May goes down for the third time

[UPDATE: The EU has issued what seems like a pretty hardline statement in response to the vote, saying that the ball is entirely in the UK’s hands now to come up with something definite by the April 12 deadline but that a no-deal outcome seems most likely. The statement says that they are prepared for a no-deal exit and will not accept any half-baked proposals. They have scheduled a meeting of EU leaders on April 10 to evaluate whatever May comes up with, though given how things are going, parliament may still be voting up until the 12th.]

The British parliament voted just now to defeat Theresa May’s stripped down Brexit plan by a margin of 344 to 286, a smaller margin than the previous two votes but still a significant defeat. The deadline now shifts to April 12 by which time parliament will have to give the EU a definite plan that can consists of: revoking Article 50; requesting a very long delay of the order of years; or leaving with no deal. The first two options would involve the UK taking part in the EU elections later this year, something that the Brexiteers strenuously oppose.
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Rising tensions in Venezuela

The Trump administration keeps ratcheting up the pressure on Venezuela, even going to the extent of threatening to send in US troops and also calling for a coup by the military against president Nicolas Maduro. Now Trump has told Russia that the troops that they have in that country should “get out”. But the Russians view this as not merely boorish behavior but hypocritical as well, given the fact that the US has troops stationed in so many countries.
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Jesus! Stop her from bearing false witness, Jesus!

Remember the Pennsylvania state legislator I wrote about who started a session with a prayer that had insertions of ‘Jesus’ every so often as if it were some kind of yoga mantra? If you missed it, you really should click on the link and listen because it is a great example of Christian nationalism, a political ideology that hides itself under the cloak of Christianity.
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Brexit memes and physics

A lot of memes have been circulating drawing parallels with the awkward Brexit attempts by the British government, such as this one.

I chose this one to highlight because the person seems to have a common misunderstanding that Galileo tried to clear up a long time ago about the nature of relative motion. Since the man was on the train, he had the same velocity as the train when he jumped off and hence was moving in the direction of the tracks when he hit the ground. It was not allowing for that that caused him to fall. If he had jumped more along the direction of the train’s motion and with a running action in that direction, it would have been much less jarring to him and may have managed to stay upright.

Not that I am recommending anything that dangerous of course!

Solution found to problem involving the sum of three cubes

Diophantine equations are a certain class of equations for which solutions that consist only of integers are sought. So, for example, we know that Pythagoras’s theorem x2+y2=z2 has many sets of solutions such as the numbers x=3, y=4, z=5 or the set x=6, y=8, z=10. A lot of these problems involve existence claims such as whether any solution exists at all and if none can be found, whether it can be proved that no solution exists.
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More Brexit drama

[UPDATE: All eight indicative votes were defeated, all but one of them (a pro-Remain one) by hefty margins, so we seem to be back to square one. I have been watching the livestream of the parliament with great interest. MPs are struggling to figure out what to do next, given the Friday deadline. Pressure is being put on the speaker to allow a third vote on May’s plan but he seems unmoved.]

British prime minister Theresa May has said that she will step down as leader before the next phase of Brexit negotiations, presumably as a last-ditch effort to get recalcitrant Conservative MPs and the DUP to back her plan.

“I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party. I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations and I won’t stand in the way of that,” May said, according to a transcript released afterwards.

“I know some people are worried that if you vote for the withdrawal agreement, I will take that as a mandate to rush on into phase two without the debate we need to have. I won’t; I hear what you are saying. But we need to get the deal through and deliver Brexit.

“I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party.”

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Jesus, just give it a rest, will you?

Via Frances Langum, I came across this extraordinary prayer given at the opening of a session of the Pennsylvania state legislature. Langum counted 12 times that the name of Jesus was inserted, seemingly randomly, as if the more she used it, the more likely she would get to heaven.

I am sure it was just a coincidence that the first item on the agenda was the swearing in of the first even Muslim woman in the Pennsylvania state house.