Briggs

Amazon remotely deletes legitimately purchased books from Kindles

Ari Schwartz sends along this link, from Gizmodo. Amazon [was] bending to the wishes of a publisher and deleting every single legitimately-purchased copy of 1984 and Animal Farm from all…

Culture

The sad decline of music: Cole Porter vs. The Beatles

Paul McCartney has once again crept upon our shores. He was, of course, vanguard in the original "British Invasion", which occurred in early 1964. Now, an invasion is something to…

Philosophy

The strange insignificance of statistical significance

Who is more likely to support the death penalty: college undergraduates from a "nationally-ranked Midwestern university with an enrollment of slightly more than 20,000" majoring in social work, or those…

Statistics

Hannah Arendt on global warming theory

...there are, indeed, few things that are more frightening than the steadily increasing prestige of scientifically minded brain trusters in the councils of government during the last decades. The trouble…

Fun

A Return to Seriousness: 7 Best Songs About Beer; Or, God Bless the Pope

Update: the embeddings have been shifted to links, because the embeddings were eating up too much memory on some people's browsers. 7 John Lee Hooker/George Thorogood, One Bourbon, One Scotch,…

Philosophy

Randomness isn’t in charge of anything: the “hot hand” in basketball

The Wall Street Journal is helping Leonard Mlodinow tout his book The Drunkardâ€™s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Among other things, Mlodinow, like academics Tversky, Kahneman, and Gilovich before…

Fun

Internet Advertising Company to Fund Itself With Advertising

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Internet Advertising Company to Fund Itself With Advertising New York - July 4, 2009 - Word leader in being a new company engaged in ways of bringing…

Book review

Public Enemies — by Bryan Burrough

I am re-posting this book review because the movie came out today, and it might be of interest. Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI,…

Johnno on World Ends In 25 years! Towns Become Slaughterhouses! Peter Thiel Disguises Self As Sheep!August 30, 2025
Well as NLR said, and others have echoed, whenever disaster ultimately comes, it comes to the most advanced places, namely…
Briggs on Class 63: My Correlation Is Causation Because My P Is WeeAugust 28, 2025
Willis, The same one you used in setting up the problem. After "millions of throws" (where the manner of the…
Williis Eschenbach on Class 63: My Correlation Is Causation Because My P Is WeeAugust 28, 2025
As always, William, good stuff. Say that I have a pair of dice. I suspect that they are loaded to…
McChuck on The Right & Wrong Way To Do (Electromagnetic) Science: Interview With Hans G. SchantzAugust 28, 2025
Briggs & Schantz - With a name like that, you two should go into business making small engines. But seriously,…
Wm Arthurs on Class 63: My Correlation Is Causation Because My P Is WeeAugust 28, 2025
Throwaway comments made by people who are confused about this sort of thing, gave me a clue to one of…