How the Democratic party establishment works

Today is the day when the final six states (California, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, and New Mexico) have their primaries. The District of Columbia (not a state, for the benefit of non-US readers) has its primary next week and that will be the final primary. There are a total of 694 pledged delegates to be elected today. Of the 4,051 total delegates that are elected in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton so far has 1,812 and Bernie Sanders 1,521, so Clinton needs just 214 today to put her over the top in terms of elected delegates.
[Read more…]

Computer cameras as spying devices

My attention was drawn to this newspaper article about how more and more people are covering up the cameras that are in their computers out of concern that other people could, unbeknownst to them, actually turn them on and spy on them. This fact has been known for some time to computer security experts but was given greater publicity by Edward Snowden as part of his expose of how the NSA and other government agencies spy on people.
[Read more…]

The debt recovery racket

On his show Last Week Tonight focused his attention on the dubious business of debt collection in which people’s debts to some institution are sold cheaply by that institution to agencies that then try and strong-arm people into paying them back, even if the debts have expired. Oliver shows how easy it is to set up a company that can purchase the debts of people.
[Read more…]

Using math puzzles to illustrate the nature of science

(As I mentioned some time ago, I am working on my next book that is tentatively titled The Paradox of Science. From time to time, I will try out ideas from it on the blog, suitably modified to make the blog posts self contained. Readers get the benefit of a sneak preview and I hope to get feedback from readers as to clarity, correctness, style, etc. Note that the book is aimed at the interested layperson and not the many experts who read this blog so put yourself in their shoes when reading. This post is the first of such offerings. Enjoy!)

The website Fivethirtyeight has a weekly feature called The Riddler where puzzles of a mathematical sort are presented and the solution given the following week. Here is one such problem stated in its entirety:

Complete this series:

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 30, 33, …

I want to use this simple purely mathematical puzzle to illustrate an important insight about science. I will give the solution below the jump and then discuss the relation to science.
[Read more…]

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

Muhammad Ali died yesterday and the tributes are pouring in. His greatest accomplishment may have been that he persuaded so many people (including me) to become fans of a brutal activity (I cannot call it sport) that should be despised out of existence. But even more than his boxing skills, what electrified people like me around the world who detested what the US was doing to Vietnam was what he said when he refused to be drafted to fight in that horrible war.
[Read more…]

The rise of physical and verbal violence

I expressed concern yesterday over the violence between political partisans that seem to be becoming a routine feature of this election. This is not a healthy sign. It is interesting how politics in US are a delayed mirroring of what I was used to in Sri Lanka. There too violence at political rallies was not uncommon. Another ugly feature there were the attempts by politicians to impugn the integrity of judges and even retaliate against them or threaten them and thus undermine their credibility or intimidate them whenever they ruled against the government in power.
[Read more…]