I was wondering which 9 countries voted against Palestine's non-member observer status. So here's this glorious list (in alphabetical order):  

Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Panama, United States.

[As reported on Huffingtonpost.]

It is getting increasingly difficult to publish math papers, partially, because of the increased competition. However, it's not all that bad. A computer generated math paper has been recently accepted for publication by a real math journal (called Advances in Pure Mathematics, it is open access, but it is peer reviewed). The brilliant paper can be found on

That's Mathematics!

P.S. The journal is not yet indexed by MathSciNet, but given that the

database already contains over 2,000 items, it's only the matter of time...

Curious statistics: apparently, scientific papers published after having first been rejected elsewhere receive significantly more citations on average than ones accepted on first submission. That's according to an article in Nature. I wonder
if this article was rejected somewhere else before being published there...

Art book with no art...

I always thought that the first year calculus textbook is the worst deal possible. But this textbook beats any calculus text (or any textbook for that matter) hands down: Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800 — doesn't contain any images of art. Nevertheless, it costs $180 is a required textbook at Toronto's Ontario College of Art and Design. More about it here.

Israel's claim that Iran is the biggest thread to peace should be put into historical perspective. So how about identifying the military conflicts initiated by Iran/Persia in the last 400 year? Let's see:

• 1980-1988: Iran -Iraq war. Initiated by Iraq
• World War II: Iran was invaded by Germany and the Allies.
• World War I: Persia maintained neutrality.
• 1826-1828: Russo-Persian War. Formally, this was initiated by Persia, however, the roots of the conflict lie in the Treaty of Gulistan (see below).
• 1806-1813: Russo-Persian War. Initiated by the Russian Empire. The war resulted in signing the Treaty of Gulistan, which confirmed the inclusion of modern day Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Eastern Georgia and other territories into the Russian Empire.
• 1796: Persian Expedition. Initiated by Catherine the Great.
• 1722-1723: Russo-Persian War, Initiated by Peter the Great. All the annexed territories were returned to Persia in 1735.
• 1649-1653: Mughal–Safavid War. This was initiated by the Safavid Empire (Persia), but the military action was localized to Kandahar. 
• 16th century: Ottomans vs Safavids: neither side can be held solely accountable.

Well, if history teaches us anything, Iran has never been an aggressive player on the political arena...

Income inequality

Ontario has the largest increase in income inequality in Canada.
And here's a relevant link to a lecture by Elisabeth Warren at
Berkeley:

 

Protests: Canada vs Russia

Protests in Montreal (left) and Moscow (right). Find the differences...