NBC and Oxford

That's it. At long last, Prof Ngo Bao Chau has won the prestigious Fields Medal. The media, as usual, is awash in joy, as it has always been with anything remotely related to the word Vietnam. Which is fine, I suppose, so long as Prof Chau isn't turned into yet another media's darling or cited, again and again, as a testament to Vietnamese's astounding intellectual capabilities. The Vietnamese media, forever in thirst of role models to heap praise on and turn into national pride, tends to blow things out of proportions whenever an opportunity arises. Consider, for instance, Dr Le Ba Khanh Trinh, my former Geometry teacher. His achievements in IMO 1979 have been propelled to the media spotlight for decades and deemed as evidence of a genius in the making. Dr Trinh has, in short, been showered with expectations he himself does not relish. When he falls short of such expectations, imposed upon him by the avaracious media, it seems that all hell breaks loose and people start to talk about just what a pathetic failure he is (he isn't, as any university lecturer with a happy family would tell you).

In any case, there's a language dimension to reports on Prof Chau's achievements. While English newspapers in Vietnam say he's a "Vietnamese mathematician", an AFP report describes him as a "Vietnamese-born" professor. It's really a small detail which makes a big difference, at least to many Government officials.

To end off, here's a list of newly included words in Oxford Dictionary:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE67I26420100819

Bromance: a close but non-sexual relationship between two men

Buzzkill: a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect

Cheeseball: lacking taste, style or originality

Chillax: calm down and relax

Frenemy: a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry

Interweb: the internet

Wardrobe malfunction: an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of their body as result of an article of clothing slipping out of position

Other entries include staycation (holiday in one's home country), bargainous (costing less than usual) and, of course, Vuvuzelas.

Source: http://sgksgk.blogspot.com/2010/08/nbc-and-oxford.html

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Conservapedia, P=NP, and the Fields Medal

Conservapedia, the right-wing, Christian alternative to Wikipedia has once again broken new ground. In previous entries we've discussed Conservapedia's founder Andrew Schlafly self-Godwining and Conservapedia's interesting take on Popperian falsifiability. Others have discussed Conservapedia's objections to special and general relativity. Now, Conservapedia is at it again.

Apparently, Conservapedia has taken a recent interest in mathematics. First, they added to their mainpage a take on the recent reports that Deolalikar had proven that P ≠ NP . Conservapedia announced:

University professors pile on against a non-professor's claim to have solved one of the millennium problems. MIT Assistant Professor Scott Aaronson declares, "Vinay Deolalikar still hasn’t retracted his P≠NP claim, but a clear consensus has emerged that the proof, as it stands, is fatally flawed." He absurdly adds, with a cite to Richard Dawkins, "the only miracle in life is that there are no miracles, neither in mathematics nor in anything else."

But the best of the public, aided by the internet, will inevitably solve more problems than liberal colleges will - just as Grigori Perelman solved another millennium problem. The future belongs to the conservative public.

(internal links and fonts suppressed)

Apparently, Aaronson's decision to quote Richard Dawkins meant that math must be evil. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to note some of the other more glaring errors. However, this was not the end of Conservapedia's attack on establishment math for being just too liberal. Shortly after this declaration, an addition about the Fields Medal went up. The Fields Medal, awarded every four years, is for mathematics roughly equivalent to a Noble Prize(there is no Nobel in math). Conservapedia announced a "Conservapedia exclusive":

[T]his Thursday liberals will likely give the coveted Fields Medal -- math's highest honor -- to an underachieving woman and to a communist-trained mathematician from Vietnam. Is the lamestream media holding back stories about this to create a bigger splash on Thursday?

(internal links and fonts suppressed)

It is not clear what "underachieving woman" Conservapedia is thinking of, but apparently the "communist-trained mathematician" is a reference to Ngo Bao Chau, who made headlines last year for proving the Fundamental Lemma of the Langlands program. Apparently Conservapedia believes that the general media cares so much about mathematics that a failure to speculate on who will win the Fields Medal is a sign of a media conspiracy. Why a "communist-trained" mathematician would be a big deal is not clear given thatabout half of the Fields Medal winners have been either from the USSR or trained in the USSR.

Also, apparently Conservapedia is unhappy that after Terence Tao got the Fields Medal four years ago he then endorsed Barack Obama for President, Finally, we come to the detail that forced me to write this blog entry. To deal with this apparent liberal bias and affirmative action in the Fields Medal, Conservapedia is starting its own award for mathematicians, the "ConservaMath Medal." According to the website this Medal is "the merit-based alternative to the Fields Medal, with winners announced at the same time so that real achievement is recognized." I'll let that speak for itself.

Source: http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/2010/08/conservapedia-pnp-and-fields-medal.html

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