.

But, and here's the risk, once the familiar turns strange it's never quite the same again. Self knowledge is like lost innocence - however unsettling you find it, it can never be un-thought or un-known.

What makes this enterprise difficult - but also riveting - is that moral and political philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story will lead. But what you do know is that the story is about you.

Those are the personal risks. Now what of the political risks? One way to introduce a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and by debating these issues you will become a better more responsible citizen. You will examine the presuppositions of public policy, you will hone your political judgment, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs. This would be a partial and misleading promise.

Political philosophy for the most part hasn't worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one. Or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one. And that's because philosophy is a distancing (even debilitating) activity.

...philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and from settled beliefs.

In short, one could justify not taking such risks by something like the following: If the greatest philosophers of the past centuries couldn't resolve these issues - who are we to think we can do it?! As Sandel puts it, "Maybe it's just a matter of each person having his or her own principles, and there's nothing more to be said about it?"

This might seems like a reasonable objection, but to this he offers the following reply:

... the very fact [these questions] have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they are impossible in one sense, they're unavoidable in another. And the reason they're unavoidable, the reason they're inescapable, is that we live some answer to these questions every day... just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection is no solution.

Hope to see you in class ;)

The Mathematics of Darwin's Legacy

There's a short post over at the Origins blog at sciencemag.org that mentions a conference that had escaped my notice until now - looks like it could be pretty interesting.

Any mathematical biologists that do work with evolutionary models might have some Thanksgiving plans to reconsider (like say, celebrating in Portugal during the "Mathematics of Darwin's Legacy" conference) ?

Dear scientists: "It's good to blog"

The well known science journal Nature came out with a nice editorial piece last week that affirms my decision to create this blog. The title of the piece says it all: It's good to blog.