This has been my first year on the Putnam committee: the committee that selects the problems for the William Lowell Putnam undergraduate competition. The committee consists of 3 members appointed for a 3-year term each (each year, one person’s term...

If you’re female and you’re reading this, stop whatever else you’re doing for a moment and go read these three posts at Women in Wetlands, now also on my blogroll. (Found in the comments here.) They offer sensible and practical advice on how to...

I grew up in a socialist country. I’m reminded of it every time I hear that public health care is socialist, or that financial regulation is socialist, or that regulating the auto industry is socialist, or that taxation is “spreading the wealth” and...

Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip:

This got me a bit puzzled: why would a comment on this post link to a BBC documentary on Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing? Given that I don’t know as much about the history of mathematics as I probably should, and that I was...