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Sunday, October 30, 2011

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Al Jazeera Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Al Jazeera Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers: pAl Jazeera released a new mini-documentary yesterday on the Koch Brothers — the multi-billionare energy tycoons who have spent over $50 million on campaigns to tear down the science of climate change and clean energy policy. The documentary features a lengthy interview with our colleague Lee Fang, an investigative reporter with Think Progress, who has [...]/p

Monday, October 17, 2011

Springer-Verlag is fucking things up

I'm in the process of publishing a book with Springer Verlag. This supposedly reputable organization sent my manuscript to a crew in India and I am now reaping the bitter fruits of out-sourcing.  This crew  butchered my manuscript in a severe fashion. They replaced many of  my formulations with grammatically incorrect ones, and more  importantly, they willy-nilly changed words, affecting  the mathematical meaning of my statements.   They destroyed in 6 weeks  what it took me    more than a year to build.  Out-sourcing may destroy in several  short years a reputation that took Springer many long decades to build.      Welcome the the new era of cheap substitutes for  quality!

Why the Math Sciences are about to be screwed by the Federal Government

 Recently, the American Mathematical Society  informed its members about  a proposed name change at the NSF. The Division of Math Sciences  is no be renamed the  Division of Math Sciences and Statistics. I'm pretty pissed off about  about this and here is what I wrote.


I read with profound worry the proposed   name change  for the current   Division of Mathematical  Sciences.   I was under the impression that all branches  of mathematical research  were equal,  but this proposed name  change   has  a whiff of an  Orwellian  ``but some branches are more equal than others''.


The new name  will  change the social  perception (read Congress' perception)   of the purpose of this division of the NSF. The practical effect   of this will be an ``equitable'' partition of resources between Mathematical Sciences and Statistics with damaging consequences to the mathematical community and research.

If anybody   doubts of the plausibility of this scenario  I would point  him or her to  the recent troubling events  from  UK. In that case, the ``equitable'' partition  of resources  took the form  of a   skewed  allocation of postdoctoral  positions, with a complete bias towards statistics.  This prompted a public reaction from the British   mathematical community that took the form of an open letter to the Prime Minister(  for  details see this recent  article from  The Guardian)


The fact that the British mathematical community had a public reaction is a telling fact  in itself because we mathematicians   tend to no get involved, even when   our interests are at stake. I think that  the American Mathematical Society   ought to state clearly and publicly    its position on this issue and I  sincerely  hope that the AMS will oppose such a name change.

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