The Catholic League is up in arms about Cosimo Cavallaro’s milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ, naked on the cross, titled “My Sweet Lord”. (the image is from the BBC article)

Personally, I’m offended for two reasons. First, this is gratuitous use of delicious chocolate that could otherwise be savored with espresso, milk or champagne. I wish sculptors would stick to making religious artwork out of things that aren’t so tasty (the virgin Mary partially made out of elephant dung from a few years ago is a fine example).

Secondly, I’m offended that Catholic League head Bill Donohue called the sculpture

“one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever”.

Really? More of an insult to the supposed Christian ideal of loving one’s brother than the homophobic attitude of the church? More of an insult than the rampant and systematic sexual abuse of young boys by Catholic priests? More of an insult than the poverty and disease exacerbated by the church’s absurd stances on abortion and birth control, particularly in the third world? Somebody needs a new priority list.

If you like the sound of the piece, or are just a little peckish, go see the exhibit Monday onwards at Manhattan’s Lab Gallery.

Apparently wine vs. beer is the story of the upcoming Democratic primary. Obama is wine, Clinton is beer. (Via MR.) And beer always wins! Glad that’s been settled.

I have nothing to say about this, I’m only posting to mock my lazy cobloggers. Do they have jobs or something? Feel free to join the mocking in the comments! And as a bonus, a cute kitten. (Via Chrononautic Log.)

It’s that time of year when eager young students are deciding where to embark on, or to continue, their higher educations. You can see our advice-giving posts on choosing an undergraduate school and choosing a graduate school.

But there are a lot of options out there, and it would be a shame to overlook any of them. So we’d be remiss not to mention the unique opportunities offered by the Maharishi University of Management. Founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, spiritual advisor to the Beatles, and led by John Hagelin, highly-cited theoretical physicist and occasional Presidential candidate, the MUM offers a — did I already mention “unique”? — set of experiences to the enthusiastic student. And that’s not even counting the Yogic Flying!

Here, for example, are some of the course descriptions for the undergraduate major in mathematics.

Infinity: From the Empty Set to the Boundless Universe of All Sets — Exploring the Full Range of Mathematics and Seeing its Source in Your Self (MATH 148)

Functions and Graphs 1: Name and Form — Locating the Patterns of Orderliness that Connect a Function with its Graph and Describe Numerical Relationships (MATH 161)

Maharishi Vedic Mathematics: Mathematical Structure and the Transcendental Source of Natural Law (MATH 205)

Geometry: From Point to Infinity — Using Properties of Shape and Form to Handle Visual and Spatial Data (MATH 267)

Calculus 1: Derivatives as the Mathematics of Transcending, Used to Handle Changing Quantities (MATH 281)

Calculus 2: Integrals as the Mathematics of Unification, Used to Handle Wholeness (MATH 282)

Calculus 3: Unified Management of Change in All Possible Directions (MATH 283)

Linear Algebra 1: Linearity as the Simplest Form of a Quantitative Relationship (MATH 286)

Calculus 4: Locating Silence within Dynamism (MATH 304)

Complex Analysis: Transcending the Real Numbers to a Simpler and More Unified Numbering System (MATH 318)

Probability: Locating Orderly Patterns in Random Events to Predict Future Outcomes (MATH 351)

Real Analysis 1: Locating the Finest Impulses of Dynamism within the Continuum of Real Numbers (MATH 423)

Set Theory: Mathematics Unfolding the Path to the Unified Field — the Most Fundamental Field of Natural Law (MATH 434)

Foundations of Mathematics: The Unified Field as the Basis of All of Mathematics and All Laws of Nature (MATH 436)

Now, sure, any old university will be offering courses in real analysis and set theory. But will they learn about the unified field, and locate the finest impulses of dynamism? “Vector calculus” sounds kind if dry, but “Unified Management of Change in All Possible Directions”? Sign me up!

Nobody ever said the Maharishi wasn’t a good salesman.

Our current task, as Serious Bloggers, is to pass judgment upon whether the Muffin Joke is funny. Here is the joke itself:

So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it’s hot in here!”

And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”

John Tierney (New York Times) thinks the Muffin Joke is not funny. Brad DeLong (Berkeley) disagrees, claiming that the Muffin Joke is, in fact, funny, although he offers no argument to support his conclusion. Jack Balkin (Yale) also finds the Muffin Joke funny, and does offer a rationale:

The muffin joke is funny because it is self-undermining. The punch line undermines the suspension of disbelief that the joke’s narrative presumes. It is kind of like breaching the fourth wall in drama. It’s like the line in Dr.Strangelove “You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!” or the Atheist Hymn we came up with in high school: “There is no God, there is no God, He told me so himself.”

He admits, however, that by offering this explanation, he has thereby wrung all of the funniness out of the Muffin Joke. That’s as may be.

I come down on the pro-Muffin-Joke side of the debate. To me, it’s quite funny. Is this some sort of Ivory-Tower Academics vs. Hard-Nosed Journalists thing?

Thanks to Daniel’s post below, Cosmic Variance is presently the #1 Google hit for pretty pictures of love.

Who says we don’t have a sensitive side?

Today’s xkcd captures an important insight.

Click for the whole thing. (Update: Darn it, Cosma Shalizi got there before me.)

Jessica Hagy illustrates the vagaries of life via mathematical doodles on index cards.

Blogs — what can’t they do?

One of the fun aspects of using Gmail is the little ads for sponsored links that appear next to every message. I can’t imagine ever clicking on one of them, but it’s amusing to see what the Google mind thinks is related to the message content. For the most recent daily mailing from gr-qc@arxiv.org, here were the sponsored links that came along with it:

Fields Medal declined
Grigori Perelman has declined the 2006 Fields Medal for mathematics
www.thefirstpost.co.uk

the field center
how consciousness creates reality; an extraordinary eight-week course.
www.fieldcenter.org

The Theory of Everything
String theory can’t be all there is Read all about the alternatives
NewPhysicsAndTheMind.net

field offices ny
Perfect sales office space in NYC. $495+, full service. Start now!
www.microoffice.us

Relativity Challenge
Did Einstein make a math mistake? You be the judge!
www.relativitychallenge.com

Wanted: Scientists
Jobs for PhDs in biology, chemistry physics, math, and engineering
jobs.phds.org

Humidifier Filters
All sizes all the time 24 hour shipping
www.filters-now.com

So the scorecard is: two relevant links, three crackpot sites, one hilariously inappropriate understanding of the word “field,” and one perplexing sales pitch for humidifiers. But I kind of like the idea of attacking string theory via Google ads. I might just start advertising my own papers this way.

Some years ago I heard a fascinating talk by the magician and pseudoscience debunker James Randi, in which he spoke of many interesting things ranging from ESP and UFOs to medical quackery. One thing he talked about was a strange phenomenon involving, of all things, the number 17.

In the advanced undergrad lab course I am teaching this term, my students and I today were talking about random numbers. At one point, the memory of Randi’s talk bubbled up in my head and I said “Hey, did you know that if you ask people to choose a random number between 1 and 20, inclusive, and record their answers, there is a big excess at 17?” Ordinarily, if you ask 100 people to do this, you would think that would get about 5 responses for any given number like 6 or 12 or 15. Of course it will vary statisticaly, but there should be no real preponderance of any particular number. Right?

My students thought this 17 stuff was nonsense, and saw an opportunity to see if I was just teasing them. So, with about 30 people to attack in the class, they started recording real data, asking first the students that had arrived, and then students who filtered in for the next 20 minutes or so.

The result? Well, to my own great surprise the number of people who answered 17 was an early favorite: three out of the first 12 or so! And then a string of four people ALL answered “17″ as they were asked the second they came through the door! We were actually shocked by the prepomderance of 17’s. The students have the data sheet, and I think are continuing to ask their other freinds and roommates this evening.

We of course tried to explain this really odd phenomenon, but so far have no good theories. Clearly 17 is a number that’s not to far away from the maximum allowed, 20, and it’s one that you don’t often encounter like the small integers, or 10, 12, 15, 16, etc. So perhaps it seems more “random” to people. But still it’s quite weird. I wonder if it would still work if asked for a number between 1 and 100, for example.

I know there are a lot of readers out there who might find this intriguing and want to do their own experiment. I am willing to try to compile the data that folks send me via email - just send a message with one line per integer, and one frequency:

1 5
2 4
3 8
4 3
.
.
.

et cetera, so I can put them into a program and make a combined histogram which I will show here in a week or so if I get data. Make sure you don’t tip off the group you are in as to the nature of the test, and don’t give your victims more than a second or two to think about it.

Have fun! (Okay, it’s a bit nerdy…)

For the first time in years, Hillary Clinton says something honest and funny that made me smile. Is it surprising that the media don’t know how to react, and run around in rapidly shrinking hermeneutic circles in attempt to make sense of this phenomenon? No, it is not surprising.

It’s a joke, people! A pretty good joke, actually. Good for her.

Promoted from comments, without comment.

Thanks to Stephen Levy for the pointer.

Who says our commenters are anything less than perfectly awesome? In the course of reading Alejandro Satz’s review of Lee Smolin’s book, I came across a link to a comment on one of Clifford’s old posts. An elaborate review of a film that is completely imaginary, but demands to be made; it’s brilliant, and somehow I don’t think it got the attention it deserved when originally posted. It’s by “Steve,” but I don’t know anything more specific — if the real Steve would like to step forward, I’d be happy to give credit where it’s due!

———————————————————–

The “String Kings”, Scorsese’s latest, is a highly violent but satisfying gangster movie, certainly on a par with Goodfellas or the Godfather trilogy, and does give the viewer insights into the raw and violent world of fundamental string theory research. The film also boasts a first-rate Hollywood cast: Joe Pesci as Michael “Mo “Green; Burt Young as John Schwarz; Antonio Banderas as the hot-bloodied Juan Maldacena, who is as fast with a flicknife as he is with an ADS duality; Leonardo deCaprio as Lubos “The Kid” Motl; Robert de Niro as Tom Banks; Harvey Keitel as Joe “the (quantum) Mechanic” Polchinski, Michael Douglas as Michael Douglas; Amanda Peet as Amanda Peet, Terrence Stamp as Lenny Susskind, Jackie Chan as Michio Kaku, Samuel L Jackson as Clifford V. Johnson and Eugene Levy as “Boss of Bosses” Ed Witten. The film is characterised by some extreme and gratuitous violence and is not for the mathematically squeamish, but this is to be expected considering the subject matter.

In the film, Lubos Motl becomes involved with the string mafia at a young age. As he says in the film, “I always wanted to become a string theorist”. As an undergraduate he idolises the string theory gangsters in the US and eagerly studies every page of GSW, Vols. I and II. Upon graduating, the local Syracuse mob captain Tom Banks sees his potential and helps cultivate the boy’s developing criminal string career, offering him a postgraduate position. In graduate school Lubos is arrested by campus police for intimidating researchers in medicine, biology, engineering, arts and humanities into citing string preprints in their work. He admits nothing and is lauded by his superiors as a “stand-up guy”. Upon getting his Phd he moves to Harvard and gets to rub shoulders with some of the “made guys” within the east-coast string underworld. Ruthless and violent and described as “perturbatively unstable” he quickly establishes his reputation. From his Harvard base he helps the mob take over local bars, clubs, businesses, casinos, hotels, libraries, graduate schools and journal editorial boards. They run a sleazy escort agency called “Matrix Models”. The also conspire to channel, siphon and launder millions of dollars worth of grant money from the government. However, at this time the FBI also begin to keep a close watch…

Perhaps the most violent scenes in the film follow when “Boss of Bosses” Ed Witten, from a huge luxury mansion in Princeton NJ, calmly gives the order for a long list of people to be “taken out” (spoiler alert). In a chilling sequence, the film repeatedly cuts between the increasingly violent mob hits and Ed giving a seminar on the twistor space structure of 1-loop amplitudes in gauge theory. Lee Smolin is seen shot multiple times in the back as he writes LQG constraint equations on a blackboard. There is a scene showing work on an extension of the New Jersey turnpike, involving string henchmen (disguised with hard hats and overalls) a large cement truck and Peter Woit. Carlo Rovelli is kidnapped and strapped to a chair while the Kid goes through his quantum gravity monologue page by page with seething criticism before finally bashing his head in with the hardback edition. Another LQG theorist gets his dimensions compactified in a car crusher. These violent scenes generally stay with you long after the film is finished and have an unsettling effect.

The film also cuts to the west-coast string operation where Stanford mobsters are experimenting with hard drugs. With on-location filming at the ITP (now the Kavli Institute) we see Polchinski (Keitel) and Johnson (Samuel Jackson) working on a lecture series, unfortunately with awful dumbed-down dialogue from Jackson:”This D-brane primers gonna kick serious ass mutha”. However, back east things go awry and the kid ends up in jail replete with orange jump suit taking the rap for his superiors, following an FBI sting (string?)operation. But he starts to run an operation from his cell smuggling in drugs and arxiv preprints for his fellow inmates.

However, the film badly degenerates into 70s and 80s actioner kitch near the end when the east-coast string bosses decide to take over Kaku’s NY pop science, popular book, tv and radio operation, thus stopping him making string theory understandable to “the stupid people”. It turns out though that Kaku who has 4 black belts can shatter a stack of D-branes with a single karate blow, and takes on the string mob, joined by fellow populariser Brian Greene played by Steven Seagal. However, some of the mob back west are not hapy including boss John Schwarz who says, “Kaku was writing string theory papers when some of you guys were struggling with high-school algebra”. What follows is an all-out turf war in NY’s China Town, with a badly dubbed Kaku (even though being Japanese), a sinewy, oiled lean, mean fighting machine…every muscle tensed ready to explode with lightening reflexes, taking out the string mob one by one in a scene shamelessly ripped off from the end of “Enter the Dragon.”

Overall, String Kings will appeal to fans fo the gangster genre and despite the ending will probably still become a Scorsese classic.

You know how George Bush is constantly admitting that he’s made grave mistakes, and apologizing, and hoping to do better in the future? Hmm, no, I guess you don’t. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is leading by example, as this excerpt from Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me demonstrates. (Via Unfogged.)

The phone rings.

Lovelady: Lovelady. Newsroom.

Obama: Nicholas?

Lovelady: This is he.

Obama: Nicholas, this is Barack Obama.

Lovelady: Hey, how’s it going?

Obama: Man, I am calling to publicly apologize for messin’ up your game. I felt terrible. I didn’t know there were any ladies around. I just wanted to let you know that I’m deeply sorry. But if she was that superficial, then she wasn’t for you.

Lovelady: (chuckles) Well, I really appreciate it.

Obama: Well okay, man. Bye bye.

The call ends.

For context … read the whole thing. Audio here.

I would definitely vote for Obama if I hadn’t already pledged my support to The Editors.

How often do you get to vote for a dinosaur?

Much subtle wisdom in today’s Piled Higher and Deeper.

I’ll admit that for a while now I’ve been unsure what to do with the following bit of photographic evidence that happened to fall into my hands. But, following PZ’s sterling example, our first duty must always be to honesty, and let the chips fall where they may.

Whatever can it be?