Banned math book
johndcook.com
johndcook.com
Specifically, they banned the book "Conceptos básicos de matemática moderna" (Modern Maths Basic Concepts) / Hernández-Rojo-Rabuffetti
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907276
Heraclitus having come up with πάντα ῥεῖ, he'd probably be the first one to carry a banner saying "Down with Heraclitus!"
[1] No doubt the General would have disapproved of Bajofondo as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8SVYDvMVzY
Speaking of Hanoi, leg warmers were another item of pop culture found on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
"Hanoi" Jane vs. Liliya Sabitova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg_VnsmATFE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_SXPbDPMVE
(bonus track: Hart, "Peace for Triple Piano" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcRW3FMuttY )
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Conservapedian_m...
https://boingboing.net/2012/08/07/what-do-christian-fundamen...
Q. what's an anagram of Banach-Tarski?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3693042-mathematics-made...
It's surprising to me that a new copy still costs $150 in 2020, when it was published in 1924, and both authors passed away 45+ years ago, and are thus unlikely to be "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Courant died in 1973, so his copyright will expire at the end of 2043.
On a more serious note, there's not a lot that individuals can do about this – even individual politicians. The systems involved have to change pretty fundamentally to prevent lobbying from working. How do you think those systems can be changed to accomplish that?
I agree it's a hard problem, but I think with a big enough pool of information everyone could get a letter/email saying that politician x cost you y amount this year by voting this way. I know I would be compelled to make some changes.
Better than the status quo, since only huge companies will still be able to effectively lobby, but introduces problems of its own. That is, assuming the system works as intended. Which it won't.
Because how do you make sure the disclosure is mandatory? This punishes honest lobbyers (and honest lobbyees) more than it punishes dishonest ones; if all politicians are being lobbied evenly from all possible causes, but cause B's lobbying is secretive, politicians are incentivised to vote for cause B (i.e. against ¬B, which they are being publicly lobbied by).
This system does incentivise not being the ones to lobby, though – assuming there's no way to do lobbying that appears to be ¬B lobbying, so the politicians can be virtuous and vote B, which makes the “¬B lobbyists” lobby harder because obviously their bribes weren't big enough…
In my mind, a couple big reasons.
One, for the same reason that we accept a lot of awful things like murder as inevitable. Of course we'd rather get rid of these things, but it's unrealistic to think we'll get rid of them completely, so the systems we have in place for dealing with them when they happen will always be very important.
Two, because these things are often in the eye of the beholder. What I see as "rent seeking", you might see as "providing a public good". Most people (on HN at least) think current US copyright law represents a lot of rent seeking by Disney. But most of the same people still support some notion of copyright. There's no clear line where "public good that most people agree with" ends and "rent seeking" begins.
And yes, in about 90% of rates in the US, the person who spent more won: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/winning-vs-sp...
They are still responsible for their actions even if the alternative actions would be highly against their self-interest.
Even a person who is threatened with death if they don’t take an action, is still free to either take or not take the action. They might be justified in taking the action on the basis of said threat, even if the action would ordinarily be forbidden, but they are still making a choice.
"I'll give you $1M if you extend the copyright timeline."
"If you don't give me $1M I'll let your copyright expire."
Does anybody else believe that congresspeople should be paid $10M/yr, indexed to inflation? This would be a drop in the federal budget, but would do a lot I think to curb both bribery and extortion.
I disagree. If anything it will push them for more bribery and extortion. Wealth seeks wealth and there is never enough wealth.
Of course Disney aims to maximize their value of the IP, also via methods that most don't feel are honest and net good for society.
But that's where law makers should be expected to hold back and take the opinions and interests of others into account too.
Notably, Sonny Bono for whom, along with the other sponsers I withhold invective purely out of respect of this community and its value of civil discourse.
I find the extension from 50 to 70 years extremely distasteful; manifest contempt by 'artists' for the commons and society's investment in their success.
But between the two organizations, gerrymandering means the politicians can't be voted out but people can "vote" to lower Disney's status with their dollars.
Since the beginning of this year, the original German edition of the book that was published in 1924 is in the public domain in the US (and most likely only the US). Unfortunately this applies only to this edition and not to any translated versions.
I looked around the front matter of the book and did not see any mention of a translator; presumably this means that Courant translated this himself. This means as soon as 50 years has elapsed from Courant's death (in 1972), all editions will be in the public domain in Canada and a few other countries (in 2023). In most other countries, this book will be in the public domain 20 years later than that (in 2043). The US is once again exceptional, where each edition will enter the public domain separately, 95 years after their publication. The English version of Volume 1 of this text in the Amazon preview appears to have been published in 1953, which would mean it would be in the public domain in 2049, well after it would be available in virtually every other country in the world.
Of course, all of this discussion above assumes that copyrights don't get extended again before these works enter the public domain. The US Supreme Court has ruled that arbitrarily extending copyrights before they expire is sufficient to satisfy the "limited Times" mentioned in the Constitution; what matters is apparently that the copyrights are set to expire at some point, not that they ever actually do.
Or check section 3.3 in the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf
I found a copy of the original German (unfortunately in scanned, DJVU form), but it was somewhat tricky to find. This comment inspired me to upload it to the Internet Archive so that others can access it more easily (https://archive.org/details/methoden-der-mathematischen-erst...).
Canada is now Life + 70. Article 20.62 of CUSMA (new NAFTA) requires copyright term to be no less than that.
https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/assets/pdfs/a...
From reading a Canadian law firm's analysis of the changes (https://www.blakes.com/insights/bulletins/2020/ip-post-nafta...), Canada has 2.5 years (until the end of 2023) to enact this change. This can also be seen in the link you provided in Article 20.89.4.c. (The link I provided mislabels this as Article 20.90. or perhaps refers to an alternate draft of the document.)
It appears that Canada has not enacted this law just yet, although I may be mistaken about that. Depending on when they do, Courant's work may or may not enter the public domain in 2023, although it seems more likely than not that the copyright term will be extended by then.
I, not focusing on math in school, had not heard of the book. But became curious reading the glowing praise in the article and this thread.
The value of their work doesn't end with their death. This means that they can sell the rights prior to dying and receive some of that value.
Courant left Germany in 1933, earlier than many Jewish escapees. He did not lose his position due to being Jewish, as his previous service as a front-line soldier exempted him; however, his public membership in the social-democratic left was reason enough (for the Nazis) for dismissal
I'm sure Courant was persecuted for being Jewish (see e.g. the discussion in that same document about how Landau was treated), but it seems to have not been the official reason for his dismissal.
[1] http://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_files...
(I left off reading Weil around this point. I'd get back to it, but find political systems without a healthy number of major parties rather depressing subjects.)
For example, the Nuremberg Laws (which, among other things, banned marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans) only went into effect in 1935.
Considering the Nazis only were in positions of power for twelve years and still managed to murder six million Jews and many million other people they did not like, they did move quickly and there certainly were sudden shifts and changes in what people (in particular Jews) were allowed to do and subjected to. However, the overall trajectory was still one of turning up the intensity, not going into it with full intensity, among other things certainly also for propaganda reasons.
Given that the Social Democratic Party was the only part voting against the Enabling Act in 1933 (Communist MPs were at that point already all imprisoned, banned from parliament or fleeing) he certainly had, however, two things the Nazis could attack him for, whichever was more convenient.
So makes sense to me that they pushed him out and makes sense to me that he fled as quickly as possible.
The Nazis murdered plenty of Social Democrats. The Nazis obviously murdered plenty of Jews. If someone was Jewish and a Social Democrat the distinction of why the Nazis were persecuting them becomes sort of an academic one. They might name either or both reasons, whichever sounds more convenient.
That's a bit like saying nobody in the US gets shot by police because they're black, since that's illegal. Anti-semites in Germany didn't suddenly start liking Jews who had rights.
I haven't found it under either Courant or Hilbert in either
https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pagevie...
or
https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/titlein...
(Note the font change between 1935 and 1938, clearly showing I was in the wrong on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23446057 My bad!)
Not trivial to make without the resources of a major industrial nation, but the actual simplest mechanism is essentially just sufficiently purifying two lumps of a metal of sufficient size and quickly smashing them together.
You don’t get modern technology, say the transistor, without nuclear inevitability.
I wondered why the book was banned. Was Courant Jewish? I’d never considered this before, because I couldn’t care less about the ethnicity of authors. Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female, I just care about their content.
John, you start a post about Courant's Jewishness by denying that you have any interest in his Jewishness. This conveys the sense that being a Jew is dirty and should not be brought up in polite company. Don't do this.