Recommended reading updated

I’ve updated the Recommended Reading page with a list of some favorite novels and authors. If you have any recommendations (books or authors, fiction or nonfiction), please comment!

Newsy tidbits

Now that I’ve finally finished that ridiculously long Pascal’s Wager post (it’s been in the works for over a week, due to both the length and the fact that I’ve been insanely busy), I can give some news!

First of all, it’s official: I’ll be attending SUNY Albany for grad school next year (mathematics PhD)! I’m very excited–there are some great people there, students and professors alike. Also, I’ll get to stay in the Capitol Region for five more years, which is great because I love the area, and besides, now I won’t have to move very far. What will I study? Well, I don’t know yet, but I am assured that that’s okay. At the moment discrete math and topology are warring for my heart.

The Definitive Rebuttal of Pascal’s Wager

Well, almost certainly not THE definitive rebuttal, but MY definitive rebuttal at least. Pascal’s Wager is one of the worst arguments I’ve ever heard for believing in God and I can think of several distinct criticisms of it, any of which is sufficient to destroy the argument. And yet theists keep trotting it out as if it’s the Big One, the one argument guaranteed to convince any atheist anywhere. I’m utterly sick of having to rebut it each time, especially since I try to pick and choose which criticism I’ll use each time so as not to get long-winded.

Here I can be as long-winded (I prefer the term thorough) as I like, and from now on whenever someone online pulls the Wager on me I’ll direct them here, rather than beating my head against the wall and typing it all up again. I’ll describe in detail every distinct criticism I know, and list the false assumptions made in the argument. I may add to this over time if I encounter new variants of the Wager or new counterarguments that are sufficiently unique to be worth discussing. Also, a note to my current (few) readers: I know most of you are either disinterested in the argument or disagree as strongly as I do. This post is not geared toward you, but rather to anyone with whom I happen to be arguing religion online from now on. So don’t feel obligated to read or comment (though I would appreciate suggestions!) Alright, here we go…

Please link to Expelled Exposed

This is just a quick post to link to Expelled Exposed, the website put together by the National Center for Science Education for the purpose of debunking the ridiculous claims made by Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. At the moment the site consists of a list of links to various reviews and discussions, as well as some information from the people who were interviewed under false pretenses. However, tomorrow they will post a full response and I’m sure it will be an excellent resource. I know several of you already read Pharyngula and other blogs that are advocating this, but I hope you’ll do your part to boost Expelled Exposed’s Google ratings when people search for Expelled. (I’m not sure; does Google take into account multiple links by the same page?)

I’m working on a couple of longer posts, including the conclusion to Hypergame which has been waiting for far too long, but I continue to be busier than a senior in spring term has any right to be! This weekend is the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, for which I still have to prepare my talk, and I also have to make fractal cookies (thanks to Isabel) to share on the drive up. It’s also coming down to the wire for grad school acceptances–the program that’s accepted me is very graciously allowing me about a week extra to decide, but at least one school whose waiting list I’m on has told me I’ll hear in two weeks. Argh! I don’t want to accept the position at the one school and then back out later, but I’ve told the other school my situation and now all I can do is wait. I should probably try to breathe.

In Defense of Worms

Over at Friendly Atheist Forums, there was a thread asking us atheists about the “big questions”, one of which has to do with what happens when we die. Some of the answers mentioned the idea of becoming “worm food”, generally implying that this was a disgusting or discomforting idea. Well, I don’t, and here’s why:

It’s officially spring!

Winter is in some ways an agonizing few months for me. I don’t mind the cold, and the snow is fun, but I love going out and spending time in Union’s garden and other natural areas, and I don’t get to do that in the winter. Over the last few years I’ve spent a lot of time with my camera, taking pictures of the flowers and plants that grow in the garden, both cultivated and wild. In the last year especially, I’ve learned to look at the insects and other bugs that live in these areas and have become absolutely fascinated with them. But in the winter all the flowers die off, and the insects are all dead or in hibernation. It feels like there’s no life, even though the birds and squirrels would disagree. But that’s why the beginning of spring is so exciting, because all of a sudden the plants are poking themselves out of the ground and I get this great reassurance that yes, life is coming back for another year!

Funny funny…

I went over to my thesis advisor’s office today and told her in a very quiet voice that I had a confession to make. I admitted that my entire thesis was copied from Wikipedia. Her face went blank, and at that point I couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing. Once she got over the shock, she started laughing too, but now that most of the math department is ribbing her over it, I’m afraid she may start plotting revenge. Anyway, most successful April Fools joke I’ve had in a long time…

In other news, I’m (obviously) back from spring break, where I ate delicious sausage soup, helped my friend with algebra, and watched elephant seals! This term should be a good one: I’m taking a course in parallel computing, doing an independent study in foundations of mathematics with one of my favorite professors, and my advisor says she has a problem she wants me to work on. This on top of lots of tutoring (calculus and a little computer science, mostly), finalizing grad school plans, figuring out what I’m doing this summer, and hopefully getting a little hiking and photography in somehow! Of course, just the next few weeks may be impossible; in addition to classes, I have to clean my dorm room (which is covered in guide dog hair), take the GRE subject test (even though I’ve already applied to grad schools), go visit SUNY Albany, prepare my talk for HRUMC, do my taxes…you know what, can I just drop out of school and go get a job at Walmart or something?

P.Z. Gets EXPELLED!!!

I’m sure most of my (few) readers are already reading Pharyngula, but this just has to be shared. I’ve been following the sordid saga of Expelled! on P. Z. Myers’ blog since he first learned that he’d been interviewed under false pretenses for this creationist propaganda “documentary”. Of course, the makers of Expelled are being very, very careful who they allow to attend their screenings and what people are allowed to write about it–all the while pretending that they support free speech and scientific inquiry–but it seems they’ve had a security breach in the midst of fending off a dangerous attack:

Ha! Take that, thesis!

Finally turned in my thesis this morning, after days of thinking about nothing else! Gosh it feels good to be done–46 pages of topology, and right now I feel like I have bits of my brain dribbling out my ears. The good news is that I feel like once I recover for a few days, I will want to dive back in and study some more topology! There’s a possibility that Prof. Johnson and I will work on some of the problems we raised during the course of this thesis next term, which will be fun.

Also, I’m not going to be thrown out in the street after this year! Yes, it’s true–I have an offer! One of the PhD programs I applied to has accepted me, so I have at least one option, which is a relief. Unfortunately they want to know right away, and I’ve only heard back from one other, which doesn’t want me. (To be fair, they had 100 applicants for 5 slots.)

Lastly, the Putnam exam scores are in! For any readers out there who aren’t familiar with it, the Putnam is a six-hour math test taken voluntarily by undergraduates every December. It’s one of the hardest math tests around, with questions that are easy to state but extremely tricky to prove the answers. There are twelve questions, each scored out of 10 points, and the median score is usually 0.

Last year when I took the Putnam I scored a 1, and the median was 0, so I did better than at least half the students who took it. Not quite something to put on my resume, but still something to be proud of.

This year I got 12. That puts me in the top 25% for this year, and it’s apparently higher than any Union student has scored in previous years, though I suspect several of my fellow students scored similarly, since there was one problem we all got. Hooray!

I’m not going to be able to do another long post quite yet, since I have a final exam to take, a friend visiting (who has been rather bored these last couple days waiting for me to finish thesis), and spring break next week. I’m sorry to leave Hypergame hanging, but hopefully sometime next week I’ll do that last post. (I’d better hurry, since MarkCC is starting a series of posts on game theory!)

Just a quick post

This is just a quick note to say that I may be scarce in the next week, because my thesis is due in seven days and counting. It’s going to be a real race to the finish, but I think I’ll make it. However, things like long posts about game theory and paradoxes have a way of eating both my time and my daily allotment of intelligent mathematical writing, so Hypergame is going to have to wait its turn. (Although most of you can already tell exactly what’s going to happen…)

Also, I seem to have hit a nerve with that post about waiting to hear from grad schools. All of a sudden you guys are coming out of the woodwork with stories about how agonizing the wait is. It makes me feel sort of perversely better to know other people are going through/have gone through the frustration too.

That’s all for now. See you on the other side (of the thesis deadline, that is)!