Brian and Dan (and Ramsey and Desmos)

Two great pieces you ought not miss from the last 48 hours:

1) The always wonderful Brian Hayes with a delightful post on Ramsey Theory:
http://bit-player.org/2015/ramsey-theory-in-the-dining-room

Brian works/writes over at American Scientist in addition to his personal blog above (and is also a Scientific American alum). He's such a clever, insightful writer I can't help but think he could've been a fine successor to Martin Gardner over at SA (where he did briefly do a similar computer science column). Anyway, much more of his writing linked to at this page:

http://www.americanscientist.org/authors/detail/brian-hayes

2) Secondly, a fairly glowing (and well-deserved) New Republic piece on Dan Meyer and his approach to teaching mathematics. Dan (and his work with Desmos) will need no introduction to any secondary math teacher in America who is active on the Web, but whether you do or don't know of him read up:

https://newrepublic.com/article/124750/man-will-save-math