Well the massive winter storm dubbed Jonas lived up to the hype. Here it is nearly a week after the snow started and the digging-out process is still going on. Lanes appear and disappear at random, depending on just how each particular snow removal crew tackled its job. Temperatures rise above freezing during the day causing wide-spread melting and the wet patches freeze over night snarling the next days commute. Most children remained at home during the entire week. And yet many drivers still text will driving and continue to pull stupid stunts by swerving around the more cautious drivers. It is enough to make a body say ‘Snow my God!’
Nonetheless, neither rain, nor snow, nor tons and tons of snow can keep the Blog Wyrm staff down.
Are faith and reason really at odds with one another? The ancient philosophers didn’t think so, neither did the thinkers of the high middle ages, and neither did most of the modern intellectuals… that is until relatively recently. The current mode of modern thought suggests that science has done away with faith once-and-for-all. But is there really a logical basis for this claim or is it wishful thinking? This week Aristotle to Digital shows that wishing it don’t make it so and that the complementary connection between the two is alive and well in science.
Keep the internet free and clear is a rallying cry of net neutrality. But as this week’s Common Cents discusses, finding the correct economic balance between competing needs and desires is very difficult. Unintended consequences lurk in hidden corners and negative externalities abound when trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution.
Most students learn to think of vectors as either arrows with length or as vertically-stacked lists of numbers or symbols. Certainly understanding these instances is important but it is all too common to see a kind of functional fixation develop where every vector space is equated by analogy with these two examples. This week Under the Hood shows how simple 2-dimensional matrices can form a vector space with an ‘unusual’ inner product. Just the thing to cure the ‘when the only tool who have is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail’ trap.
Vertigo has been hyping a new, ongoing series called Unfollow. With a Twitter, social-media theme, the story is about the experiment run by a wealthy, dying billionaire who picks 140 random characters to receive a slice of his fortune. About Comics takes a look at how it has developed so far.
Note: The early advertised column about Secret Wars will come a later date.
Enjoy!