The Breakfast Club (Logic)

Well, I was going to talk about planetary science today (about which you’ll find plenty of links below) but instead I spent all night puzzling over what is supposed to be a simple 5th grade math problem.

Albert and Bernard just became friends with Cheryl, and they want to know when her birthday is.  Cheryl gives them a list of 10 possible dates.

May 15	May 16	May 19
June 17	June 18
July 14	July 16
August 14	August 15	August 17

Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard seperately the month and day of her birthday respectively.

Albert: I don’t know when Cheryl’s birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know too.

Bernard: At first I don’t know when Cheryl’s birthday is, but I know now.

Albert: Then I also know when Cheryl’s birthday is.

(note: copied by me directly from the picture)

If you don’t want spoilers you’d better stop reading and figure it out now.

What is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths.  Are mine the same as yours?- 39 Lashes

Let’s start with one truth.  This is not a simple 5th grade math problem.

You see the meme is that this is a regular old word problem from a 5th grade math test that Singapore children are expected to pass in order to graduate to the 6th grade which led of course to much Internet hand wringing about the abysmal state of U.S. education in general and particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) where the privatizing looters of our School funds and fiscal conservatives in general bemoan the lack of a qualified work force that must be supplemented by smarter (and cheaper) H-1B imported slave labor.

Here’s some tangential truth to start off- there is no shortage of STEM qualified native labor, in fact there is a surplus.  The problem is that they expect salaries commensurate with their expensive multi year training.

Irrespective of that, almost every element of the meme is untrue.

This question is actually one of the more difficult math nerd questions given to high school students at a Math Olympiad.

Then there is some dispute about the semantics of the question.  The New York Times goes so far as to re-write it so it is undisputably true that “seperately” in this case means that Albert knows only the month and Bernard only the day instead of another fair interpretation of the word that would mean merely that Cheryl told them independently.  I’ll point out the official language of Singapore is not just English, but British English (hell, they even drive on the wrong side of the road) so that’s kind of a minor, if glaring, quibble; the sort that ought to make Alex Trebeck blush if not adjust the score during the commercial break (I give it a 25% chance, but what the heck).

There is however a deeper, logical flaw that allows for two (count ’em, 2) “correct” answers that is explained by The Guardian’s James Grime.

The 3 Easy Steps

1. Albert knows that Bernard doesn’t know.

2. Albert deduces Bernard can’t have a unique date such as 18 or 19.

3. Albert, smugly taunts Bernard, announcing Bernard doesn’t know.

As we’ve seen above in The New York Times discussion, step one is dependent on what the definition of “is” is.  Clearly if knowing the date (as Bernard does) provides a unique solution, Bernard knows all which he admits he does not.  This eliminates the 18th and 19th (you know my methods Watson).

The Difficult 4th Step

4. Bernard realises what Albert has realised, which is that Bernard does not have 18 or 19. Now if Albert was holding June he would know the answer, because there is only one remaining date in June, namely June 17. So Bernard deduces it is not June.

The “Wrong” Answer- QED

5. Bernard announces he knows the answer. This is the second statement of the problem.

6. If Bernard is so confident, he must have a unique date. We know it’s not 18 or 19. What other unique date can it be? There are two 14s, two 15s, two 16s and two 17s – but Bernard has eliminated June 17 – leaving him with August 17 only. That’s how he worked it out.

7. Albert is furious Bernard beat him to the answer. Albert puts himself in Bernard’s shoes, running through the six steps above. Finally Albert reaches the same conclusion we have, Bernard must have 17. Albert announces he knows the answer too.

So August 17 is a valid answer.

Or is it?

It is all about how you interpret the first statement. If Albert has to deduce that Bernard doesn’t know, then we get July 16.

But if Albert knows that Bernard doesn’t know – in other words, that this is a statement of fact, rather than a deduction – then we get August 17.

This incredibly subtle change – deduction vs fact – completely changes the nature of the question. Indeed, with fact interpretation the reader can now deduce the answer from just the first two statements of the conversation, whereas the argument for July 16 does require all three statements.

So, can we accept August 17?

Not any more. The originators of the question, Singapore and Asian School Math Olympiads, have rejected this alternative answer.

I’ll point out that in most classic logical problems all the statements are to be taken as fact rather than bluffs.  On the other hand usually (but not always) all the information is relevant.

In any event I’m taking Alex to the mat on this one.  Jeopardy is an incredibly lucrative franchise and they give away only a pittance in prizes.  I know plenty of lawyers (looking at you PhilJD) and I think I get at least a settlement and an invite back.

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science and Technology News and Blogs

• Pluto’s First Color Portrait From the New Horizons Probe, by Neel V. Patel, Wired
• Target Pluto: fastest spaceship set for epic encounter with our remotest planet, by Robin McKie, The Guardian
• Weird Bright Spots on Dwarf Planet Ceres Still a Mystery in New Maps by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com
• Rise and shine: Rosetta’s Philae probe could be awake within weeks, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Here’s mud in your eye: Rosetta’s ‘star trackers’ muddled by comet dust, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Violent methane storms on Titan may solve dune direction mystery, by Peter Kelley, University of Washington Today
• Nasa’s Curiosity rover finds water below surface of Mars, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Scientists hope Venus will give up the secret of how life evolved on Earth, by Robin McKie, The Guardian
• SpaceX Comes Close to Recovering Rocket, By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times
• The Pacific Ocean has been slowing global warming down. That could be about to change, by Chris Mooney, Washington Post
• Mighty Rio Grande Now a Trickle Under Siege, By MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times
• In California, a Wet Era May Be Ending, By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times
• For Drinking Water in Drought, California Looks Warily to Sea, By JUSTIN GILLIS, The New York Times
• Four-year-old discovers 100-million-year-old dinosaur, By Joseph Dussault, The Christian Science Monitor
• Julius Caesar may have suffered mini-strokes, say doctors, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Cracked it! Scientists solve puzzle of why knuckles pop when pulled, by Ian Sample, The Guardian

Science Oriented Video

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Obligatories

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD.  And I am highly organized.

This Day in History

News

Tensions Flare Between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in U.S. Coalition

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT

APRIL 15, 2015

The dueling Iraqi and Saudi narratives began when Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, who this week is making his first official visit to Washington, spoke early in the day to a small group of reporters at Blair House, the White House guest residence for visiting dignitaries. He said the Saudi campaign and the fighting in Yemen had created huge humanitarian problems.

“There is no logic to the operation at all in the first place,” Mr. Abadi said. “Mainly, the problem of Yemen is within Yemen.”

Mr. Abadi, who is in Washington seeking American military help in the fight against the Islamic State as well as billions of dollars to shore up his sagging economy, then suggested that the Obama administration agreed with him in his concerns about the Saudi campaign.

“They want to stop this conflict as soon as possible,” Mr. Abadi said. “What I understand from the administration, the Saudis are not helpful on this. They don’t want a cease-fire now.”

…

The United States is flying Predator and Reaper reconnaissance drones over Yemen and transmitting the information to a 20-person American military coordination team divided among Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, overseen by Maj. Gen. Carl E. Mundy III, the deputy commander of Marines in the Middle East, said a senior American military official who wanted to remain anonymous because he was discussing targeting procedures.

Under the arrangement, Saudi Arabia gives lists of potential targets to the American analysts for vetting. “We are not choosing their targets, but upon request, we’re providing intelligence to help Saudi Arabia with their precision, effectiveness and avoidance of collateral damage,” the official said.

U.S. Soldiers, Back in Iraq, Find Security Forces in Disrepair

By ROD NORDLAND, The New York Times

APRIL 14, 2015

Iraq’s army looked good on paper when the Americans left, after one of the biggest training missions carried out under wartime conditions. But after that, senior Iraqi officers began buying their own commissions, paying for them out of the supply, food and payroll money of their troops. Corruption ran up and down the ranks; desertion was rife.

The army did little more than staff checkpoints. Then, last year, four divisions collapsed overnight in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq under the determined assault of Islamic State fighters numbering in the hundreds or at most the low thousands, and the extremists’ advance came as far as this base.

…

Those soldiers were already in their fifth week of a six-week basic training course; some will come back for an additional three weeks. In all, 3,600 from two Iraqi brigades are in the American training program, and 4,600 more have graduated since the program began late last year.

With the Taji training site running at maximum capacity, as it is now, that means the program will reach at most about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers by the end of this year, probably far fewer. The Marines at Al Asad train smaller numbers of regular soldiers.

…

Their Iraqi regimental commander, Maj. Masar Hasim (six deployments with American soldiers, and three other wars), was a veteran of a half-dozen battlefields against the Islamic State in the past year, but he said this was the first time his men had received any meaningful training.

“This is a completely different level of training, nothing like what we had before,” he said. But the Iraqi major was cleareyed about their ability and thought it would be a long time before they made a difference in the field.

“If I get 100 good soldiers out of this 400 we have here, I would feel like a king,” he said.

BP dropped green energy projects worth billions to focus on fossil fuels

by Terry Macalister, The Guardian

Thursday 16 April 2015 01.00 EDT

BP pumped billions of pounds into low-carbon technology and green energy over a number of decades but gradually retired the programme to focus almost exclusively on its fossil fuel business, the Guardian has established.

At one stage the company, whose annual general meeting is in London on Thursday, was spending in-house around $450m (£300m) a year on research alone – the equivalent of $830m today.

…

Facing shareholders at its AGM, company executives will insist they are playing a responsible role in a world facing dangerous climate change, not least by supporting arguments for a global carbon price.

But the company, which once promised to go “beyond petroleum” will come under fire both inside the meeting and outside from some shareholders and campaigners who argue BP is playing fast and loose with the environment by not making meaningful moves away from fossil fuels.

In 2015, BP will spend $20bn on projects worldwide but only a fraction will go into activities other than fossil fuel extraction.

…

“All the reports that we produced were filed away and contain a huge mass of information. We had been researching alternative energies for years going back to the early 1980s,” said one senior scientist involved in the BP programme who did not want to be named.

A major cost-cutting drive in 1993 forced the end of R&D as a standalone department. It was reduced in scale, merged with the engineering department and told to concentrate on oil and chemical research.

Much of the renewable energy research is now kept in a formal BP archive based at the Modern Records Centre, a part of the main library at Warwick University, which describes itself as “a history of the modern world”.

The oil company employs its own librarians at the site who insist that only pre-1976 material on issues such as solar power are available to journalists and the public.

…

BP continues to invest in carbon-heavy tar sands operations as well as its traditional oil and gas fields and yet it accepts that some reserves will have to remain in the ground to beat global warming.

…

Many leading environmentalists such as Jonathan Porritt and Bill McKibben believe fossil fuel companies will never play a leading role in any move to a low-carbon economy.

McKibben says: “BP’s ‘beyond petroleum’ shtick was one of the great PR moves of all time, but it never amounted to anything – nor will the pious purring noises they’re making now,” he argues.

“If they want to lead they’ll pledge to stop looking for new hydrocarbons. I’m guessing they won’t, and that we will need to fight them every step of the way.”

Top US lawmakers to discuss police killings as reform momentum builds

by Dan Roberts and Sabrina Siddiqui, The Guardian

Thursday 16 April 2015 08.47 EDT

Recent video of the shootings of Walter Scott in Charleston and Eric Harris in Tulsa, both of which have led to charges against officers involved, has helped galvanise momentum on Capitol Hill which has been slow to build since the disputed death of Michael Brown in Ferguson in August.

…

The event is expected to discuss calls by Cummings for a better national register of police killings and from Paul for a trial of police body cameras, as well as broader sentencing reform and changes to drug laws.

…

Citing the police killings of Scott, Eric Garner in New York and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, New York representative Hakeem Jeffries asked what else Congress needs to see in order for lawmakers to be convinced that some form of action is required.

“Over the last year we’ve seen a parade of [horrible] examples of police violence caught on video for all of America to see. We’re compelled to ask the question: what more does Congress need to see in order to understand that we’ve got a problem? That requires Democrats and Republicans, people in the House and the Senate, working in partnership with the president, to address,” Jeffries said.

Chicago pays $5m to family of teenager shot by police 16 times

Associated Press

Wednesday 15 April 2015 15.37 EDT

The Chicago city council approved a $5m settlement on Wednesday with the family of a teenager killed after being shot by a police officer 16 times last October.

…

Chicago Corporation counsel Stephen Patton had recommended the settlement and told reporters that dashboard camera footage of the 20 October shooting prompted the city’s decision to settle with the family before a lawsuit was filed.

…

The unidentified officer who shot McDonald has been stripped of his police powers and put on paid desk duty, according to a spokesman for Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy.

Tulsa Authorities Ordered Robert Bates’ Training Record Falsified: Report

By Andres Jauregui, The Huffington Post

04/16/2015 11:00 am EDT

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s office ordered supervisors to falsify the training record of the reserve deputy who fatally shot a suspect after mistaking his revolver for his Taser, sources told the Tulsa World.

…

Multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the newspaper that at least three of Bates’ supervisors had been transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-mandated training. The World notes that “the sources’ claims are corroborated by records, including a statement by Bates after the shooting, that he was certified as an advanced reserve deputy in 2007.”

The Sheriff’s Office denied that documents were falsified or that supervisors were reassigned because they wouldn’t sign off on Bates’ training. The office announced Thursday that it will conduct a review of its reserve deputy training program.

A guide to the British election for non-Brits

by Esther Addley, The Guardian

Wednesday 15 April 2015 07.30 EDT

On 7 May, voters across the four nations of the United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – will go to the polls to elect a new government and new prime minister.

This is the most complex and unpredictable British election in living memory, and with less than a month to go, the pollsters and the politicians themselves remain as flummoxed as the rest of us as to what the next government might look like.

If you’re not from the UK, have never voted for a local MP, or are just a bit confused about how the whole thing works, hopefully this will help.

Julian Assange speech prompts judges to boycott legal conference

by Joshua Rozenberg, The Guardian

Thursday 16 April 2015 09.41 EDT

Assange spoke at a panel session of the Commonwealth Law Conference about surveillance and security on Wednesday. He has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since losing his legal challenge to an extradition request from Sweden in 2012.

Judges from Scotland, England and Wales and the UK supreme court had agreed to speak at or chair other sessions but withdrew – in some cases after arriving at the conference centre.

A spokesperson for the Judicial Office for Scotland said: “The conference programme was changed to include Mr Assange’s participation at short notice and without consultation. Mr Assange is, as a matter of law, currently a fugitive from justice, and it would therefore not be appropriate for judges to be addressed by him.

“Under these circumstances, the lord president, Lord Gill, and the other Scottish judicial officeholders in attendance have withdrawn from the conference.”

Obama’s proposal for more trade with Asia may not go over so well in his own party

By David Nakamura, Washington Post

April 15

Obama’s embrace of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) faces fierce opposition from some of his closest political allies and the organizational heart of the Democratic coalition: labor unions, environmental groups and the progressive wing of Congress. His critics on the left contend the pact would help American corporations in state-controlled foreign markets but would lead to job losses and exacerbate the growing income gap at home.

If Obama pushes hard but fails, “Republicans will still be fine with that if they can ignite a civil war on the left,” said Austan Goolsbee, who chaired Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2010 to 2011 and supports the trade push.

Already, the AFL-CIO has suspended all political contributions to focus on defeating the TPP. Rust Belt Democrats have accused Obama of betraying his past opposition to big trade deals as a senator. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s fierce criticism of provisions favoring corporations has made it difficult for Hillary Rodham Clinton to embrace the pact in her White House bid – even though she touted it as secretary of state.

“Why, exactly, should the Obama administration spend any political capital . . . over such a deal?” asked the New York Times’ liberal economic columnist Paul Krugman in a blog post.

…

Obama aides were initially doubtful about whether the economic benefits would justify the level of political capital and presidential attention that would be necessary to complete the deal. But the TPP increasingly came to be viewed inside the West Wing as having broader strategic significance as a cornerstone of the administration’s “Asia pivot,” a rebalancing of U.S. foreign policy attention to confront an ascendant China.

The trade deal would offset the Pentagon’s military buildup, White House advisers believed, and reassure the region of the administration’s intentions.

“The argument was: This is an important leadership moment for the United States,” said former national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, who left in 2013. “If the U.S. pushed hard and indicated its commitment to the trade agreement, it would have a magnetic effect and draw in other countries.”

…

Doubts remain on Capitol Hill and in Asia about whether Obama can close the deal.

The president has dispatched his Cabinet to lobby Congress, emphasizing his commitment to enforceable labor and environmental protections. But Democrats have been cool to the sales pitch, and Obama has had to personally call lawmakers.

…

Obama acknowledged the uphill political fight he faces during a recent meeting to promote his agenda with small-business executives.

“Trade deals have not always been good for American manufacturing,” he said. “There have been times where because the trade deal was one way, American workers didn’t benefit and somebody else did. Well, we intend to change that.”

In many respects, however, Obama faces the same type of deep skepticism he did in Galesburg a decade ago among those he has tried the hardest to convince. On a trip to Cleveland last month, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) accompanied the president on Air Force One.

The trade deal “comes across badly,” Brown said. Obama is “talking about it as part of national security, not part of his economic message, because it doesn’t work.”

NBC’s Conduct in Engel Kidnapping Story is More Troubling than the Brian Williams Scandal

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

In December 2012 – as the pro-intervention cause was strengthening – a group of five journalists working for NBC News, including its star international reporter Richard Engel, was kidnapped inside Syria. They were held for five days, threatened with death, treated inhumanely, and forced to record a video in which Engel was made to call for an end to U.S. involvement in Syria. Scrawled on the walls of the room where the video was recorded was graffiti of pro-Assad messages along with well-known Shiite references.

The obvious intent was to make it appear that these NBC journalists had been kidnapped and mistreated by Shiite forces associated with Assad. By all accounts, the kidnappers went to great lengths to make their hostages believe that as well, and they succeeded. Engel and his fellow captives believed (understandably) they had been kidnapped by pro-Assad forces, only to be rescued by brave and kind Sunni rebels who freed them. Once they were released, NBC said at first that the journalists had been “kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group,” but Engel quickly gave numerous interviews unequivocally stating that the captors were aligned with Assad and that he was rescued by anti-Assad forces. That then became unquestioned fact on NBC.

…

There were ample reasons at the time to be suspicious that this was a scam (perpetrated on (not by) Engel and his fellow captives) to blame Assad for the abduction. There was skepticism expressed by some independent analysts – although not on NBC News. The truly brilliant political science professor and blogger As’ad AbuKhalil (who I cannot recommend enough be read every day) was highly skeptical from the start about the identity of Engel’s captors, just as he was about the pro-intervention case in Syria and the nature of the “Free Syrian Army” generally (in August, 2012, he told me: “Syria is one of the biggest propaganda schemes of our time. When the dust settles, if it does, it will be revealed”).

…

As it turns out, that seems to be exactly what happened. Last night, Engel posted a new statement on the NBC News website stating that, roughly one month ago, he had been contacted by the New York Times, which “uncovered information that suggested the kidnappers were not who they said they were and that the Syrian rebels who rescued us had a relationship with the kidnappers.” That inquiry from the NYT caused him to re-investigate the kidnapping, and he concluded that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia” and that “the group that freed us” – which he had previously depicted as heroic anti-Assad rebels – actually “had ties to the kidnappers.”

…

Nobody can blame Engel – a courageous reporter, fluent in Arabic – for falling for what appears to be a well-coordinated ruse. Particularly under those harrowing circumstances, when he and his fellow captives believed with good reason that their lives were in immediate danger, it’s completely understandable that he believed he had been captured by pro-Assad forces. There is no real evidence that Engel did anything wrong in recounting his ordeal.

But the same is most certainly not true of NBC News executives. In writing his new account, Engel does not mention the most important and most incriminating aspect of the New York Times reporting: that NBC officials knew at the time that there was reason to be highly skeptical of the identity of the captors, but nonetheless allowed Engel and numerous other NBC and MSNBC reporters to tell this story with virtually no questioning.

In a very well-reported article this morning, the NYT states that “Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.”

…

The Brian Williams scandal is basically about an insecure, ego-driven TV star who puffed up his own war credentials by fabricating war stories: it’s about personal foibles. But this Engel story is about what appears to be a reckless eagerness, if not deliberate deception, on the part of NBC officials to disseminate a dubious storyline which, at the time, was very much in line with the story which official Washington was selling (by then, Obama was secretly aiding anti-Assad rebels, and had just announced – literally a week before the Engel kidnapping – “that the United States would formally recognize a coalition of Syrian opposition groups as that country’s legitimate representative”). Much worse, the NBC story was quite likely to fuel the simmering war cries in the west to attack (or at least aggressively intervene against) Assad.

That’s a far more serious and far more consequential journalistic sin than a news reader puffing out his chest and pretending he’s Rambo. Falsely and recklessly blaming the Assad regime for a heinous kidnapping of western journalists and directly linking it to Iran and Hezbollah, while heralding the rebels as heroic and compassionate – during a brewing “regime change” and intervention debate – is on the level of Iraqi aluminum tubes.

At the very least, NBC owes a serious accounting for what happened here, yet thus far refuses to provide one (note how, as usual, the media outlets who love to sanctimoniously demand transparency from others refuse to provide even a minimal amount about themselves). There were – and are – a lot of shadowy interests eager to bring about regime change in Syria and to malign Iran and Hezbollah with false claims. Whether by intent or outcome, that’s what this story did. If it was not only false at the time NBC executives repeatedly broadcast it, but recklessly disseminated with ample reason to suspect its falsity, that is a huge journalistic scandal.

Blogs

• Bob Graham’s Credibility, by emptywheel
• Hassanshahi Bids to Undermine the DEA Dragnet … and All Dragnets, by emptywheel
• Despite Changes, US Government Still Unwilling to Provide Meaningful Information to Americans on No Fly List, By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake
• DEA Faces Criticism From Congress Over Drug Cartel-Backed Sex Parties, By: DSWright, Firedog Lake
• The TPP is Not a “Free Trade” Pact and President Obama is a Politician, not a Political Philosopher, by Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Quick Note on Slavery, Finance, Minsky, and the Panic of 1837, by Lambert Strether, Naked Capitalism
• Capitalism’s Defender Unknowingly Indicts the Banksters, by William K. Black, New Economic Perpectives
• The Defining Moment, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, by Robert Reich
• The Big Chill: How Big Money Is Buying Off Criticism of Big Money, by Robert Reich
• It’s Not Your Money, by Ian Welsh