Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday defended his ex-White House colleague Gary Cohn for removing a trade-related document from President's Trump.
Reads, Listens
Reading list of books, magazines, newspaper articles, other physical documents, or online posts
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
Playlist of posts listened to, or scrobbled
🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Conservative Divide Over Kavanaugh | New York Times
We look at three stances taken on the accusations against the Supreme Court nominee.
🔖 Sylvester’s Line Problem | Wolfram MathWorld
Sylvester's line problem, known as the Sylvester-Gallai theorem in proved form, states that it is not possible to arrange a finite number of points so that a line through every two of them passes through a third unless they are all on a single line. This problem was proposed by Sylvester (1893), who asked readers to "Prove that it is not possible to arrange any finite number of real points so that a right line through every two of them shall pass through a third, unless they all lie in the same right line."
Woodall (1893) published a four-line "solution," but an editorial comment following his result pointed out two holes in the argument and sketched another line of enquiry, which is characterized as "equally incomplete, but may be worth notice." However, no correct proof was published at the time (Croft et al. 1991, p. 159), but the problem was revived by Erdős (1943) and correctly solved by Grünwald (1944). Coxeter (1948, 1969) transformed the problem into an elementary form, and a very short proof using the notion of Euclidean distance was given by Kelly (Coxeter 1948, 1969; Chvátal 2004). The theorem also follows using projective duality from a result of Melchior (1940) proved by a simple application of Euler's polyhedral formula (Chvátal 2004).
Additional information on the theorem can be found in Borwein and Moser (1990), Erdős and Purdy (1991), Pach and Agarwal (1995), and Chvátal (2003).
In September 2003, X. Chen proved a conjecture of Chvátal that, with a certain definition of a line, the Sylvester-Gallai theorem extends to arbitrary finite metric spaces.
👓 Terence Tao’s Answer to the Erdős Discrepancy Problem | Quanta Magazine
Erica Klarreich (Quanta Magazine)Using crowd-sourced and traditional mathematics research, Terence Tao has devised a solution to a long-standing problem posed by the legendary Paul Erdős.
In the middle of the lecture last night, I was thinking to myself that this problem seems like a mixture of combinatorics, integer partitions and coding theory. Something about this article reminds me of that fact again. Most of the references I’m seeing however are directly to number theory and don’t relate to the integer partition piece–perhaps worth delving into to see what shakes out.
The article does a reasonable job of laying out some of the problem and Tao’s solution to it. I was a bit bothered by the idea of “magical” in the title, but it turns out it’s a different reference than the one I was expecting.
🎧 ‘The Daily’: Rod Rosenstein’s Insurrection | New York Times
In the eight days between the firing of James Comey and the appointment of Robert Mueller, the deputy attorney general faced a crisis.
🎧 An Obit, This Time For Real | On the Media | WNYC Studios
Remembering the veteran news media hoaxer Alan Abel.
This past week’s coverage of Hurricane Florence has had all the trappings of a terrible storm: the satellite images, the sandbags and empty grocery stores, the newscasters dressed in flood gear. One recurring side character we seem to have avoided this time around, though, is the doctored image of a shark swimming on a flooded highway.
It’s a preposterous hoax that succeeds, occasionally, on the merits of some kernel of truth; for instance, whole swathes of interstate highway in North Carolina are, as of this moment, covered with water. That kernel of truth is what hoaxers and jokers build their handiwork upon — as did the veteran hoaxer Alan Abel, who passed away late last week at the age of 94.
Abel made a name for himself inventing characters and causes and turning the joke on the media; in 1980 he staged his own death and got himself an obituary in the New York Times.
Brooke spoke to Abel — and his daughter, Jenny Abel, the director of the documentary, "Abel Raises Cain" — in 2008.
🎧 FEMA Time | On the Media | WNYC Studios
As Hurricane Florence bears down, we discover that FEMA has $10 million less in its budget. The money was siphoned off to pay for detention and removal of immigrants.On Wednesday, as Florence swirled ominously off the coast of the Carolinas, and states prepared for imminent disaster, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) thought it would be a good time to draw everyone’s attention to the shifting priorities of this administration. Specifically, he released a budget that showed the Department of Homeland Security had transferred nearly 10 million dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pay for detention and removal operations.
FEMA officials maintain that the smaller budget won’t hinder their operations, but as wildfires rage and hurricanes make landfall, they have a lot on their plate. We don't think about FEMA much, until that's all we think about. Historian Garrett Graff says the agency’s, quote, “under-the-radar nature” was originally a feature, not a bug. Graff wrote about "The Secret History of FEMA" for Wired last September and he spoke to Bob about the agency's Cold War origins as civil defense in the event of a nuclear attack and how it transitioned to "natural" disaster response. Plus, they discuss the limitations to FEMA's capabilities and why it has such a spotty record. Graff is also author of Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While The Rest of Us Die.
🎧 O See, Can You Say | On the Media | WNYC Studios
The anonymous op-ed, the Kavanaugh hearings, decorum, civility, and the freedom to speak.
Between the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill and an anonymous op-ed from within the Trump White House, a wave of rule-bending and -breaking has crashed on Washington. This week, we explore how political decorum and popular dissent have evolved since the early days of our republic — and how the legal protections for those core freedoms could transform our future.
1. Brooke and Bob on how best to cover the anonymous op/ed written by a "senior official in the Trump administration." Listen.
2. Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at University of Chicago, on our evolving — and occasionally faulty — interpretations of the first amendment. And, Laura Weinrib, professor of law at University of Chicago, on how early-20th century labor struggles gave birth to our modern ideas about freedom of speech. Listen.
3. Tim Wu [@superwuster], professor of law at Columbia University, on how the first amendment could inform new regulations for Silicon Valley. Listen.
👓 What is Applied Category Theory? | Azimuth
Tai-Danae Bradley has a new free “booklet” on applied category theory. It was inspired by the workshop Applied Category Theory 2018, which she attended, and I think it makes a great com…
👓 On the recently removed paper from the New York Journal of Mathematics | Terence Tao
In the last week or so there has been some discussion on the internet about a paper (initially authored by Hill and Tabachnikov) that was initially accepted for publication in the Mathematical Inte…
I wish there were more on the math here or at least some solid discussion of the actual science. The huge number of comments make me just think that this is gasoline, however well intentioned it may be.
👓 Agent, Auburn native subject of Wall Street Journal feature | Auburn Citizen
Matt DelPiano is used to being a step removed from stardom, but a Sept. 24 story in The Wall Street Journal finds him front and center.
Ha!
👓 The Pre-Challenge Challenge – Setting Up for the 9 X 9 X 25 | Extend Domains
This post will be a series of questions. If you answer yes to the question, skip to the next one! If you answer no, follow the links for further detail. If you’re thinking “I’d ra…
🎧 Summer Series Episode 3: Airline Crash Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios
This summer we revisit some of our most important Breaking News Consumer Handbooks. Episode 3 in this mini-series is Airline Crash Edition.
When a commercial plane goes down, media speculation ensues. With the help of The Atlantic's James Fallows, we give you some tips that can help you comb through the coverage.
🎧 Summer Series Episode 2: Military Coup Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios
This summer, we're revisiting some of our favorite Breaking News Consumer Handbooks. Episode 2 in this mini-series is Military Coup Edition.
Back in the summer of 2016, Turkish putschists shut down highways, attacked government buildings and took broadcasters hostage, world media outlets struggled to provide sober reports of the coup. During the chaos, some listeners told us on Twitter that they’d appreciate an OTM Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Coup Edition. Coups are especially tricky to report on because they're mainly about perception and narrative. Plotters and the government are both trying to establish dominance, and misreporting can determine whether the attempt succeeds or not.
Naunihal Singh, author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, says the first step for a successful military coup is to take control of radio and tv broadcasters. From there, they can literally and figuratively control the narrative.
Brooke spoke to Singh about how to understand coups through the media, and how to understand whether an attempt will succeed or fail.
Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Military Coup Edition
🎧 Summer Series Episode 1: US Storm Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios
This summer we revisit some of our Breaking News Consumer's Handbooks. To mark the ramping up of hurricane season, the first episode in this mini-series is the US Storm Edition.For media professionals, hurricanes offer the very best kind of bad news because the story arc is predictable and invariably compelling. In this summer series revisiting some of our Breaking News Consumer’s Handbooks, we examine the myths, misleading language, and tired media narratives that clog up news coverage at a time when clarity can be a matter of life and death.
Brooke speaks with Dr. Robert Holmes, National Flood Hazard Coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey; Gina Eosco, a risk communication consultant; and Scott Gabriel Knowles of Drexel University, author of The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America.
