Recursivity

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: [email protected]

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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: [email protected]. 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: [email protected]; [email protected]

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: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

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.

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.

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.

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 [email protected].)

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 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. 

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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?

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

1910 was a different world.

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.

• 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.

But why has it taken so long?

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?

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

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.

• 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.

Hat tip: reader D. S.

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?

Well, happy 53rd birthday to Jack, who was born on October 29 1960. But I can't help complaining about yet another mathematical error, this time in Child's latest book, Never Go Back. On page 379 of the Canadian edition, Reacher muses,

"His ears had the center whorls intact like any other guy, but the flatter parts around them had been cut away, probably with scissors, very tight in, so that what was left looked like pasta, like uncooked tortellini florets, shiny, the color of a white man's flesh. Not exactly hexagons. A hexagon was a regular shape, with six equal sides, and Shrago's stubs had been trimmed for extreme closeness, not geometric regularity. They were irregular polygons, more accurately."

Sorry, but a hexagon is not necessarily a "regular shape"; that would be a regular hexagon. A hexagon is any polygon with 6 sides; there's no symmetry implied.

I'll pass over the parts where you ridicule me by associating me with fraudulent archaeology and people who think 1>2 and circle-squarers. Your first direct volley is aimed at my paper “Beautifying Gödel”. The title comes from the fact that the paper was a contribution to a book titled Beauty is our Business. I set out to write the simplest, most elegant presentation that I could of one of Gödel's theorems. The paper does not suggest that there is anything wrong with Gödel's theorem. The simplifications come from our modern familiarity with the character string data type (so we don't have to encode programs as integers) and with programming language interpreters; these were unknown to Gödel. My presentation has been used by various authors and textbook writers (e.g. What Computing is All About, a textbook used at CalTech).

I am a fan of Torkel Franzén and his wonderful book Gödel's Theorem: an Incomplete Guide to its Uses and Abuses. His criticism of my paper was very mild (especially compared to his pointed criticisms of almost everything else). It seems to arise because he, like most mathematicians, is a platonist (he believes mathematical objects exist, independent of people; we just try to find out some truths about them) whereas I am a formalist (I believe mathematics is a formal language created by people to describe some aspects of the world). In particular, soundness is stated differently. Perhaps formalist mathematicians are “fringe”; if so, it's an august group that I am happy to be part of.

You cite my paper “the Size of a Set” as fringe mathematics. You say I deny “that it is reasonable to say that a set A is the same size as set B if A is equipollent with B”. Then a few sentences later, you say “But who cares what Prof. Hehner thinks is “reasonable”?”. When you quote the word “reasonable”, you are quoting yourself, not me; the word “reasonable” does not appear in the paper. You say “There are other problems with Hehner's paper”. First, I “present the minor technicality of some numbers having two different base-k representations as something that has to be “repaired”, when in fact this problem simply does not occur in Cantor's proof when correctly presented”. Your comment is entirely unfair. I first present the popular form of the proof, point out the problem, and repair it. I agree that the problem does not occur when the proof is correctly presented.

The next problem, you say, is that I “claim the proof is informal when in fact formalizing it is trivial”. The wordy proof is informal, and I formalize it. How is that a problem?

Finally, you say I “confuse the notions of cardinality and computability”. I most certainly do not. I present two analogous arguments, and point out the important difference that one talks about “having” a list, and the other about “generating” a list. Your criticisms are false and unfair.

Here is the conclusion of my paper; judge it, remembering that I speak from a formalist point of view: “It is popularly believed that Cantor's diagonal argument proves that there are more reals than integers. In fact, it proves only that there is no onto function from the integers to the reals; by itself it says nothing about the sizes of sets. Set size measurement and comparison, like all mathematics, should be chosen to fit the needs of an application ___domain. For all application domains that I know of, Cantor's countability relation is not the most useful way to compare set sizes.” How does that conclusion draw such ire?

Now let's get to the papers that upset you most: my claim that Turing's proof of the incomputability of the Halting Problem has serious flaws. You say: “If Prof. Hehner claims that this proof is flawed, then he must point to the exact line of the proof that he disagrees with.”. Yes! That is precisely the content of the paper (although it's not just a single line that I find fault with). Continuing, you say “Instead, what he does is translate this simple proof into his own private language in a flawed way, and then raise several objections to his own translation.”. By “translate” you mean formalize the proof. The “own private language” is the assignment statement, if-then-else, and while-loop. They are the basis for all current popular languages. I chose the language because it is standard. As for “in a flawed way”, formalization makes clear one's understanding of an informal, English-language proof, and one can never be sure that one has formalized correctly. After I had done my formalization, I read the formalization in Boyer and Moore's paper “a Mechanical Proof of the Unsolvability of the Halting Problem” JACM 31, 3, 441-458, 1984. I was delighted to see that they had formalized the problem the same way I had (except that they used LISP). That gave me confidence in my formalization. I added a section on the Boyer and Moore formalization and proof to my paper.

You say I “seem a bit confused” about what the computability hierarchy is. The paper begins with a very clear construction of the hierarchy. [Dear reader: judge for yourself.]

You cite a paper by Huizing, Kuiper, and Verhoeff, “which generously takes his work seriously and points out the flaws. If Prof. Hehner has a response, I have not seen it.”. So here is my response. I was the (one and only) referee for this paper; I accepted it. It makes good, valid points, and does not invalidate my paper, although they thought then that it did. I spent some time talking with them at the Turing100 celebration in Manchester last year. They suggested another way I could present my case; it became the paper “Reconstructing the Halting Problem”, which you cited.

How can I know if I am a crackpot? On the one hand, a person whose work and opinions I respect, Jeffrey Shallit, tells me so. On the other hand, there's a wonderful book named the Experts Speak by Navasky and Cerf that has a long list of major scientific achievements that were ridiculed by the reigning scientists (the “experts”) of the time. Usually, one is not called a “fringe” scientist just for making a mistake (I don't think I have made a mistake, but I can't be sure). You call me “fringe” because I am challenging an established result of computer science. One way science is distinguished from religion, at least in principle, is by not having any sacred truths that must not be challenged. Unfortunately, I am discovering, some scientists treat some of their truths as sacred, and become quite upset when they are challenged. Challenging sacred truths can be dangerous to one's reputation and career: the priests who protect their truths will attempt to assassinate your character by writing insulting blogs. That's why I waited until retirement to pursue this topic. Here is the real danger: if challenging basic accepted results becomes too costly (it's not easy to bear the insults), science loses its self-correcting character that distinguishes it from religion.

“It is our unfortunate duty to host this nonsense at the University of Waterloo at 4 PM on Thursday, November 28, in DC (Davis Centre) 2585.” See you there!

Eric Hehner:

You seem confused. I didn't call your work "fraud" in my post, I did not use the word "crackpot" there, and I never said a word about your "character", much less "assassinate" anything. For all I know you're probably a nice guy who is kind to your pets. My post was about your work, not you. I think your work on the topic of Cantor and Turing is junk, and I said so.

I'm certainly uninterested in a long back-and-forth about this, but I will say a few things. Your work (and the venue you publish it in) speaks for itself, I think. You also confuse "ire" with "amusement"; I think your criticism of Cantor's work is trivial, silly, and is likely to be completely ignored for those reasons and others.

Your presentation of the proof of the unsolvability of the halting problem (on page 1 of "Problems with the Halting Problem") is not the one I present in class. It is also not the one in any standard textbook on the subject that I looked at (e.g., Sipser, Hopcroft and Ullman, etc.). You certainly do not take the standard proof and point to the exact line that you disagree with. That is your obligation, and you didn't fulfill it.

Blogs are not the place to reply to the Huizing et al. paper. If you contest their conclusions, publish a paper specifying exactly where they went wrong. That's the "self-correcting" nature of science you seem to think highly of.

the priests who protect their truths will attempt to assassinate your character by writing insulting blogs: oh, please. I'm not a priest, just a guy with a blog who is pointing out your silly claims and is sorry that my university is giving you a venue. I didn't say anything about your character. By the way, you forgot to compare yourself to Galileo.

science loses its self-correcting character: you're confused. The self-correcting character is precisely that you offered a bogus refutation of the standard proof, and I'm pointing out that your refutation is bogus.

You would think that in a field like mathematics, it would harder to be fringe. People don't normally debate whether 1 > 2, or whether ½ is a rational number. Nevertheless, there is a surprising amount of fringy mathematics. I'm thinking, for example, of circle-squarers, who continue to try to construct π with straightedge and compass long after Lindemann's proof that it cannot be done. In 1977, the Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik published a fringy proof of Goldbach's conjecture that, needless to say, is not widely accepted.

While most people engaged in fringe mathematics are amateurs, there are a few professionals. It used to be pretty hard to publish fringe mathematics in journals, but with the rise of open access journals of questionable credentials, it has become a lot easier. Not all fringe mathematics is wrong, but most of it is.

Up until now, I hadn't seen too much fringe computer science. But now I have. And to make things worse, we have apparently asked the author of these fringe works to come speak at our university.

The work in question is that of Eric C. R. "Rick" Hehner, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto. Hehner worked in what is called "formal methods", which concerns logical formalisms for computer science constructs, such as those in programming languages. On his web page, you can find a list of his publications.

Hehner seems to have done some reasonable work in the past, although I'm probably not the very best judge. Some other people apparently disagree. For example, Hehner lists a paper called "Beautifying Gödel" as among his very best; yet the late Torkel Franzen, an expert on Gödel's theorem who published an eponymous book on the subject, said that Hehner's paper "contains some odd misunderstandings" and exhibits "some standard confusion regarding the soundness condition needed".

Lately, however, Hehner's work can, I think, fairly be characterized as "fringe computer science". For example, he claims that our modern understanding of uncomputable problems, such as the halting problem is completely wrong and that the standard proof of unsolvability, taught in nearly every undergraduate course on the theory of computation, is bogus. (Another version of Hehner's claims is here.) As a result, Hehner denies the existence of something he calls the "computability hierarchy" (although he seems a bit confused about what that is). At the end of this piece, Professor Hehner reveals that his focus on the halting problem dates from the 1980's.

Prof. Hehner has recently branched out into another favorite of the fringe mathematician, Cantor's proof of the uncountability of the reals. Prof. Hehner's paper is not the worst anti-Cantorian work I have read --- it seems that, at least, Hehner does accept that Cantor's proof is correct. He just denies that it is reasonable to say that a set A is the same size as set B if A is equipollent with B. (There are other problems with Hehner's paper, such as (1) presenting the minor technicality of some numbers having two different base-k representations as something that has to be "repaired", when in fact this problem simply does not occur in Cantor's proof when correctly presented; (2) claiming the proof is informal when in fact formalizing it is trivial; (3) confusing the notions of cardinality and computability.) But who cares what Prof. Hehner thinks is "reasonable"? There's a lot of beautiful and interesting mathematics that arises from this definition, and mathematicians find it useful. If Prof. Hehner does not, he is free to make a case for a better definition. But he does not, not in any serious way. In this sense, his case is entirely a negative aesthetic one: he doesn't like Cantor's definition, and can't imagine why anyone else would. This is not a basis for good science.

The reception of Prof. Hehner's claims about computability and Cantor -- which would be revolutionary if accepted -- has been, I think it is fair to say, silent or negative. There are only a handful of citations of the relevant papers, mostly self-citations. One exception is this paper by Huizing, Kuiper, and Verhoeff (behind a paywall, probably, if you aren't at a university) which generously takes his work seriously and points out the flaws. If Prof. Hehner has a response, I have not seen it.

Professor Hehner seems unhappy that his work is not treated seriously, and that some people who object to it do not always point out specific problems with his reasoning. But I think he's got it exactly backwards. The uncomputability of the halting problem has a proof, and we teach that proof in most introductory courses in theoretical computer science. The proof doesn't have many steps, the steps are very simple, and it is accessible to any bright junior-high school student. If Prof. Hehner claims that this proof is flawed, then he must point to the exact line of the proof that he disagrees with. Instead, what he does is translate this simple proof -- as in this video -- into his own private language in a flawed way, and then raise several objections to his own translation. This tactic is well-known as the "straw man". It is not a serious scientific attack on our understanding of the problem.

It is our unfortunate duty to host this nonsense at the University of Waterloo at 4 PM on Thursday, November 28, in DC (Davis Centre) 2585. The public is welcome. If it had been up to me, I would not have extended an invitation to Prof. Hehner to speak on this topic because (1) I am not convinced, based on what I've read, that he has a deep understanding of the material and (2) I do not think, based on what I've read, that he has anything interesting to say. But a great feature of a university is that all kinds of ideas, from the well-supported to the fringe, can be discussed.

Sometimes, though, we pay the price.

Meyer made his usual false claim about "information" and how it can't be generated through evolution. Of course it can; any random process will generate "information" in the sense used by mathematicians and computer scientists. The creationist version of "information" espoused by Meyer is different, but even there it is easy to see that mutation can generate it (take a program that does something and change one character so it doesn't compile; then a mutation that restores the function will create creationist information).

Meyer made a false claim about Dawkins only being interested in genes and not being interested in organisms. Of course, that's a lie, and anyone who has read Dawkins (e.g., The Extended Phenotype) knows this to be the case.

Meyer also repeated his usual lie about how "Darwinists" expected there to be junk DNA and how recent findings by "ID scientists" (as if there is such a thing!) show the Darwinists to be wrong. (Larry Moran has discussed this false claim many times, so there's no point to discussing it again.)

Three lies in 15 minutes. That's pretty good, even for Meyer.

It amazes me that there are folks who are still flogging their silly conspiracy theory, and that some people actually take them seriously. That Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 is documented in great detail in books like The Looming Tower and is established beyond reasonable doubt.

To get some idea of the ragtag bunch of people who endorse this crap, take a look here: a professor of public administration, a professor of economics, a professor of physics, a professor of economics, a professor of mathematics, and a professor of English. Not a single person with any expertise in politics, Middle East studies, architecture, or building design among the endorsers.

Pathetic.

Yes, believe it or not, they've hired Denyse O'Leary, the world's worst journalist™, to write for them.

We can look forward to hours of fun: mangled syntax, clichés, punctuation chosen at random, repetition of signature buzzwords like "Brit toff" and "tenure bore", unfounded accusations of racism and Nazism against reputable scientists, neologisms that only O'Leary understands, and a thorough misunderstanding of anything she discusses -- not to mention that Denyse never ever interviews anyone she disagrees with.

Congratulations to both the DI and Denyse! You definitely deserve each other.

From Joe Smith:

Here is my submission, entitled "1 + 1 = 2", to the Journal of Integer Sequences. It gives a simple, new, and cute proof of this famous theorem which I know you will want to publish.

My response:

I'm sorry, this is simply too trivial to publish in the Journal.

Smith's response:

How disgraceful that an honest person seeking to publish their work in a forum belonging to an elite that think they hold the absolute truth, and deliver their decision based on an incredibly deprecatory pseudo review, are frustrated by your dishonest response!

I will give you one week to accept this paper. If not, I will destroy the reputation of the Journal.

My response:

I'm sorry, the decision stands.

Smith's response:

Can you please suggest another journal where I can publish my result?