Mathematics as the Central Principle of Modern Origami

At min 2:00 of his TED talk, Robert Lang asks what has allowed the recent explosion of innovation in the ancient art of origami:

And it raises a question: what changed? And what changed is something you might not have expected in an art, which is math. That is, people applied mathematical principles to the art, to discover the underlying laws. And that leads to a very powerful tool. The secret to productivity in so many fields -- and in origami -- is letting dead people do your work for you. (Laughter) Because what you can do is take your problem, and turn it into a problem that someone else has solved, and use their solutions. And I want to tell you how we did that in origami.

In his excellent talk, Lang refers to modern examples of origami, including a cuckoo clock made from one sheet of paper and no cuts. Lang proceeds to discuss the mathematics of origami. Beautiful, mathematical and mind-blowing. It's an excellent talk with more than a few laughs along the way.

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Transgender Logic: A Kidney is the Same Thing as a Liver

From Zach Elliott's tweet:

Elliot's "argument" is satirical, aimed at claims commonly being made by transgender activists. Elliot cites to some of these claims in his tweet thread. Another person making this claim that biology is merely socially constructed is Chase Strangio, one of the lead attorneys for the ACLU, which, once-upon-a-time used to be a principled organization, but has now become unapologetically partisan on many issues.

The problem for Strangio, et al is that biological sex came into existence two billion years before the existence of hominids.  That said, basic biological facts don't seem to matter to trans activists like Strangio.

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It is Important to Criticize Each Others’ Ideas

Peter Boghossian's Letter to the Chronicles of Higher Education. What he writes about civil engineers, physicists and philosophers really hits the nail on the head.

It is worth noting that criticism is framed as harassment only by academicians working in certain domains of thought that are in Critical Theory’s orbit. Civil engineers are not claiming that criticism of truss bridge design is harassment. Physicists are not claiming they’re being persecuted when their contributions to quantum theory are criticized. Philosophers are not claiming victimization when their arguments about free will are scrutinized. Claiming criticism is harassment occurs when a discipline’s North Star is not Truth, but ideology.

The internal rationale for calling criticism “harassment” is as simple as it is absurd: because these Critical Theories are believed to proceed from one’s “social position” as an occupant of some “identity category,” the person and her ideas are treated as though they overlap. They do not. Thinking they do is a dangerous mistake for anyone to make, not least institutions that are nominally devoted to Truth. The backbone of rational thought is separating people from ideas to protect the dignity of the former while being free to criticize the latter.

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How Gender Ideology is Degrading Medical School Teaching at an American university

From an anonymous Medical Student at American University (an excerpt from a longer article):

IDD64 @IDD64 asks: “What happened to “nobody’s saying sex isn’t real”?”

This is actually what compelled me to speak out about this practice in the first place. Well-intentioned non-medical people often assume that medical schools are teaching something like, “Gender identity can be fluid and varied, but biological sex is real, binary, and relevant in medical contexts.” This idea is around five years out of date in the most progressive of institutions. I have been told multiple times in several classes that biological sex is a social construct – not just gender. Granted, I can speak only for my institution, but this change has been frustrating and disturbing to witness.

Robert Woolley @RandomlyBob asks: “Do any of the required textbooks also avoid using those words? If not, might you ask those professors if they think the books are either inaccurate or offensive?”

Our curriculum is constantly subject to revision. Around two-thirds of our written materials have been updated with this new language. For the one-third that has remained out-of-date, our class has received multiple apologetic, itemized emails from course instructors in which they provide corrections, beg for forgiveness and patience, and avow to “do better”. In class, we have been given multiple histories in which the patient’s sex has been deleted, even for cases involving disorders which can manifest differently between the sexes. The words “female” and “male” are being erased and replaced.

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