Meanwhile on the Iran front…

While a lot of the media focus in the run-up to the elections has been on domestic US politics, we should not ignore the fact that the government of Israel has been dropping hints of imminent war with Iran. As Stephen Walt says, Israel has raised the stakes by saying that they not only will they not let Iran develop nuclear weapons or the capability of making them, they will not even tolerate the Iranians having the theoretical capacity of doing so at some unspecified time down the road, a much lower threshold. [Read more…]

What is the matter with these parents?

You would think that after what seems like non-stop revelations of Catholic priests abusing children, parents would not let their children be alone with a priest. And yet, when the priest of a parish in Oregon told the parents of a 12-year old boy that he would like to take their son on a trip to the mountains, they not only agreed but let the boy spend the night in the priest’s house. [Read more…]

Can someone please explain this to me?

I have a simple rule about news items about celebrity gossip. I tend to ignore those things that concern people that I am too much of an old fogey to be aware of, let alone care about. So I will read something if it is about a truly famous actor or someone not so famous but who is of my generation (i.e., old). But if the header of a news item refers to people like minor celebrities like Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and the like, I tend to skip over it and the story usually disappears fairly quickly. I save lot of time this way. [Read more…]

The difference between intuitive and operational in science and mathematics

My post on infinities and the accompanying video generated some interesting discussions and illustrated the difficulties that people have the idea of ‘operational definitions’ in science and mathematics. While scientists and mathematicians, like everyone else, use everyday language to communicate with one another, they are well aware that language contains traps in the form of implicit meanings and hidden concepts that can lead to ambiguities and even paradoxes in unfamiliar situations. These arise because our intuitive concepts are developed from our experience with the everyday world and while they may work well there, problems can arise when they are extended to regions beyond our immediate experience. [Read more…]