Briggs

When Should The Church Meddle In Science? Guest Post by Bob Kurland

A longer version of this essay can be found at Kurland's site. Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

Bad Arguments Against The Death Penalty: Update

Big news is that both lefty and righty Catholic news sources banded together last week to issue an editorial "Capital Punishment Must End". The subject is enormous; there is no…

Culture Statistics

Race Norming At Universities And The Doctrine Of Unintended Consequences

The Los Angeles Times had a story about how hard East Asians have to work to be admitted to college. Problem is these kids are too smart, an attitude which…

Philosophy Statistics

Sampling Variability Is A Screwy, Misleading Concept

https://twitter.com/Bigdatanalysis/status/573739862924353536 Because of travel and jet lag, exacerbated by "springing forward", we continue our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles next week. If you can't read the tweet above, it says…

Culture

You’re A LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM-aphobe!

I admit it. I am afraid of the sort of person who boasts of being a card-carrying LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM member. I would not want to be in a room alone with…

Culture

Journalist Bias For Sale Vs. Academic Freedom: More On The Soon Pseudo-Controversy

Two parts to this. An email exchange with a reporter, and the column he eventually wrote. Regular readers know I've been documenting these so other can people can see just…

Statistics

Can Microbes Manipulate Minds? Guest Post by Petro Starokadomskyy

Starokadomskyy is at the Department of Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center. He writes about his work in the area our original post "Decline Of Participation In Religious Rituals With…

Statistics

Der Spiegel Asks About Global-Warming-Causes-Syrian-Civil-War Paper

That peer-reviewed Colin Kelley et al. paper "Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought", which the traddy media is portraying like Wired did---e.g. How…

John Pate on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 30, 2026
I would press the red button because it's the red button. The bigger the red button the harder you hit…
Polybius II on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
"their Other Lives’ Value premise is something vague about man, but not men" I am reminded of a british comedian…
Johnno on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
But do we get time to explain to everyone and have them all sit down and have a discussion before…
gareth on Class 87: Calibration & Conformal Prediction: ExamplesApril 29, 2026
Timestamp 21:35: A "correction" from 0.8 to 1.0 is a "correction factor" of 1.25, not 0.2 (akshully wot you mean…
Cato on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
There’s no point to a world without me; of course I press Red.