Scrolling around...May 24, 2013

Conservatives Became Targets in 2008
The Obama campaign played a big role in a liberal onslaught that far pre-dated Citizens United....

30 Million Americans Added to Food Stamp Rolls Since 2000
U.S. welfare spending last year was enough to send each household living under the poverty line a check for $60,000...

In wake of soldier’s beheading, UK authorities on alert for anti-Muslim backlash
Fear of a continuing backlash against Muslims gripped London on Thursday following the gruesome beheading of a British soldier by two men spouting jihadist rhetoric...

Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap
On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of Annals of Mathematics, one of the discipline’s preeminent journals. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field — a 50-something lecturer at the University of New Hampshire named Yitang Zhang — the paper claimed to have taken a huge step forward in understanding one of mathematics’ oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.

Editors of prominent mathematics journals are used to fielding grandiose claims from obscure authors, but this paper was different. Written with crystalline clarity and a total command of the topic’s current state of the art, it was evidently a serious piece of work, and the Annals editors decided to put it on the fast track...  [I'm not a math person at all, but this was fascinating. -PD]

The Beauty of Bounded Gaps
A huge discovery about prime numbers—and what it means for the future of math...