Chess Tutorial

I was channel surfing when I came across Eugene Torre, Asia and the Philippines' first chess grandmaster re-creating one of his games and giving out pointers as he did so. I don't know if this is a regular show or if this is a one time deal but at the end he said that in the future, he will re-create his games with Karpov, Kasparov and Tal.

So Filipino chess fans should watch out every Saturday, about 6:30 pm at SBN channel 21.

Update:

Googled SBN 21 and found out that the show is titled "Barangay Uniting thru Chess" and airs every Saturday 6:00 - 6:30 pm.

Nerd Wannabee

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

Not nerdy, but definitely not hip.

I should really get a life. :)

Subtly Simpsons: In-Depth Explanations to The Simpson's Wittiest References

When Sideshow Bob is in jail, his prisoner number is: 24601. This is also Jean Valjean's number in Les Miserables. Episode: 8F20, The Return of Sideshow Bob.

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Excommunication

From the Guardian via Pharyngula

"A Vatican official has said the Catholic church will excommunicate a medical team who performed Colombia's first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl, who was eight weeks pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, said in addition to the doctors and nurses, the measure could apply to "relatives, politicians and lawmakers" whom he called "protagonists in this abominable crime".

Update

Cardinal Trujillo, the one quoted above has denied having said such a thing.

"A Roman Catholic cardinal has denied reports that he said the Vatican would excommunicate doctors who performed Colombia's first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather.

"I have not said that, nor has the Holy See, nor have I thought it," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican's pontifical council for the family, on Caracol Radio on Wednesday."

One Voice vs. AdCom

FYI. Got this from the One Voice mailing list.

The Manila Times asked the Advocacy Commission and One Voice to
answer 10 questions. Here is part 1 and part 2

The AdCom replies were written by Dr. Jose Abueva. He served as
chairman of the Consultative Commission that drafted the
recommendations that President Arroyo endorsed to Congress last year
for the new Constitution to replace the 1987 one. A former president
of the University of the Philippines, Dr. Abueva is now president of
Kalayaan College.

The One Voice replies were written by Dr. Rene B. Azurin. He
authored the Dissenting Report of the defunct Consultative
Commission and is a convener of One Voice, the nonpartisan
organization against the Charter-change efforts of Sigaw ng Bayan,
the Union of Local Authorities in the Philippines (ULAP) and Adcom.
He teaches Strategic Management at the University of the
Philippines.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

As per Dr. Myers request at the Pharyngula. I would like to inform you that the folks at the Panda's Thumb is doing a review of the the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Jonathan Wells.

A quotation from the Introduction of the review

"One thing is for sure, Jonathan Wells is too modest. His recently published, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, is not only politically incorrect but incorrect in most other ways as well: scientifically, logically, historically, legally, academically, and morally."

The consequences of allowing Porn

First it was gays now its porn, my going to hell has become a real possibility. :)

Dispatches from the Culture Wars informs us about a new study that "points out, rape has decreased by 85% since 1970, while pornography has become vastly more available and more popular."

He also warns us that correlation does not necessarily mean causation so be warned.

Update 10/05/2006

Here is an article by James McConvill who actually read the study.

Dirty Tom Bonney

My pirate name is:

Dirty Tom Bonney

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

The Anti-Escultura

From seattlepi.com

"Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal - often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize - for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe"

The story from the Wall Street Journal

"In 2002 and 2003, he posted two papers to an online archive. Usually, a posting serves a flag-planting function - "I solved this first!" - until the paper is published in a journal, which can take years. But as the math community waited for him to follow up his postings, a realization set in. Dr. Perelman, long affiliated with the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg, apparently has no intention of saying more. He probably feels he proved the Poincare conjecture, mathematicians surmise, and has no interest in the $1 million bounty. (He did not respond to emailed requests for comment.)"

"Putting his proof online rather than in a journal is only one example of Dr. Perelman's iconoclasm. He admits that he gives only "a sketch of an eclectic proof of" a more general conjecture from which Poincare's follows; he never mentions Poincare. The papers are difficult to understand, and sketchy in the extreme. He asserts that one can prove something by a variation on an earlier argument, but it isn't clear what the variation is. "Perelman's papers are written in a style rather different from what would appear in a journal," says mathematician Bruce Kleiner of Yale University."

"Others have taken it upon themselves to explicate his work - and find no major flaws. Like Torah commentaries, they dwarf the original. Dr. Perelman's 2003 paper is 22 pdf pages; the 2002 paper is 39. But "Notes on Perelman's Papers," in which Prof. Kleiner and John Lott of the University of Michigan explain them almost line-by-line, is 192 pages. A book on the papers is expected to top 300 pages. A "complete proof" of Poincare, based on Dr. Perelman's breakthrough and published last month in the Asian Journal of Mathematics (which Prof. Milnor describes as throwing "a monkey wrench" into the question of who gets credit), is 328 pages long."

He put his proof online and did not answer questions nor defend it, yet other mathematicians recognized the worth of his work continued it and still gave most of the credit to Mr. Perelman. so much so that he won a Fields Medal.

Meanwhile the Gauss Prize that Dr. Escultura has claimed he won was awarded for the first time to Kiyoshi Itô

Ever SEEN an actual firefox?

geek joke + a super cute puppy

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