Briggs

Columbia Law School Kiddies ‘Traumatized’, Exams Postponed: Update Harvard Joins

There's a story in John Toland's magisterial The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (volume two) which depicts a Japanese ship transporting Western prisoners in conditions…

Statistics

The Philosophy Of Rock Paper Scissors

Way my dad and I used to play is that when somebody won they got to grab the hand of the loser and then, with the fore- and middle-fingers only,…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: Terms Which Can Be Predicated Of God

See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. All posts are under the category SAMT. Previous post. Today some…

Philosophy Statistics

Infinite Surprise And Impossible Events

It's a lazy Saturday, so some musings today on entropy and information and probability. It's about time we started tying these things together. Things like the following are heard: "Given…

Statistics

Uncertainty Is An Impossible Sell

I've never seen the show, but I've heard that the protagonist on the X Files used to have a desk sign which read, "I want to believe." That sentiment characterizes…

Philosophy

Pascal’s Pensées, A Tour: II

Since our walk through Summa Contra Gentiles is going so well, why not let's do the same with Pascal's sketchbook on what we can now call Thinking Thursdays. We'll use…

Book review Statistics

The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels Reviewed

People first Just in time for the Federally-Recognized-Holiday-Of-25-December-That-Shall-Go-Unnamed we have a suitable gift for science deniers everywhere. Alex Epstein's The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels Science deniers? Yes, sir. Those…

Statistics

Can We Predict The Unpredictable?

The most intriguing thing about the new peer-reviewed paper of the same name as today's post in Nature: Scientific Reports by Abbas Golestani and Robin Gras is that it is…

John M on Climate Change Increases Risk of Even Slower World Cup Games!June 11, 2026
The picture on the video link shows how boring the game is. There are so many people yawning and a…
_Jim on How Experts Use “Calamities” to Find Official Victims & Gain PowerJune 11, 2026
re: "How Experts Use “Calamities” to Find Official Victims & Gain Power" Having skimmed the above post, I realize my…
_Jim on How High an IQ Must A Person Have To Be Executed?June 11, 2026
re: "The only question is capacity to recognize guilt. If the perpetrator was allowed to vote in national elections, the…
_Jim on The Ultimate IQ Test: Guessing the Author’s Mind and Escaping the Infinity of AnswersJune 10, 2026
One gains a better understanding of the underpinnings of the grist (the extensions to the 'maths') behind QM (Quantum Mechanics)…
_Jim on Reader Poll: Shorter or Longer, Frequent or Rarer Posts?June 10, 2026
I echo Jean Lesperance's response ... overbooked to too many blogs these days!