The Santorum also rises…

… and will set soon.

The Republican nominating race continues on its bizarre trajectory.

I wrote a couple of months ago during the first Newt Gingrich surge that Rick Santorum had a right to feel aggrieved with his god because although he is a true believer, god had not granted him his moment in the sun the way that he had with all the other candidates (Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry) who also felt that god wanted them to be president. It is true that god being so fickle and a bit of a tease pulled the rug from under all of them, like he did with Tim Tebow, but at least they all briefly enjoyed the limelight. Even Donald Trump, of all people, briefly rose to the top of the polls, even though he never declared his candidacy.

But his god has answered Santorum’s prayers. Although none of the caucuses and [Read more…]

The Koran for dummies

I have tried to read the Koran on several occasions but have never been able to make it all the way through. I keep getting stalled because the writing is so turgid that its meaning is hard to determine without great effort. The fact that I have strong suspicions that after all that effort I am not going to end up with anything useful also dampens any motivation.

Since it is supposed to have been directly dictated by god, this does not reflect [Read more…]

The odd opposition to same sex marriage and contraception

Yesterday a three judge panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision upheld the ruling of US District Court judge Vaughn Walker that Proposition 8 (that reversed the policy allowing same sex marriage in California) was unconstitutional. This ruling will likely be appealed to either the full Court of Appeals or the US Supreme Court and until such time as they uphold the appeals court ruling or decline to hear it, the ban on gay marriage in California will continue.

One of the things that really puzzle me is [Read more…]

Who benefits from Republican candidates’ tax plans?

It is no secret that it is an article of faith in the Republican party that tax cuts are always good and almost all their candidates had tax proposals to do so. Via Kevin Drum, I came across a handy chart created by the Tax Policy Center that showed the effect of these cuts and what is clear is that most of the benefits go to the very wealthy. Herman Cain’s plan even raised taxes on lower incomes while cutting those of the wealthy.

These people could not be more transparent about their devotion to serving the interests of the rich.

Talking with Obama supporters

They say that at social gatherings one should avoid politics and religion to avoid disharmony. But this rule is frequently broken when people feel that they are with like-minded people where they can say things without fear of being contradicted. My social circle consists of self-described liberals who are all Obama and Democratic party supporters. They are people who view themselves as politically conscious and they raise issues of politics all the time and, at least in the US, politics is closely intertwined with religion, so that supposedly taboo topic comes up too.

During the period leading up to the elections of 2008, these social gatherings were pretty much a love fest, with all of us hoping that Obama would win and [Read more…]

The haves and have-soons

John Hodgman of The Daily Show tells the 99% to be patient, that soon they too will be in the 1%.

To get suggestions on how to view clips on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. This clip appeared on February 2, 2012.

The answer is 17

I think that most people are familiar with Sudoku puzzles. There are some interesting questions that can be asked such as what is the minimum number of the 81 boxes in the grid that need to be filled in initially (the ‘clues’) in order to be able to obtain a unique solution?

It is known that for at least some puzzles one can obtain a unique solution with 17 clues, and no one had found any puzzles with 16 clues that had unique solutions. But is 17 the minimum number required? If you [Read more…]

Why randomness doesn’t always look random

I got the lightning puzzle that I posed yesterday from the latest book by Steven Pinker The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined that I reviewed in December. He uses it to illustrate that our intuitive notions of randomness and probability can easily lead us astray.

Here is the problem again.

Suppose you live in a place that has a constant chance of being struck by lightning at any time throughout the year. Suppose that the strikes are random: every day the chance of a strike is the same, and the rate works out to one strike a month. Your house is hit by lightning today, Monday. What is the most likely day for the next bolt to strike your house?

Here is his answer followed by [Read more…]